SMART Ecommerce Blog

Customer Spotlight – Theme Kitchen

Keller Hawthorne is a talented Web designer and marketer who, at the age of 22, decided to open an online business. But when Keller dipped her toe in the ecommerce pool in 2005, she realized she really didn’t know what she was doing. Keller admits, “I thought all I had to do was open a store or sign up with eBay and I would instantly make tons of money.”

After pausing to research and learn more, Keller made a huge splash with her second launch, Theme Kitchen, in 2006.

When did you get started in E-Commerce?

I opened my first ecommerce store in 2005. It was not very successful. After a year of researching and learning about Internet marketing, I decided to revamp. I purchased an ecommerce package from Network Solutions in 2006 and opened Theme Kitchen, which has been a great success! In 2007, I opened a sister store to TK, Theme Bathroom. I am also in the process of developing a new sister store, hopefully to be launched this summer.

(source: www.themekitchen.com 09/09/2009)

What type of growth have you experienced since starting your site?

Just 5 months after opening Theme Kitchen, I obtained the number one result in Google for the search term “kitchen décor.” Theme Kitchen’s sales are expected to exceed $100k this year (sales have doubled since last year).

Theme Bathroom has experienced slower growth. It’s actually my fault – I just haven’t had time to devote myself to it as I did with Theme Kitchen. However, I’ve been able to utilize my existing TK traffic to send potential customers to TB.

How do you get traffic your site?

Whenever I open a new business, I invest in maybe one week of PayPerClick advertising. After that, I work hard to obtain high search engine rankings. I rely on organic traffic from search engines and word-of-mouth marketing.

What are some of your biggest challenges?

Before I purchased Network Solutions’ ecommerce hosting, I had A LOT of trouble managing my online inventory and customizing my store’s design. Since I made the switch to NS, these problems have gone away.

Today, I would say my biggest challenge is lack of time. There are only 24 hours in a day to execute all of your tasks and achieve your goals.

A huge weakness on my part would be the act of following up with existing customers. I really need to get a survey/feedback system into place and reach out to old customers. I would love to have a system like Amazon.com has where follow-up emails can be sent to existing customers with product recommendations.

I’m a web designer/marketer, so I’ve been able to save money by creating and optimizing the stores myself. Of course, this requires even more time and attention on my part.

What aspects of running an online store do you enjoy the most?

Working in my pajamas of course! I also love working from home. The Internet provides an easy and affordable platform for business owners. I get to set my own hours and be my own boss!

What tips would you share for others trying to grow their E-Commerce business?

Be prepared to devote your time and attention to your store. High search engine rankings require consistently updated content (try to add new products to your website often).

Be prepared for customer service to become more demanding as your store grows. Outsourcing may be an option you will consider in the future.

DON’T open an “everything” store. Try to find a niche and excel in it. If you have other types of products you want to carry, open sister stores and let them share traffic with your “parent” company.

Also, work on the design of your website and make it unique!

Follow Up Question: Why you do ‘maybe one week of PayPerClick advertising’? Is it just to test out keywords or see if the pages can convert? Do you start to get organic traffic after one week or do you start to rely on word of mouth at that point?

Honestly, I don’t like to spend money on advertising as I can get so much free traffic from search engines. So, I use PayPerClick for the first week of a website launch to get it some immediate traffic. Then, I get to work on optimizing it. It can take a little while to get good organic traffic, but there are other ways of bringing in visitors, like article marketing.

In May 2009, I launched an Internet business blog, FresheVenture.com. I recently posted an article there titled, How I Got Google PageRank within 3 Weeks of Launching My Website. You may want to read it to learn more about what I do to optimize my websites. Since writing the article, Google has assigned a PageRank of 6 to my blog’s home page. It took only 6 weeks to get it!

During my first year with Theme Kitchen, I added a new product collection every week. This helped update the content and got me a PageRank of 3.

Thanks so much for this opportunity to be spotlighted!