The short version (TL;DR):  On Oct 27th, I mocked up a page to potentially sell custom music videos, and asked four people for feedback. This is that feedback retold as a fable: a retired window-dresser teaching four shopkeepers how a stranger decides, in about four seconds, whether to walk in. The reviewers are anonymized, and if you have ever wanted to sell something, it may be for you.

It began, as these things often do, with a ribbon.

Fen the picture-framer had tied a big red bow across the face of every portrait in his window. He thought it looked festive. Passers-by saw a row of faces they could not see.

He was explaining this to a woman in a long grey coat when she stopped him.

"Who dressed this window?"

"I did," said Wick, who owned the lantern shop next door and had come out to listen. "That one is mine too."

Odile looked at Wick's window, then at his sign, then at the street.

She had dressed the windows of Hollis & Marsh for forty winters. She now lived above the bakery on Tallow Row and gave advice to anyone who brought tea.

"I never dressed a window to be admired," she said. "I dressed it so a stranger walking past could decide in four seconds whether to come in."

Wick had brought three friends. Fen had his ribbons. Pell sold dresses, forty of them, and had never sewn a care label into any. Tamsin ran a shadow-puppet theatre in the arcade, and her puppets' mouths opened three seconds before the singer did.

"Show me the shops," said Odile.

Lesson One: The Window

Wick's window held six lanterns. Each had a number painted on its base.

"What are the numbers?"

"How many people stopped to look at each one. The popular ones are at the front."

"And the one a stranger meets first?"

Wick winced. It was an early lantern, made on a borrowed kiln. Its flame danced a beat before the music box beside it began to play.

"The stare tells you it was loud," said Odile. "It does not tell you it was good."

She moved it to the back. Then she lit another, and the flame moved with the tune.

"Three lanterns. One that is yours from start to finish. One that borrows a tune everyone knows. One that shows your flame can follow a voice. Take the numbers off. They sell nothing but themselves."

"Where does the christening lantern go?"

"On a shelf that says christening. Storm, story, cartoon, real life, the future. Nobody walks in knowing what a lantern can be. Let them see the shelves before they have to ask."

Tamsin said quietly that two of her puppet shows were for small children.

"Then that is a shelf," said Odile. "And a rather good one."

Lesson Two: The Sign

Odile pointed her tea at the board over the door. Thirty-eight years in the same village. Retired. Now making lanterns.

"Why is that the first thing a stranger reads?"

"It's who I am."

"It is where you have been." She held the pause a moment. "A stranger does not hire a lantern-maker because he is retired. He hires him because the lanterns are good and the maker knows his tools. Say where you live, and be done with it. Then say what you have learned, and how long you spent learning it."

"Four hundred hours at the kiln," said Wick slowly.

"Paint that."

Lesson Three: The Care Label

Pell had been unusually quiet.

"Your dresses. Where are the care labels?"

"I didn't want to frighten anyone."

"A customer who learns about the shrinking from the shrinking does not write you a kind letter." She turned over the nearest hem and found a seam that had puckered slightly.

"Sew them in. Say plainly that the work is machine-made, and that machines sometimes get a seam wrong and a face drift. Say what happens if they are unhappy after the second fix, and when the money is due. And if someone asks for a copy of a famous designer's gown, tell them the designer's lawyers may take an interest and you cannot promise otherwise."

"Will they still buy?"

"The ones who read the label will buy and come back. The ones who don't would have been trouble in any weather."

Lesson Four: The Early Mouths

Tamsin's puppet opened its mouth. The band played. Three seconds later the singer came in.

Odile did not laugh, which Tamsin found kinder than laughing.

"What does the puppet listen to?"

"The whole song. Fiddle, drum, everything."

"Then it hears the fiddle and thinks it should sing."

She walked to the back and pulled the fiddle off the recording so that only the voice remained.

"Let the puppet hear only the singer. It will not open its mouth for anything else."

Tamsin tried it. The puppet stayed shut through the whole of the intro. When the singer came in, it sang.

Lesson Five: The Ribbon

Fen's turn came last, which he had been dreading.

"A bow," said Odile. "On a face."

"It's a big one," said Fen. "So people notice it."

"They noticed it. What did they not notice?"

Fen looked at the portraits. Behind the ribbons, a good many of them were smiling.

"The colours are lovely," said Odile. "Keep the colours. Take the bow off the face and put a small tag in the corner. A stranger should see the person first and the way in second."

She turned and looked at the back wall of his shop. It was bare plaster from floor to ceiling.

"And this?"

"I was saving it."

"Space that holds nothing is not saving. It is a pause nobody asked for. Fill it, or shrink the room."

Then she walked Fen to the side lane, where the pavement narrowed to the width of one person.

"Stand here. This is how most of your visitors will see the shop, through a gap no wider than a hand. Look at it from here before you decide it's finished."

Fen looked, and said nothing, and then went back to move a portrait.

The Night Market

Saturday came with a thin rain.

Wick's window now held three lanterns, a smiling face on the sign, and a note: Hand-guided, machine-made. Two fixes included. About two days. The price, from $79, appeared once at the front and nowhere else.

Pell's dresses had care labels. A customer bought one, read it, and washed the silk on a hot cycle anyway, to nobody's surprise. The label had been right. Odile graded it a good label.

Fen's portraits had faces. Tamsin's puppets sang in time, and the rain sent the whole audience home.

"Good work, bad weather," said Odile. "Come back Sunday."

Wick sold his first lantern at nine o'clock to a woman who had read the sign twice. He gave the second away to a neighbor, who is now telling people.

The Window-Dresser's Journal

Anyone can dress a window.

The difficult part……is letting a stranger see, in four seconds, which door is theirs.

Lead with the one that works. Sort the rest onto shelves. Say who you are by what you have learned. Sew in the care label before the customer finds out the hard way. Take the fiddle out before the singer sings. Take the ribbon off the face.

Wick's kiln costs $6,500 and would fire thirty percent faster. He asked whether he should buy it. I told him to sell five lanterns first.

What does your shop look like from the narrow lane?

Come and look through the window

The ideas in this story come from honest feedback on a real page, given by four real people who are anonymized here. The characters are fiction; the feedback was real.

Wick's shop is my preliminary storefront page for custom music videos, a couple of suggestions already incorporated, and most others not yet.

You can visit it here: musicvideos.sebastianantony.com

Four people have already walked past and told me what they saw.

I'd like to hear from you too. If something confused you, slowed you down or made you leave, I'd love to know. The same goes for anything you liked. Tell me what you'd change, what you'd keep, and what a stranger would never guess from the front door. Honest is better than kind, although both are welcome.