Welcome to all those of you who have expressed interest in the Dressmaker’s Shoppe at the Irish Dancing Exchange, which will be going “live” on March 1, 2007. We’ve assembled this page in hopes of answering all your questions about the Shoppe and giving you the info you’ll need to get started. We’ve also included some FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions) based on some recent Shoppe inquiries we’ve received.
We hope that the majority of your questions about the Shoppe will be addressed by the information and FAQs presented below, but please feel free to contact us with questions anytime at webmaster@irishdancingexchange.com, and we will be more than happy to respond. Thanks for your interest!
Information/FAQs Index
- General Information
- FAQs For Dressmakers
- Q. You’ll forgive me for being a bit skeptical, but I’ve never heard of you or your site and I'm a little uncomfortable sending $99 for a Dressmaker’s Shoppe that doesn't even exist yet.
- Q. Do I get anything else for my annual fee besides the page and the listings?
- Q. If I have you create a page for me in your Shoppe, how many people are actually going to see it?
- Q. How do you plan on getting visitors to the Dressmaker’s Shoppe from other parts of the site?
- Q. I already have my own Web page, so how is your Shoppe going to help me?
- Q. I don't have my own Web page yet. Can I use my Shoppe page as the home page for my dressmaking business?
General Information
The Dressmaker’s Shoppe In A Nutshell
The Shoppe is simply a distinct area of our site highlighting independent dressmakers from around the globe who offer new/custom-made/ready-to-wear dresses, as opposed to the pre-owned listings we now provide. Since virtually every visitor is looking to buy or sell a dress, you have a pre-qualified audience for your services. Each “Dressmaker’s Shoppe” page will contain your dressmaker profile (bio, history, contact info, testimonials, etc.) a link back to your Web site (if you have one), any dress listings you have posted to our site, and a pop-up image gallery featuring photos of your designs, styles, materials, sketches, etc.
Here’s an example of a completed Shoppe page for Caroline Vermeulen/Lowland Design of Holland:
http://irishdancingexchange.com/shoppe/lowland_design/
Shoppe Pricing
There will be two pricing options for Shoppe pages. For those of you who have an inventory of new or ready-to wear-dresses that can be listed on our site, the fee for your page would be $99/year, and that price would allow you to create up to six listings on our site each year at no additional cost. For those dressmakers that do not maintain an inventory of dresses, the fee would be just $59/year.
Getting Started
In order to create a page in the Shoppe for you, we simply need the following information emailed to us at webmaster@irishdancingexchange.com by Feb. 15, 2007:
- General Information: The name for your Shoppe, your contact info, a working email address (very important!), and a few paragraphs detailing the history of your work, your dressmaking philosophy, and your brief bio. Use the example listing as a guide.
- Testimonials: 2-3 brief statements from satisfied customers
- Photos: At least 4-5 digital images showing your work (finished dresses, designs, styles, materials, sketches, whatever). These should be attached to your email message.
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FAQs For Dressmakers
Q. You’ll forgive me for being a bit skeptical, but I’ve never heard of you or your site and I'm a little uncomfortable sending $99 for a Dressmaker“s Shoppe that doesn't even exist yet.
A. Well, first off, I'm going to place the initial group of dressmakers on the Shoppe (those who provide me with their info by Feb. 15) for sixty days before invoicing them for the first year. So if at any time in the first couple months you change your mind about taking part, just let me know and I’ll take down your page at no cost. As far as the Irish Dancing Exchange itself, you can read all about us here. In brief, we launched in the summer of 2005 and have approximately 300 current dress listings and 500 unique visitors each day. We have testimonials at the bottom of the aforementioned page from lots of happy customers too.
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Q. Do I get anything else for my annual fee besides my page and the listings?
A. Actually, yes. I will provide a personal Webmail account for you if you want to manage your inquiries through the site (you@irishdancingexchange.com). I will also create a 468 x 60 pixel banner ad (about 5" x 3/4") that will go into the ad rotation for the entire IDX site, so your ad will come up randomly throughout the day as people are searching the site.
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Q. If I have you create a page for me in your Shoppe, how many people are actually going to see it?
A. That’s pretty hard to predict, but what I can tell you is that we have approximately 500 unique visitors each day who perform thousands of dress searches, so between the links we will have to the main Shoppe page as well as your randomly-appearing banner ad, there are numerous opportunities for you to be seen. Since your page can be reached directly from anywhere on the Internet, you can also list it anywhere you wish to bring more people in. See the next two Q&As for more on this.
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Q. How do you plan on getting visitors to the Dressmaker’s Shoppe from other parts of the site?
A. Three ways: One will be a direct link from the upper right side of all pages on the site, where the gold bar is now above the “JUST ADDED.” The second will be a link on every search results page that turns up zero matches, along with a suggestion along the lines of Not finding anything in your size/color/style? Visit our exclusive Dressmaker’s Shoppe and see if a new ready-to-wear or a custom-designed dress is right for you... Lastly, we send out weekly alerts to our subscribers and once the site launches we will place links to the Shoppe at the top of all our alerts. Keep in mind that Google and other search engines will eventually index these pages so that they may be found if someone does a Web search for your info.
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Q. I already have my own Web page, so how is your Shoppe going to help me?
A. Your Shoppe page can serve as a referrer to your own site by sending visitors who otherwise might not know about your site directly to you. It’s also one more place on the Web for your dresses and designs to be seen, and if you choose the option without dress listings it comes out to about $5/month, which seems pretty reasonable for a site whose entire audience consists of either buyers or sellers of pre-owned dresses.
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Q. I don’t have my own Web page yet. Can I use my Shoppe page as the home page for my dressmaking business?
A. Absolutely. You can link directly to it from anywhere on the Internet without going through any other part of our site, so you could add it to your stationery and/or business cards or incorporate it into your email signature, and it can serve as a “stand-in” site until such time as you create your own.
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