If you receive this blog via email, you might have noticed you didn’t receive one last week. That’s because the brand new website went live and the blog ‘disappeared’ for a few days.
The new site is pretty similar to the old one, but rather than just using Shopify buy buttons, it’s a full-on Shopify online store.
The advantages of this are:
- I have full control over the site (so I can add, edit and remove any page, or menu item that I choose to).
- There are lots of additional extras you can use, in the form of Shopify apps. For example, a reviews section.
- The sites are all designed to be viewed on mobile devices.
It took me a few hours to set up my store, copying and pasting the content from my old site. I did hit a few issues with formatting, and knowing some basic html was useful, but not essential.
You pay a set fee for your site, per month, currently £29 for ‘Basic Shopify’. For that you can add unlimited products and, if you choose a free theme for your site, that’s all you pay.
As far as I can see, the main difference with the more expensive plans is you get more staff accounts. You can do things such as send abandoned cart emails, but I believe there are apps out there that can do that for you. The Shopify app store is huge and I definitely need to explore it!
You can also integrate Shopify and Mailchimp, which I’ll be doing to automatically generate emails to customers.
The site has been live less than a week, so I’ll do an in-depth post in a month or so, once I’ve had more experience.
Right now I’m working on improving my SEO (search engine optimisation) – so my site actually gets found! This is quite a big deal as, on Amazon there are literally thousands of buyers, all with their card details saved, ready to buy. It’s very unlikely someone will just come across my site (or anyone’s) by chance – so I really need to put some effort into this.
Watch this space!
P.S. None of the (many!) links included in this post are affiliate links.