Name of your website?Paper Trail
Your name?
Tina Hebert
Your Location (city, etc)
Lafayette-River Ranch
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Our website is a snapshot view of our retail store inventory.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
We wanted customers to be able to view our products online. Many customers live out of town or don't have the time to come in and browse during business hours.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
This is our first website. It was launced in early 2008.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
The name follows the name of the retail store.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We are not an e-commerce site yet. However, we have plans to add that in the future.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To be able to take orders directly from the website. Saving our customers time and making their lives easier.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
The website is very new and hard to gage the success yet. So far we've had positive feedback from our customers.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Interactive site where customers could see a virtual proof of their invitation as they design it. Then proceed to checkout.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Not at this time. We would need to hire more employees.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Not realizing how much time it takes to start up and maintain a such a dynamic site. We get many new items each day and many are discontinued.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Keeping the website fresh and up to date.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
yellow pages, website links, print advertising, rack cards, emailed newsletter
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Much harder than I expected. However, we expect it to get easier once the initial setup is done.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The site is only a few months old. Not sure how long we would keep it going if we didn't see much traffic.
What is your website address?
Paper Trail
