We now have a website for two reasons--for information for our customers (our location, hours, contact info), and for e-commerce. Having a website of multiple layers and pages requires a big time commitment, and lots of creative energy, learning-as-one-goes, and sometimes, frustration. But all in all, the website is evolving into a good vehicle for selling for Exquisite Fabrics.
Our customers urged us to sell online ages ago--almost as soon as you-know-who "invented the internet." We have always felt that customers should be able to touch the fabric, because touch is also so important to us when we buy our fabric supply. We realize, however, that there are certain of our suppliers on whom we can rely if we see something online that we like, and by the same token, our customers are familiar with our quality and would appreciate an "online presence" from us. The availability of "good stuff" in the fabric world is becoming more and more limited at the consumer level, as more and more stores decrease inventory of dressmaking fabrics and turn to the more-profitable quilting and crafts sectors.
We still love silks, woolens, cashmeres, fine imported cottons, the seasonal variety of fashion fabrics, and extra special haute couture fabrics for eveningwear. It's lots more work for us than it would be to simply order the latest quilting fabric lines, but we love it.
Creating the website is an important way to bring enjoyment to customers who can't reach our store. As much as we enjoy the colors, textures, and tactile qualities of fabrics, we love to try to translate that to photographs for our customers to enjoy. It's a joy to see how beautiful some fabrics drape and to be able to capture that feeling in a picture! You might have noticed that the pictures on our site are quite a big larger than those on some "e-commerce" sites. That's because we are building the site ourselves instead of using a template. We think it's important to have nice large pictures--it's more like being face to face with the fabric in our store!
Progress is slow on the website, though. We wish it could be faster, but there seem to be lots of "issues" in the e-commerce hosting world, and we just have to wait for the issues to be addressed and resolved, one by one. The "skeleton" of the site is in place, though, so you can see how it will eventually guide you through a whole world of fabrics and buttons and trims to dream about....your 24-hour fabric store!
One issue seems to be with the Firefox browser. One customer reports that the website looks truncated on her browser. The website is optimized for IE and for Google Chrome browsers, so if you have a choice you might try using one of those browsers until the host gets back to us.
Another issue is "blank pages." This is part of the process of building the skeleton of the site. Not all the pages will have content until later. You can help by suggesting what you would like to see on the site...our site is very "organic"...we give high priority to customer requests!
Happy postscript: Many issues have been solved (thank you Intuit) and many pages now appear where there was "nothing" before! Dig in!
