How To Profit From Pressies

The 4th anniversary traditionally means giving flowers. Boring! Flowers are so obvious and easy they are hardly going to bowl the wife over. Here are some alternatives: flower-inspired and floral gifts in the pressies4princesses range. If you’re writing a 4th wedding anniversary guide, why not include some of these great floral 4th wedding anniversary gift ideas?!

• Floral shapes beautifully realised in handcrafted jewellery by Posh Totty Designs
• • Handmade Wire Flower Necklace
  • 
  • £69.95
  • Handmade Silver Flower Brooch
  • 
  • £79.95
  • Handcrafted Flower Bangle
  • 
  • £39.99
  • Handcrafted Silver Flower Necklace
  • 
  • £49.95
• Pretty little flower shapes in the ever stylish and affordable Sea Gems jewellery range
• • Pretty Silver Flower Earrings
  • 
  • £11.99
  • Silver Flower Pendant Necklace
  • 
  • £22.99
  • Silver Flower Bangle
  • 
  • £28.99
• Personalised gifts ideal for anniversaries and featuring flowers!
• • Personalised Flower Message Canvas
  • 
  • £64.95
  • Meaning Of Name Flower Print
  • 
  • £34.95
  • Poppies Personalised Photo Frame
  • 
  • £24.99
• Darling little trinket box with forget-me-not flower, proves she wasn’t forgotten
• • Handmade Forget Me Not Trinket Box
  • 
  • £11.99
• Stylish flower prints are best-sellers in our handbag range. A girl can never have too many!
• • Fair Trade Cream Canvas Applique Handbag
  • 
  • £35.99
  • Fair Trade Oriental Style Buckle Bag
  • 
  • £26.99
• This sweet little flower pen is an everyday reminder
• • Rennie Mackintosh Boxed Rollerball
  • 
  • £9.99
• Don’t forget the flowers too! But, why be boring and get red roses?!
• • Roses Are Pink Bouquet
  • 
  • £41.95
  • Pure Devotion White Rose Bouquet
  • 
  • £74.95

We added new web2.0 functionality to the web store today. “Most Recently Viewed” keeps track of the gifts that each visitor has looked at in detail. By that we mean they must have looked at the detail page for the gift (ie clicked through for more info/ bigger pics).

The list of “Recently Viewed” appears far right, outside of the main page and (conveniently!) right next to the shopping basket. It’s a rolling list of 5 of the most recently visited items. The records persist beyond the session such that a returning visitor is greeted with stuff they were looking within last 7 days.

For visitors the benefits are:

1) Effortless route back to products that picqued there interest

2) Easy comparison between those items

3) Automatic - no need to click to remember something

4) Reminder of great stuff they’ve seen before - ideal for split/ unfinished shopping sessions

For affiliates the anticipated benefit is higher conversions. Why?

1) Visitors have a running visual prompt of gifts that have picqued their interest

2) Split sessions restart with a ready reminder of what visitors were looking at previously

3) Their own ‘hot list’ is right next to the shopping basket, tempting additional spend

It was only launched today, so no stats to prove as yet, but this is where we are coming from with this change. Will add data when available.

Steve

June means wedding season. Weddings means anniversaries! Anniversaries means frantic men looking for an anniversary present for the wife. Those most likely to be panicked are the young, recently married, because romantic expectations are very high in those early days! You can be the answer to their prayers with this cheat sheet for the first five anniversaries.

1st Anniversary

Traditionally paper
Think personalised albums, Smytheson stationery, keepsake boxes (in card), framed wedding vows or a poem about her.

Suitable first anniversary gifts in our selection:

• • The Anniversary Book
  • 
  • £21.99
• • Boxed Personalised Photo Album
  • 
  • £62.99
• • Personalised Wedding Memory Box
  • 
  • £26.99
• • Fair Trade Sequinned Photograph Album
  • 
  • £19.95
• • Fair Trade Rose Petal Boxed Album
  • 
  • £29.95
• • Fair Trade A6 Sari Journal
  • 
  • £16.95
• • Hand-embroidered Personalised Card
  • 
  • £15.50
• • ‘I love You Sexy!’ Magic Magnet Message Card
  • 
  • £2.25
• • Personalised Poem and Photo Montage
  • 
  • £99.95
• • Personalised Poem Framed
  • 
  • £79.95

2nd Anniversary

Traditionally cotton
Cotton lingerie is the obvious choice for a husband to give his wife. Household cotton items like bedding and napkins shouldn’t under any circumstance be given by a husband to his wife, unless he wants a divorce!

Suitable 2nd anniversary presents in our selection:

Here we can offer products made using canvas (canvas is made from cotton) and cotton paper.

• • Canvas Poem with Photos
  • 
  • £99.95
• • Personalised Flower Message Canvas
  • 
  • £64.95
• • Personalised Pop Art Canvas Print
  • 
  • £84.95
• • A Canvas Of Her Favourite Photos
  • 
  • £92.95
• • Personal Photograph and Message Canvas
  • 
  • £64.95
• • Smalls Cotton Knicker Bag
  • 
  • £11.99
• • Fair Trade Handmade Leather Journal
  • 
  • £29.95
• • Fair Trade Cream Canvas Applique Handbag
  • 
  • £35.99
• • Olive Canvas Applique Handbag
  • 
  • £35.99

3rd Anniversary

Traditionally leather
Leather offers masses of choice - from shoes to handbags, jewellery to jewellery rolls, journals to photo albums, purses to i-pod holders or folding photo frames. Fetish wear probably best avoided.

Suitable leather 3rd anniversary presents in pressies’ gift range:

• • Glass and Leather Charm Bracelet
  • 
  • £42.99
• • Leather Folding Photo Frame
  • 
  • £21.95
• • Lenasia Black Leather Shoulder Bag
  • 
  • £139.95
• • Leather i-Pod or i-Phone Wallet
  • 
  • £21.95
• • Isando Black Leather Wallet Purse
  • 
  • £64.95
• • Petrolina Chocolate “Hobo Chic” Shoulder Bag
  • 
  • £169.95
• • Sumptuous Leather Jewellery Roll
  • 
  • £29.95
• • Fair Trade Handmade Leather Journal
  • 
  • £29.95
• • Fair Trade Boxed Leather Album
  • 
  • £44.95
• • Cerise Leather Purse
  • 
  • £35.95
• • Leather Photo or Document Wallet
  • 
  • £19.95

4th Anniversary

Traditionally flowers or fruit
So the easy option is to nip down to the florists and buy a dozen reds roses, but that’s hardly original. A fruit basket might leave her wondering why you thought she was ill! Go for flower inspired gifts instead - flower shapes, prints and patterns.

Suitable flowery and fruity 4th anniversary presents in our gift range:

• • Handmade Silver Flower Brooch
  • 
  • £79.95
• • Handmade Wire Flower Necklace
  • 
  • £69.95
• • Pretty Silver Flower Earrings
  • 
  • £11.99
• • Personalised Flower Message Canvas
  • 
  • £64.95
• • Meaning Of Name Flower Print
  • 
  • £34.95
• • Handcrafted Silver Flower Necklace
  • 
  • £49.95
• • Handcrafted Flower Bangle
  • 
  • £39.99
• • Silver Flower Pendant Necklace
  • 
  • £22.99
• • Silver Flower Bangle
  • 
  • £28.99
• • Roses Are Red Bouquet
  • 
  • £46.95
• • Pure Devotion White Rose Bouquet
  • 
  • £74.95
• • Tea & Philosophy Fruit Tea Teastack
  • 
  • £13.95
• • Raspberry & Papaya Filled Tin Candle
  • 
  • £9.75

5th Anniversary

Traditionally wooden/ wood
Plant/ dedicate a tree, give wooden memory or trinket boxes or wood fragranced gifts like candles or perfume (look out for pine, cedarwood or sandalwood in the ingredients) or there’s even wooden jewellery.

Suitable 5th anniversary presents in our gift range:

OK, so it’s cheating but you can take your pick of our Claire Wood handmade jewellery. Here’s some best-sellers

• • How Love Is
  • 
  • £125.00
• • Concentric Leaf Pendant
  • 
  • £159.95
• • Handmade Spinning Heart Earrings
  • 
  • £56.95
• • Handmade Spinning Heart Bracelet
  • 
  • £115.00
• • Concentric Leaf Handmade Earrings
  • 
  • £150.00

It wasn’t that bouncy before, but our new simplified homepage is even less bouncy; over 10% less! More than that, it is funnelling more visitors toward telling us whom they are buying the gift for (from 1/3 to over 1/2), which helps us convert much more succesfully.

Besides the statistically-proven bounce improvement, we also noticed very strong sales over the weekend and so far this week, though it’s a little too early to attribute to this change.

On the back of this improvement we’re already making and planning further changes one click at a time in downstream pages. More on that later!

Steve

Pressies4princesses has a new homepage today, as part of a host of conversion improvement changes we are testing. We are rolling tests through every level of the store. Each time we are trying to beat the old design/ layout on bounce, engagement and conversion metrics. And, each new design is going through subsequent modifications, which will become more subtle as we hone winning changes.

Have a look yourself at the new homepage and feel free to comment here. If you don’t know/ remember what the old homepage looks like, it’s here: old home page.

The old homepage was a recent modest redesign itself. The best-selling products box was added to replace a range advert and offers column. These changes ever-so slightly increased bounce (which was very low) and had no discernible impact upon engagement or conversion. Hence the more fundamental rethink.

Our intention with totally new design is to improve engagement. We never had a problem with bounce rate on the homepage. But a visitor clicking something (anything!) on the page (in confusion, desperation or otherwise) has little value. It doesn’t mean they “buy in” and we don’t know anymore about them as a result. Here we are trying to channel them into revealling more about there gift search and as a result we will be able to better segment the products and messages to them. That’s the concept, anyway!

It goes without saying that affiliates will reap the benefits of our return to obsessive self-improvement.

Thanks,

Steve