Date to visit: Thursday, 2nd July 2009

Website Address: http://www.lewishamshopping.co.uk/

Opening Time: 0900 – 2000 (The good shopping time is 1000 to 1200 in the morning, because all items in shop floor are tidy which save shoppers’ time and energy to make choices.)

Getting There by Car: The Shopping Centre is located near the intersection of the A20 and A21. The entrance to the car park is from Molesworth Street southbound carriage way (A21).

Parking Fees: Up to 2-3 hrs £1.80 - £2.50 (Normally shoppers have energy for exploring in 2-3 hrs).

News & Events: Summer Sensation Promotion in North Square

Contact: Centre Management team on 020 8852 0094

Facilities: Toilets: for disabled customers and a parent and baby room, are located just outside the West Walk entrance. Additional public toilets are located on Rennell Street

Food and Drinks: Bhs, Greggs, M&S, Muffin Break, Poti’s ( I picked Muffin Break which Located in Centre Square, Unit 74 and Poti’s is my backup which located in Centre Square)

Store Directory: Not available in website.

My evaluation of information I got from Lewisham website is 6 out of 10. There are two most important information I can’t find out which are shops layout and sales offers.

In fact, this is good news for my online business. I could offer this information on my website and guide people to shop there.

In order to attract more people to visit my website, I need to study their requirements from local shopping centre. And are these shopping centres met their needs. How I could offer valuable information /suggestions in my website for people and fulfil their requests before they visit their local shopping centre.

I started from checking out their review of shopping centre. The list of their concerns as showing below:

1. 
   Building Service Management: such as Parking, Lift/ Escalator, Toilets, Baby Changing Facility, Centre Directories/Shopping Guide, Building Security Systems (Shopping Centre Building are required to be designed to protect the health and safety of customers visiting, maximizing their comfort and shopping mood, while minimizing the impact on the environment. The good shopping environment will attract shoppers to drive traffic.)
2. 
   Layout of Shops: the need of division of “Teen Zone” to avoid conflicts of seniors shoppers. (The good layout of shops could save shoppers’ time and energy to maximize their shopping mood.)
3. 
   Food and Drinks: the Food and Beverage Vending Machines are required. In the food shopping peak time such as 2 or 3pm, long queues are always there outside of sandwich bar. (Selling soft drinks and sandwich in shopping centre could ease the traffic for food stores and get hard cash to shopping centre building management.)
4. 
   Value for money: a great shopping centre should have everything you need, but you can easily blow your budget! Although there's shops for every budget so it suits everyone, and you could easily do all your shopping in one place! (Advertising in Centre’s Directories could guide people to find sales offers, discounts & bargain easily.)

All in all, I have to make a journey to all the shopping centres in London in order to evaluate whether the shopping centre management’s objectives met shoppers’ expectations and find out how I could help from my website.

Today, I got the first comment of my blog from the stranger. He said:” You're hilarious: You are funny. And I mean funny ha ha, not funny weird.”


My first reaction was why he said I’m funny. I’m a very serious person. I’m telling my real story. And I mean it. You know, it’s a serious stuff.

Then I seek my answer to my English husband. He laughed at me and told me its positive sign. He said:” you got your first fan.” “Really?!” I think I don’t understand English Sense as good as him. So I changed my mind and treated as a positive feedback.


Now, let me tell you my process of my online business. I finally pursued my classmate from University and made him help me for the web design. He was the best in the class in my memory. And I trust him better than anybody else. “No pressure, my friend.” It’s not that easy. Because I need to convince him that no matter this website will make money or not I won’t regret this investment. As you all known, I have done job seeking for 4 months. The information I got it’s that I have to pay for one year IT training to get the IT job even I had my IT degree with me. So why not, I invest money and time to train myself as my own boss for my own IT business. See, me – I’m getting the IT job by myself.


And my online business is to build up an online shopping centre in London for people to find sale offers, discounts & bargains at whatsonoffertoday.com. The definition of people is that include students, tourists, and local people who love shop in London and love to have sales information about high street as me. This is what I’m passion about my life in London. And I’d like to share with everyone in the world.

There are some family issues like how to balance time for working on business and home.

In the day, there are two babies that need me to take care. Plus housework and making dinner, I'm always very busy and no time for my own business. So all the work has to be done in the night. It's very hard, no sleep in the night, the morning sleeping quality is not good while I have two babies in the house. Ma Ma and my husband help me a lot to encourage me to keep working on my destination.

After long working hour during the night, I started to feel tried once I got up in the afternoon. My body is very weak. To adjust my life style to suit my dream job is major problem at moment.

Me -- A mummy with two babies and a happy family in London.

I'm a positive person somehow, but not everything goes as smooth in my life as everyone else in the world. But I believe “There are two sides to every coin". You'll never know how the worst time lead you to the great opportunity for your life.

My Daddy became so ill so I quit my job at the end of last year, so not to miss my last chance to take care my dad in China. I lost him in December 15, 2008. Then I packed "the home" in China and flew back to my own home in London. Not only my heart was still bleeding for losing the best daddy in the world, but also I have to face the finical problem of my own family. The only thing I could do which it's to search for the job. It wasn't going well. I couldn't even get a average of one interview each month after 4 month job seeking and 1000s CV have been sent out. "What I am doing wrong?" I kept asking myself and my poor husband. He always encourages me and tells me "you are doing well; it's just tough time for everyone these days."

Last Saturday 6/6/2009, I made one of the biggest decisions in my life that I'm going to set up my own online business. "Where to start?" and "what to sell?" were questions for me. Do the research and see what other people do. I started with online business guide from Startups.co.uk . After 8 pages study, I got an idea. "Nowadays, people go to the same place for shopping all the time, but they could miss out the perfect sales time for not been told." I told myself "it maybe the great opportunity for you to make saving for them, just use the website advertise all the sales offer and send to them by email in the real time."

First of all, I started with searching if there are any competitors who are having same idea as me from our best friend Google. Well, there are quite a few websites here and there. Okay, then I wonder how I can make differences...

Secondly, I went through their sites to find sales offer for saving money. Somehow I ended up to the other retailer's web page and lost my way to saving. Then I knew how I could make differences. I'll set up the money saving website for people to find offers, also they have the option of shopping here and not leading them to others' web page.

Now, it's time to think how to make profits. Well, there are two options: Advertising and earning the difference between whole sales and retails.

In the end, I decided I'll do it. I'll become my own boss...