In this post I will highlight what I learned from building a woodworking E-commerce website and business from the ground up from the start through the first 3 months.
In July 2024, I started something that I never thought I’d do – I started an E-commerce site selling cutting boards! I have had the privilege of making custom woodworking projects for family and friends over the years as purely a hobby – is now the time? We’ll find out. Most would suggest never taking a hobby and turning it into a business, but I also tend not to always listen very well.
Custom furniture making is fun, but there is an added stress to not mess up, to ultimately satisfy a customer, and make sure its what they want. Aesthetically speaking, everyone has their own flavor when it comes to furniture design. On top of that, I am not a “designer”. My wife has that gift – I just do what she tells me to and I make it come to life.
A significant problem with selling custom furniture on-line is that shipping becomes pretty tough. It’s possible, but takes an extra level of effort due to the sheer size of pieces and adds a pretty hefty cost. In the process, I have always thought about handmade wood projects that I could ship easily – phone stands, foot stools, etc. I found that end grain cutting boards are relatively easy to make, don’t take up much room to store inventory, and have a decent margin.
I decided to enter an overly saturated cutting board market. Look on Amazon, Etsy, or Google search “end grain cutting board” and you will see hundreds of options and other makers out there. I will need to set myself apart from the rest somehow. Time will tell if this was a bad decision and that is why I will occasionally post quarterly reports outlining the status, successes, and failures of this new adventure so you can follow along and hopefully learn from my success and mistakes. Now that you have a background of how I got to this point, let’s dive in.
Summary of 2024 1Q Practical Woodwork Results
Practical Woodwork in this inaugural quarter was a “good” start. From July 1 to September 30, Practical Woodwork had 2 sales and welcomed 546 unique visitors in 585 sessions to Practical-Woodwork.com. I had to pay for most visitors through paid advertising, but none-the-less, people came. Wix’s website analytic provided some interested data that allowed me to understand what was going on, plus, as hard as it is for me to say, patience is required – especially when trying to corral internet traffic my direction.
I pretty powerful insight was that 86% of the traffic used either a tablet or mobile device with 14% of the traffic on an actual computer.
The website itself evolved over the quarter and multiple marketing techniques were deployed such as few website blog entries and variations of Google Ads.
Website Design
There are so many decisions to be made when starting an online business. Here’s a sample of the decisions that need to be made:
What E-commerce company to go with?
How much will my website cost?
What will the logo look like?
What color will the background look like?
What font do I use?
How will my website magically appear in someone’s Google search for “End Grain Cutting Board”?
What will emails look like?
When will I have my wife post this on her social media account?
The list goes on and on and is still lengthy. If I can give any advice to anyone thinking about starting out – relax and take your time. Be thoughtful and plan out or have a vision for as much as you can. Anything you do in the first week can be changed when it comes to web design.
Along the way I had to take off my pride hat and put on my User Experience (UX) hat. I looked at traffic patterns and behaviors. I will say that Wix is pretty good at allowing me to find information (analytics).
Screenshot of Practical Woodwork’s home page. Needs photos and more engaging design.
My original web design was focused on computer desktop users and lacked any catching design or intriguing photos. This was a poor assumption as I came to find out that 79% of the traffic on a mobile phone with another 7% on a tablet. 86% were not using a traditional laptop or desktop computer. This was huge!
Mobile version of Practical Woodwork’s shop page.
My store front, which is where the sale actually occurs, looked horrible with small product images. So I had to re-design and format the website for the mobile device user which I did, focusing on the shop features and displays for mobile devices.
Marketing
I am not a marketer or a salesman. Google Ads was my primary marketing vehicle. Using Wix as my E-commerce platform, Google Ads allows me to either “Drive site traffic” or “Boost product purchases”.
I found that “Driving site traffic” brought visitors to the site and had tons of impressions, but it burned through my monthly marketing budget very quickly, but did not result in actual product views. In case you are new to the lingo, ‘impressions’ are when someone view’s the ad or has the potential to view the ad.
With Google Ads, I set up the minimum daily budget of $6.40 per day, but it went through it way faster than that – any idea of why it spent more per day than I budgeted?
I figured that this was not really a driver for making a sale. Maybe I’ll use that feature to advertise my blog? Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments section below.
Back to Practical Woodwork – I switched Google Ads to “Boost product purchases” which slowed down my monthly cash burn and showed that people were actually looking at products assuming that these are the folks who are assumed to be wanting to buy.
Quality of each visit improved as shown through time spent on the site – even though most did not convert to a sale. Honestly, I can’t expect everyone to spend $100+ on a cutting board on a whim. Personally, I shop around a ton before making a purchase like that.
Sales
2 cutting boards sold! … Nope, won’t be quitting my day job anytime soon. That being said, it will take time to build more traffic and also learn what people are viewing and buying. My inventory levels also grew from around 8-10 pieces to about 16-18. This will continue to grow as I have time and build confidence.
Walnut was by far the most popular wood species followed by maple based on what was purchased and which products were viewed.
My end grain cutting boards are individually made and marketed. One thing that makes Practical Woodwork end grain cutting boards unique is that they are serialized. The thought behind this is that the customer can see exactly what they are buying. Wood has different colors, grain patterns, and other characteristics that make them one-of-a-kind. If someone is looking for a “standard size”, this is not the place.
I did become an Amazon Handmade Seller about half way through the quarter. While Amazon is the king of on-line sales, my format of single item listing up against the time and effort it takes to get an ASIN created does not seem to be worth my time right now. I also encountered some issues getting Wix and Amazon to talk to each other for inventory management.
And then to drive me further away, I either was not getting product views or the product analytics didn’t work on Amazon’s end, so I was not able to analyze the traffic I was getting on Amazon. It was showing zero views on all items after 45 days.
Again, this was my experience. If I were to have one listing and lot’s of inventory, then it might make sense. And finally, for all that work and to be charged 15% of the sale to use their platform did not to make sense for Practical Woodwork at this time. For these reasons, I am tabling my efforts on Amazon (for now anyway) to focus on other marketing strategies for a small business.
Late in the quarter, I added items to eBay to drive exposure. They also take about 15% of the sale compared to the 3% I pay on Wix, but I have seen multiple product views. Wix and eBay integration was a breeze.
My theory is that since my website is engraved on the boards and they are listed with the Practical Woodwork branding, this will drive people to the main website to see other options. It can’t hurt and the 12% sales premium for a sale on eBay I think is worth it compared to Google Ads monthly cost. This is all in the realm of increasing brand visibility.
Future Looking Statements
The 2nd quarter brings the holiday shopping season. I continue to play with pricing and marketing. I will be creating blog posts for a few reasons. It’s just another way to get the brand out there and drive traffic to the website.
I can not rely solely on the confusing and competitive world of SEO to drive traffic. Creating more “lines in the water” will increase my odds of catching a sale. If Google Ads bring in traffic, SEO improves over time, more people buy my products, and the blog reaches additional people, I am increasing traffic and in turn should produce more sales.
I have not released this to my family and friends yet via Facebook or other social media- which will likely be a huge step. I thought of this first quarter as a “soft opening”. In the second quarter, my goals are:
Triple my sales to 6 cutting boards.
Double site traffic to 1,170 sessions.
Get on social media.
Improve site design aesthetics.
To supplement the high-to-me cost of Google Ads per month, I’ll be looking into adding in additional revenue streams like Google AdSense and Affiliate Marketing. If people are coming to the site, why wouldn’t I try to make a few cents in the process? I’ll be making more walnut cutting boards and then also capitalize on my wife’s social media network as I think I can say that my soft opening was successful.
I welcome any thoughts, comments, or feedback. Maybe you have some suggestions. Post a comment below and don’t forget to subscribe to follow along the check out www.Practical-Woodwork.com.
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