Hi Kristine,

Reading this series of posts a second time today, leads to my post.

You need to calculate your hit to sales ratio. If you aren't tracking how many people are hitting your site or how they're getting there, you'll have no idea what the h2r is. If you do track this, then you should be able to tell that X hits = Y sales... and thus, you need to generate the hits that will give you the desired sales.

Know this... Just because you have a website, doesn't mean that you will have sales. A lot of people make that mistake. In fact, I'm sure there is a certain number of times that someone has to hit your website before they will buy and in addition to that, they have to be comfortable with the idea of buying online and frankly, with the exception of porn and gambling, I really don't think people are all that comfortable with this type of purchase, yet.

Also, in reference to your thoughts on sending out holiday cards... I have just set myself up with someone to whom I will give my card list, they will monitor it and send out my cards as I request them and bill me the cost of the cards plus the postage. Go for it, there are bound to be companies like me who want the higher level of quality than just signing up with a company like send-out-cards. You need to make sure you have a way that the customer can add to their list easily, look into setting up something online when it becomes cost effective to do so.

That said.

It's all in the numbers. You've been given some great advice. Get the eyeballs to your site. It looks good and as long as your architecture works well (and easily), you'll get the sales. Nice product.

Good luck,

Tina Brooks, VP Marketing
Brooks Pepperfire Foods, Inc.
Makers of Peppermaster Hot Sauces
http://www.peppermaster.com

Eat more peppers!