Back in the day, when Snorestore’s directors were journalists not web store owners, we covered a story involving a well-known fast food chain which was opening its doors in Harrogate. The spa town, accustomed as it was to the rather more genteel offerings of Betty’s tea rooms, was in uproar. How could this happen, they cried? Sacrilege, dumbing down etc etc.

In the event, McDonalds did one of their “silent openings”: they deliberately didn’t announce the exact date and time when the Harrogate Golden Arches would serve its first Big Mac Meal. There were no crowds breaking down the doors, no police having to hold them back. The fuss, such as it was, was over.

Fast forward to 2010, and Snorestore’s had its own silent opening. Overnight from Friday to Saturday, we completely changed the look of our website. Granted, we’d hinted at this a little while back, but we didn’t want to make a great thing of it when the change actually took place.

What if people didn’t like it? What if it didn’t work – you can beta test all you like but in the web world, things don’t always go plan when a site goes live – what then?

So there was no great fanfare. What we did do a couple of days later, is send out emails to our thousands of newsletter subscribers, inviting them to go take a look at Snorestore. The bribe of a 15% discount code has obviously nothing to do with the fact that we’ve had our busiest three days ever, and everything to do with our new look. Or so we’d like to think

PS If you’d like to get your hands on future discount codes, you can either untick the “do not contact me” box at the checkout, or follow us on Twitter.