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POD site layered over fulfillment site such as Cafe Press or Spreadshirt?
I'm working on the e-commerce website for our new line of t-shirts and baby onesies. To save dollars and because we're not web dev experts we were going to use a do-it-yourself site like big cartel, webs, wix, etc, and layer it over a site like Spreadshirt.
We may have to find a designer to fuse the separate entities and make the Spreadshirt site navigate and look seemless with the rest of the site.
I'm writing for a sanity check. Has anyone else done it like this? Have you seen other sites do this successfully? We welcome thoughts and feedback.
Last edited by ziggyszoo; October 17th, 2009 at 01:02 AM.
You will be faced with separate check-outs. I would not be able to buy one item from your bigcartel site and one item from your spreadshirt site and just go through checkout once. That is a major confusion issue. It will also mean double paying for shipping costs.
You will be faced with separate check-outs. I would not be able to buy one item from your bigcartel site and one item from your spreadshirt site and just go through checkout once. That is a major confusion issue. It will also mean double paying for shipping costs.
Agreed, confusion will lead to lost sales.
Paying for extra shipping will also lead to lost sales.
What if we're only selling product through the site we layer on top of. For example, let's say we're selling all our product through Spreadshirt or Cafe Press. The pages layered on top are just our "about" pages and "extras," etc? That way we're not using two check-outs. Just the check-out from the e-com shop we decide to go with.
Big Cartel might be a bad example because we probably don't need to use an e-commerce site -- just a regular WYSIWYG to create a look/feel and style easily.
What if we're only selling product through the site we layer on top of. For example, let's say we're selling all our product through Spreadshirt or Cafe Press. The pages layered on top are just our "about" pages and "extras," etc? That way we're not using two check-outs. Just the check-out from the e-com shop we decide to go with.
Big Cartel might be a bad example because we probably don't need to use an e-commerce site -- just a regular WYSIWYG to create a look/feel and style easily.
Hope this makes sense.
Yes, that will work and is done a lot. Here are some examples with spreadshirt:
Generally, you want to build your 'shell' site within the confines of spreadshirt's limitations to get as seamless a connection as possible. The neofaction site is a perfect example of that.
I would caution against using a free service as your shell site however. Here today, gone tomorrow is one concern. The other is the flexibility of building headers and footers and being able to use them in your spreadshirt site. And another is unwanted advertising place on your site.
You can buy web hosting for as little as $10 a month. That is a better alternative than using a free site.
There are lots of Spreadshirt shop partners that create websites that match their Spreadshirt shops. With Spreadshirt you can customize many aspects of your shop and you have access to the HTML and CSS so you can make your shop match your website and your website match your shop.
Let me know if you need any help with Spreadshirt.
POD site layered over fulfillment site such as Cafe Press or Spreadshirt? 
