VernonGirl

What are your website objectives?

An Internet presence should begin with a website.
Here are some objectives that your website can accomplish:

*Attract new customers
*Reduce the time to market of certain products or services
*Make announcements to current customers
*Reduce paper and postage charges by using email
*Inform and educate clients about products and services
*Service existing clients
*Advertise your business around the world
*Advertise your business locally
*Increase the value of your company
*Increase your company’s credibility
*Improve your company’s image
*Help you and your staff spend less time on the phone with customers
*Attract new employees
*Show examples of your work
*Replace your brochure with quicker information fulfillment
*Replace service manuals
*Help your customers locate key personnel
*Promote upcoming events
*Attract entrepreneurs to business opportunities
*Offer on-line product purchases and/or product knowledge
*Demonstrate that you are great corporate citizens
*Attract shareholders
*Open a new communication channel to media
*Explain who you do business with (partnerships)
*Book appointments or reservations
*Take applications

Establishing credibility is one of the most underestimated powers of a good website…and a dangerous one for some consumers. A colleague of mine – a webmaster – told me about his pawn shop client who has a website. If you walk into the guy’s store, you see carpet that hasn’t been changed for 30 years and dust that’s at least that old, too. Yet, he has the most incredible website – with nice graphics and professional design, great information and a sophisticated shopping cart system. (That’s because my colleague, the webmaster, designed it for him.) His customers from around the country who buy products off his site will likely never know what a pigsty his store is. His website is first-rate and that is all they will ever see. (Boy! You gotta be careful with Internet blind dates if this principle applies!)

Think of it the opposite way. Sometimes you are better off to pull an ugly website off the Internet if it creates a bad impression of your business. One of my clients had a large website for their Optometry business when they hired me to help them update it. It was so outdated we pulled it off immediately and posted a single page that said: “We are currently renovating our website to serve you better. Please enter your email address and we’ll notify you as soon as we launch our new site.” The former site just didn’t reflect the quality of their service and products and so they were better off not using it at all.

To meet your objectives of what you want to accomplish with your website, here are some items to include:

*Frequently asked questions
*Company structure and staff, along with phone numbers and email addresses for all key personnel
*Products
*Services
*Prices
*Hours
*Locations and contact information, including physical addresses
*Directions or maps on how to find your stores
*Testimonials
*Warranties
*Employment information
*Business or franchise opportunities
*Vision/mission statement or corporate philosophy
*Number of years in business
*Upcoming events
*Community involvement and sponsorships
*Newsletter
*Shareholder information
*Search tool – especially if your website contains lots of information
*Portfolio (for designs, plans, art work, etc.)
*Listings (real estate agents)
*Reservations (accommodation)
*Vehicles (used and new cars)
*Book your appointment (vehicle maintenance, dental, etc.)
*Activities (travel, tour companies, event company)
*Packages
*Mortgage calculator (mortgage broker)
*Site Map – for larger sites
*Applications – financial industry
*Partners (companies you work with)
*Resources (links to helpful sites)
*Promotions
*Customer Care
*Awards

Realistic Expectations…

 “A friend called me up the other day and talked about investing in a dot-com that sells lobsters. Internet lobsters. Where will this end? The next day he sent me a huge package of lobsters on ice.
How low can you stoop?”
--Donald Trump

The owners of a manufacturing company came to me to help them develop a website. They did not have a marketing budget and were struggling to sell their quality wooden fireplace mantels into the state of Washington. They thought that if they had a website, residential home developers would phone them to buy wooden mantels.

It is a myth that a website is the overnight answer to your marketing problems. Like a brochure, your website must be designed, published (or in the case of a website – launched), distributed (emailed or advertised in social media sites like Facebook, Twitter or StumbleUpon) into the right hands, read (or seen), have a ‘call to action’ and target a willing participant who acts on the call. If you expect new business from your website, it needs to be promoted properly, measured for effectiveness, maintained and kept ‘fresh’.

For most people, giving birth to an effective website requires a substantial investment in time, planning and money. Although most websites take from three to six months from concept to launch, a nine-month investment in your website baby is not unrealistic if you expect a quality result (unless you have a superior marketing company to project manage for you).

Websites also serve certain marketing functions. Getting new overnight business from them is definitely not one. There are pros and cons to consider before deciding to put the website bun in the oven!

Website Advantages

*A great way to get information into the hands of your customers immediately
*Can be updated immediately
*Can present information statically and dynamically
*Are interactive – providing you with valuable customer feedback
*Are visual and can include audio
*Have unlimited space (very affordable)

Website Disadvantages
 
*Require frequent maintenance
*Can be costly to set up – both in time and money
*Are somewhat of a mystery – kind of like your car if you’re not a mechanic. Your webmaster, like your mechanic, has a lot of power and knowledge and you are subjected to trusting him or her.
*Have continual yearly and/or monthly fees including hosting, domain name renewal and maintenance

Consider Your Timeline…

 “If I had to sum up in a word what makes a good manager, I'd say decisiveness. You can use the fanciest computers to gather the numbers, but in the end you have to set a timetable and act.”
--Lee Iacocca

A typical website project, from design to launch, takes at least three to six months. The majority of the time is spent gathering ideas, images and text. Set a timeline for yourself and your web design team upon starting this project. Here is a check list that will help:

1.    Gather information, plan your site, and develop a bid document
2.    Have three design companies bid on your project
3.    Choose a design company
4.    Meet with design company to begin your project
5.    Wait for initial design concept
6.    Review the home-page and sub-page concept. Provide feedback.
7.    Review the home page and sub page again, give the web design company the go ahead to develop the remainder of the site.
8.    Wait for the design company to incorporate all of your images and text into the site.
9.    Review the completed site, test links, proof read, and provide feedback.
10.    Wait for the designers to make final adjustments to the site.
11.    Review the final design and sign it off. Have meta-tags (we’ll explain later) programmed into the site.
12.    Launch the site.
13.    Submit the site to key search engines and announce it to media and customers.
14.    Get your backup and passwords from the design company and make your final payment to the web design team.
15.    Promote, Promote, Promote!
16.    Track your success.
17.    Keep it fresh!

Patience and planning are key to making your website project a positive experience.

Don’t get e-screwed!

 “There was a time when a fool and his money were soon parted, but now it happens to everybody.”
-Adlai E. Stevenson

When your gut feeling tells you that the prices are ridiculous, they probably are. Continue reading and you’ll know whether you’re paying a fair price for the services you are about to receive!

Budget…
Establish a budget to determine what you can afford. Most website designs start at $900 and up. This cost does not include your domain name ($25 - $45/year), hosting (from $180 per year and up), database ($1,500 and up), or e-commerce ($3,000 and up). Other charges can include maintenance ($40/hour and up) and promotion ($100 and up).

When considering your return on investment, determine ways that a website can save or make you money if it:

*Eliminates or reduces the need to print brochures or catalogues
*Cuts postage and faxing charges
*Cuts time for stuffing envelopes and packages
*Cuts long distance phone calls to customers or staff
*Saves printing charges for brochures, catalogues, annual reports, owner’s manuals, etc.
*Saves personnel time speaking with customers
*Saves personnel time searching for information
*Brings new customers
*Sells products

To do Internet marketing well, it requires its own marketing plan. Every activity in your Internet marketing plan should have a budget, an objective, a market and a way to track success.

Each activity should include costs for creative, time (human resources) and items such as hosting, advertising, maintenance or design charges.

Target Market
Consider who will use your website and it will be easier for you to determine your objectives. Will it be…
*Staff
*Present Customers
*Suppliers
*New Customers
*Distributors

Important for pricing and language considerations, is to determine where your website will be accessed from…
*Locally
*Nationally
*Internationally

Determine which age group will use your website as it will help you consider the information, type style, graphics and technology that you include in the site…
*Kids
*Teens
*Adults
*Seniors

You get the idea! As with other types of media, you have to know your market before you can design an effective website for it.

Revenue
Consider the ways that your website can bring in new revenue streams….
*Support existing products and services
*Offer New products and services
*Advertising or link exchanges
*New customers

Expenses
Consider some of the expenses of website development and marketing…
*Photograph acquisition
*Copywriting
*Design
*Hosting
*Maintenance
*Promotion

Price
Pricing of the website design, hosting and maintenance is important to consider as part of your marketing plan. I always advise my customers to start small and build. Get on the Net with a small investment. Begin promoting the site and generating traffic to it. Then expand.

You also need to consider how to price your products on your website. For example, will you offer discounts for on-line ordering? Will you use your website to blow out slow moving products? Will you offer your purchases in Canadian or US currency, or both?

If you feel that the website will be worth your time, energy and money, then let’s get started!

Blogs are also great alternatives to a website. Read more about blogs.

Thanks for reading.

Courtenay Pitcher, Webmaster, Website content writer

This article was adapted from my book: Secrets of Internet Marketing

How a luxury real estate brand for Kelowna, Vernon and Calgary is born

When Gord Fowler, a dually licensed RE/MAX real estate agent in Calgary and Vernon, came to my company Lava Marketing to create a luxury real estate brand for him, I was delighted.

Obviously, everything about a luxury brand must scream:

professionalism,

quality

and class.

When a new brand is developed, we also make sure that elements like colour, font choices or design touches are consistent throughout the client's marketing pieces. 

For Gord, we developed a proposal that included a new logo, tagline and marketing photo. Once these projects were complete, he hired us to do a web page design, business card design, web page programming and 8.5 x 5.5 flyer.

Gord was decisive about choosing his new brand name: Fowler Luxury Homes. 

We came up with several tagline choices. The one that took first prize was:

You Deserve The Best.

This tagline has a double entendre....not only do you deserve to live in a luxury home with a luxury lifestyle, but you also deserve a specialist and seasoned professional in dealing with Okanagan luxury and resort properties, Gord Fowler.

Here is the logo with the tagline:

 

Every great real estate agent needs a really great photo. Our original intent was to take Gord's picture in front of a crackling fireplace inside a luxury home. As it turned out, the location we used for the photoshoot had a fabulous balcony in front of the Vernon Yacht Club. What better backdrop to scream "luxury" and "Okanagan lifestyle" than yachts? (A blue suit is always a safe and professional choice too.) Here is the result:

We integrated his logo/tagline, with his image to create a web page design that we uploaded (in pieces) to Ubertor, a template website system popular with real estate agents. I have to admit that working with a template system like Ubertor is challenging. We had to adapt our original design to fit into their rigid template. But I'm pleased with the results:

Here is the business card (front and back) that incorporates many of the same elements:

Business Card Back (notice the background with elements of the logo):

This is the 8.5 x 5.5 flyer design just approved:

What do you think of Gord Fowler's new marketing pieces? Do you think we hit the mark so that when you are looking to buy a luxury property in Calgary or the Okanagan, you'll call Gord Fowler? Please leave a comment at the bottom of this blog.

I really enjoyed working with Gord on this project. Thanks Gord!

Thanks for reading.

Courtenay Pitcher, Personal branding specialist

How To Track Your Advertising and Social Media Efforts On-line

This article has been adapted and updated from chapter three of my book Secrets of Internet Marketing: Streamline, promote, communicate and sell more effectively on-line.

Tracking programs


 

As you know, it is imperative to track your advertising – whether it is website banner advertising, television or print. With the advent of social media, it is also good to know how much traffic is coming into your blog or website through Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, YouTube or other sites. You must know where your business is coming from. If you have a banner ad on a website that is costing you big money and your referring URLs from that site are low, you have choices. (More about URLs below.) You can pull the ad, change the ad, change the location of the ad on the site, or negotiate a better rate or location for your banner ad on their site.

Tracking programs or website statistics are excellent for monitoring visitor and customer behavior. With them, you can track where your customers come from, where bottlenecks occur in your site, which content, products or services visitors prefer, how you can improve your customer support, the best way to convert a visitor into a buyer and which advertising campaigns are working.

I use Google Analytics to track my blog traffic. The best part about it…it is free.

Hits

Hits, also called a page hit, are the retrieval of any item, like a page or a graphic, from a web server. For example, when a visitor calls up a web page with eight graphics, that's nine hits, one for the page and eight for the graphics. For this reason, hits often aren't a good indication of Web traffic. Anyone trying to sell you on-line advertising based on hits should be asked to get out of the ballpark.

Page Views
A page view is a web page that has been viewed by one visitor. Rather than hits, page views are a much more reliable measuring tool for evaluating where to place your online advertising and/or your website traffic. You'll see by this image below, how my page views skyrocketed when I added K. D. Lang to my site immediately following the 2010 Winter Olympics.



Search Engine Reports

Software (like Google Analytics) that provides search engine reports can tell you which search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc.) visitors are using to find your site. By knowing which search engines people are using to find you, you’ll be able to tell which search engines aren’t working for you. Then, you can attempt to fix your ranking in those search engines where you need improvement.

Keyword Reports
See which keyword combinations people are entering in search engines to find your site by looking at keyword reports. Keyword reports tell you that you have content in your blog or your site around those keywords. However, if you want to bring visitors to your site or blog with other key words, and you are not getting traffic from them, you’ll know what kind of content you should add.

Here is an example of my keyword report. Recently, I posted a YouTube video to my site and ever since then, my traffic has gone through the roof for K.D. Lang Olympic video searches.

Referring URLs (or Referring Sites)
A URL is a Uniform Resource Locator. It is a very complicated way of saying ‘website address’. Referring URLs are the websites that refer, send, divert or direct business into your site.

By tracking your referring URLs, you can determine which websites (in addition to search engines) are sending you business. This is extremely valuable information because it allows you to determine where your advertising is, or isn’t, working.

As you can see by this image below, top referring sites to my blog are Twitter, Kelly Diels, Facebook and Hootsuite. (That goes to show the power of blogs and social media to generating traffic.)

Return on Investment Calculation
Compare referring URLs to determine the percentage of traffic each URL brings. Track return on investment for each URL by assigning a dollar figure to the percentage and dividing it by the cost of your advertising. This method is used for comparison purposes. It doesn’t actually assign a real dollar value.

For example: let’s say you are a photographer and you have banner advertising on two sites:

Kodak.com
Gettyimages.com

Kodak is bringing you 50% of your visitors, but the ad cost you $500. Getty images is bringing you the other 50%, but the ad cost you $1000.

Return on investment (ROI) is calculated strictly for comparison purposes – the dollar figure means nothing in this case.

Your return on investment for Kodak 50/500 = 0.1

ROI for Getty is 50/1000 = .05 (half).

While they bring you the same amount of traffic, the traffic costs you twice as much with gettyimages.com.

Therefore, you may want to consider reducing your investment with gettyimages.com to see if you get the same amount of traffic for the same price, or negotiate with Getty to keep the same ad, but at half the cost based on your knowledge of Kodak’s results. As long as all other things remain equal, you may be in a very good negotiating position with Getty. Do you getty what I’m saying?

Most requested pages
Tracking programs also allow you to track the most requested pages on your website. The most requested page on your website is often your home page. But which page do your customers visit next? Is it your contact information, jobs, or what? This is useful information to know.

This is important if you are trying to convince a supplier or associate to buy advertising space on your website. You can indicate where the best place to advertise will be.

When I had a contract with a community Internet portal to sell banner advertising, we sold all of the advertising at the same rate – regardless of whether it was a busy page or a slow page. However, we quickly sold out the busy pages because we were able to prove to our customers that they could capture a portion of the traffic we were getting just by placing banner advertising on those busy pages. Interestingly, some of the busiest pages were bus route schedules on BC Transit, movie listings, and the ‘image of the day’ (a nice picture of the local scenery that the webmaster took each day). Accommodation was hugely popular in the tourism section and the news continually drew visitors to the site.

Tip: Movie listings are a great place to advertise on line if you are targeting teens. Facebook, is another. Ironically, Facebook is also great for advertising to grandmas!

The most requested pages are one of the first things you should ask if you are considering advertising on anybody else’s website. If it is a high traffic site, place your banner advertising on their most requested page, and you’ll see results!

Use your most requested pages as a place to put announcements and news, or move product. If you know it is a well-visited place on your site, use it to your advantage.

Average time spent on the site

    “The 'Net is a waste of time, and that's exactly what's right about it.”
      -William Gibson

A good tracking program can provide you with the average amount of time that your visitors spend on your site. If your visitors are not spending much time on your site, maybe it is not very interesting, maybe your pages download too slowly or maybe your shopping cart package is not user-friendly. Tracking this information allows you to re-think your site layout and/or content. Increase the amount of time a user spends in your site and you will likely increase the amount of money that they spend with you.



Unique Visitors
Unique visitors are measured according to their unique IP addresses. IP addresses identify each computer or computer network that is connected to the Internet. IP addresses have a unique four digit number that identifies a particular network and a host on that network. Except in special cases, one IP address equals one unique visitor no matter how many times they visit the site within a given period. The only flaw in tracking unique visitors is that one IP address can be assigned to a network having 500 employees on it – so the unique visitor will be counted once while up to 500 employees may have actually visited your site.

Unique visitor statistics can be useful if tracked on a daily basis to tell if more people visit your site on a Monday or a Sunday, or in August than March. They will indicate when your traffic increases or drops.

It is also important to know what this term means when you are sourcing information from advertisers about their unique visitor traffic so that you can compare ‘apples to apples’. It is better to ask ‘how many unique visitors do you have’ than it is to ask ‘how many hits do you get’ as an indicator for their amount of traffic. 

Path Reports
Statistics or tracking programs can monitor path reports. These indicate where visitors entered your site, which paths they took and where they exited. This is useful information for determining ‘jumping off’ points that may need to be re-designed. They will also tell you how people travel through your site which can arm you with information on how to improve your navigation.

Return frequency
See how many visitors have returned to view your site a second time, and how long they waited between the first and second visit. If visitors return to your site daily, you know you’ve got an interesting site. If they return monthly, you may need to reach out to your customers electronically more often with an e-newsletter, blog or special promotional deals by email.

Other Items Which Can Be Tracked

Software can track everything from the most common monitor resolution settings used by your visitors to their language setting, country and operating system.

Email Reports

Once you have set up Google Analytics, you can also set weekly or daily email reports to send to you in .pdf format.




Summary

*Tracking programs or website statistics can help you monitor customer behavior and traffic to your site

*Hits are a common, yet unreliable measuring tool

*Use page views to guide you in placing your advertising or to determine the most popular pages within your own site

*Keyword reports help you optimize your content

*Referring URL’s help you determine which websites (in addition to search engines) are directing traffic into your site

*Use referring URL’s as a measuring tool to determine your advertising return on investment

*Put your most important information or product offerings on your most requested pages

*Invest in advertising on other websites on their most requested pages

*Knowing the average amount of time that visitors spend on your site can help you provide better site layout or content

*Unique visitors are a better tool than hits for measuring traffic to a site

*Path reports tell you how people travel through your site and where they leave, giving you hints on how to improve your navigation

*If customers return to your site frequently, you have great Internet marketing. If they don’t, you need to reach out to your customers more often.

*Tracking programs can track just about everything. Focus on the tracking information that helps guide your Internet marketing the best.

More Information

If you would like coaching on how to set up and interpret Google Analytics to track your on-line marketing, please get in touch.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Google Analytics Cheerleader

Video tutorial: How to add a Facebook Fanpage to Hootsuite.com

Here is a video tutorial on how to add your Facebook Fanpage to your Hootsuite.com account so that whenever you send a tweet from Hootsuite, you can update your Facebook Fanpage automatically.

Or, here are the written directions:

Open Hootsuite.com

Go to settings > social networks > add a social network




Click the “pages” icon. (as per the image above) Note: Do not click the "Facebook" icon.

Connect with Facebook (It will open Facebook and you'll have to type in your Facebook email and password).

It will bring up a list of Fan pages you have set up on that account and so you can tick the Fanpage that you want to come up.

Cllick "Allow Publishing".

If you're getting this post by email, you can watch the video at this link here.

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher
Social media trainer and Hootsuite Fan

Super Affiliate Handbook Review - Monetize and supercharge your website or blog

Have you been writing articles and posting them on your blog and not getting enough traffic to it?

Are you a traditional brick and mortar business who has a website, but wants to add revenue streams to it?

Are you an entrepreneur thinking about starting a blog?

Do you have a website with good traffic, but are you having a difficult time selling advertising on it?

Do you want to start a business with minimal risk and financial investment?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, you’ll want to purchase and read the Super Affiliate Handbook, by the “Affiliate Queen”, Rosalind Gardner.

What percentage of visitors to your site will become your customers?

How much is each visitor to your blog or website worth?

How much does it cost to bring a new visitor to your site?

This book teaches you how to answer those questions.

I’ve been marketing on the internet since the late nineties, but this is the first book I’ve read that really explains in detail how to profit from a website or blog and how to promote a website or blog with software I had not considered.

The Super Affiliate Handbook by Rosalind Gardner was published in 2003, but it has been recently updated. Since internet marketing is evolving with the addition of social media and new technology, I was happy to know that the book wasn’t a dinosaur. It’s current and relevant. In fact, the book even lists changes and improvements since 2003.

First, you’ll learn seventeen benefits of being an affiliate. What stands out for me in this section, is how inexpensive, simple and virtually risk free it is to begin an affiliate progam.

Gardner explains:

 “An affiliate program is a program that facilitates the relationship between online merchants and their affiliates – allowing the affiliate to promote that company’s products or services for a commission. Affiliate programs may also be referred to as:
    *Associate programs
    *Referral programs
    *Bounty Programs
    *Partner Programs
    *Revenue Sharing Programs."

In the book, Gardner, who is a successful webmaster, online entrepreneur and affiliate marketer, shows and links to her own website examples so you can see live working affiliate websites. The well-written book reads like a full-fledged business and marketing plan. She tells you the software and tools needed, the process and steps to take, ways to stay organized, ways to identify a profitable niche, short-cuts, how to evaluate market demand and competition, how to choose a domain name, how to choose a web or blog host, design rules-of-thumb and how to build a website or blog with, or without, a webmaster.

Software she reviews in enough detail to really understand them are: Google Adsense and Keyword Tool, Wordtracker, Google Toolbar, Microsoft Excel, Eudora Email Client, File Transfer Software, Paypal, Wordpress, and Aweber Enewsletter Software to name only a few.

She explains how to create or find content, which content is essential for an affiliate blog or website, how to write product endorsements, secret ingredients every article needs, and how to make your site “Google” friendly. 

The meat of the book is in the middle where she goes into ways to monetize your site simply by adding small snippets of code to them. And, she shows you step by step how to do it and which ones to add. She explains how to evaluate affiliate programs and which ones are profitable and easy to work with. Recurring sales, commissions, lifetime commissions, multiple-tier programs, sales tools and sales statistics are covered. Page 132 of her book has a gem so good, I was too excited to sleep the night I read about it.

After she explains how to fill your site with content, she details thirty-one ways to market your site on-line. I’ve known about many of the tools and strategies she lists here, but she goes into them in detailed ways that shifted my perspective. Also, she reveals software on page 138 so powerful and effective (I watched the video) that I’m scheming of ways to afford it. After all, my internet marketing plan is ever-evolving too. That’s why I read great books like this one.

Like adding icing to a delicious cake, she puts a section at the back of the book called “Evaluate Your Site’s Performance” which explains how to determine:
1.    What percentage of visitors to your site will become your customers.
2.    The conversion rate for each Affiliate program.
3.    How much each visitor is worth.
4.    How much it costs to bring a new visitor to your site.

This section also teaches you how to assess individual product performance (clickthroughs, number of sales, commission amounts), compare products side-by-side for performance, evaluate monthly trends, grow commissions and profit from error pages and exchange rates. The number crunching techniques on these pages will keep your Banker and Accountant happy for sure!

The book is topped off with problem-solving and prevention tips plus a glossary of terms. “Twenty-five mistakes to avoid” is the maraschino cherry of this affiliate marketing masterpiece.

Rosalind Gardner lives in Penticton, B.C. Canada, just down the road (two hours) from me. Her book is 210 pages long and it took me six hours to read. I jumped over some sections I already felt I knew, but took longer on some of the links. This book comes as an e-book. After reading it, I printed it and put it into a binder that I will keep on my shelf and refer to often.

At just $47 USD, this book is excellent value. I give it 10 out of 10.

Buy a copy of The Super Affiliate Handbook here


Thanks for reading.

Courtenay Pitcher, Aspiring Affiliate Marketer

From Florence to Facebook: Calgary leather handbag designer's career is launched

 

Sabra Mottram is a Designer who makes earrings, cuffs, one of a kind handbags and moccasins out of leather. She launched her design career, Sabra Mottram Designs, a little over one year ago on Facebook. She says, "I started off displaying the things I make on Facebook for my own satisfaction in an album called: Things I Make. I made a bag for a friend on her birthday. Friends of mine would say, "I want one." The more bags that I put up on Facebook, the more orders I got." Now, she has a website, Facebook Fan page, Twitter account and blog. Avenue Magazine, last October, featured a bag of Sabra's as part of the Style section. Calgary Fashion has accepted her as one of their top designers. (Pictured above: Littlest Hobo Airporting Bag by Sabra Mottram Designs. Photo credit: Sanja Lukač)

In 2010 she plans to be part of Alberta Fashion Week and Vancouver Fashion week. "I will have two launches this year. I am going to be adding some clothing to my collection. Most likely some leather, but other fashions as well. The clothing line will be extremely small to start, but it will grow." she says.

Sabra Mottram's current collection is the Fall/Winter 2009 Collection. She hopped a plane in Calgary last Fall and flew to Italy where she hand picked the leather hides at Primorepelli, a leather distributor in Fucecchio (about half an hour from Florence) in the heart of the tannery district of Tuscany where fine Italian leather comes from.

"I picked good Fall/Winter colours I like and staples like black. After my trip to Italy I came up with new designs and decided to change the style of the bags slightly. I created three new patterns, cut out templates and starting sewing. I made a Hard Bag Overnighter style, Saddle Bag style and a completely Hard Bag which is a men's style. I also use Lindsey handbags which are Tandy Kits I stamp and carve myself with designs I make or use stencils for." she says.

(Pictured above: Swallow Lindsey handbag with custom design by Sabra Mottram Designs. Photo credit: Sanja Lukač)

The collection has a lot of appliques, which is the biggest change from the last collection. The collection was inspired by Nice, France and Pisa near Florence, Italy. Sabra says, "I went to Pisa and looked at the architecture in Florence. The architecture was classic looking and there was lots of French influence. I started the collection with one I made for myself, the Fleur de Lis of Florence. It has Fleur de Lis pull tags for the zippers and a large Florence Fleur de Lis on the side of the bag. It is named in French because I was going to France and Italy. I kind of tie things together."

 

(Pictured above: Larsen B Saddlebag by Sabra Mottram Designs. Photo credit: Sabra Mottram Designs)

All of her bags are named by their unique attributes. For example, she made a bag with white patent leather with holes and a turquoise back side. It reminded her of the Larsen B Ice Shelf that dissolved recently. It comes with wooden nautical-looking accoutrements for the zipper pulls.

She purchases all the material for the satin and lace interior linings of her handbags in Calgary. She  chooses lace that accentuates the satin and buys enough satin lining for two or three bags only. "I don't purchase too many materials at once because I do things as one of a kind, so it doesn't go out of fashion. I get bored with styles rather quickly." she says.

Most of her bags have been sold to friends and family, but recently a Calgary Flames player's wife purchased one and and she sold two custom ordered bags to a company as parting gifts for two male employees. "I had one men's bag already made, and I got the call. I asked the client what the bags were for and she told me she wanted a unique one of a kind gift. I ran to Tandy to purchase some leather that was more metropolitan and less rustic to show her. She ordered two."

Sabra has received many orders through Facebook from friends and family. Sabra remarks, "People want to buy local and from people they know. They like to support the Arts Community in Calgary, small endeavours, and the barter system."

Using Facebook, she announces art and fashion shows that she is at or is involved in. "Facebook events are easy because I can upload a picture, give all the details and send it out to everyone in my Facebook, as well as people in my email who are not on Facebook."

She has a Facebook Fan Page for Sabra Mottram Designs in addition to her personal page, which is only for close friends and family. "I have 51 fans. It has brought people from the public into my circle who are not my friends or family. They are friends of friends who I wouldn't normally have access to."

The barter system also works for Sabra. She put a request to exchange photography for a handbag on Facebook. "I got 5 replies immediately and the first I liked I went with." she says.

Using iWeb on her Mac laptop, Sabra created her website through painstaking hours of trial and error. The website features a Gallery to view her handbags in a slideshow format and Shop where purchases can be made by Paypal. Instead of going through MobileMe for hosting, she purchased hosting through Go Daddy. The clean design templates of iWeb suited her style and matched her brand which is her SM signature stamped on all tags and dust jackets for each handbag hand-sewn by her. Every bag is named individually, so it is a one of a kind collector's item. "Most designers use their name as their brand." she says.

Her fan page on Facebook automatically updates her Twitter. If she posts photos to her Fan Page on Facebook, a tweet is sent. For example: I posted 13 photos on Facebook in the album "AW09" http://bit.ly/8YdHw.

Fearless in the social media realm, she just launched Sabra Mottram Design's Blog on Wordpress  discussing the archaeology of style. Sabra is a University of Calgary graduate with a B. Sc. in Archaeology. She says. "Nothing is really an original idea in reality. Styles change through time, they come and go, ballooning out like a battleship curve and then fading away again. You can see aspects of certain styles that have carried through more than just costuming, but in small elements as well."

Sabra's designs are featured on a blog for a store called Worth. She keeps the bags in that store to sell at retail but if one sells through Facebook or other methods, she can pull them out any time because they are on consignment.

"When I was a little girl, I was sick a lot, so I used to stay at home with my mom. My mom taught me how to use a sewing machine.I always wanted to make drawstring handbags like Polly Pocket or Anne of Green Gables. I stopped sewing things for a while because I had so many problems with the bobbins. Instead, I began to bead things and make costumes from scratch." she says.

Sabra was an Account Manager for a sub-prime lender up until about a year and a half ago. When the financial crises hit, she was laid off immediately. She took a watercolour painting class, woodworking class and ceramics class. She says, "My creativity spilled out into new areas where I wanted to work with leather. My grandfather on my mom's side was a leather saddle maker, and on my other side of the family, the Mottrams, they were leather makers. I bought a turquoise deer hide to make a vest and couldn't find a pattern I liked, so I got bored and decided to turn it into a handbag. My friends on Facebook wanted me to make them one."

Sabra follows Fashion Television on Twitter so Jeanne Beker will some day find out about her. There is lots on the horizon, so it's really exciting. And this is just in one year. In three years, I'll be in London."

Sabra's website: http://sabramottramdesigns.ca/Sabra_Mottram_Designs/Home.html

Sabra on Twitter: http://twitter.com/sabramottram

Sabra's Facebook Fan Page: http://www.facebook.com/pages/Sabra-Mottram/117153635506

Thanks for reading!

Courtenay Pitcher, Sabra's biggest fan

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