I'm busy working away here in the studio this weekend. I managed to completely mess up my website, (I know just enough HTML to get myself in trouble!) throw it away and create a whole new one that works and looks like I want it to, finally! The walls were blue from my cussing Friday! Lol! I actually uploaded my site live and checked all my links, which all worked..squee! Then I took it back down since I don't have any products in it yet. But soon my pretties, soon!
Shopify has a built in blog you can use on your site but since I already had this blog I was able to link it to my website..whoo hoo! Quite honestly it took a while to figure out but once I did I was like "Duh". I had a lot of duh moments and can now see why people pay others to make their sites even on Shopify. It's possible to do it yourself, I did, but I have a graphics background which was super helpful on a lot of the design part, ie. making the header, footer and buttons match my logo colors. I went pretty simple and then customized from there but you could do simple just fine and use the preset default colors. Just go slow and ask for help from Shopify when needed, the have lots of help pages plus you can get one on one help when you first start.Shopify sent me an invite to a free webnar which showed the background basics and you could ask questions during and after. This was super helpful and then they sent me the video to watch whenever I wanted.
Once everything clicked, it was awesome! So I now have a website! My next steps are to finish my products, shoot photos, edit photos, write product descriptions and load everything on the site. Still lots of work and I'm kind of exhausted already, what with moving the studio and all.
Here's a workable peek from yesterday. I think he's foxy.
Oh yes the other big thing I did this weekend was go through all my social media and selling sites and make them all cohesive. I added my new logo everywhere I have a presence, changed colors and added my new tagline. If you know me other places then you'll notice a change.
I also added a link on my sidebar here to subscribe to my newsletter. So if you want to be the first to know when the website is launched, get free little diy plush and other designs to make, notices for giveaways and great things only for subscribers, you absolutely want to sign up.
After talking about having my own website, trying out different hosts and researching the heck out of the subject for so long, I finally started putting together the design for my very own site!
I was able to purchase my old domain name. I stalked it forever to make sure it was available. But honesty who else would want it beside me?
I chose Shopify to host my website. I've heard awesome things about them. They come highly recommended, their customer service is crazy good and I actually know people who have websites on their site. I had Shopify purchase my domain for me and link it to my site. It was quick, easy and the domain cost was the cheapest I've ever paid!
Also about an hour after I signed up a customer service guy for Shopify emailed me welcoming me and asking if I wanted to get together for a phone consultation to help me through any of the set up I needed help with. What!? Guys this is free! They are here to help...wow! They have all kinds of help pages too.
I worked most of Sunday setting up the back end of my site and starting my design.
The back end involves:taxes, shipping, how purchases are handled and all those business type things that make stuff work
I started my design by picking a theme. Themes are how your site looks. Shopify has a nice selection of free themes to start out with. I'm using a nice simple free theme now but next year I hope to graduate to a more featured theme that I'll pay for. One day in the future I'll hire a web designer to custom do a site for me, but that's a ways off...baby steps.
My theme design is mostly done. I still have tweaking to do and I'll have many sleepless nights trying to finish art to load into my shop.
I'll probably do a series on my website journey cause when I talk to my family their eyes just glaze over but someone reading this might be interested. I'm so flipping excited!
I added a signup box for my newsletter to my side bar, check it out! Or click HERE!
