I haven't been much of an artist this week, as I have been spending the majority of my time researching new resources for a website for Sailor Studio.
It is perfect for artists and photography websites because it uses Flash. It is free (with ads), and very reasonable pricing without. It is more expensive if you want Ecommerce (online shopping) capabilities.
Because we want to move towards a boutique/gift shop feel and have an online store, we are looking for something more geared towards small businesses.
I have found two sites that look very promising!
They are reasonably priced and have similar features:
15.00 set up fee and around $10 a month hosting
-offers shopping cart, unlimited products, descriptions, and pages, upload your own graphics,offers pre-made pages like contact, calender, wholesale (password protected), FAQs, etc.
*Shoppe Pro offers nicer pre-made templates and easy tutorials for a DIY template design.
80.00 set up fee and around $10 a month hosting
offers shopping cart, unlimited products, descriptions, pages, upload your own graphics, offers pre-made pages like contact, calender, wholesale (password protected), FAQs, etc.
*Offers several pre-made templates, but only one with graphics. They also offer a catalog option where you can print out your own paper catalogs from your store. I am very interested in this option (after finishing a ridiculously time-consuming spring catalog for sailor studio).
If anyone has experience with these website builders, or if you know of any other "store" builders that are good for new businesses, please share!!
Right now, we have an Etsy shop for our online selling (which we finally updated! :)
I think there are a lot of plus sides to it:
-online marketplace that thousands of people access every day.
-user-friendly, you don't have to know how to build a website or pay to have one built..
-great community atmosphere of crafters and artists
But there are a few down sides too:
-You can't customize your own store look other than a banner.
-You pay 3.5% of your sales plus 20 cents per listing
- Your customers have to make an Etsy account in order to buy from you.
- Everyone can see exactly what you have sold, and you are directly competing with a LOT of other talented people.
The biggest thing that is frustrating for us is that we have an actual store front that we sell from, as well as several shows a year that we sell to. So when we make a bunch of new pieces and get them photographed, edited, priced, and uploaded to Etsy... and then we have a good day at the studio, half of our inventory on Etsy has been sold and we have to deactivate the items and it is basically a waste of 20 cents each item... which can add up.
Now this is a good problem to have of course- we are happy to be selling! The obvious solution would be to make two sets of inventory and sell one set on Etsy and not display it in the store.
but hey, if someone is looking for something specific, we want to show them everything we have. :)
Plus, since we are really interested in getting our items into other shops and boutiques, it would great to have a wholesale catalog available on our website as well.
BTW, Facebook has really been our best resource for getting online customers. We usually end up messaging thru FB, and sending them an invoice through paypal so they don't have to hassle with going through Etsy.
Seriously, every online business should have a Facebook account!
Great marketing tool!
So I will be glued to my computer for the next few weeks getting this new site up and running- It is a lot of work, but I know it will pay off when we finally get it the way we want it! :)
Any thoughts, input? We are still new to all this so we are open to suggestions :)
BTW, I am working on a QR Code blog post. We went to a marketing workshop, and these things are so much fun. We just added them to our business cards!
(just scan with your smart phone)
HAPPY FRIDAY EVERYONE!!
No comments:
Post a Comment