Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

Good afternoon all!

Cherry Designs, Inc. has been in business for 9+ years designing and wholesaling our artist designed blown glass ornaments.  We have had our website for the same amount of time but for the first 6 years we did strictly wholesale with it so it didn't have any ecommerce on it!!

About 2 1/2 years ago we decided to do a little retail off the website for those that would call us looking for product that our stores were sold out of, we really didn't push it though because we didn't want to be in competition!

Last year we learned that really we were hurting ourselves in name recognition because we had a lot of wholesale stores nationwide, but very few carried our whole line so we decided to push our retail website.

This year we decided to create a new line of ornaments that are hand painted here in the United States instead of importing our blown glass ones.  This created more room in our warehouse, so we used that space to promote our local artists by creating a Gift & Art Gallery.

All this being said, I am having a difficult time trying to find an identification with our website.  Our Gallery name is Cherry Designs Gift & Art Gallery, and the retail and wholesale is Cherry Designs, Inc.

The gallery is just a couple of weeks old, but with the economy the way it is wholesale is going down while our retail is going up!

I am also having conflicts with the website content.  Most I have read about content is don't be salesy.....have content that is informative.  I have done that and my bounce rate has sky rocketed like my customers like the salesy part.

I do the website myself and have the capabilities to do almost anything but I can't seem to grasp my head around how to promote all three in a successful way and get a good ROI!

Any help on navigation and content would be most grateful!!

Thanks a lot!!

The website is http://www.cherrydesignsinc.com