Category Archives: Stores and Services

From dry cleaners to shoe shiners, this category is for companies that do stuff for others.

New business headshots slideshow

Just completed another slideshow for Gretje Ferguson.

This slideshow is for business headshots. It looks beautiful for 2 reasons. One, I am working with a talented photographer and two, the software I use to create these works well.

Please note, I share no affiliation with the company and I am not trying to sell you this product. Just sharing my personal experience here.

I am using a software called Visual Slideshow. This is now around the 5th slideshow I’ve put together and all have been really easy to do. You can add folders full of images, output to a single file and upload the slideshow from the program.

I have to integrate the slideshow by brute force into the Dreamweaver template, but it’s 2 things to paste, so overall, I would have to say it’s a rather easy process. They even have a way to do the integration for you, although it has not worked well for me, primarily because they do not detect their own slideshow when re-inserting and thus, it does not update the slideshow but pastes in a new one.

Here is a different slideshow for a different client with the Ken Burns effect: a spring tour to see tulips in Kazakhstan.

Graphic designer in need of work can find plenty of opportunity with Zen Cart

If you are a graphic designer looking for work, I have an opportunity for you. Recently, I created a store for Dr. Fisher’s Mix (a high fiber and high protein dietary supplement)using Zen Cart. The default graphics on the Zen Cart are terrible and need to be updated to 2011.

Screenshot of the Dr. Fisher's Mix Store

At $50 – $75 per set, the graphics would be affordable for a developer and once you setup the proper templates, it won’t take more than an hour to get all the buttons (I think there are 3-5) into the customer’s colors and fonts. And if you have time, make a name for yourself by updating the default style of the cart for the next release.

From a quick search on Google, it looks like the vast majority of high ranking services offer integration, installation, etc. That’s expensive and not necessary for someone like me, who really just needs a small amount of graphics.

If you are a graphic designer and you’ve created Zen Cart graphics, contact me.

Why some businesses fail

I got an excellent pedicure at a spa once and when it started wearing off, I called for an appointment for another.

Here is my conversation at 9:30am on Wednesday:

Me: Hi, I would like to make an appointment for a pedicure.
Salon: What? This is a beauty shop. We don’t do pedicures here.
Me: Hmm. I got a pedicure a month ago at your salon.
Salon: What? (talks to people behind him). Oh, call back in 1/2 hour. I don’t know how to book that.

11am conversation on the same day
Me: Hi, I would like to book an appointment for a pedicure.
Salon: We don’t do pedicures.
Me: Actually, I had a pedicure at your salon a month ago.
Salon: Oh. The woman who does it, she has a small child, sometimes she comes, sometimes she not want to come. Call on Friday at 11am. If she’s here, you can have a pedicure.

Friday, at 1:30pm:
Me: Hi, I wanted to come in for a pedicure.
Salon: Oh, did you make an appointment?
Me: No, I was told to call the day of.
Salon: I see. Well the manicurist is with someone right now and she will be busy until 4pm when she has to leave. Would you like to make an appointment for next Friday?

The gift of the Magi?

One of our former clients – Day Spa Magi has been transferred to new ownership. It’s always a little unnerving and exciting at the same time when this happens to a business. It’s unnerving because it’s change. It’s exciting because you don’t know what’s coming and in which ways it will be different.

We’re not involved with Magi any more, but it can still be fun to exercise our thinking caps and come up with a list of things a spa should do to reinvent itself. So, here it goes:

New Name – New Image with a new brand. Choose different colors, update the entry room, basically, give a different look to your business.
Same People? This is a tough one because your customers, those who come regularly, are used to their specific hairdresser, cosmetologist, etc. And since you want to retain the customers as much as possible, it’s best to keep those members of the staff who are performing well. And of course, weed out those which are not. Try to balance this off with some new faces and some new services.
Offer an introductory coupon – you’ll need to entice past customers and new customer to come and try something new – i.e. your services, so offer a 20% off your first treatment coupon to get them in the door.
Fix the website! Of course, with every new brand, there must be a new website. I would also recommend this for spas which are also not going through an ownership change – every 3-5 years, redesign your site. It will keep your business looking fresh to potential customers.

And, as I am left with a $38 Magi gift certificate burning a hole in my pocket, I anxiously await the opening of the new spa, even if just to see whether I can still get a manicure with my certificate.

New Client – New You? Brown Couch helps Acupuncture Clinic of Brookline

We’re proud to announce that the Acupuncture Clinic of Brookline has become a client of Brown Couch Consulting. We’re helping the clinic gain more visibility in the natural and herbal healing market in and around Brookline. They already have a website, but we’ve been making improvements in the SEO realm that are necessary to help the clinic to be more visible on the web and Google Maps in particular.

Yogurt and the anticancer link

I’m always fascinated by co-marketing. I just opened a brand new jar of Stonyfield yogurt to discover an ad on the foil seal for a new book called Anticancer: A New Way of Life, David Servan-Schreiber. Here is how this works: Stonyfield goes out and buys (or maybe even gets) 1,000 copies of this book that is very much akin to their phylosophy. They create a giveaway for the book, thereby getting information from thousands of their customers, which, in market research dollars is far more valuable than the cost of the book. The book publishers benefit because their book just got publicity from a company whose customers are most likely to read it, pass it to their friends and tell others about it. The customer benefit because they get exposure to a resource they most likely would not have found on their own, a book which advocates organic foods for health benefits, and more specifically, as a weapon against the disease we are all aware and worried about. It’s brilliant.

Now if I could find a company that did store design for Brookline and Boston area businesses, I could team up with them for a physical and virtual makeover package!

Business sense at its best

As I write this post, I lament the end of a bag of granola I had purchased in Vermont on vacation. Silly you! You might say. Why not just order online for them again? It’s so easy for us to assume that any retailer would have an online store, or at least a website that would tell us how to get the product you want. That’s not the case here. I bought this bag at a farmer’s market and the gentleman who sold it to me said that they don’t have a website because “they are afraid that people will buy”. After a hearty laugh, I realized that his sense for his business is right on. How much would they have to make if people could buy their product online? How would their business and their life change? Did they want that change?

I’ll probably never know the answers to these questions, though I am very glad to have met the seller. He gave me a fresh reminder of how important it is for a business owner to know the limits of their business and the limit to which they are willing to take it.

A picture is worth a thousand words

We often recommend a photo gallery for our clients. Not only do customers like to see many different pictures of a product (think Zappos with their 8 images of the same pair of shoes), but they also like to see pictures of your organization, your staff (think day spas) or meeting you’ve organized (think a professional organization such as NEWBO).

I am very pleased to announce that IBEX, one of our busiest customers, has posted a photo gallery of their destination countries and past tours. Check it out: http://www.bioexploration.org/photo-gallery.html. The pictures are breathtaking and we are adding more albums every week, so check back often. If that doesn’t wet your appetite enough, read through the tour descriptions and start saving for a trip of a lifetime.

A picture is worth 1,000 words

Brown Couch Consulting

A blog of thoughts and ideas on small business website development.