How can we do better?

[uniquecorals]

While we're on the topic of improvements, I just want to let everyone know that you can always contact us here or on our Facebook page to address any questions that you have. We welcome them.

My background is marketing...and the rules of marketing have certainly changed with the rise of social media! When I went to college, it was all about placing ads and sales material in front of people at all times...and that is really no longer the case. I think "new media" is more about building relationships and fostering conversation and interactions, and I love that. Nonetheless, it seems like people still like to see us feature corals and product news on our forum!

So, I find my self in a quandry at times...I love to help foster a "community" of "fans", or really- friends- who feel comfortable giving us input, calling us to the carpet when we screw up (that NEVER happens, of course! LOL), and just sharing information and stories. It's fun, in between putting up new corals- to share things, ask questions, etc. That's where I appreciate the help of everyone on this forum. Always feel free to start a dialogue here, or on our Facebook page...We listen. We want to interact. And we will act upon your suggestions when it is feasible! If we screw up, we need to know about it. We have nothing to hide if we mess up- it's a chance to learn. And if we're doing something right, we really appreciate you people, our "brand advocates"- putting in the good word out there so that we can do even more! ( I finally understand the value of a "Like" on Facebook...LOL)

So, my next question is- what kinds of things do you want to see more of on this forum? More corals, contests, discussion topics, stories from UC? Little snippets about how we do stuff, occasional silliness, stories from my speaking gigs, or even stuff that has less to do with the corals and more to do with our "community" now and then? We will probably never stop putting up coral updates (it's a business, for goodness sake! LOL), but we can always bring you lots of other good content. Feel free to tell us what you want to see- or even contribute yourselves here...We would love to see things like how your frags are doing, reports on the condition of he packages on arrival...Whatever you're interested in.

And (I'm just throwing it out there) now and then, we like to send people a surprise or two for their participation...that's super fun! You never know what might show up in your PM inbox...or on your front porch!

OK, I'm rambling...gotta get ready for a frag swap tomorrow! And there are more corals to put up on the site..LOL

Thanks as always,

Scott

 

[jerwin]

Well Scot I might have some other ideas. I like that you are willing to listen to customer feed back.

 

[uniquecorals]

Well Scot I might have some other ideas. I like that you are willing to listen to customer feed back.

Keep 'em coming..They're everything to us!

Scott

 

[jdl513]

It would be helpful to know the lighting conditions when the picture was taken (LED, MH, T5) and the approximate spectrum.
This will help people determine how the coral will look in their display.

One of the things I like about UC is the photos appear representative of what the coral will look like in most displays.
There are still quite a few "glamor shots" using heavy actinics being posted by some I find to be how shall I say...slightly misleading....

 

[jdl513]

to clarify I don't mean UC uses "glamor shots"...far from it from what I have seen.

Just speaking generally!

 

[rajkovich207]

Number one on my list, send us the right corals, the ones we pay for. I haven't ordered from you yet but another sponser has sent the wrong thing more than once... other than that a video tour or build thread of your place would be awesome! In The pics of you guys your facility looks awesome! Should be ordering from you guys just after Christmas! Good luck and happy holidays!!!

 

[uniquecorals]

Number one on my list, send us the right corals, the ones we pay for. I haven't ordered from you yet but another sponser has sent the wrong thing more than once... other than that a video tour or build thread of your place would be awesome! In The pics of you guys your facility looks awesome! Should be ordering from you guys just after Christmas! Good luck and happy holidays!!!

I agree! You gotta get what you paid for! I have to admit, it can be tricky at times, with lots of WYSIWYG stuff going out. Tracking systems are important. I'd be lying if I said we didn't screw up one or two before...but there is no excuse. Customers should have a worry-free experience.

Funny story, though- we had an order early on where our guy simply grabbed the wrong coral frag when the lights were off, and sent it on (bad practice!). When the client received it, he was so happy with the piece, he actually didn't want the one he originally ordered...And he's still a good client/fan! We were luckier than good THAT time, and I still joke about it with him! Yikes, I could do a blog on UC bloopers...but that might scare people off! LOL. Really, mistakes happen. They get corrected. We learn from them. Best simply to not make them!

We do have a lot of video and some build pics, and I'll get a feature together soon. We need to keep quality high on this kind of stuff, as it gets shared, so we need to work a few things out with the right skilled people first...but you'll see more of that kind of content coming!

Thanks!

Scott

 

[Michelle Lemech]

You could turn that backwards "e" around in your logo... It's backwards, a mistake, something someone either not well educated or perhaps not familiar with the English language might print. In my opinion it is not progressive and forward moving... And isn't that what Unique Corals is supposed to represent? Forward momentum, change, making things better? "Conscientious... Sustainable... Responsible..." The backwards "e" in my opinion does not represent this.

 

[Loki]

I like the "e" it's unique leave it be


Sent from tapatalk

 

[Fatmike92]

+1 the e is UNIQUE!! Lol

 

[uniquecorals]

LOL re; the backwards "e'...It's a design element that we very carefully chose.

I know that you could actually make some kind of inference about it being symbolically incorrect, or not proper, etc. Kind of like "adidas" being all lower case, or "UNITED" being in all caps, I suppose...not "techinically" correct, but appropriate for marketing. You have a very short period of time in which to create an impression with a logo. I know that you must have noticed that ALL of the letters in our logo (with the exception of the "q" and the "i") are backwards! Sort of makes you go, "I know what that says", and your brain assembles it, yet for some reason, it's "different". Funny, huh?

When we were looking at logos and iconography for Unique, we also were playing off of our very early tag line, "Something different." Our company sells corals, like many online vendors do. However, we wanted to stand out in terms of service, core values, and aesthetics. Unique. The blue box with the wave pattern was carefully chosen to symbolize an aquarium. Therefore, one could make the iconographic interpretation that we want you to put "unique" (livestock) into your aquarium! Seriously, we spent a LOT of time on this..LOL

The logo was selected because it is completely readable, yet somehow makes you stop and think, "That's a bit different"- even if it's subconscious- and that's part of the customer experience we wanted- for you to be doing something familiar (shopping for/purchasing livestock on line), yet comprehending that you're dealing with a vendor that does things a bit differently than what you're used to. Based on a lot of feedback here and elsewhere, I'd say that we are sending that message - and it's being received!

We don't have any plans to change the logo for a while. I'm sure it will evolve in the future, which is going to be fun! We love our logo - and we hope you do, too. More important - we hope you like our service, products, and customer experience! We will keep working hard to make sure that you do!

Thanks,

Scott Fellman

 

[Tabasco1]

+1 choose your own frag pack

+1 care and tips for individual coral

+1 for lighting conditions

And I would personally love to see an icon showing the growth habit of a colony. We just see frags and not everyone knows what a colonies growth pattern might be. I think it would be a great help when chosing for aqua scraping.

Great communication and customer service, which you guys seem to have nailed!

 

[uniquecorals]

+1 choose your own frag pack

+1 care and tips for individual coral

+1 for lighting conditions

And I would personally love to see an icon showing the growth habit of a colony. We just see frags and not everyone knows what a colonies growth pattern might be. I think it would be a great help when chosing for aqua scraping.

Great communication and customer service, which you guys seem to have nailed!

Thanks for the feedback! I think we'll work on all of those things! We have been playing around with the "care" tips for the individual corals. We're going to be looking into ways to refine that into a good, user-friendly format. It may take a while, so please be patient! It think it's really important, as you suggest. Once question on the care- do you (our customers) favor a graphic, or is a written description acceptable? Do you like a separate one for each coral, or more generic sections (ie; Acropora, Echinophyllia, etc.)?

We are trying to figure out a way that is helpful to the consumer, but practical for us (we upload a lot of new corals weekly, and it could be super tedious to do a detailed summary for every single WYSIWYG piece and frag., if you know what I mean. On the other hand, as a reefer, I get the point of the importance of this information. We attended a local frag swap yesterday with our corals, and I took not of the types of questions people asked about the corals...Trying to balance getting lots of information up on the site that will be useful to fellow reefers, while not bogging down the uploading process to the point where it will take 20 minutes to upload one coral (sometimes we upload 25-30 pieces at a time...arrrgh!) is a challenge. We want to provide lots of new items regularly, while still giving great information.

Just wanted to point out- and get everyone's thoughts on one more thing...We do tend to write things like (This coral) "favors moderate flow and lighting conditions"... in our product descriptions.

Question: 1) Do you as consumers tend to read the descriptions that we write? and 2) Is that information placed in the description simply too "vague" to be of any real use? Again, we want to find the right combination of usefulness and practicality. Do let us know your thoughts on this!

I do like the idea of the icon. We discussed doing this at one point with our developers. It requires drawing from a few disciplines (web developer, graphic designer, reefer ...LOL), so it was disappointingly tedious to implement initially! We'll figure something out that works!

Thanks so much for the feedback. We really want to take your suggestions and run with them (and we will!). Just need to figure out the best format. Ideally, we want something that is generic, without being too broad. And of course, we want to do it in our own unique way!


Thanks!
Scott Fellman
Unique Corals

 

[KJAG]

Killer stuff yesterday at the MASVC swap. Truly lived up to claims of your "SPS encrusted" thread. Good to see someone selling fully encrusted frags instead of freshly glued nubs! Sets a new standard.

 

[uniquecorals]

Killer stuff yesterday at the MASVC swap. Truly lived up to claims of your "SPS encrusted" thread. Good to see someone selling fully encrusted frags instead of freshly glued nubs! Sets a new standard.

Thank you so much for the kind words! It was a fun day, and a great opportunity to meet more local reefers.

(Ok, it was a bit blue on the iphone shot..LOL)

It's so much fun to attend local swaps- one of the best parts of the hobby. Some really cool people and talented reefers out there! We were able to secure some awesome pieces from local propagators to add to our inventory, and we're going to be very excited to add them to our site to give our customers even more coral options!

Oh, and the barbecue by "Chef Zilla" was AWESOME!! Imagine? A great reefer and an awesome chef! LOL

Nom, Nom, Nom!

Again, good to see everyone! Thanks to MASVC too, for a great event. Looking forward to the next one!

Scott Fellman
Unique Corals

 

[uniquecorals]

Oh, while we're on the subject of helping us improve our website and overall business, I had one more request:

Did you know there is a place on each product page where customers can write a brief "review" of the product they purchase? This is really helpful, as it can give other hobbyists some great feedback on your experience with the coral. This will help build a more rich information source for everyone! Please do participate in this if you purchase a coral or other livestock/product from us!

Thanks!

Here is an example: Note the "Reviews" tab at the bottom of the product description?

http://uniquecorals.com/default/seriatopora-sp-rainbow-birdsnest-2-frag.html

Regards,

Scott

 

[oceangirl2009]

It seems like you have a great following of current customers, but if you are looking to attract new ones, I would use your forum for sales and contests. We all have our "go to" vendors, but if a vendor on here has a sale/contest through the forum I am more likely to try a new one if I feel I am getting an awesome deal.

 

[uniquecorals]

It seems like you have a great following of current customers, but if you are looking to attract new ones, I would use your forum for sales and contests. We all have our "go to" vendors, but if a vendor on here has a sale/contest through the forum I am more likely to try a new one if I feel I am getting an awesome deal.

Thanks for the feedback, oceangirl! I agree that the contests and sales are important for attracting new customers, and we'll continue to run them and discuss them here! I guess my biggest goal in having this forum is to help foster a sense of community and interactions between our customers and us, and amongst each other. It's so important for everyone to feel that they have a place where they can ask questions, discuss concerns/problems, put up pics, or just generally chat about things related to Unique Corals and the livestock we work with. I'd like potential customers to feel that they are dealing with people- rather than an avatar or faceless corporate presence! It's also so cool when our customers chime in on this forum with feedback for other customers on their coral questions! Love that sense of community.

We are a business, but we are hobbyists, who love this stuff as much as anyone! So it's great to have people around to share our geeky enthusiasm. And, if you happen to do business with us along the way- all the better!

Thanks again!

Scott

 

[Pkunk35]

Question: 1) Do you as consumers tend to read the descriptions that we write? and 2) Is that information placed in the description simply too "vague" to be of any real use? Again, we want to find the right combination of usefulness and practicality. Do let us know your thoughts on this!

Yes, i do read this info when it is provided by a vendor and most descriptions of coral care are quite vague and just about useless as everyone's system is unique.

What might be better information to provide would be in what conditions is this frag/coral colony currently being kept in and how long has the coral been in stock. For instance, it is more useful to me to know if a frag is coming from a Metal Halide system which runs lighting for 6 hours a day/VHO for 2 hours additional and has been in the tank for 2 months, rather than a description of "high light" which is the norm when describing coral needs by vendors.

I think an easy way to do this for UC in particular would be to describe the conditions in your raceway on a separate page/thread (e.g. Raceway 1 uses 400watt MH on movers, 1.025 spg, etc) and then reference which raceway each coral resides in so that you do not have to keep retyping information.

I think this helps the customer understand better the coral's current conditions and are better able to acclimate the coral to their own system.

Just a thought.

fwiw i do think you guys are very good about informing customers of which region or whom their animals are coming from and I think this is an important step as well.

 

[uniquecorals]

Yes, i do read this info when it is provided by a vendor and most descriptions of coral care are quite vague and just about useless as everyone's system is unique.

What might be better information to provide would be in what conditions is this frag/coral colony currently being kept in and how long has the coral been in stock. For instance, it is more useful to me to know if a frag is coming from a Metal Halide system which runs lighting for 6 hours a day/VHO for 2 hours additional and has been in the tank for 2 months, rather than a description of "high light" which is the norm when describing coral needs by vendors.

I think an easy way to do this for UC in particular would be to describe the conditions in your raceway on a separate page/thread (e.g. Raceway 1 uses 400watt MH on movers, 1.025 spg, etc) and then reference which raceway each coral resides in so that you do not have to keep retyping information.

I think this helps the customer understand better the coral's current conditions and are better able to acclimate the coral to their own system.

Just a thought.

fwiw i do think you guys are very good about informing customers of which region or whom their animals are coming from and I think this is an important step as well.

I like that idea a lot! It is infinitely easier to simply indicate that this coral resides in our LPS raceway, and then have a separate description of the conditions in said system. Good idea. Or, we would just make it known that, for example all Chalices come from Raceway #3. Raceway #3 would have a page explaining the conditions and lighting, etc. That could work real nice, and not drive us out of our collective sanity when we upload new products to the site! Smart!

Scott Fellman