Name of your website?Elankaonlinegift
Your name?
Dolly Jude
Your Location (city, etc)
Colombo
Please give us a short summary of your website?
This website is to fascilitate the Sri Lankan expatritates to send/receive gifts to/from loved onces in Sri Lanka. We also give our customers an opertunity to write their horoscope in Sri Lanka. Furthermore, we do our customers' Travel plan.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
First of all, I want my children to be in touch with my loved ones in Sri Lanka. Business will always keep you motivated to be in touch with someone in Sri Lanka. Also, I thought of give some kind of employment opertunity to someone in need.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
elankaonlinegift.com is my first website and I launched in October,2007.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
ecommerce is the new trend in business. Also search engines will give priority to the related names when customers search a key work. Though elankaonlinegift.com is a big word, it is self explanatory.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
A lot of people are doing this type of business. My website is the most beautiful one among others. We do care our customers the best.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
I want to expand to some other business like real estate, used car, marriage proposals etc. This will grow leaps and bounds and one day elankaonlinegift.com will be a Lanka wihtin Lanka.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It is in the infant stage. Frist, I should focus only on survival. As of today, I am running at a lost.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I will spend money only on advertisement. I want atleast 100000 hits per day. Once I achieve that, I will have my own server. then, I will improve my website like daily sale weekly sale etc.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, of cause. I am waiting for a momentum.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
The initial hickup was to find a reliable merchant account. Our customers should trust us frist to give their credit card. Fortuntately, we now have paypal.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Testing and launching the first trial transaction. Journey of thousand miles starts with one step. That was the biggest challange.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
By advertising in Sri Lankan websites. Through that we get a lot of hits.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
To be honest, I thought I will get a lot of hits in a day. Once I put my advertisements in Goole or yahoo, it will appear in the first page and people will come in. Contrary to the expectation, nobody came during the first month of operation.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
This is the infent site. Only three months old. I will continue, till I feel to have this website channanging.
What is your website address?
Elankaonlinegift
