"The ICT training courses I have attended, run by the ebusiness club, have been of extremely high quality. They have enabled me - together with my website provider - to see considerable improvements in website visitors and sales". Libba Jones - Mimu
Mimu is an online e commerce business which sells unique, decorative hand crafted special occasion and everyday bags, belts and scarves. In order to help drive business to the website the company attends many events around the country to sell and promote its unique range of accessories. Established for just over two years, Mimu, founded and owned by Libba Jones, has seen a more than a 100% increase in the number of hits to its website with a resulting big impact on the online sales.
Before setting up Mimu, Libba Jones worked with her husband running a business that designed and sold greeting cards. Having always worked in the creative industry, but wanting a new challenge Jones decided to set up Mimu to sell beautiful, individual accessories to women of all ages after she identified a gap in the market to provide a range of beautiful and unusual special occasion bags not available on the high street.
Whilst always being an ecommerce website, showcasing unique and individual products, Libba realised that to compete in the highly competitive area of womens accessories and at the same time building a brand, it was necessary to optimise the site to increase traffic driven to the site. In the early months the business became too reliant on sales made at events with little traffic to its website.
To help redress this balance and make more of the online opportunity for Mimu, Libba realised she needed to learn about optimising Mimus website. She completed the web academy course, and SEO, pay per click and ecommerce training days. To improve the website image quality she also attended a digital photography and photoshop essentials workshop to continue her steps towards improving the Mimu website.
As well as being fully interactive, customers can browse and buy online, register for newsletters, check out the events calendar, making their shopping experience more exciting,
Libba commented: "The courses have helped me to understand how the web industry works and how it can really benefit my business. The website has been optimised for the last two months and we have seen a huge increase in customers visiting the site and now a boost in sales".
Mimu is now a very successful and growing online business. "We have dramatically improved our website listing positions on search engines and now continually update both the content and look of the site. A professional interactive and dynamic website is, in my view a key ingredient to being a successful business in todays society. It provides a level playing field, meaning that an SME like Mimu, providing a high quality range of beautiful accessories, can compete equally with well known UK brands. We appear like a big city based company whilst operating from the very rural Peak District"!