So, you want a website for
your soap business but have no idea how to do it. If you
have no experience with creating websites,
there are a lot of drop and drag methods for building a website in
very little time. It's simply a matter of writing your text,
selecting colors and clicking on pictures on your computer.
Below is a short video showing how easy it is to building your own
website on
Bizland.com. We can't give you any other recommendations for
web hosts because we've been using
Bizland to build all of our websites since 1999. At the
present time, we have soapbytheloaf.com, greenpergola.com,
gregoryleewhite.com, royhamiltononline.com and
makingbathproducts.com hosted on the
Bizland servers. They are extremely affordable, have
good customer support and a very easy to understand interface for
performing all sorts of tasks for your website. Bizland also
provides you with the opportunity to download and install
Wordpress on your website, as an alternative to using the Drag and
Drop Site Builder. Wordpress is usually used for blogs but
more and more static websites have been using it for web design.
When it comes to building a website
for your soap business, two of the most important things is
photography and excellent description. Soaps are something
that normally have to be picked up and smelled before a customer
is willing to buy. It is up to you to present to your
customers virtual eye candy. Look around the web at some of
the best known soap websites. Most of the time you will find a
single photograph for each bar of soap, a simple photo with a
white background and plenty of light. This keeps the
customers eyes focused on the products itself, its colors, the
herbs that speckle the soap, the rustic edges of the bar the show
it is handmade - all of these things create a mental "scent" in
the buyer's mind. Until scratch and sniff has been invented
for the internet, good photographs are the best thing you can do
for you website. If you don't own a camera, it is highly
likely that you have a friend you can borrow one from - or, even a
friend who will take the photos for you. Remember, take
several pictures of the same bar of soap in an attempt to get the
very best picture. If none of them turn out, start over
again.
Description goes hand-in-hand with
your photographs. The customer must be well informed about
the product and why they should buy your soap over the next
company. On our retail site, greenpergola.com, we point out
that our soap are made ONLY with vegetable oils and real essential
oils, stressing that they have no artificial fragrances.
This means a lot for people who search for natural products.
Include a full ingredient list in your description and try to
describe the scent. You might even mention some of the
benefits of the particular essential oils that are found in the
soap. Over time, collect testimonials from your customers
about each of your products. Include those testimonials on
your product page.
ONLINE SHOPPING CART
We have always used the shopping
cart provided by Mal's Ecommerce.
After signing up for an account, you can easily start building BUY
NOW or ADD TO CART buttons to your website. This will allow
customers to shop for your products on your website, check out
when finished and provide you with their credit card information.
Mals is easy to set up and
best of all, FREE. There is also a paid version that allows
you the option to download all your current orders at once, along
with the credit card info. In the free version, the order is
found on one page of the Mals
website and the card information is found on another. Mals
does NOT, however, PROCESS credit cards - they are simply a
shopping cart, a way for your customers to shop your website and
give their credit card information. It is up to you to obtain a
merchant account. Or, Mals has a feature where you can turn
on PAYPAL and accept payments that way.
CLEAR AND CLEAN DESIGN
Make it easy for your customers to
buy from you. There is nothing more frustrating than a
website that has countless pages that describe the products and
show glorious pictures, only to find out you have to go to ANOTHER
page if you want to buy the product. Do your customers a
favor and put the shopping cart button on the same page as the
product description.
Include a CONTACT US page.
Sometimes, customers just want to know there is a real person
running the show. If you still have a day job and can't
answer the phone all day, then say so in plain English. Something
to the effect of - ' the best way to reach us is through email.
Right now, we're still working our 9 to 5 job and wrapping soaps
and shipping orders in the evening '. It shows that you're
human and customers like that. Or, if you feel that isn't
professional enough, use a phone number with an answering machine
or a cellphone with voicemail. And don't forget to include your
email address on your CONTACT US page.
Make the links of your website easy
to understand and to the point. If one page features your
bath salts, just make the say BATH SALTS. If there is more
than one page of soaps, break up the pages in a logical fashion.
You could go the alphabetical route but its also in fashion to
break up the soaps by TYPE such as minty soaps, relaxing soaps,
spicy soaps, etc.
BE ORIGINAL
By all means, whatever you do,
write your own content for your website and take your own
pictures. I cannot stress this enough! As I write this
webpage, I still have an entire copyright complaint form to fill
out where a fly-by-night blogger stole four pages of this very
website and used it as their own! Another site has stolen
one of our pictures of the Garden Mint soap - they have to be
officially notified as well. So you see, webmasters CAN find
out when you steal their articles, descriptions and pictures.
You certainly don't want to start your business off with the
reputation of being a lazy thief. Do your own work and it
will pay off big time in the end. The search engines LOVE
original content, especially Google.
Youtube is a big source for
learning web design. Yes, there are many books out there on
the subject but there's nothing like someone actually showing you
how to do something. We hope this small tutorial on how to
build your website helps you build your soap business.
