[RuggedBear]

To start with, I wont have many products to sell as I am starting small and expanding the range bit by bit, perhaps just 3 to 6 designs to start. Rather than creating a full blown website, would I be better just creating a site based on wordpress to keep people updated about company news with an ecommerce plugin? What is available besides wordpress?

 

[20vK]

To start with, I wont have many products to sell as I am starting small and expanding the range bit by bit, perhaps just 3 to 6 designs to start. Rather than creating a full blown website, would I be better just creating a site based on wordpress to keep people updated about company news with an ecommerce plugin? What is available besides wordpress?

Joomla is similar to wordpress - I've had both and ended up with wordpress this time round. There are a few free ecommerce apps you can add on to wordpress which should do the trick.

What's nice is that you can start simple and build up content easily as you grow. That way, you don't loose all the SEO that you will build up. if you build 1 site then change it to another one later on you may loose all the links and loose your google position.

For a simple info site you can use Adobe Muse - a "what you see is what you get" editor built for designers. No blog function though

Richie

 

[MKROY]

Well RuggedBear

In my humble opinion, wordpress is free. Which is always good when you are starting out.
I would start with a wordpress blog format which would allow you to showcase your designs and keep visitors updated.

It is also a easy to use package.

As you grow your business and the designs get more you can always have a full blown website designed and built and keep the wordpress as your blog attached to your new website.

In this way you don't have to loose the custom or traffic you have built to your wordpress site.

Hope this helps.

 

[RuggedBear]

I currently have a countdown timer on my site based on wordpress. Am I able to install a wordpress ecommerce template pugins etc and activate it when I am ready or do I have to do everything offline and upload it when I am ready?

 

[20vK]

I currently have a countdown timer on my site based on wordpress. Am I able to install a wordpress ecommerce template pugins etc and activate it when I am ready or do I have to do everything offline and upload it when I am ready?

My site is online, but I haven't yet added an e-commerce plugin to the standard 2011 template. I will do though. I've been focusing on the site navigation, adding html code to the template to display FB and twitter links where I want them and using the correct words in each level of script to help with SEO. It's worked already, too - page 1 for my chosen search words, before I've even started in earnest!

You can add any plugin whenever you are ready for the benefits it offers. I recommend some sort of SEO plugin and the google analytics plugin is pretty handy for monitoring site traffic too. Also, there is a plugin for creating a sitemap that help search engines find the words you want them to

Richie