So... I want to tell you about my friend's new website that is just up and running.  When I am not working on the website, making pictures, running round the kids, exercising the dogs etc etc I can be found on the beach at Littlehampton or East Preston, kitesurfing.  I absolutely love it - in fact it's a bit of an addiction for both me and my husband and we are constantly juggling things so we can get that all important time in on the water.  Anyone that does a wind related sport knows exactly what I am talking about and those that don't ... just think we're weird!! 

Anyway, the guy I have to thank for getting me into this great sport is Jason Higgins, who currently teaches out of his van in Littlehampton, West Sussex (affectionately known by the locals as LA baby, LA!!).  He is a fantastic teacher, very patient and calm, and I recommend anyone thinking about trying this sport, having lessons with him. 

This week he has launched his brand new website www.finkyinc.com and very soon he will be setting up a permanent kiteschool/shop right on the beach.  It's a great looking site, easy to navigate, with clear, concise information about what they offer, so if you know of anyone who might be interested in lessons make sure you pass on the Finkyinc details.  My son is very proud of himself, as he actually features on the site in the taster sessions section - "mummy I'm famous, mummy I'm famous"!

See you on the water!

Gosh it's hard getting back into the swing of things when you've had a great holiday isn't it?  Our little oasis of paradise in an otherwise crowded french coastline lived up to expectation yet again and we had a fantastic two weeks - eat, sleep, surf, repeat, eat, sleep, surf, repeat!  Love to tell you we did the chateau thing, a bit of culture to please our parents - but no... we had great conditions and both kids now catching the "blue water" as Tom puts it! - Next year I'm guessing they'll be leaving us for dust!

Got back to a stack of orders to send out - so plenty to keep me occupied as I reminisce about warm water, waves and moules frites!!

Ok - so my holiday is almost upon me - yippee! - but I do understand that this might be very inconvenient for people who were hoping to order pictures over the next couple of weeks.  So, to try and make up for it a little bit, if you place an order over the next couple of weeks I will give you a 10% discount.


What you need to do is place your order online as normal, then send me an email to anna@littlecrab.co.uk - giving me your unique transaction i.d. number (you should receive a copy of this once you have placed your order) and the July offer password - which is "Plage des Casernes" - one of my favourite beaches in France.  When I get back from holiday on Monday 2 August and process your order, I will refund you back the 10% (excluding postage).  Sorry I can't offer a slicker way of doing this, but as a small business with website constraints, I am unable to do promotional codes and take the discount off at the time of order.  This offer will run on all orders received from now, up to and including Monday 2 August.

Wow! - what a month June has been.  I have been thrilled with the increase in sales on the website over the last three months - but June has surpassed all my expectations and became my best EVER month for business since I started three years ago. 

In website terms - the thing I am most excited about, is that the reason for this increase appears to be that all my SEO work (for those not in the know of such terminology - this is all the work you do in the background to make sure your website is found by the people you want it to be found by!) seems to have paid off, as I am getting much better quality traffic - i.e. the right customers who actually want to buy!

So after all this hard work, I am  very much looking forward to my upcoming family surf trip in a couple of weeks.  I feel I have definitely earned a break!!

The emergency budget this week was not such good news for Little Crab Designs.  Like everyone else I had an inkling that VAT was going to go up - but it doesn't dull the pain at all when it actually happens!!

As a non-VAT registered, small business who operates on very tight margins - every little rise in costs really affects me.  This increase means I have to pay more for prints, canvas, frames, delivery of all supplies etc etc - and although an extra 2.5% doesn't sound a whole lot - when you add it onto the cost of everything that goes into producing a picture - it does become significant to the business.  I really don't want to have to put my prices up - the website is really flying at the moment - sales are going up and up - and I have had some fantastic feedback from customers. 

Over the past couple of weeks in particular, people have been writing me some lovely emails.  It's so nice when people take the time to write to you saying how pleased they are with their pictures, or how friends were delighted etc etc.  It makes me feel very happy and proud that I am doing a good job and offering a valued service.  So, somehow or other, I need to find a way to swallow the extra costs without having to pass it onto my customers.  I have six months... better get my thinking cap on!

Well - my little darling was NOT my little darling last week.  We fell out... MAJORLY!   As you can see here, she looks as innocent and gorgeous as could be - happy with her chew...

Our latest range in our boy's nursery pictures section has been added to the website - Dotty About Dinosaurs.  We hope you like them! 

Aren't these just gorgeous!!

I have had a bit of a result this past week with the website.  For ages I have known that with all the images I have on the site - the download time is a bit slow.  I had been asking around - on forums and stuff how to speed it up - how to reduce the size of the images but not lose the quality - but had never quite seemed to work out exactly how to do it. 

Anyway it all came together when the monthly newsletter from Mr Site (my website host) stated that Google would now be taking download time into consideration for search engine rankings, so thinking I had better get my a**e into gear and sort it out once and for all, I combined the information they gave on how to do it, with advice I had received from Sadie at Glassraven Web Design a while back on the Mums Club Forum (she is an active poster on there and always willing to offer tips and advice).  Anyway, I managed to apply it to my site and with a bit of trial and error, reduce the size of all my images considerably, whilst not losing any of the quality.  The result being - I have lowered the amount of my allocated webspace by 61% (freeing up loads more space for new designs - coming shortly!!) and when you click on my homepage and other key pages now, it is virtually instant as opposed to taking several seconds to fully load.  Have a go yourself - www.littlecrab.co.uk - I would love any feedback as you can only test it so much yourself.

Well it's been a few weeks since the last entry - but that's not because I am slacking! Quite the opposite in fact.  Despite being heavily distracted by the new love of my life...

OK - well it's been a couple of weeks since my last posting... what can I say?  I've been busy!  Firstly I had to go visit the mountains for a week - it's a hard life!

A welcome distraction this week from the stresses of  website worries  - I went to see my new baby!  No... not the human kind - we are getting a puppy, and I went to see the litter, currently 5 weeks old.  Absolutely gorgeous - as you can see.

We will be getting it in a couple of weeks - so I took the children to Pets At Home to get a few bits and pieces as they are so excited - BIG MISTAKE!  £60 later - this puppy has more toys than the average 6 month old baby has!  I was amazed at what you can buy for puppies these days and had to run round after the kids taking stuff out of the trolley as quickly as they were putting it in!  My husband's remark when we got home with our booty was, "I couldn't understand why Pets At Home just sold for £900 million but now I know why - because they have customers like you!!"

Oh my goodness - I think I have gained a million grey hairs this week!  Those of you who have been following my blog will know that last week I was complaining of the anticlimax of my website hosting company's recent upgrade. 

Little did I know then, that the anticlimax of the new features not working would turn out to be the least of my worries this week, when my website lost much of its formatting, all by itself, the shopping cart stopped working, all by itself, the pages changed their layout - all by themselves - and whilst this nightmare was going on and I was tearing my hair out trying to fix it - the website hosting company's forum was going  crazy with the chatter of unhappy customers suffering a multitude of problems  arising out of the supposed upgrade.   At first the company were trying to appease everyone saying things like "please bear with us, we are working through the issues as fast as we can" etc etc but then on Sumday and Monday, the technical support team went AWOL for 48 hours - no response on the phone, email, forum  -  Nada! 

Mass panic ensued, as people jumped to conclusions and started speculating whether the company was going under and would it recover from what had been a disastrous upgrade.  Anyway  - to cut a long story short - this morning - I ventured to look at my website again, praying for divine intervention or something - and lo and behold - everything is back to normal - everything seems to be working again - and  forum chatter seems to have calmed down - the tech support guys are back online and seem to be ironing out the bugs in the upgrade and  rectifying the situation .  Phew!

What all this did show me though, was that I am very dependent on this company for my website.  It has prompted me to back up my site and make a contigency plan  in the event that this happens again  or - even worse - my website goes down for good.  I guess I could say that although the whole experience has been very stressful (facing the prospect that three years hard work was about to go down the drain was not good for my sanity), it has helped me to recognise a weakness in my business which has now been strengthened. 

Shop news - we have just added some new offers onto our Special Offers page so do go take a look.  You can buy two Hotchpotch Beach prints in ivory mounts for the price of one - £10 plus post and packing at £2.50.  A total bargain, as we were selling these pictures framed for £17.50 each.  Hurry though - when they're gone - they're gone!

My week started out full of anticipation for the eargerly awaited upgrade being launched by my website design company.  I could'nt wait for the new features that I was going to be able to add to my website, the benefits I would be able to bring to my customers by being able to improve upon areas of the site I was not entirely happy with etc etc.

They said it would be available on Monday 1st March.  Monday went by - no new features available.  Tuesday went by - no new features available - but a message on the forum to say they were staggering the roll out as it was such a massive upgrade they didn't want to crash the server. 

Wednesday came round and low and behold when I logged into my administration area, I could see some new buttons and tools.  I only went and had a look to see what was on there when all of a sudden, my website changed all by itself.  Fonts changed, menus disappeared, pages were all over the place!  What had I done?   Fighting back the panic, I had a quick look on the forum to discover there was a lot of angry chatter from other people finding the same problem - and all sorts of bugs in the new upgrade causing all sorts of problems for everyone.  After finding an answer as to how to resolve what had happened with my site - I quickly republished my site and got it back to normal, thank goodness. 

However, after that little drama, I have now made the decision not to go near the adminstration area, or make any changes to anything for a few weeks until all the little niggles and bugs have been ironed out and it is safe for me to dip my toe in the water again!!  So sorry folks - had hoped to be able to bring you an improved shopping experience this week, but at this point I just daren't take the risk - especially when I have just had the most fantastic month of sales ever!

On a more positive and exciting note - with spring in the air and the weather improving - we have just started work on a new set of designs so watch this space for more details shortly!

Well this has been quite a testing week so far.  The orders are still piling in so I am chasing my tail keeping on top of them (all good of course).  Then yesterday I tried to update some stock information on the website - and add a privacy policy (after my useful seminar on legal issues a few weeks ago where it was pointed out to me that I should have one!)  Anyway mid-working on this, I went to upload the new information  and the website crashed - coming up with some complicated error message...needless to say all changes were lost! 

I tried several times, getting more and more frustrated each time as I wasted more and more time setting up new stuff that kept getting lost in cyberspace.  I then contacted technical help who said it was just a temporary error and would resolve itself (very helpful!!).  I then realised that my existing website - i.e. what was on the web prior to me trying to make the changes - had gone offline too!!!  When customers would have tried clicking on my website yesterday they would have got a  "page unavailable" message - how professional is that!  And it stayed this way all of yesterday - despite me contacting technical support again and trying to log onto my administration page over and over, every half an hour. 

In the end I gave up, deciding  I was wasting my energy - then of course this morning - ready to do battle with technical support and  demand they sort it out straight away -  "lost revenue, lost customers, inconvenience, not good enough etc etc" it only went and worked fine this morning.   And then I got an email saying "we apologise for the inconvenience - we had a small problem with one of our servers - it should be working fine now" !!!  Nice! 

So I  was then on the backfoot today, redoing all the stuff I had tried to do yesterday but couldn't  and was trying to crack on with this, when I started getting weird messages from people - emails, texts and even phone calls, asking me why I had sent them an email pointing them to a viagra site!!!  Luckily this was from my personal email account - so hopefully none of my customers would have been affected - but if you were - I am SO sorry -  I spent an hour on live chat with a tech support guy trying to sort it out - apparently my contacts folder had been compromised and all of my contacts had been sent this email that looked like it was coming from me (nice when one of the people who rings me up is my mother in law thinking I have started a new business!!!).  Anyway an hour later his conclusion of the situation was to say "monitor your account for the next two days and if the problem persists contact us again"  You can imagine how pleased I was with that response having wasted another hour of my life resolving nothing, especially after the day before... I HATE computers!!!

Well I  know I have not updated the blog for a couple of weeks but that is because I have been SO busy!  Orders are coming in thick and fast - the  new range of boys pictures - Driving Me Spotty  - have already sold out on the first print run and no sooner do I get a frame order in than I am having to re-order again! 

Not that I am complaining or anything - it's great - just means I have had no time to do anything apart from fulfill orders the last couple of weeks.  With the kids on half-term this week, time management has been even more crucial than ever and painting frames interspersed with flipping pancakes this evening has truly put my multi-tasking skills to the test!

 

Congratulations to Caroline Rossall - winner of the  Little Crab Designs January competition to win 2 brand new design boys prints.   We had a great response with some really lovely ideas for naming the new range, so choosing one was quite tricky - but in the end we went with Caroline's idea of "Driving me Spotty".  Fun, in keeping with the style of other range names we have, and short enough to fit on the menu bar!! - we thought this was brilliant.  Well done to Caroline - her prints will be winging their way to her very soon.  To the rest of you who sent in an entry - thank you so much for making the effort - and the Driving me Spotty range will be in the boys nursery pictures section on the website, ready to buy by the end of this week/beginning next so do check back soon.

Over the last couple of weeks I have been spending quite a lot of my time scouting round the net on various  forums, websites for mums, websites for  wahms - (work at home mums) etc - looking for advice, ways to promote the website, ideas for SEO (search engine optimisation), PR opportunities etc.  There are some truly great resources for business mums out there - where you can find other like-minded people to chat to, bounce ideas off and  give you that much needed support network when you are self-employed and don't have an office full of people to whinge to when things aren't going quite right!!  So I thought I would mention a couple of sites here that I find particularly helpful - for those of you who might be reading my blog and either already have a small business working from home, or are thinking about starting something. 

The first one I will mention is mum's club.co.uk - I actually came across this one towards the latter part of last year - but I am finding it increasingly useful - particularly the mum's club forums  - where I try to go and check out what's being talked about at least 3 or 4 times a week - it really is a mine of information.  Another site I have come across - which I actually found through mum's club - was familyfriendlyworking.co.uk - which is a blog with some great articles, reviews and lots of inspirational stories about other businesss mumpreneurs.  And the most recent site I found, which is relatively new but I think will become better and better as more and more people find it and make use of it, is the work at home mum directory.  So do go check these out - I am sure you will find them as valuable as I do.

Well - at last... the kids went back to school today!   Much as I love 'em, and love the snow - it was becoming a bit of a 'mare not being able to get on with stuff I wanted to do to the website or get back to work properly after the Christmas holidays.  I have to say though...  I was dead jealous when I dropped them off this morning - I could see why the school had been unable to open, with the "foot deep" white blanket over the playground and rather wished I could have stayed to go out with the children at breaktime...  But of course - I had to get my adult, "work head" back on (7 days tabogganing on the trot is really not acceptable for a grown up self-employed  business woman!!)

So I am pleased to report that I got knuckled down and have had a very productive day.  Sorted out latest orders - check.  Ordered more prints - check.  Ordered more frames - check.  Written a plan of attack for the rest of January - check.  Added new Beautiful Butterflies designs to the website - check.  I am feeling MOST proud of myself!! 

I have also added a link to Yummy Mummy Week on the links page on the website as I think this a great event to get involved with.  If you don't know what it's all about - Yummy Mummy Week is CLIC Sargent's fun-packed fundraising event for mums of all ages.

There are lots of ways to get involved and have a great time with family and friends. And you’ll be helping children with cancer at the same time.  As Yummy Mummy Week is five this year, they have come up with five fabulous ways to get involved to be a Yummy Mummy!

o        Eat Yummy – dinner parties, cheese and wine nights, coffee mornings and BBQs

o        Dress Yummy – ‘dress pink days’ at work, pyjama parties, clothes swaps and fashion shows

o        Feel Yummy – pampering nights and girlie nights in

o        Party Yummy – balls, house parties, garden parties and nights on the town

o        Go Yummy – welly walks, swims, cycles, jogs, – do something active for Yummy Mummy Week

For more information and to register please visit  www.yummymummy.org.uk  or call 08451 206 658.

Oh yes - and lastly... have had some great entries for the competition launched last week to win two of our latest boys prints but there is still plenty of time to enter (closing date 31/1/10) - so get your thinking caps on and submit an entry - you never know - IT COULD BE YOU!!!

Phew! - what a busy day I have had.   With Christmas over (and too much eaten...again!), and at last some clear sunny days, I figured I just had to get down to the job of reshooting photos for the website showing the new frame design.   After a couple of days of painting and sanding (gosh sanding in freezing temperatures is  a really nasty job!)  today was photo day!  Having packed the kids off to a friend for the morning as they are still on holiday, I set off down to the beach only to find that actually the frost had not burnt off, the breakwaters were all wet and I couldn't use my usual "studio" for taking  photos after all!   What to do?... I  needed to redo the photos as so many of them were now out of date with the old frames, that it called for some ingenuity on my behalf to come up with an alternative plan.   Half an hour later, I had set up a little photo backdrop in the garden by the kid's beachhut/playhouse and I was David Baily for the morning!  I was super organised and photographed  the new designs too - ready for putting onto the website in the next couple of weeks.

This brings me on to tell you about the competition Little Crab Designs is running until the end of January.  If you have been reading my blog, you will know I got some new designs from Sarah Howell (my friend and Isle of Wight artist) just before Christmas - some gorgeous butterfly pictures (see blog entry for photo).  I also got a new set of pictures for boys from her, but am having a dilemma as to what name to give the range (currently nicknamed "boys toys two"!).

Well, the Christmas orders are all done and sent out, and the website has suddenly gone very quiet in the last couple of days -  well timed now my children are at home for the holidays.  Thought I would just pen a quick blog entry to wish everyone a Happy Christmas and to thank all my customers  for shopping on my website this year - and a special thank you for all those who took time to write - or even phone in one case, and  thank me for their pictures.  I have had some really  thoughtful  and kind comments over the  past year and it means so much to me when I know people are really happy with their purchase!

I hope you all have a  lovely Christmas and  enjoy spending time with your families over the Christmas - I know I am really looking forward to some "down" time.  I shall be back in the New Year with renewed energy (though  you can place orders over the holiday period - they just won't get posted til w/c 4th Jan)  and I have lots of exciting things planned for 2010:  New ranges - you have seen a sneak preview of one in my last blog entry, but I have a new boys range coming online too;  I am going to be running a competition  in January so check back soon in the New Year for details on that;  Updated photographs, more streamlining of the website,  offering one off originals etc etc etc.  These are all things in the pipeline for 2010.  It's going to be a busy year... so best be off to eat too much, drink too much, and chill out for a couple of weeks before the  madness begins again!! (wouldn't have it any other way :))

Well - how excited were we in my house this morning when we woke up to a blanket of  white! This is what my children got up to before breakfast ...

I think he's very cute too!! - and then we went tabogganing with some friends which was brilliant - we got a really icy track going.  I can't remember the last time we had snow  this early on - before Christmas.  Here's hoping we get a repeat next Friday!!

Now back to work matters - my day got even better as the post had arrived when we got back from our morning's entertainment and Sarah - (Isle of Wight artist who supplies me with many of the designs for the website) had sent me some gorgeous new pictures - beautiful butterflies! - What do you think?... (just a quick snapshot photo here I know) - I shall get them up onto the website and available to buy in the New Year - but I think they are just gorgeous and my daughter and her friend adored them.  They also remind me that Sarah is way better than me at creating pictures and that I really should just stick to the marketing and sales side of things!!  Would love to hear your comments on them.

A pretty crazy week for me with the rush of Christmas orders (not that I am complaining:)!) combined with end of term school madness - nativity plays and carol concerts,  my daughter's birthday and of course my own Christmas shopping to do! 

An observation I made this week when analysing data from online orders - there seem to be  a lot of boys being born at the moment!!  Having sold mostly pictures in white/pink frames over the summer and early autumn - the last couple of months have definitely been "blue" frame time - and the  Boys Toys range have been hugely popular.  They are flying out the door as quickly as they come in on the print run!

You still have plenty of time to shop for Christmas presents  -  and in fact, as a way to see who is reading my blog (find out if I am interesting or not!?!),  if you quote this  phrase "the hopeless camel" when you place your order up until 25th December, I will send your pictures out with free delivery (I will refund you the postage costs when I receive your order).   Why the hopeless camel?... - it's the title of my son's nativity play next week!!  

I went to  the children' s school Christmas Fair last weekend - and bought my daughter this gorgeous fleece poncho.  The lady selling them was just starting out - and she told me her website really was just a page - she was wondering whether to invest in a proper site or not - but after an hour or so at the fair where she had sold nothing - a couple of the girls bought one - and then their friends saw them and bought one - and then their friends saw them... and so it went on - and in the end she sold LOADS!!!  I really hope she feels more confident now about investing some money in her fledgling business.  I think she has a great product - really gorgeous and totally practical - I don't know about anyone else - but my daughter  refuses to wear a coat - so this is perfect as is easy to throw on - and being fleece  - easy to wash and dry in minutes.  Do go and look at her website - www.cozypo.com - it is basic - but I think they would make fantastic Christmas presents for  little girls - I just wish I had seen them before I had shopped for my two neices!

Well this has been a slightly testing week!  Went along to collect some frames from my supplier on Monday, only to find that the profile of the small frame I use for a lot of my pictures - namely Hotchpotch Farm, Hotchpotch Sealife, Boys Toys, Vintage Spotty Farm, and Country Kitsch has changed!  And the warning I received that this was going to happen...NONE! 

Of course he couldn't see the problem this might cause me - "price is the same - it's still a pine frame, just been updated a bit" - (in fact I even think I prefer it to the old style... however this is not the point!)  The point is - ALL my photos on the website show the old style profile and now, with immediate effect, all orders will be fulfilled using this new profile.  The dilemma is - that I will now need to update a huge amount of photos on the website to show the new style frame!  Urghhhhh!!!  This is a major amount of work... not to mention a fair cost involved.  The other issue is it is now winter - and if anyone else has noticed - it has been blowing a gale, and raining daily for the past month - not an ideal setting for a photo shoot on the beach right now!!!

So my husband and I sat down with the frames last night and decided that for now - the only option is to put a note on the website pages of those pictures it affects and stick some photos on here to show you how they have changed and then just check with customers as they order, that they are aware of the change.  At least this is what I am going to do in the short term... in the longer term I have a major amount of work to do on updating the website!

(new profile on left)

 

This last week has been a busy one!  Christmas orders starting to stack up and even getting some from across the pond which is nice as I really don't market to the States at the moment.  I have also been busy getting around the net sourcing possible PR  and link opportunities for the website. 

I came across one site that has been particularly helpful called www.mumsclub.co.uk.  It's  a business club for "mumpreneurs" and I urge any mums reading this who runs a small business from home, or are thinking of starting one up to take a look as there is some great stuff on here - not to mention the forums where you can chat with other like minded mums and get some feedback on your ideas etc.  I am really looking forward to making full use of this support network over the coming months.

Well, here we are... today is the day for starting my blog!   I have been thinking about it for a while - and equally putting it off for a while - wondering what to write, not wanting to bore people etc etc, but my business adviser assures me it's a great idea - so here goes...

I won't be posting every day, that's for sure, as I am busy working mum of two (one of the things that was putting me off doing it in the first place was finding the time!).  I am going to use my blog to tell you about new projects on the go and to keep you up to date of what goes on behind the scenes at Little Crab Designs. 

Current dilemma?... am considering whether to take the plunge and trial selling my products on amazon.  Firstly - are my products the right kind of thing to sell on amazon? - have had a look and there are some nursery art sellers on there - not too many either, which could be a good thing as not too much competition yet.  However, they take a pretty hefty commission which is what is putting me off - but obviously as a big hitter on the web - might my sales increase by so much that I could take the hit on the bottom line... there again...I am a one person operation at the moment... and if  sales suddenly increased 100%, would I be able to cope with the ramped up production necessary?... What to do, what to do?  If anybody has any thoughts on this one I would appreciate your comments. 

I was very pleased this weekend to get the reassurance that my Little Crab Designs pictures have longevity.  My "soon to be" 9 year old daughter has just had her bedroom re-done.  Gone are her days of pink, purple, princesses and fairies etc - now it's all about  "the fashion" mummy!  She wants a "room like a proper grown up girl" these days - and when we were putting things up on the walls and deciding which pictures she wanted, she made my day by saying she DEFINITELY wanted her Jasmine canvas pictures back up  - (see photos below). 

I was so pleased to get one of my biggest critic's endorsement!!  Plus it does show me that although I currently market the pictures as nursery art, actually they work equally well for older children too  - particularly the canvas art and my son, age 6 - still wants his Tom pictures up on the wall when we redo his room too.