Archive for July, 2007

In the attached graph the green line is our traffic on Yuppiechef from 9th to 15th of July (ie 2 weeks ago), and the blue line is traffic from 16th to 22nd July (ie last week). In both weeks traffic dips towards the weekend, but otherwise the figures are pretty similar.

The odd thing is that last Friday (the third blue dot from the right) there was a large article in Die Burger punting our site and our products. Very exciting at the time, but apparently completely useless?

Well, we're still hopeful. We assume that at least a few people read the piece, and the next time they come across our site or a Yuppiechef advert the sense of familiarity that they have with our brand will help them in the buying process. As Fred says, branding is about consistency and pervasiveness, so any media coverage helps in the "pervasive" department.

Thanks to our new PR company, Yuppiechef had the opportunity to feature in Die Burger, one of the biggest papers in the Cape. For all our foreign readers, and even some of the locals you might not get it all as it's written in Afrikaans. It's about kitchen gadgets and current kitchen trends. But basically its all good stuff and it cost us nothing!

Click image to see full size.

Most gurus and books will tell you that repeat customers are more important than trying to gain new customers. They've already proved that they want to buy from you, and there is generally less customer service interaction because they've experienced the process once. Amazon have hatched a way to facilitate this with items like coffee pods, razor blades and washing powder. When you buy this type of product you are presented with the option to have Amazon deliver the same item at regular intervals. Convenient for the customer, and oh so profitable for Amazon.

This model works quite well for flags, which need to be replaced every year or so due to bad weather. We'll add it to the development wish-list.

Last week we launched a blog for Yuppiechef. Our whole aim was to have a space where we could celebrate the amazingly cool products that are out there as well as talk about things that are relevant to Yuppie Chefs. You'll notice we've made use of Flickr and are hoping to develop a community around the Yuppiechef brand where foodies, wannabes and kitchen posers can connect. Long way to go still, but we are pleased with the progress so far. Check it out here, and give us some feedback…good and bad.

Have a look at this article and spoof video here:

http://www.getelastic.com/ecommerce-video-checkout-personal-information/

As we’ve said before, reducing the hurdles during the checkout process is crucial to serving customers well, and showing the total price (including delivery) as early on as possible is a good idea.