2 years ago I started with a plan on making a business selling handmade products made by small families in a country from South America who I visit personally to help them with some income. For this business I wanted a website, now a few months I have been working on designing as I decided that wordpress templates aren’t for me.
I have seen probably months worth of tutorials and also implementing what I saw as great functions. However with a business there is a need for a webshop, as a beginner I can only see this as a struggle, is it recommended to build it myself or for the time being should I resort to Woocommerce?
My plan was to not use Wordpress at all but if anyone has any advice for a noob that’d be great. Perhaps a link to other topics.
I suggest, if you have not already done so, you may wish to go through the Responsive Web Design Course. It has great instruction and exercises.
It also has a Landing Page project which may give you some idea on how to set up your own landing page for the shop. You can always add on, or change it, too. If you have github, you can allow others to see and help you outside of our great community.
But, we provide guidance here, too.
Here is an article I found in the fCC News category that may interest and help you.
For now I try to keep doing most of it alone but if I do have some trouble it sounds nice to have others dig in for advice. Even if I would like to execute it myself.
I had seen this article and video but wasn’t sure if this was beginner friendly. But I guess it’s a start somewhere
As a beginner you’re not going to be able to learn everything you need to actually have a store online. There is way too much for something to just watch videos on. Especially, if you are going to be dealing with peoples money and keeping their information private, its going to take probably over a year just starting out to actually get comfortable with this. Then more time to actually learn what you need to meet your goal. The best bet is to find something that does the shop part for you if you want to get it up and running soon.
My plan was to not use Wordpress at all but if anyone has any advice for a noob that’d be great.
What about any of wordpress’s alternatives like Wix or Shopify?
The problem of an “online store to sell stuff” is extremely common. With plenty of big name players in the space.
Building one from the ground up yourself is only worth it if you have a very specific use-case, or you want to gather the development skills as a learning task.
For what it’s worth, I’ve been doing web development for about a decade and if I was trying to create an online shopping website, I wouldn’t build it myself.
What you’re doing is a really lovely thing, by the way. Please don’t get disheartened, it’s a hard task but it’s not impossible. The main issue is just how competitive everything is.
Apart from building the website, another problem you might come across is SEOs, when a website is first designed, even on WIX, it takes a long time for search engines to be able to place the website in relation to other websites of similarity. If you then discover an amazing piece of code to add to your head element, it could take longer to place. Should this be placed on anything past the first page of Google, it’s going to be hard for people to see it.
I really recommend beginning with Etsy because the SEO side of things is much easier, you can use something called eRank which will help you find niche SEO keywords. This is key, you need to niche down! It’s also much less money to lose and a well established audience. It’s also completely secure and keeps everyone safe, follows all the laws of each country when it comes to selling and data protection.
Lastly, the power of social media!! It should never be under-estimated, it’s a wonderful, free tool to market to people.
There’s a brilliant woman called Starla Moore who does YouTube videos on all of this too. I wouldn’t pay for her enrolment class, it’s tempting but very expensive and there’s enough fantastic information on her channel.
It’ s a hard job, you have to be a photographer, writer, social media marketer, distributor, creator etc. It’s always worth-while at the end!
Also I’m not affiliated with anything mentioned, everything is free except the cut Etsy takes.
That is some of the solid advice I was after too. I know privacy is to be obeyed by law when it comes to coding and I am fairly sure I can’t do that all alone (yet). Time isn’t the issue though but I don’t want any legal problems haha.
I might have to dive more into this, I have heard of them also other CMS such as Ghost, Adobe (that’s expensive) and lots more. But constantly trying and not finding what I want made me decide that a better longer route is alone.
Maybe what I have isn’t that specific, as long as I can have 95% control over the design of the store I’d be happy. Could you perhaps tell if one is better than the other in this case?
Sorry to only reply just now. I did notice your own background in a seperate post and it’s a great thing to be working for wellbeing of others.
I do happen to have a job I started earlier this year in marketing so I do know a fair bit about GA4, GTM, SEO among other things.
There is a website I have running now with no sales on Wordpress just so I am getting something based on the company name for the past 2 years but to say the least, the website is very basic. Within The Netherlands they can find me on the first page at least.
I saw that Starla Moore seems to cover mostly Etsy and that seems viable for some of the products, I will have to see it I can work with that.
Thank you for the details though, it’s all hard work but if in the end it’s enough that everyone eats well I’ll be happy enough.
