Despite the economic slowdown, the quilting industry has seen a 9% increase of quilting enthusiast's spending since 2006.  It's a really good thing to be involved in this industry at this time.

A recent comprehensive study completed by Quilts, Inc. and Quilters Newsletter magazine has shown an increase in spending by dedicated quilters and a slight decline of casual quilters. This is the sixth of such studies performed by this same group. 

Read the press release of the survey and leave a comment with your thoughts!

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Average Online Spending

Survey respondents claimed to spend an average of $616.70 per year on quilting-related purchases online. They spend a little more online compared to $587.29 per year in traditional brick-and-mortar stores.

There was a wide range of spending. The standard variation for online spending was $492.44.

On average, quilters who shop online spend about as much as they do in a store. The graph below illustrates this.

Comparing In-Store vs Online Prices

Seventy-seven percent of survey respondents said that they actively compare the prices of what they see in the store with what they can find online.

Which Search Engines Quilters Use To Find Products

When asked what search engines quilters use to find products online, most stated they used popular Internet search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. However, a significant number of quilters use niche search engines as well.

What Quilters Buy The Most and Least Of Online

Quilters that shop online were asked what they buy the most and least of online. Fabric is by far the most popular category. The least popular category is Sewing Machines. Blue indicates what quilters buy the most of online. Red represents what quilters buy the least of online.

Online Store Loyalty

To test an online shopper's loyalty to a particular store, survey participants were asked how likely they were to try a new online store every time they sat down to make an online purchase. Survey takers responded on a scale of one to five. A five meant they rarely shop outside of the online stores they have purchased from before. A one meant they're not loyal to any particular store and begin their search for products afresh every time.

The average response was a 3.3, meaning quilters tend to be somewhat loyal to the online stores they like. Quilters check the online stores they like first, but are also willing to look elsewhere for the products they're after.

Important Factors in Choosing an Online Store

Survey takers were asked if more than one online store carried the same product, what would be the most important factor in determining from which store to make the purchase. Although prices are important, you may be surprised that the most popular answer for Most Important and Second Most Important was Favorable Shipping Prices. Second to that was discounted products. Thirdly, customers thought good customer service was an important factor in choosing which store to buy from.

Biggest Deterrent to Shopping at an Online Store

Along with initial attraction to an online store, survey participants were asked what are the biggest deterrent to shopping at an online store. Cluttered or hard to follow website navigation was at the top of the list.

Online Social Network Use

Aside from blogs, survey respondents said they use Facebook, Yahoo! Groups, and Webshots the most to share network and share with others.

Age of Online Shoppers

Ninety-nine percent of survey participants were females. The graph below shows their ages. The most popular age group of online quilting supply shoppers is the 45 to 55 age bracket.

Text Messaging and Smart Phones

In general, 58% of the quilters surveyed send text messages from their cell phones. Of those that do text messaging, most text message once a day. Only twenty-five percent of those surveyed have a smart phone, with Blackberry phones being the most popular at 62%.

Key Findings

• Little or no shipping prices is more important that the product's price
• Mobile commerce is still very new for this demographic
• Quilters tend to be loyal to the online stores they have shopped at before
• A cluttered, hard to follow website will drive shoppers away more than any other factor
• Fabric is by far the #1 most shopped category on the web

Categories: Business Tips, Quilting Related | Read 1 Comment(s)

Long time ago in a galaxy far, far away... the war of the web browsers began, and still continues today!  Simply put, a web browser is the program that you use to surf the web.  It interprets web page code and loads the information on your screen.  Popular web browser programs include Internet Explorer, Mozilla Firefox, Apple Safari, Konqueror, Opera, and Google Chrome.  There are literally hundreds of web browsers out there.

Each web browser displays websites slightly differently, because it's up to each program to interpret the web page code to display it on the screen.  Although modern browsers agree on many of the important web page code interpretations, once in a while a website will look different on your computer.  From a web developer's point of view, the web browser software that has the biggest problems is Internet Explorer version 6.  It displays and interprets web pages very differently from the others.  My personal favorite web browser is Mozilla Firefox.

One neat online program that helps you see the differences of web browsers is called BrowserLab by Adobe (http://browserlab.adobe.com/en-us/index.html).  After creating a free account, you can view any website in a few browsers.  You can even see them side by side.

Understanding how your website looks on the web in different browsers is your web designer's job.  But understanding that websites look differently helps you understand your customers better.  For instance, if you get a call from someone saying they have a big gray spot at the top of your site, but you don't see it, it could be related to a different browser interpreting things differently.  You can recommend they try a different browser until your web developer fixes the problem.

Below is a table of browsers popularity as of April 2010.  This information comes from w3cschools.com.  IE means Microsoft Internet Explorer. 

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Aside from selling products on your e-commerce site, there are other ways you can make money from your website.  Today I'll talk about displaying ads from the AdSense ad network as a way of earning residual income.

Some websites you visit have ads on them.  Although there are many kinds of ads, the most common ads are served through Google.  Their ad program is called AdSense.  How it works is you create a free AdSense account and copy-and-paste a unique code to your website.  Here is an example of what you might see after you copy and paste the code:

Whenever someone clicks on a link on your site, Google is charging the advertiser some money (usually $0.15 to $0.65) for that click.  As a way of thanking you for bringing them the click, Google will share part of the revenue with you.  The amount they share with you depends on the cost of the ad running on your site.  It's usually a few pennies.  The goal is to get a your website visitors clicking on the ads on your site.

Once you have accumulated enough revenue through sharing ads, Google will pay you.  On my site, I have opted for the option of receiving a check in the mail after accumulating $100 in shared advertising revenue.  

As you can imagine, it can take a lot of time to accumulate enough clicks on ads to earn $100, especially if you're making pennies per click.  I have AdSense ads running on my Quilter Blogs website. However, it's an exciting thing to get a check like this one in the mail:

If your website won't look unprofessional with ads on an area of your site, I recommend trying AdSense to make a little extra money.

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Gregory Case is a professional photographer specializing in photographing quilts and other art.  Photographing art and quilts uses different techniques than photographing people and other objects.  You may have taken photos of a quilt or painting and wondered why the photo doesn't turn out right, giving the quilt justice.  We interviewed professional photographer Gregory Case to share with us some tips on how to make your photos of your quilts look stellar.

As quilters get better at their craft and their confidence and competence improves, often time they consider entering quilt shows or posting their quilt images online on their blogs or websites. Unfortunately, most entries in juried shows fail due to poor photography images, as do quilt images on websites and blogs. Thus, these photography tips will help you improve the quality of your quilt images for shows or web viewing.

We chose four problems most often encountered by jurors in quilts shows and by students in my photography classes. The reality is that once you enter a juried show or post your photo to your blog or website far more people will probably see that image, than they will ever see your quilt.

• Problem: Distracting Backgrounds
  Solution: Photograph against a blank wall ideally painted white or very light color. If a wall is not available crop the quilt image in-camera or using image editing software, such as Photoshop Elements or Photoshop without cutting into the edges of the quilt. Don’t show your hands, feet, the family dog or cat, etc. in the image.
• Problem: Keystoning
  Solution: Keystoning is created when your camera is not at a 90-degree angle to your quilt, making your quilt looks distorted (wider at one end and narrower at the other).  When photographing your quilt, your camera should be aimed at the center of your quilt at a 90-degree angle and at a distance far enough back to capture the entire quilt. However, for larger sized quilts you may not have enough space to move the camera back. One popular option is to place the quilt on the floor and climb a ladder then photograph it from high above. However, this often times creates a problem called “keystoning.”  While you can solve this problem with image editing software, it works better to keep your camera as close as possible to a 90-degree angle to your quilt. 
• Problem: Blurred Photos
  Solution: Almost all cameras have an automatic focus feature, use it! Additionally, along with using automatic focus, I strongly recommend using a tripod when photographing your quilts. 
• Problem: Improper Lighting of Quilt
  Solution: Whether you light your quilt using natural light (outdoors) or with indoor (studio) lights, make sure all four corners and the center of the quilt are evenly lit. Before you put your camera away, make sure to download your image on to your computer and review it on your monitor. Do not rely solely on the camera’s LCD screen to judge the evenness of your lighting—that screen is too small and thus too forgiving. And while reviewing your image on your computer screen, check to make sure all four corners and the center of the quilt are in focus. 

By following these tips, you have eliminated the majority of the problems seen in quilt images in juried show entries, websites, and blogs.  

Gregory Case and Elena Morera have photographed quilts and textiles for over 7 years. Their work has been published in over 80 different publications and Gregory is the staff photographer for the San Jose Museum of Quilts & Textiles. They have recently moved to Colorado and their new web site (www. gregorycase.com) design, featuring lots of quilt and textile images, will be completed sometime in April 2010.

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