Your best customer flew home on Wednesday

A customer walks into your shop in Gustavia on a Tuesday in February. She buys one piece, puts two back, tells you she'll think about it. Wednesday she's on a plane. Thursday she's in Boston.

That is what makes retail different in St Barts and Sint Maarten: your best customer is not walking past the window again on Saturday. She is two and a half thousand miles away, she has a blurry phone photo of the piece she didn't buy, and she cannot remember the exact name of your shop.

The sale isn't lost. It has simply moved six weeks and two and a half thousand miles down the road. The only question is whether she can find you when she gets there.

The second sale is worth as much as the first

An island shop lives through two seasons: the one where customers are physically here, and the one where they are back home with the island still in their heads. The second lasts a great deal longer than the first.

The customer who bought from you in February is the best online buyer you will ever have. She has touched the fabric, she knows the cut, she already trusts you. She needs no convincing and no reassuring. She needs to find you, and she needs to be able to pay.

That is where most boutiques lose the money. Not in the shop. Afterwards.

Three obstacles, all fixable

She can't find you. She types "jewellery shop Gustavia" into a US phone. If your name doesn't come up, or comes up as a Facebook page last updated in 2023, the search ends there. Run it yourself, in English, on a phone: what you see is what she sees.

She can't pay the way she pays at home. An American buyer thinks in dollars and reaches for an American card. A price shown only in euros, a checkout demanding a five-digit postcode she cannot fill in, an order by email followed by a bank transfer: every one of those details costs you a sale that was already made.

The site is too slow for a phone. Shared hosting in mainland France routinely takes 6 to 8 seconds to appear from Miami. Google measured that 53 % of mobile visitors give up past 3 seconds. Your product photos are your sales argument; served too heavy, they become the reason people leave. We went through that trade-off in our piece on photos that sell without slowing you down.

The paper bag does half the work

This is the cheapest thing on the list, and almost nobody does it.

Your customer leaves with a bag, a receipt, sometimes a card. Put your web address on it, spelled out in full, plus a QR code. Not an Instagram handle on its own: an Instagram account sells nothing to someone who has forgotten your name, they have to already follow you to find you again.

The bag travels in the suitcase, it gets emptied in a bedroom in Boston, and it sits on a dresser for a fortnight. It is the best advertising you own, and it is already paid for.

What that means for the site

Not necessarily a full catalogue on day one. Ten to twenty pieces is often enough: the ones you don't restock three times a season, the ones that move fastest, the ones that travel well. The rest can stay a simple gallery with a way to message you.

What isn't negotiable: both currencies, a page that loads in under 2 seconds from the US, product pages written in English rather than translated word for word, and a human answer when someone asks whether the size 38 is still there.

We've set out what goes into this kind of site, section by section, on our page for boutique and retail websites.

Measurable, not promised

We promise nobody the first page of Google, and nobody can guarantee you an online sales figure. What can be measured: the number of orders coming from the US between May and October, while your shutter is down.

Write the number down this year. Compare it next year. If it hasn't moved, your website wasn't the problem. If it has, you'll know exactly what the second sale is worth to you.

Our website pricing is public, lead times included — or get your quote within 24 hours and be live before high season.