Name of your website?Sunflowertherapies
Your name?
Wendy Wilson
Your Location (city, etc)
Sierra De Yeguas, Malaga
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Sunflower Therapies website is about Holistic and Beauty Therapies; and how they can make your life and health better. It informs potential customers of the the many treatments we provide and tells them a little about us, the owners and also where our salon is in Sierra de Yeguas.It also promotes the bed and breakfast side of our business. We want it to portray that we want people to come to Sunflower Holistic and beauty therapies in Sunny Sierra de Yeguas where we can meet all their beauty needs and also help them relax and unwind from the stress and tension in their lives while being pampered.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Opening a Holistic and beauty Therapy Salon in Sierra de Yeguas, Andalucia, Spain. We felt the best way to attract people to visit us would be to tell them about us and what treatments we do. A website seemed the obvious answer.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
This one - It was launched around a year ago as Sunflowertherapies.net, but changed to sunflowertherapies.es to reflect the fact that we now live and work in Spain and have both Spanish and English clients.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
It is the name of our business. I started it in the UK and realised people remembered it easily. When we moved to Spain we were lucky to discover that our village is surrounded by Sunflowers. In UK we felt that a website was not needed as all our clients were Native English speakers and therefore word of mouth was enough, Add business cards and people are more able to find you and phone you.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
It is easier on the eye and to navigate than others I have seen. It is more informative about what to expect, rather than just being an advert. It is being changed at the moment so that the home page reflects the therapies on offer rather than the place we live.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
To live a long and happy life in Spain and run a successful holistic and beauty therapy business in Sierra de Yeguas, with Clients from Spain and, hopefully, who may also travel to us from UK or further afield.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
It is still early days yet, but more people are contacting us via or because of the website.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
Make a Holistic Retreat where people can come for up to a week at a time and relax, unwind and be pampered for the whole time. I'd like to advertise this service globally, giving everyone a chance to come and use the salon.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
We are a small family business and intend to remain so for the forseeable future. If demand took off we would consider training some one to help in the salon.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Spanish taxes, licence fees for the business and everything else we have had to do to become a safe and legal salon in Spain. No matter how much you plan there is always some unexpected charge that arises. We lost a cheque for 18000€ and then discovered that it was not possible to simply cancel it and reissue. It had to go to court three times via a solicitor (abogado) before they finally agreed to let us have it 2 years later, after removing court fees, solicitor and barrister fees and taxes. A very expensive lesson in life in Spain. We lost around 4500€ on it.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Trying to learn the language was never going to be easy - it is constant hard work but incredibly satisfying when a Spanish person understands and says my Spanish is very good. I have a very long way to go, but I intend to have a Spanish section on my website quite soon.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Word of mouth and business cards. With the right terms we come up quite well in Google. (I tried "holistic malaga" and came up on the first page, although our previous suffix, .net comes slightly higher than .es)
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I didn't realise it was a constant update task. I thought it was a case of simply putting it there and waiting for the customers to come flooding in. The website is useless unless it is advertised well.
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?
About a year so far, and I intend to carry it on for as long as I run my business.
What do you think of websites for advertising businesses or products
I think websites are a wonderful way of promoting a business as long as they are easy to find. There is nothing more frustrating for a potential customer than typing something they want into a search engine and coming up with nothing that matches what they were looking for.
What is your website address?
Sunflowertherapies
