Name of your website?Gifts 4 eXpats
Your name?
Katrina Robinson
Your Location (city, etc)
Reading
Please give us a short summary of your website?
http://gifts4expats.co.uk An eXpat gift guide cataloguing gifts from across the web located in various countries such as the UK, USA, Spain, Australia and Germany that you can send back home to your friends and family special occasions you may be missing. Gifts such as Flowers, Chocolates, Champagne gift ideas, Gift baskets, Hampers, Teddy Bears and Christening gift ideas. Also we are an Occasional site focusing on seasonal events and celebrations such as Valentines Day, Easter, Mothers Day, Christmas etc
What inspired you to launch your own website?
When living in Dubai I missed family and friends Birthdays, Weddings, and the arrival of my twin sisters Baby Boy and wanted to send gifts back home to celebrate these occasions, this is when I decided to create gifts 4 eXpats to make sending gifts back home easier for those along way from home ensuring they are sending local gifts, or to send gifts to those who had moved away from home.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
I Launched my first website when I was living away from the Uk and it was gifts 4 eXpats 2006.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
I knew the reason why I wanted to create my website purely to aid expats and there families so they could send gifts to each other so the domain gifts 4 eXpats was easy to choose.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
Gifts 4 eXpats, which can also be found under http://giftslittleluxury.co.uk is trying to bring gifts from across the virtual globe to reach expats and their families and friends from across the globe.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
For my website to become or to be felt by persons missing loved ones, a familiar comforting shopping haven for those living far from home to get in touch with occasions that they cannot attend due to their distance.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Its still early days, I am promoting the site on my own and is currently definately running at a loss but now not working full-time I have more time to work and improve my site.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would have an os commerce website making shopping less expensive for the shopper, as its currently only a catalogue gifts directory and the gifts are from across the globe the shopper would be directed to the retailer, if they happen to choose more than one gift each from different retailers then the delivery could be a nuisance, however if I had os commerce shopping basket site, the shopper would pay just one delivery charge whether the gifts came from one or 3 different retailers, I would then process the orders or have someone managing the orders and manually process them.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Currently yes as its a self working website without manually running no matter how many shoppings came through my route, but if I designed it with a shopping cart as mentioned if I had a big budget then yes this could be more of a problem processing the orders. However if it was doing that well then I could employ an order processor.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
None really, the only thing is the site is html css coded and all the products are manually loaded, rather than if I had an os commerce site the retailer products and Xml or Csv file with all their products and this could be loaded into the sql database automatically stocking my site with 100s of products with a few clicks of a button.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Initially learning the programing language, html and Css to design my website.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Currently using Google ads although this is costly, I am currently promoting my website to the natural listings.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
Taking longer than expected.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
Site has been running since 2006, and hope to keep it going for some time yet.
Which country is your website focused ?
I am located in the UK, however I list products from a few other countries such as Australia, Spain, USA and Germany.
What is your website address?
Gifts 4 eXpats
