Caring About Your Business
Over the past week or two, I’ve been making some major changes to my original website, Mom’s Market. A little redesigning and reformatting, and basically resurrecting it to what it was before… a directory. Now, though, instead of loads of links on a page, each store has their own listings with details on the business, products, and pictures. Basically search engine food, and better promotion for those listed.
Since I wanted to build the directory back up a little before I started charging for listings, I did offer free listings for the first 5 category. Some of the submission I got were a little disappointing. Not because they weren’t great products (all were FANTASTIC, actually), but because some spent so little time crafting their description and reading over the guidelines.
I really wasn’t surprised at the lack of reading the guidelines. As irritating as it is, I’ve come to expect it and just reject those that don’t read rules. Not too big of a deal. What did bother me was the lack of descriptions. Right on the form it says “Description of Site (history, products, etc – 200 words MINIMUM – required)”. The “200 words MINIMUM” part was added after the first few with little description, in hopes that would solve the problem. Sadly, it didn’t.
I realize this was a “free” opportunity, and maybe others just don’t take the same amount of time on a free resource instead of paid ones. But still. If YOU don’t care about your business enough to spend that little extra time promoting it or talking about it, who will? Those that didn’t enter a very long description are only hurting themselves. Less words means less random terms that page will pop up in the search engines for, which of course means lost customers.
What scares me a bit is this issue probably won’t go away, even on paid submissions. I know we tend to be use to shortening our description to a limit of 250 characters or words or whatever the limit is, but if there IS no limit, why not take advantage of it?
On a side note, you can see the details for submitting your website to the Mom’s Market Directory here: http://www.momsmarketonline.com/submit-your-site/ (Handmade products only for the time being – Etsy shops welcome!)
Your fellow WAHM in success,
Kara
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