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Taking Advantage of OPS

© Shirley Frazier

What products are appropriate in a sympathy basket? How many items go in a basket with a $100 price tag? What are designers charging for delivery?

Answers to these and other questions are found by using OPS - other people's sites. The Internet provides you with information sources and research support you may not have considered - until now. Other people's gift basket Web sites are up and running to make money for the owners, but these sites also provide you with a healthy dose of ideas and product sources for your business.

I'm not advocating that you blatantly rip-off another company's gift basket designs. Customers are drawn to your baskets by an appreciation for your creative style, which you develop over time and perfect as necessary. That's something that can't come from OPS. What designers search for on the Web are ideas to expand their product line and find solutions to business problems. This is how the Internet becomes a personal R&D (research and development) playground.

Thousands of gift basket sites are accessed through any search engine when you type the keywords "gift basket" in quotes. Add in front of "gift basket" the words "sympathy," "birthday," "get well," or another theme (such as "thank you gift basket"), and you'll find sites with product ideas to keep your creativity flowing for months.

If you own a well-designed Web site, you can bet that other savvy designers are using your site as part of their research. This is one of the hazards of making your business available on the Web, but it's not viewed as a problem as long as you've positioned your site to draw business. Unfortunately, that's one thing that OPS can't solve.

With the click of a mouse and a small investment of time, you can find information on:

-- Which products are popular, and which ones are underused
-- How much to charge for local deliveries and shipping
-- What shipping carrier(s) to use
-- How to craft a return policy
-- What to use in place of chocolates during warm weather

OPS will also lead you to customer service and online ordering solutions. Some of these opportunities will come from non-gift basket sites, and that's when you become a truly-savvy professional.

Research is a never-ending activity, but the Internet has made the work a bit easier. You must still design gift baskets and run the business as best you can, but answers to some of the most-perplexing questions in this industry are closer than they've ever been thanks to OPS.