Home décor seller runs like a big business
A year ago I was doing 4–5 orders a month in my ProStores Web store. Now I'm getting 7–8 orders a day. Once I started using the ProStores tools to bring in the traffic, things really took off.
Paul Stainton, Owner of
www.Art-and-Home.net
Art & Home finds a new customer base with ProStores
Paul Stainton wanted to increase his customer base for the wide variety of home décor items he was selling on eBay. Opening his own Web store seemed like the logical next step to increase sales and find new customers. After trying some other Web store solutions and finding them too difficult to use, Paul discovered ProStores through a Web search. It was just the solution he needed.
"I first opened my ProStores Web store in August 2005," Paul explains. "I was primarily an eBay seller, and started with ProStores mainly just to have the Web presence. I didn't start doing much with the site until January 2007, and have had very rapid growth in the past year–about 4,600%! A year ago I was doing 4–5 orders a month in my ProStores Web store. Now I'm getting 7–8 orders a day. Once I started using the ProStores tools to bring in the traffic, things really took off. My sales used to be 90% eBay. Now my sales are 60% eBay and 40% ProStores, and in six months I expect to reverse that. Plus, the sales are all to new customers–they're sales I wouldn't have otherwise."
ProStores gets top marks for ease of use and customization
Paul found that the ProStores tools made it easy to ramp up his store once he set his mind to it. "I'm not a designer, but with the ProStores design tools I was able to design the site myself using a standard HTML editor," Paul reports. "It's really easy to customize. We were able to import our own Welcome section with no problems. I've tried three other Web store providers, and ProStores is by far the easiest to use. The other ones were a nightmare to try to customize, and I would try them for a few weeks or a month and then just give up. But then I tried ProStores and have been with them ever since. I really love the capabilities and ease ProStores provides. I can add a whole new category of product, and within three hours I can have it sent out in my product catalog to Google Base so people can find it right away–how great is that?!"
ProStores helps a small business run like a big business
Paul wanted to have a professional-looking site and to grow his business, but he didn't want to add a lot of labor costs and overhead to his bottom line. The simplicity of using ProStores lets him run a rapidly growing business without a lot of manpower. "I love ProStores. I can't think of any other program that would let one person run a site of this size! I come from an e-commerce marketing background, not a technical background, but ProStores makes it easy to do it all myself. The customer service and order processing tools are a fantastic time-saver. I didn't need a technical or design background to make things look good. I'm very proud of my site–it runs smoothly and looks very professional. And a professional-looking site enhances customer trust."
Prostores helps Art & Home load and update a huge inventory in minimal time
Art-and-Home offers a wide variety of home décor items, and it's important to offer a wide selection of colors, styles and sizes to suit every taste. Creating and updating individual listings would be next to impossible for this small business, but the ProStores bulk upload and edit tools make it easy to offer more choices. "I've really taken advantage of the product upload features, which let me import products rapidly from CSV files," says Paul. "I went from 0 fine art tapestries on the site to 1,200 in a week. The mass edit features are also a lifesaver. I can make mass adjustments, change pricing or add keywords by category, which saves a tremendous amount of time. I carry such a large assortment of items–if I had to go into each product individually to make changes it would take forever."
A great year of sales, and an even brighter future
Paul is getting great results by using the tools that ProStores provides to bring in customers.
"I've only really been focusing on ProStores for about eight months, and I'm already getting a huge payoff for my efforts. The Search Engine Optimization tools are great for bringing in customers on a budget, especially the free services such as feeds to Google Base. I also manually set up feeds to the MSN product catalog beta, which took less than an hour. It really helps bring in the sales. For a small, family-owned business, the extra $15,000 or so a month in sales our ProStores Web store brings in is great. We've made an extra $200,000 or so in sales in the past year with ProStores, I can only see it growing from here."
