What Do I Do About My Store's Website?

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You want to improve your store's website but don't know where to start. Do you go the e-commerce route or use your site simply as a local calling card? Do you hire outside help or do it yourself? How much do you invest? This session at Summer NAMM 2013, moderated by Danny Rocks, addressed these questions with a panel of brick-and-mortar MI retailers who have websites that are working for them. Highlights from the video: Hosting: "I went with an e-commerce solution that is integrated with payment options," said Brad Boynton, owner of drum and percussion specialty shop Rhythm Traders of Portland, Ore. "They host it on their servers. The reason we did that is because I figured they're a technology company, so they can keep up with the technology, which frees me up to sell drums." Advertising: Leslie Faltin, co-owner of Instrumental Music Center in Tucson, Ariz., created her store's website by herself. Even though it's relatively bare-bones, the site has been useful in attracting local customers. And for Faltin, Google AdWords has been a critical tool for drawing people to the site. "In my opinion, there is no better way to reach your customers than Google pay-per-click," she said. "These are customers in your area searching for things that you sell. They're actually actively searching for you. "You don't need a consultant or any fancy person to do this for you. You can totally do this yourself." Staffing: "Now I have a full-time product specialist," said Whitney Grisaffi, president of Tacoma, Wash.-based Ted Brown Music. "What she does is she uploads from our POS [system]. When we went on our POS, it didn't have any pictures, and it didn't have any descriptions. It just had the product. So we've been working really hard on getting pictures attached and good descriptions. We went from her doing that for about two hours a day to about 40 hours a week. "I also have a full-time marketing coordinator, and he is spending most of his time updating the website daily. He also is doing our social media. Then I have a full-time marketing manager who's overseeing the work of the other two. And then I have a dabbler who wants to do the videos, so he does the videos." Branding: "When I go to a lot of e-commerce-only sites, it's very difficult to find out the personality behind the shop and who they really are," Boynton said. "A lot of us have the same product. So having an 'About Us' page was important." His shop posts a 7-minute video featuring a store walk-through on the "About Us" page. "I walk you through the shop, show you all the different products and the lines that we have, some video footage from events and classes and from trips to the Sabian cymbal factory and the DW drum factory. So you get a pretty good sense of who we are, and then you also know these are real guys. These are real drummers." Updating: Boynton's Web marketing manager needed more help to keep product pages updated. His cost-effective solution? "We ended up advertising on Craigslist for two interns," Boynton said. "We were looking for marketing specialist people who had done marketing, Web page building. We got a lot of applicants. Basically, we're giving them the opportunity to learn real-world skills so that they can build product pages and do promotions. So I have my manager and two interns. The three of them are always coming up with stuff and working wonders."