I’ve come to notice something very interesting on one of my eCommerce stores and I’m beginning to wonder if this is just a coincidence or something that can be attributed to Google.

MyOutwardHound.com is a small, niche store that primarily sells the Outward Hound line of dog gear that includes car booster seats, dog strollers, dog life vests, and outdoor gear for dogs. The manufacturer of these products is the Kyjen Company located in Huntington Beach, California. Since the site is pretty keyword rich in “Outward Hound” terms, our search engine placement is good – which is a double edge sword. People looking to buy Outward Hound items find us pretty quickly, but so do people who think we’re the manufacturer and are looking for replacement parts or warranty information.

To help those customers who aren’t looking to buy, but need the contact information of the manufacturer, I added the following text to the customer service page:

Outward Hound Product Warranty Question or Information:
For question regarding replacement parts, accessories or warranty claims on Outward Hound pet product, please contact the manufacturer directly at:

The Kyjen Company, Inc.
P.O. Box 793
Huntington Beach, CA 92648

Phone: 800-477-5735
Fax: 714-841-8979
E-mail: info-mail@kyjen.com

Since that text was added, nearly 16% of site visits for February MTD comes from the state of California, which is more 3 times more than the second highest state.

I started noticing the number of orders being shipped to CA and I had to dig further into why, and the numbers got me thinking.

Is Google (or other engines for that matter) crawling pages like this looking for information that may determine where orders ship from and geo-target search results based on where the search originates from? Or, do these products fit the California lifestyle?

That same page has an address on it for our office in Wilkes-Barre, PA, but traffic from Pennsylvania is just like any other state according to the sites analytics. I want to ride out the month of February before making changes to this page, but come March, I’m going to remove the California address and do a test to see if site traffic from California users decreases.

I’ll keep you posted with my findings. In the mean time, if you own a dog that you spend a lot of time with outdoors, check out MyOutwardHound.com – even if you don’t live in California.

A younger me, on the right, working the line in the Ferret Store's warehouse. Picture from July 11, 2005.

But alas, the days of me picking, packing and shipping orders are gone. But I do remember them. I remember them well.

When I owned TheFerretStore.com, a typical Monday would consist of about 300 – 350 orders. Once Black Friday hit, a typical Monday had us looking at 500 – 600. And we didn’t drop ship. All the product we sold was stocked in our warehouse, picked, packed and shipped by a staff of 50 before automation.

We had pickers that would grab an order, start at the front of the pick route and fill big plastic tubs up with that order’s contents. The tub made it’s way on a set of rollers to a packing station where someone would verify items and quantities, wrap the items up with care and seal the box. The box would then make its way to a shipping station where one person would do the weighing and shipping.

Then we automated things. Everything was barcoded for accuracy, the shipping station was eliminated and equipment added at each packing station which enabled the packer to verify, pack and ultimately ship the package. With automation we dramatically increased out output and reduced our headcount.

Even with automation, when the holidays rolled around, it was all hands-on-deck. Everyone stepped up to the plate when the orders were backing up. We had a 24-hour shipping guarantee that we had to abide by and that meant many late nights and weekends. Customer Service Representatives would help out after their shifts, all our managers were pulled into the warehouse and basically anyone who could breathe was enlisted to help.

While the orders were going out, stock was coming in, so we had to balance and work around stockers who would be in the aisles restocking shelves or relocating product for quicker picking. Normally restocking was done at night when the picking operation wasn’t going on, but during the holidays you did what you had to do!

The hustle-bustle of “the season” was fun and exciting, and in case you didn’t get it from this post – I miss it. I loved walking through the warehouse watching that big stack of orders start out inches high and get whittled down by the end of the day, then grow the next morning. I miss the excitement of hearing “150 orders to go and an hour to get them out” at three in the afternoon.

A lot of eCommerce store owners never had the “thrill” of warehousing product and and filling orders. As more and more companies started drop-ship programs the eCommerce store owner needs to just send their orders in and someone else does the work for them.

The stores I own today, are all drop-ship stores and well, aren’t very exciting this time of year! There’s no warehouse for me to walk through and count the boxes going out. There’s no busting on the FedEx or UPS driver who was off for 8 weeks because that 70-pound ferret cage he lifted resulted in a hernia. And there’s no late night or weekend shifts working to crank out the orders (everyone hated them anyway).

I waxed nostalgic in today’s post after receiving an email from one of my good friends who uses Solid Cactus for her eCommerce needs. She was showing off pictures of the orders leaving her warehouse like a new father would show off pictures of his newborn son.

I remember pictures like these too…. I also remember how bad my back hurt by the end of the day Friday.

Happy selling!

If you’d like to open your own eCommerce store and experience all the fun and excitement for yourself, be sure to call upon Solid Cactus. I’m not only a former owner, I’m also a customer. And an employee! They can help you get started on Yahoo! Store, Amazon Webstore, eBay Prostores or Solid Cactus eCommerce.

Then once you’re up and running, Solid Cactus can help with Internet Marketing, Call Center Services, Comparison Shopping Engine Management, accuRATEship Shipping Manager, and total automation with Cactus Complete Commerce.

Shameful, self serving plug is complete.

One of my roles as a marketing consultant for Solid Cactus, is to organize an event called Solid Cactus eCommerce Boot Camp. These three day events held at various times throughout the year are a three-day gathering of eCommerce store owners from around the country. Informational sessions are put on by Solid Cactus staffers and guests and are held throughout the day. Evenings are set aside for networking opportunities with fellow entrepreneurs.

The latest Boot Camp wrapped up last night and marks the seventh such event I had the pleasure of putting together. I always enjoy meeting with other eCommerce store owners to learn about their business, what they’re doing to drive sales and most importantly, how they’re combating a challenging economy. As we move into the busiest time of the year for most merchants, the general feeling is that of uncertainty. Uncertainty about whether or not Christmas 2009 will be better or worse than Christmas 2008. Personally, I feel it’s going to be worse.

If you listen to the talking heads on television every night, they make you feel like the economy is on an upswing. Yet at the same time they report that the unemployment rate is nearing 10% as more and more people are laid off. With 10% of the working class not getting a paycheck every week, spending just isn’t happening. Store owners I talked to are feeling the effects; some more than others.

Knowing that store owners need to be cautious in what they spend to attract business this season, I tailored most of the sessions at this latest Boot Camp on free and cost effective ways to get customers. Social Media, SEO, effective Internet Marketing and features designed to convert were the hot topics.

One thing that I did notice was that many store owners have not fully embraced the power of Social Media. Blogs, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube are free ways for business owners to capture customers, but few of the attendees are actually using them to their full potential. Some expressed a lack of time or an inability to gauge Social Media’s ROI as reasons for not exploiting these means of advertising. No matter what your opinion or reasons for not taking advantage of Social Media are, the fact that you should be using them to get your message out is paramount.

I always enjoy sitting in on the Boot Camp presentations because I always learn something new. While I try to keep up on trends, there’s always something that I missed! I enjoy listening to the presenters even if it’s on a topic I’m very familiar with because I could always stand to learn just a little bit more or get a refresher on the topic.

We had a great group of attendees this time around and a nice mix of new and seasoned eCommerce store owners. This always makes for a great Boot Camp as the pros tend to help the newbies and the newbies walk away with a lot of great information to help them be on their way to online success.

While this Boot Camp may be behind me for now, I’ve already started working on the next one!

Special thanks to The Cafe @ Pic-a-Deli, Pazzo Restaurant and The Woodlands Inn & Resort.

For those who were unable to attend, here are some photos from the event: