Websites

Description

Websites with SEO and no monthly fees* to launch a keepsake business. The Platinum Keepsake Business Startup Kit also includes a website if you would prefer to receive physical items

Step one, watch Nikki’s entire playlist on YouTube here (click)! Then purchase this

These are the tools and settings we have used at Tree of Opals for the past 6 years from suppliers we trust and items made in-house. For advice on making keepsake and memorial jewellery see our blogs here. The silver keepsake business startup kit is suitable for breastmilk and baby keepsake (breastmilk jewellery, first curl, placenta and umbilical, baby teeth and Christening flowers etc) but also as a memorial for your clients (cremation ashes jewellery, hair and fur, funeral flowers) and all other occasions and elements such as wedding dresses, wrapscraps, petals, earth, sand etc.

Buying a Domain
A domain is the URL for your website, such as www.keepsakersupplies.com and I’ve bought several for clients in the past, but I’d generally recommend you buy one here on 123-Reg yourself in your own name. You can buy a .com domain from £1.99 or $2 plus taxes, and it’s good to do it sooner so that someone doesn’t buy it.

.com or .co.uk?
Choosing whether your domain should be .com or .co.uk or something else is a choice to make. I do own treeofopals.co.uk but rarely get traffic from it. I bought the .co.uk first and used it on some original business cards before buying the .com then forwarding all traffic to the new .com. There are lots of other options for different countries, .com is sometimes seen as USA or international, then for Australia there’s .au, Canada is .cn etc.

Stock Images

The website price will include all of the stock images we have available at the time of publishing, which we will make available to you in your Keepsaker Supplies downloads page for your to download and watermark. You can then add whichever images you feel suit your style of making and brand. We will use one stock image per product and watermark those for you then add them to the media library. They’re royalty-free and Creative Commons 00 so you’re free to edit and use for your own purposes but we ask you to let your clients know in the image description that they do not necessarily reflect your own work and are for guidance only. You can Photoshop in your own work if you know how. More coming soon – feel free to submit your own royalty-free CC00 images to benefit the community, so long as you are happy with no attribution required, which means that someone using the images doesn’t have to credit you for the photo.

Website costs and Fees

To give you peace of mind we ask clients to purchase their own domain/URL and hosting plan separately. We recommend 123-reg or GoDaddy. Then simply install WordPress – this is the platform your website will run on. If you’d prefer, we can do this all for you for no extra charge. We will install lots of free “plugins” to make your site run smoother and give you a choice of “theme” to give the site a look. We will set up the following pages:

• homepage
• about us
• blog
• terms and conditions and privacy and cookies policy (if you’re in the UK we can supply these, international clients please contact us for advice about them before purchase)
• shop

In the shop we will set up your basic categories, products, and attributes. We recommend if you’re offering a full spectrum of services, that you start with Breastmilk, Cremation Ash and Hair but this is completely up to you and can be changed afterwards. We will create three products for each category which you can duplicate later to add more products. That’s a total of nine product listings. Local, national and international SEO will be built in to the website. We are able to offer websites in English, Spanish, French, German, Danish, Dutch and Faroese.

What we will need from you:

• Your business name (Nikki can help with this during a Mentoring Session or you can ask for help in our Facebook group)
• Your logo for watermarking images
• Text and photos for your About Us page
• The categories and products you wish to list (for example, milk ash and hair are categories and products may be the Hannah ring, the heart necklace and a bead). They will be simple products without variations so if you wish to add attributes such as various ring sizes, colours, chain lengths or bead cores then you will need to add these later. You may find the simple look is best and clients can add a note on the checkout to tell you what colours they like
• Prices for the products, download our free pricing calculator here

Payment options – WooCommerce offer various payment types including PayPal, Stripe, Square etc. You will be responsible for adding these. The only payment option we will add will be payment by invoice, where you then ask the client to pay you with your chosen method like cheque or invoice them on PayPal etc.

Website Maintenance and Issues

This packages is for the initial web design only and does not include domains, email addresses, maintenance, backups, hosting or server issues. You will own your website entirely and can remove us as users any time you wish, and it also means we don’t have liability towards your site for maintenance. If you have an issue, you can hire web developers or choose one of our monthly website maintenance packages or simply book a Zoom call with Nikki or Hakun to resolve issues and learn to manage your site, or you can email us for a quote for work that needs to be done. You will be given a mobile number for emergencies (WhatsApp available) in case of out of hours issues and we can invoice you if you agree to the fees on the call (£20 per hour during office hours, £40 per hour out of office hours unless previously agreed call time).

Most hosting plans get more expensive the more traffic and larger your website. We can also offer hosting, usually matching any rates currently available. Just contact us for a quote.

Ongoing Costs and Fees

The only fee you will need to pay is external hosting, we recommend you buy this from the same place you get your domain/URL. This will increase as your site draws traffic. Other add-ons are completely optional and we find at Tree of Opals and Keepsaker Supplies we spend around £1000 a year on hosting and plugins combined for both sites in total. Plugins are things you can purchase and install to personalise your website such as adding different currencies, languages, product add-ons, checkout add-ons (the options are endless!) However, many plugins are free or at least they have a free limited-action version so you can try it out. Many are one-off purchases and can be bought as and when to suit your needs. We’re always happy to help you find a plugin within your budget – please see our blogs to follow!

ECommerce websites are digital assets created by Keepsaker Ltd trading as Keepsaker Supplies. Hakun Kamminga has been a systems developer since the early 90’s and Nikki Kamminga has been doing frontend developing and web design since 2012.

Costing Keepsake Jewellery

Over at Tree of Opals we sell charm beads with hair for around £70 (80EUR/85USD/120CAD/130AUD appx) and sets of them down to around £50, plus occasionally up to 30% off for large family orders, wholesale (funeral homes and crematoria, I used to do 30% off for 10 pieces or more for a breastfeeding group) or black Friday deals etc. The very cheapest I would sell a charm bead for would be £25 as a mystery piece/mystery order addon or for someone who wanted a second charm bead set when you’ve already made two. The profit margin on that is high enough to cover my overheads (websites, payment processing fees, my admin manager, moulds etc) and support my family.

Of course, you can sell charms for £15, and I have seen them that low, but only with silver plated cores. Clients will happily pay extra for a solid silver setting on any piece. We also sell glue-in charm inserts and a set is a little less expensive but they do not fit all the way through the core and will need to be glued in. This will take longer and occasionally they can fall out. These cores provide the most professional option and will set your business above others using glue-ins.

Use the free pricing calculator to work out the prices you need to charge. You may wish to employ an accountant or you can download our free UK tax

Does not include terms and conditions. You may use the Tree of Opals Terms and Conditions as a guide but copying may result in legal action from SEQ Legal, the company we purchased the template from. To be on the safe side, you can download their free version but you must include their information as explained in the download. For other countries, please check local government guidelines for terms and conditions. In the UK you also need to have a privacy policy and a returns policy.

RRP Prices are a guide and correct at the point of publishing!