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We have had a lot of great folks participate in the on going Website Grader contest (enter for your chance to win.) We thought we would highlight one of the companies that have joined in, showing what they are doing really well on their site, and what they could be doing better.
BagInspiration.com
Bag Inspiration is the brain child of two moms, Michelle and Stephanie, in Wisconsin who are passionate about protecting the environment and who have a love for bags made of recycled materials. On their site, they sell bags made from everything including candy wrappers, old Indian saris, juice boxes and mosquito netting.
Things Bag Inspiration is Doing Right
1. Michelle and Stephanie have done a great job of creating content in creative ways. They have a blog which highlights how you can live a more green life, write product reviews on different green cleaning products and also each have a favorites section where they talk about their favorite bags. The content is relevant to their readers and covers a variety of interesting topics.
2. Michelle and Stephanie also have a newsletter registration form right on their homepage. It's a great idea to collect the names and email addresses of people who are interested in hearing from you but might not be ready to buy right now. By collecting email addresses and building out a house email list, you have a great tool to nurture people until they are ready to buy.
Things Bag Inspiration Could Do Differently
1. Bag Inspiration would benefit by consolidating their different online properties. Currently their blog and website live at different URLs. This means that their main site, isn't getting the search engine optimization benefits of all the content they are creating on their blog.
I would recommend consolidating their blog, GreenInsprintation.com, with their website BagInspiration.com. I would also recommend making their favorites and product recommendations part of their blog. It has the double benefit of adding more relevant content to their site and including that content in the blogs RSS feed.
2. From their Twitter feed, I learned that Bag Inspiration also has a fabulous weekly online newspaper call The Green Inspiration Daily, which pulls together interesting content from around the web. Based on a quick search, I don't believe that this is linked to from anywhere on their site! With each new issue, I would recommend writing up a blog post highlighting one or two of the articles. This will not only add more content to their blog, but will also help drive more people to the newspaper.
I think Bag Inspiration is doing great things for the environment and is very deserving of the 95.5 that Website Grader gives them.
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