Karen’s Cookie Blog

Mike showed me this really cool Google Analytics thing where we can see all kinds of fun stats about the Karen’s Cookies web site. They have a map where you can see where all of the visitors are coming from. In the last month, most of our visitors came from California, followed by New York, and Texas took 3rd place. So if you’re from one of those three states, you’re not alone!

If you are from Wyoming…. you ARE alone.



We had one visitor from the whole state of Wyoming, and that was probably my friend Amy who lives there! Are there no cookie decorators in Wyoming? We had more visitors from Saudi Arabia than Wyoming! So here’s a fun little project for you. Do you know a cookie decorator in Wyoming? The first person from Wyoming that contacts me will get a little cookie decorating care package sent out in time for their Christmas cookie decorating. So email your Wyoming friends and let them know we’re here!

Anyway, it was fun to see where you all are from! I hope that wherever you are you are finding time to enjoy the season! Make time to decorate some cookies!

This is a feature I had implemented before we had to do that major upgrade a few weeks ago. Since then “Related Products” have been unavailable, but I am happy to announce that it is once again running on the web site.

Basically this allows us to place a few links on each product page, which will take you to other products that may be of interest. Currently it’s just setting them up automatically, but we can manually choose products as well, which I’m sure we’ll be doing little by little in the future.

I hope people will find this useful!

Hello fellow cookie decorators! Once again I have to start out a blog post with an apology. It’s been a while since I’ve posted, so thanks for hanging in there with me! It’s been a crazy busy month, and now I’m going to enjoy a leisurely Thanksgiving dinner tomorrow– how about you?

But before I can relax and stuff myself with turkey and potatoes, I have a big sale announcement just for you! We participate in an annual craft fair here in Idaho Falls, which takes place the Saturday before Thanksgiving. It’s a fun chance to get to meet some of you cookie decorators, and we have fun selling some great little gift sets. Here’s a picture of the booth (and that’s me down there in the bottom right corner on about 3 hours of sleep. Karen and no sleep are kind of a bad combination, but we were cramming to get everything done before the fair!)

Anyway, we have some of our gift sets left over from the fair, and I’d like to pack them up and send them out! These make really fun and inexpensive gifts for kids’ teachers, neighbors, coworkers, or anyone else! They also make fun stocking stuffers for the decorator on your list (or yourself!). Check out our Craft Fair Specials section for some fun deals! And keep in mind that these don’t photograph very well. The cellophane bags create an obnoxious glare that’s hard to work around, but they are super cute in real life!

Happy Thanksgiving everybody!!

Functionally, it’s no different than before… but I just didn’t want a page with only 4 links be quite so boring, so I added some icons. No biggie, but I feel if I change enough little things like this, the site as a whole will be more usable and attractive.

In another effort to increase the usability of our web site, I have added a notification that appears at the top of the product page when you have added the product to your cart. Before, the cart simply updated, but provided no obvious feedback that this was done successfully. I believe this makes it much more clear.

Just a little note to let you know I’ve made some tweaks to the layout on the product pages. This all started with an intention to make the price and “Add to Cart” more apparent, and visible without having to scroll. However, as I started redesigning the layout I also decided to tweak a couple of other things.

Basically I made everything generally more compact and easier to see most of the content at once. Along with this, I have decided to not show the main product image at full size by default, but rather allow the user to click the thumbnail to see the full image if they so desire. This will help the pages load up faster.

With 95% of our products this is a definite improvement over all. The full decorating kit pages (having more content within the product description) were compromised slightly in that one area. However I believe the change, as a whole, is a great improvement.

If there are ever any usability issues that you experience on our site, please let us know.

Have you found yourself in charge of your child’s class party? Do you need an activity for your children or grandchildren this Halloween? Are you planning on making cookie treats for a party? You’ve come to the right place!!

Because of the unexpected store closure and upgrade, we were closed for the busiest Halloween sales week! Bummer! BUT– here’s the really great news for you: This unexpected blip in our plans has left us with a surplus of Halloween products that we can still get into your hands by Halloween, and it’s all ON SALE!

Hooray for a good sale! Nearly every Halloween product is now on sale at 25% OFF! To expedite service, all Halloween product orders will be sent via USPS Priority Mail at our regular flat rate price of $6.95. This means that if you place your order in the next couple of days (by Friday, October 24th) it will be in in the mail by this weekend and on your doorstep by the first part of next week.*

Have a happy and safe and cookie-filled Halloween!!

*Estimated delivery time for all Priority Mail packages is 2-3 business days. Orders sent from our facility on Saturday, October 25th should arrive at any given location in the continental U.S. by Wednesday, October 29. This is not guaranteed, but very likely. If you need a guaranteed option, please contact us and we can discuss your options.

Ok, I think the biggest issues were resolved. There are some more minor things to address, but I think it’s safe to open our doors again.

Just a note, at no time has the security of orders been an issue. Through our Secure Socket Layer certificate, and running orders through authorize.net, everything in the payment process is securely encrypted. Perhaps this goes without saying, but just wanted to assure anyone that may wonder if our store being “fixed” meant that any security issues needed to be fixed.

Ok, so here we go… again let us know if you experience anything that is confusing or doesn’t make sense. Thanks!

- Mike

Well, I was really hopeful that everything was to a level where we could open the store again… apparently not. There’s some quirky things going on with email and Karen thought they merited closing the store until they’re fixed.

Suppose she’s right… considering when a customer places an order, the system sends an email to SOMEBODY ELSE!… yeah, I’ll try and get that one worked out

Thanks again for your patience and understanding!

- Mike

WE’RE OPEN AGAIN

Thanks so much for your patience! Looks like generally the site is back to it’s former glory, minus a few things I’m still working out - mostly broken links and cosmetic items.

You may notice things here and there. If you’d like to contact us and alert us to any abnormalities you experience, it would be most appreciated.

Thank you again for your understanding and patience as we made these necessary upgrades.

- Mike