Working Wonders on the Web

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Like many small-company owners, Jackie outsourced hosting for the site and the attendant security and reliability headaches. (For small and midsize businesses with basic commerce sites, host outsourcing can reduce total cost of ownership 25% to 80%, according to the online Web Hosting Resource Index.) The store portion of the site is housed at a company called Hostway, which charges MagicTricks.com from $69.95 to $159.95 a month, depending on traffic. Jackie also chose low-cost vendors to handle the electronic commerce piece: Americart for the shopping cart and Stone Edge Technologies--to which she paid an initial $2,500 fee--for database processing. She manually enters credit-card numbers into a regular retail credit-card processor, then erases the numbers from her site--a setup she believes is more secure than a fully online processing system. She still uses the same vendors, at a cost of less than $600 a year. "The site cost us hardly anything to put up," says Jackie.

But there is nothing bargain-basement-ish about MagicTricks.com's appearance. Jackie went into the project with an understanding of design developed over years working in advertising. And she has never been shy about contacting other site owners to ask how they achieve certain effects. As for the site's scope, MagicTricks.com offers more than 1,400 constantly changing products--from a device for sawing a girl in half to tricks recommended specifically for bartenders and sales reps.

There are also thousands of pages of pure content: biographies of magicians, histories of tricks; sheet music played during performances; guides to celebrity magicians, tips from "guest authors," and more. The content is so copious that it would cost an extra $300 a month to house it at Hostway. Fortunately, the Monticups have a friend who runs the information portion of the site on his own servers at no charge.

"It would be great if people who read about Houdini would then go to the online store and buy some of his favorite tricks but unfortunately, that's not how it seems to work," says Jackie. But the content, she adds, "establishes our expertise and makes customers more secure about our buying recommendations; it gives visitors a reason to bookmark our site and perhaps return when they are in a buying mode."

As the site grew through the late '90s, so did its impact on revenue. The first year, it accounted for 50% of sales; the next year, more than 80%. At that point the Monticups hired several people to take online orders and handle fulfillment; they also built a physical wall dividing their shop into a showroom front and shipping-department back. In 2000, when their lease came up, they closed the shop and moved the online operation into their guesthouse.

Jackie insisted on managing MagicTricks.com by herself when it was part of a store; even now that it is the entire business she still refuses to hire technical help. "I believe in doing things myself. I like to have control," she says. Currently, she spends 20 hours a week removing discontinued items from the site and adding new ones, changing product descriptions, taking photos with a digital camera and posting them. (An employee from the shipping department lends a hand with data input.) Another 10 hours is devoted to finding and writing up new material for the online magic resources. That task often means playing reference librarian. "People will write and say, 'My grandfather was this particular magician and what can you tell me about him?" Jackie says.

The rest of her time--two hours a day--is given over to the study of metrics. She spends several hundred dollars a month on Web analytic software and services that measure how people arrive at MagicTricks.com, where they travel on the site, and what pages prompt them toward--or deter them from--final checkout. The most useful of those programs is Urchin, offered for $5 a month through Hostway. MagicTricks.com plans to spend $2,000 on a much more powerful tool--the WebTrends Log Analyzer--early next year.

Jackie is also meticulous about tracking the performance of her advertising: The company pays about $3,000 a month to such pay-per-click sites as Overture, Google, and Sprinks, and for banner ads on industry sites. "I want to know the return on every investment I've made, and as a result of what I see I will make changes every day," she says. For example, if her weblogs suggest that a preponderance of customers head for the beginner's section of the site, she might tweak the wording in her ads so that instead of "Incredible Magic Tricks!" they tout "Incredibly Easy Magic Tricks!"

Peter Monticup, meanwhile, remains responsible for inventory and customer service, which he chiefly handles through e-mail. (The couple hired another professional magician to take customer questions over the phone.) And he is preparing for a more public role: demonstrating tricks on videos that will be on the site next year. Video will be the most expensive tech investment the Monticups have made to date; Jackie estimates the cost at $40,000, plus greater charges for hosting.

Even as the site grows more technologically sophisticated, the Monticups plan to spend less time on it. Unlike a mall store, the Web business allows them to keep Monday-through-Friday schedules. That gives them more time to pursue hobbies and more opportunities to attend professional gatherings, like a sword-swallowers' conference or a horror convention, where they can network, pick up ideas, and promote their business to peers in the industry.

"I grew up thinking that you have to have a walk-in business," says Peter Monticup. "Then I came to my senses."

Leigh Buchanan is a frequent contributor to Inc. on the subject of technology.

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Leigh Buchanan

Leigh Buchanan is an editor at large for Inc. Magazine. A former editor at Harvard Business Review and founding editor of WebMaster magazine, she writes regular columns on leadership and workplace culture, and she contributes Inc.'s capsule book reviews, "A Skimmer's Guide to the Latest Business Books."

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