Market Your Pet Shop Online.. Carefully

It was with no small degree of scepticism that I set out to investigate a 13 July posting to YouTube proclaiming: 'Pet Supermarket the UK's largest online supplier of pet food and accessories wins the Retailer of the Year Award.' But I did manage to find some truth in the statement..

If you have just popped onto Pet Supermarket from the link above, you will have found a website with some pretty poor production values - which may have made you doubt the claim that it is the UK's largest. A quick look at the grainy promotional YouTube video of pet food being moved around a warehouse may not do much to reassure you either.

However, Mark Berriman MD, Pet Supermarket, reports shipping 60,000 orders per year, a turnover of £2million and a workforce of 19 staff, (Shelds Gazette, 13 July 2007).

Additionally Mark Berriman's, confirmation to me this morning that his company won retailer of the year, is indeed true.. if a little short on the facts.

STEP is the acronym for the South Tyneside Enterprise Partnership, a public/private local partnership which has just celebrated its 10th Year of presenting awards to successful local businesses.

On 28 June 2007, Pet Supermarket was named this year's retailer of the year at the Step Business Awards Ceremony at the Quality Hotel in Boldon, Sunderland.

And so it seems that Pet Supermarket is a bona-fide thriving business with a very respecatable local accolade. Unfortunately it lay behind what can only be described as a poor piece of DIY Internet marketing on YouTube and a not-very-inspiring e-commerce website.

Appearances can often be deceiving. More importantly, and especially when you are marketing on the Internet.. first impressions count for a lot.