By Paul Lang, Editor, Sell It!
June 14th, 2000

See Also   Terrence Sherry and 1 World Sarongs   Andrew Bridgeman and eART-originals   Mark Annett and Scruplestore.com   David Sabot and Cheaphumidors.com   William Waite and Nemmelgeb Murr   Mary Lu Wason and LampLink   Michael Campbell and Cellwest   Bob Rankin and Flowers Fast   Louis Jay and Health4Her.com   Jeff Swearingen and TheGift.com   Bill Broadbent the T-Shirt King   Jim Goodbody and PlanetLearn   Todd Mogren and coastaltool.com   John D. Einhorn and CapShack.com   Beverley Wood and the Gift Ship   Sgt. David Hack and US Wings   Brenda Do and MindFood Media.com   Rory O'Connor and Shopirish.com

The subjects of this "My Store" article are unique in two respects: first off, the Web store is the first non-US one I've featured, being run from Copenhagen in Denmark. And secondly, it has definitely got the weirdest name I've come across!

The Nemmelgeb Murr store has been hand-built by William Waite and although it only opened a couple of months ago, results are already looking promising. If you're trying to build a Web business on a very tight budget, then William has some great tips for you.

Lang: Ok, first things first: where did the name "Nemmelgeb Murr" come from?

Waite: The name "Nemmelgeb Murr" is taken from the name of a "small world" that is depicted in a painting I made and from a piece of music that I wrote to structurally correlate with it. Part of the "joke" behind the name is that it is against all recommended practices: it is long, with totally made-up words that are difficult to remember. This reflects my belief that the site will depend upon links to get people there. I am hoping that the unusual strange contents, and that the ambience of the site will attract people and linking to the site. In particular, I wanted the site to be as visually appealing as possible.

My site is actually divided into 2 parts:
(1) The Nemmelgeb Import Shop
(2) Nemmelgeb Murr

The first is a typical shop to try to sell my puzzle designs, which when made in wood are too expensive for K-mart to market, and also even too expensive for many specialty puzzle shops (which would have to mark them up to a rather high price). In this way I can try to market the puzzles directly to the consumer and cut out all the middle men in order to make the puzzles affordable.

The second part of the site is a journey to Nemmelgeb Murr itself, a place in another galaxy where culture is based on puzzles. Nemmelgeb Murr is the main reason for the site--an outlet for my creative ideas about puzzles, music, and painting which I plan to develop over time.

Lang: How did you go about building your store?

Waite: I had no knowledge of HTML whatsoever, when I began to work on my website in January 1999. What I thought would be a 4 month project took an extra year and is still not fully accomplished, but at least it is established on a good footing, I think. I have no previous knowledge of e-commerce or marketing in general.

I began by downloading "A Beginner's Guide to HTML" from NCSA. I still refer to it to be sure of little basics once in a while.

Next I bought a copy of the "HTML 4 Bible" and read pretty much the whole thing, from the beginning, for an hour or two each night (that was all I could stand at a time). I also took a several month hiatus in the middle of the project to do something (anything!) else for a while.

I bought a scanner and scanned in various of my artworks and puzzles (or pictures of them) which I very simply edited in Windows basic Paint Program. I also made drawings on the computer of puzzles and used Image Composer to lighten them for background.

Meanwhile I was putting the HTML 4 ideas into practice by starting to make the sight using MicroSoft FrontPage. This was an easy way to begin, but one must check the HTML script very carefully for extra unneeded text that gets added when you move things around. This makes your script longer in download time and harder to understand later.

After a while, you get used to FrontPage's idiosyncrasies and can quickly clean up a page. Of course, it is best if you can write everything from scratch, but I don't think it's the quickest way.

The site went through 3 major versions. The second version of the "Nemmelgeb Murr" section was the biggest. It involved complex bitmap navigation using a large painting of a galaxy where different parts turned into words of a destination page on mouse-over. This was a disaster in download time! The picture (and the small corresponding pictures that showed up under mouseover) took almost a minute to download--each and every time you tried to return to the menu!!!

Lesson learned: I needed to keep it simple! So I instead made a table with very small pictures scattered here and there throughout as buttons in the new menu. This has a relatively quick download time--essential for a menu. The "alt=bla bla" text tells where the buttons go if you click on them. The clean sparseness of the page gives the viewer nothing else to do BUT click on the pictures.

The other major lesson learned: I should have spent more time AWAY from the computer, making flow charts to plan the site, and especially writing the TEXT for the pages. The text on my site still tends to be the "fill-it-in-for-now-and-I'll-come-back-and-really-do-it-right-later" kind of text. Figure out WHAT content goes WHERE on your site, and be direct and simple.

Lang: What server and shopping cart software are you using and why?

Waite: To decide on a server I checked out TopHosts.com and chose Concentric at $25 a month. It depends on your needs, so you should shop around.

The orders are processed by a credit card company in the USA that specializes in that sort of thing: CCNow (Credit Card Now). They charge nothing for setting up the shopping cart. It is all done instantaneously and automatically over the internet. It is easy to do. They charge 9% of every order. Perhaps a bit high, but if you figure that into the prices you set, it certainly saves a lot of hassles!! It comes recommended very highly by a friend of mine who was doing all the bookwork himself for his site and whose international orders were driving him crazy. He says the headaches avoided are well worth the price.

Also, note that because I used frames for my site, the CCNow ordering page becomes nestled into my site and seems much more a natural part of it.

Lang: Why did you choose to use CCNow instead of getting your own merchant account?

Waite: A merchant account costs a fairly high monthly fee whether you use it or not. Because I sell a "niche" item (which is more of a "want" for the consumer than a "need"), I cannot be sure that I will cover even my monthly server fee of $25. It is quite possible during some months that I might make no sales at all. Therefore, I cannot justify a monthly merchant account payment. CCNow only charges when you actually make sales and not during any lean time of no sales at all. Only after I have established a dependable monthly sales record might it pay to get my own merchant account.

Lang: How much did the store cost to build? How much to maintain and promote?

Waite: I built the site entirely myself, so outside of a few books, software, $70 for my .com domain, a scanner and a computer, it only(!) cost months of labour. It was a lot of fun, and even more frustration, but an enjoyable learning experience for someone who likes making things, like I do. In a way, it was just another creative project for me.

Maintenance is my labour and $25 a month to the server. There are plenty of free ways to promote a site, more than I could find in a lifetime, so I don't plan to spend any money on promotion at this time. But there are probably good ways to invest a bit of money for a larger return.

Lang: What were the major problems/challenges you faced?

Waite: Trying to learn HTML and various programs like FrontPage without any live person to guide me was the biggest challenge. Occasionally I was able to get help from a friend or two when I was totally stumped, but I mostly learned on my own. This means that I do not always do things in the optimum way, but I suppose that goes with the territory.

Lang: How do you plan to promote your store?

Waite: I have gone out and asked other related sites if they will exchange links from their links page. But I continue to search for more, and have promised myself that I will spend a few hours at least once a week searching to promote the site in this way. I am also looking for places on the web that recommend interesting new sites, also puzzle newsgroups, unusual shopping opportunities, puzzle web rings, etc, etc.

In the first two weeks of my site, before it even came up on any of the search engines, I had two orders and five people that signed up for "PuzClub" the Puzzle-of-the-month club. Half of these are strangers that arrived through links, the other half were friends.

One plan I have is to list a puzzle for sale on e-bay with a link to my site. This is good free advertisement directed to those interested, and probably I'll sell a puzzle as well!

Lang: Finally, what are your top tip(s) for anyone considering opening their own Web store?

Waite:

• Uniqueness. If your products are not unique, offer information or some content that is unique as a draw.

• Have people proof read for you and try to get around!!

• Keep it simple and uncluttered! There is too much clutter on the web, give people space they can relax in.