Have you ever felt that sinking feeling with the realization that you just have to improve your online store? I have been working on our online store for a while now. I must say I love the idea of eCommerce. I love the potential to be able to create products, art, information that will be of benefit and to be able to sell them online.
I have to admit that opening one’s computer in the morning to discover an email with the message that a sale has been made is an incredible feeling. As much as I loved the potential, I was not so happy with how our store looked. First the images for each product came up double. Oh dear, time for a new theme. Then the blog became a mess. On top of that, I could not fit our new logo into the header. Oy, is it time for another theme? What could I do? I had to figure out what was needed in order to improve our online store.
It was not long before I began to feel like the image below. I knew where I wanted to go. I had all these ideas. I wanted to begin selling my items. I wanted to get going and create more products. But what could I do with our store?
I have learned a lot about WordPress. I guess I learn daily. Every time I do something on either of my websites, I learn a little bit more. The problem is, the more I learn, the more confused I get when it comes to selecting the best theme. There are so many themes out there. How will I ever find the one that will be just what I want? How do I decide what features I need for my store.
I thought more about the goals I have for our online store. The truth is that I keep learning and discovering what features I need the more I work with my site. The learning and discovering also relates to the progress towards our goals of being able to earn from our creative skills. All the while moving ever so slowly towards developing the platform to earn what we need to develop our centre with our special focus on empowering widows and orphans. Why is it all so slow? Well, I don’t have an answer as to the speed, what I have discovered is that I am not yet ready to pay for a theme. I still have certain details that need clarifying.
Just as I was about to give up and look for another option to earn, I had one of those light bulb moments. The funny thing is, that the flash of inspiration and the series of events that suddenly transpired completely blurr whatever had lead up to this. As a result, I can not tell you exactly what steps I took. I do know that I decided to be a good OT and do a little research. How did the rest unfold? I really don’t know. I am very grateful that it has though. From my research I have a much clearer path of where we are heading. I discovered some wonderful resources. The first of them being WP for Beginners. I am so grateful to have found this team. Through their detailed list of free themes to use, I found the one that I am currently using.
I do admit that I have some goals that will probably require my outsourcing for a web designer a little down the road. Or adding to our goals to be able to upgrade to use one of the options to build one’s own site. Yes, I know, I am building my own but there are a few details with the layout that I am working towards. For now, we will work with what we can until such time as sales and or Patrons improve to the extent that we can upgrade and pay for a theme.
Please be patient as behind the scenes work is happening. You will notice we have added a FAQ feature. I am so excited to have figured out placing this in the footer. Thanks of course is due to my husband for that. If you have any questions that will help to improve your shopping experience in our store, please be in touch. We are happy to update the FAQs as needed.
What else? Well, the next step is improvement of some of our product images. More about this in the next post. Once that is complete, we have some exciting new designs. I can hardly wait to see them on our range of products. It’s all very exciting. If you explore the improvement in our online store, do stop by our page of our Acts of Kindness. Stay tuned for the gallery of some of those we have helped.
Well, with that snippet of news, I am off to do some more behind the scenes work. Before you go, have you signed up for our newsletter? Please do so that you can be the first to hear of new products, specials and other exciting developments. You will find an option to sign up on the top right hand corner, right next to this blog post.
Thank you so much for your support. We look forward to many more good things happening through this online store.
