Watch this! It’s too cool and it works, I’ve just tried it.

When we were setting up the business we thought long and hard about a business name.

We wanted something which would be easy to remember and spell, which would not limit us in the type of things we could sell and which would conjure up the idea of living a ‘fairytale’ life. And so mirror mirror was born.

Looking back, we were astonishingly naïve about naming an online business and the importance of being visible to the search engines. I don’t pretend to understand all its little foibles and quirks, but in essence Google works by looking first for the search terms and then by ranking the ‘importance’ of the sites in which they appear. It judges this importance by how current the content is and the number of sites which link to that site and how ‘important’ those sites are in turn.

So for the first eighteen months of mirror mirror’s life, it was impossible to find us if you searched on the terms ‘mirror mirror’ – instead you would have got pages and pages of articles from the Daily Mirror, books on Amazon, Guardian columns and song lyrics. Every journalist working for every newspaper in the world, seemed to have written an article which contained the words ‘mirror, mirror….’

A friend of ours who specialises in all things Google did some consultancy for us and said that with such a generic name we would never get to the top of the search engines. So, in despair, around about Christmas last year, I thought seriously about changing the name of the business. I agonized over a new name, coming up with more and more ridiculous and random combinations, but nothing was perfect enough to warrant the huge step of rebranding the business and losing all the goodwill we’d built up around the name.

And then I started up the blog. And people started linking to the blog and linking to the shop. And then one day I was checking the search engine rankings and found that if you searched on ‘mirrormirror’ (all one word) the shop finally appeared on the second page of the search results, though if I searched on ‘mirror mirror’ the shop still didn’t appear at all. So I finally had my new name. The shop would now officially be called mirrormirror (the eagle eyed among you may have noticed that I started changing the name on the blog around that time).

Our PR company was informed, all new instances of the name appeared in the new format and the next big project on the To Do list was to change all the instances of the name on the website itself and on all our collateral. Until yesterday when I searched on ‘mirror mirror’ and the shop appeared on the first page of Google (though ‘mirrormirror’ still appears higher up the rankings).

So now I’m really muddled. Obviously we need to be consistent, but I just don’t know which name to choose. I think there is a chance of getting ‘mirrormirror’ to be the absolute number one on the search engines, but less of a chance with ‘mirror mirror’. But on the other hand ‘mirror mirror’ seems to be the spelling that people use most often and if I stick with it I won’t have to change the website and the collateral.

Confused yet? Which version of the name do you prefer?

Ooh, I forgot to mention that mirrormirror‘s quest for world domination continued recently with a cool bit of coverage in July’s US Elle – our first bit of coverage abroad.

Our black lace tablecloths (hand-dyed by Pearl) were shown at the end of a huge feature on Pearl Lowe – yummy mummy of four, erstwhile singer with Powder and rock chick extraordinaire. Her long-term partner and the father of her three younger children is Danny Goffey of Supergrass, whilst the father of her, very beautiful, older daughter is Gavin Rossdale of Bush – now Mr Gwen Stefani. In the magazine article Pearl looks trim and beautiful, despite having a baby under a year old.

In between hanging out (I use this term loosely in the light of last year’s gossip about Jude and Sadie) with the stars, Pearl designs and makes our Scottish lace tablecloths, beautiful bespoke lace curtain panels for the rich and famous, and has now designed a new line of lace dresses, based on her own collection of vintage dresses.

Having met her once, at her beautiful Georgian townhouse in Camden (she has since moved to a wonderful-looking house in Hampshire), I can confirm that she is extremely pretty and petite, full of energy and has the most beautiful speaking voice. Her house too was absolutely stunning (I’ve been trying to find pictures online but without success) – mostly white, with fluffy white rugs, venetian mirrors, a huge portrait of Pearl above the fireplace, and accents in the form of her colourful lace window panels everywhere. What struck me most was that, although the house was comfortable and family-filled – with Danny Goffey playing table-tennis with a bunch of kids downstairs and a small boy running about dressed as an unidentifiable animal – it still managed to look bohemian, chic and elegant. One can only aspire.

We’re not having a good time with technology at the moment, which is somewhat problematic if you’re running a business online. Over the last few weeks we’ve been wrestling with email problems, a pernickety issue with the website, Orange ‘upgrading’ the broadband over at Siobhan’s so that it now no longer works, smashed laptops and temperamental printers.

But tonight I watched the Minx excitedly ‘chatting’ to her father, who is currently over in Seattle, using our new webcam and realised that sometimes technology really does have its uses.

Thanks for all your recent comments and lovely messages. I AM slowly feeling better and hope to be in a much chattier mood as of tomorrow.

Well, I’ve been feeling a bit better today. I managed to get out and about this morning despite feeling rather wobbly, and after being overcome by the munchies for the first time since Saturday decided that a Bacon Double Cheeseburger from Burger King was the only solution. And it made me feel like a million dollars. Never underestimate the restorative medicinal powers of junk food.

Unfortunately a glance in the mirror has revealed that I don’t look anything like a million dollars, even at today’s favourable dollar exchange rate. What I need is for these people to follow me around all day and weave their magic. (Go to Portfolio and then Before/After and then stop wondering why you don’t look like a supermodel).