I recently rebuilt a good working e-commerce website. Why would you start such a time consuming monster project? Let me take you on a short adventure in e-commerce.
About 12 years ago, when blogging with Blogspot was still cool and Etsy was high cuisine, I started selling my handmade bags & cases online. I opened an Etsy store for International customers (I like to think big) and wrote about sewing, kids, this & that on Blogspot. In those first years, Etsy was upcoming, hot and American and my bags flew out all over the world to their new owners.
Back in those vintage days, Etsy's currency was in dollars only, writing in English and payment through credit card. Now as you know, I live The Netherlands. We are a small country with a cheeky crowd. And this cheeky people started to buy my bags and cases too.. but they wanted to read in Dutch and pay in euro's. So I wanted to offer them an online shop in Dutch, with easy software and smooth styling. I tried Bigcartel, eBay and Dawanda but ended up with an easy and very good looking website at Weebly. In the past years, my Dutch and Belgian customers have used this Weebly website over 4000 times.
The cheeky Dutch people also insisted on paying with iDeal. As I do my self, honestly :) Weebly promised to integrate this about 2.5 years ago and I was willing to wait a few days, maybe weeks (I am a very patient person) because rebuilding my website with ancient backlinks fromeverywhere and 100+ products was not my favorite weekend activity. Ah well, you get it. In december I was done waiting and 3 months later I had my Shopify website up and running. With iDeal payment and super support from several companies. With a 180 USD theme from Pixel UnionI started off with Shopify in development mode.. all with the detailed and priceless support from JD Mahs from ThirdShiftVintage and EtsyToShopify. iDeal payment worked from day 1 and the dashboard shows detailed and helpful information. I love the fact that this rebuilding project also meant renovation. I made 700 new pictures (of which about 70 made it to my website), new artwork and writings. Sometimes you need quite a push to make a version 3.0 of yourself.
An e-commerce website like mine is never finished. There are new apps to add (like I added the review app yesterday) new products to add, blogs to write and fancy pictures to upload. But if you are looking for a seamless integration of products, service and good looks for your e-commerce business, start with Shopify. I am using the English platform but there also is a Nederlandse versie for you cheeky Dutchies ;)
There is much, much more to share about my handmade goods journey, before I start writing a book, is there a specific subject you'd like to learn more about? Let me know in comments or send me a message!
Annemieke X0
PS you made it till they end of this article - -yeah! Use this code for 10% off on everything in the shop! 2018BLOG10
PS2 Open your own Etsy shop and get 40 listings for free: Go to Etsy now
PS3In case you are interested in opening an Shopify store yourself, you can do so right HERE. Feel free to ask my help or just some inspirational words to get you going.