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Christine, what inspired you to develop Girl Shop Spot?
I felt there was a real need to support local cottage businesses in the online community, to create a site where merchants and entrepreneurs could truly connect with their customers on a more direct and mutually beneficial basis. Because the online media channel plays such a vital role in small business success, my goal is to help cottage businesses catering to women become ever wiser with marketing—-by providing them with the information and tools to promote both online and offline sales, by delivering smoother, faster, and more effective commerce solutions.
How do you continually create new services and functionality for your site?
We work hard to stay aware of what will help our customers (both sellers and shoppers). We routinely talk with them to find out what they are interested in, what they really want in an online presence. Sometimes the result of that involves implementing new technologies; sometimes it involves implementing new ideas.
We also constantly read and conduct research about marketing, e-commerce, online tools, and business trends. From this research we develop fresh ideas to bring our sellers and shoppers an ever-evolving online experience. We always ask ourselves “Will this be extremely useful to our users?” If the answer is yes, we create a plan and execute.
What is the most significant lesson you have learned about your business?
Technology is always changing and needs are too. We want to be a successful business built on hard work and knowledge, not fads. We are dedicated to bringing small business owners what they need to be successful online. That’s what we are sticking to and that’s what we are good at.
What does the future hold for you/your company?
Most women like to research and make buying decisions online. And local search will become the web's predominant search mechanism within the next few years. The Internet is also in dire need of more content specific, niche sites.
People, products, and companies tend to get lost within the large search engines. If you advertise on a site that combines both a local and category search mechanism within a niche specific site, you will receive more qualified and relevant leads. Plus, small businesses are always in need of fast, inexpensive, easy, and quantitative solutions to advertise their business online...and Girl Shop Spot's mission is to deliver such solutions.
As local search grows and small businesses become savvier about advertising online, Girl Shop Spot will have great opportunity for growth. Our market, women, is the largest segment to research and make buying decisions online. Therefore, GSS intends to be the ultimate shopping resource and online community for this market. Shopping is second nature for many women, and GirlShopSpot.com was created to make online shopping a more natural and enjoyable experience.
What do you think your story tells our audience?
That we are just like them. We know how hard it is to launch a business, get your feet wet, take the plunge, and then have to be an expert at everything.
We are also very passionate at helping small business owners succeed. Before GSS, I would honestly buy, order, and schedule anything and everything from a dedicated small business owner if I could. But it dawned on me that I could go broke taking this route so I thought there must be another way to help, especially with my shopping habits and both our business and technical expertise.
We thought if we could help these small business owners connect with one another to improve networking and sales, while providing a great way to market their business online to customers, we would all be in a better place. Aren’t we all searching for a solution to achieve better commerce online? And I can't help but enjoy supporting the small business owner and seeing people become successful.
Girl Shop Spot continues to support and launch new cost effective business solutions and technology to small business owners while providing fun shopping for all.
What’s the most amazing part of your life?
I get to work from home, do what I love, and raise my kids. I also love working with my husband. We make a great team. We are both very passionate at what we do and it really makes a difference in your life and your work.
What is the most interesting lesson you’ve learned as a small business owner?
Customer service and customer satisfaction are the most important factors in running a business. Always focus on your existing customers and keep them happy versus putting all your efforts in gaining new ones.
What have you learned about marketing a small business?
Operate like a large business, but think smarter and market wiser.
Please think about your most significant accomplishment. Now, could you tell our audience about it?
After having kids and raising them, I felt another part of me was missing and really wanted to do something businesswise. My husband saw this and suggested we launch an online business that would come to be SeeVacationRentals.com.
I learned and became expert at something I was fascinated with...the web. I learned web design. I learned what makes a great website—-including content, navigation, colors, graphics, building web pages, and all about search engine optimization (SEO). Then I took what I learned from my prior career in marketing and applied it to the marketing and advertising of a website. Now I have created my dream job. I develop solutions, create new services, get to be freewheeling with creativity, and most importantly contribute to the success of small businesses. I found it all within myself, and that the best accomplishment anyone could ask for.
Speaking for both my husband and myself...we never give up. We keep moving forward and working to find better and more cost-effective solutions for small business marketers online. Our customers tell us they see this in GSS and continue to put their faith in our company.
What single piece of advice would you give to other entrepreneurs?
Build your business around your true passion and your customers. Loving what you do makes it that much easier to please your customers and build your dream.
Part II: A New Pay Model
With advertising rates that are already highly competitive, what motivated your management team to develop a new pay model for Girl Shop Spot?
Being small business owners ourselves, we thought it would be great to create a pay model where you only paid for the performance of an ad. Currently, there isn't anything whereby advertisers only pay for performance and measure the interaction of that ad simultaneously. We believe Pay-Per-Interaction™ is the next step in formulating guaranteed ads where the advertiser doesn't pay unless they see real interaction and interest in that ad from real customers. And while not all interactions cost, all can be measured. The GSS PPI model provides shop owners with both paid and non-paid interaction metrics.
How did GSS settle on this particular pay model? Why this approach versus pay-per-click and other existing versions?
Jim Van Buskirk: We believe that there is a real need for a more comprehensive internet advertising pay structure. In current economic times companies are looking for ways to cut costs, but still remain competitive. Pay-Per-Interaction allows companies to do both.
Christine: We are speculating that this model will motivate the seller to create an ad that is full of images and content in order to measure what's working, what people are interested in, what they click on to learn more. Why would shop owners do this? Because the more ways you offer your customers to interact with an online ad, the more qualified your leads become, which in turn lowers the bounce rate of an ad you would typically pay for in Pay-per-Click advertising.
How does this work?
The process is pretty straightforward and begins as soon as someone clicks on to your Shop Spot. Right away that initial click is recorded, but does not cost. Shop owners engage shoppers through multiple touch points, all of which are recorded for future analytics.
 Images: Records clicks to enlarge and view short description (up to 27).
Must Haves: Records what 18 Must Haves have been clicked.
E-mail Owner: Records how often someone clicks the "e-mail owner" link.
E-mail Friend: Records how often someone clicks the "send to friend" link.
Link to Website: Records how often someone clicks on a sellers website.
Video: Records how often someone clicks to view sellers video.
Bio: Records how many reads.
Reviews: Records how many reads.
Shop Talk: Blog or Q&A section where owner can develop for their shop spot.
Sales Coupons: Automated for deep discounts, seasonal sales, close out items & special GSS sales.
Specials Coupons: Shop owners can use this tool to promote and measure a customer rewards program, special discounts, event marketing, and more. Clicks to view are recorded for both.
As an example, what if a buyer who has clicked on 6 product photos, your sales coupons, and 2 of your Must Haves? What you as a shop owner will receive are daily and monthly snapshots of each specific interaction category along with the total number of interactions. These results that can be further dissected by the images, Must Haves, and Sale and Specials coupons, with a detailed summary of how many interactions per each item.
The date, time and IP address is recorded with details how they found your Shop Spot page—-whether it be Google, Live, Yahoo, another GSS Shop Spot under Favorite Spots, GSS search, GSS home page, your Featured Ad, or GSS Great Sales results page.
Through GSS you know you've made an impression from your ad. But what’s even better is that you can measure specifically what they are interacting with, and from where they are coming to find you. Not only do you streamline lead generation, your Shop Spot literally becomes an online marketing laboratory. You get to test and retest promotions, experiment with your product or service mix, and refine your communications with prospects and customers.
Pay-per-Click advertising is short text ads, typically found on very large search engines. Many times these ads create high bounce rates. You generally end up paying more for your leads, while not being able to measure the value-to-cost ratio, other than the gross traffic rate. What you are paying for is simply the initial click made, which doesn’t tell you if the person pursued more actions or if that’s as far as they went.
What are your goals with this new pay model? What do you hope to achieve on behalf of Girl Shop Spot sellers with the pay model?
Our goals are to help educate advertisers on how shoppers interact with their ads by giving them easy-to-use tools to manage and measure them. Our goal with Girl Shop Spot sellers is for them to take full advantage of all the functionality the site offers, familiarizing themselves with cutting edge tools that GSS offers to help them market their business more cost effectively.
We also don't believe in having to pay for something unless it's really working. Pay-Per-Interaction is the ONE and ONLY way advertisers can trust that they will get the exposure but won't pay for uninterested passersby.
How does this new pay model fit into your plans for Girl Shop Spot going forward?
Funny you should ask that because the plan on what is to come is an obvious one. But before I answer what's to come, I'll answer how the new pay model fits. The web seems like it is overloaded with e-commerce sites and yet many of these sites:
Are hard to find
Make it difficult to connect with the seller
Make it difficult to make a purchase
Are designed poorly with difficult navigation
Instead of building a site based around advertising, selling and e-commerce, we wanted to first find solutions to all these obstacles both businesses and shoppers face online.
Many advertising sites that seem to offer a one-stop-shop e-commerce solution (or any advertising for that matter), still don't offer sellers cost-effective measurement tools to learn what interactions lead customers to make their purchases from their ads. They don’t, for instance, track how many times a product or service image has been viewed but not purchased. They don’t tell the seller what the conversion rates are for each. Are they clicking to view specials? How often are these specials clicked versus how many sales codes are used or entered? From where are they clicking to find the seller’s ad?
The PPI tools are the next step to moving towards the obvious...e-commerce. We intend to help those small businesses that are either financially or logistically unable to offer an e-commerce site by giving them the option to sell their products and services online through their Shop Spots.
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