On Friday, January 26th, John Shelley's Garden Center & Nursery, went live
on the World Wide Web at http://www.gdnctr.com.
Since then, John's little Garden Center in Felton has not been the same.
John Shelley is somewhat unique for a gardener. He graduated from Drake
University with a Bachelor of Arts in Marketing/Advertising. After
graduation he went to New York City where he worked for Trout & Ries, a
prestigious advertising agency known for their concept of product
positioning. Some familiar campaigns he worked on include: Seven-Up: No
Caffeine. Never Had it. Never Will., Avis: We're Only Number 2, We have To
Try Harder., BMW: The Ultimate Driving Machine, Chevrolet: The Heartbeat of
America, and more.
At the age of 39 he was very successful but completely burned out. It was
at this time that he decided to move to Pennsylvania and start his
specialty garden center. On March 15, 1991, he opened his doors.
"Watching Adam build my Web Site was a lot of fun, it was exciting to see
him turn my dream into a reality" says John Shelley. "Once the Web page
was completed it was hard to sit around and wait for people to show up, so
I went out and started to drum up business on the Web."
Drum up business is exactly what John did. Since his Web Site went live,
John has completed 3 landscaping jobs, has 7 additional jobs scheduled, and
estimates out on another 10. "We have made $12,000+ on the 3 completed
jobs to date. The 7 scheduled, will yield just over $81,000; the 10
estimated jobs could yield about $90,000 if all completed as planned," says
John Shelley. "Additionally, we've sold 31 Alpine Trough Gardens and have
orders for 126 more throughout 1996. Not bad for a site which only costs
me $150 per month!"
John has done an excellent job marketing his Web site on the net. He has
received over 18 awards including: The Top Shopping Site, Starting Point and The Excellence In Commerce Site.
We asked John to share his secrets of marketing a Web site on the Web, and
he came up with some great suggestions:
Divide The Web into two distinct market segments; 1) The Awards Providers
and 2) Your Industry. Try to work out arrangements where you will provide
links to their sites for reciprocal links to yours.
Register with all search engines. Two sites, "Expose-It" and "Submit-It can simplify this process.
Visit all award givers and leave an invitational message to them. When
you visit the award giver's site, tell them you would be honored to be
considered for an award and would be excited to provide a link on your
Web site back to their awards page.
Keep the Page maintained and updated frequently, adding new things and
update the *date* so visitors can see it's recent. There's nothing worse
than visiting a Page, "last updated 7/5/95". Old stuff.
The success of John's page is exciting. It is great to see a business with
a local market profit so much from the use of the Internet and World Wide Web.
Please email comments/suggestions to editor@cyberia.com.
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