Welcome My New Website

Six months ago I began a new project and today I invite you to welcome my new website. This is a very different project from all the others I’ve created and I thought my solopreneur audience might find the process interesting and instructive.

This WooCommerce site gives me the opportunity to profile and sell three very large boxes of carvings that were collected in Canada’s Arctic. I reviewed the possibilities of selling them locally or on sites such as Ebay, but opted to try my hand at creating a website just for that purpose. What an interesting and enjoyable experience!

Please do visit the site and have a look around. (click the image)

Getting Started

What should this site be called? After some keyword research, I decided on the the URL arcticcarvings.com and purchased it through my Wealthy Affiliate Training Platform 

After researching other Woo Commerce sites, I learned  that I needed to provide pictures and details. I used my cell phone to photograph them and realized those results would never do. 

That’s when I did more research and discovered the Light Box. The results 

achieved with the light box made the expense and waiting for delivery worthwhile. I took at least three angles of each carving – including the carver’s signature on the bottom.  

Getting Organized

It became obvious that some inventory management was necessary, and I created a Google spreadsheet so that I had all the details in one place:

1. Inventory number
2. Carving Name
3. Dimensions – height, width, depth and weight
4. Carver’s Name
5. Price
6. Notes

The photographs needed to be saved and labeled by inventory number so that during the input stage, I would make no mistakes.

All this organizational work took several weeks to complete.

Website Setup

This was the easy part. Wealthy Affiliates sets up a new website in a matter of a couple of clicks. Next came choosing the Theme. I use Generate Press Pro and it provides an automatic WooCommerce module.

The logo was created in Canva and the choice of colour on the site was determined by the logo.

The product entry was easy to do because of the WooCommerce set up. For each product, you enter a full description as well as a short one, a main picture and a gallery of the other shots. Then you enter the price, dimensions and inventory number. Since there are 39 carvings, this took a while to complete.

The Last Hurdles

1. Setting up with PayPal to receive payments;
2. Setting up with Canada Post in order to automatically determine the cost of mailing;
3. Testing the purchase of one test item.

Now Comes the Real Work

The site needs to be listed in Google Analytics, Google Search Console and Bing so that the search engines will index it.

I will be working on the marketing of the site by posting to Pinterest, Facebook and LinkedIn. You can assist by sharing a link on any Social Media sites where you are active.

Your comments and observations about the site are welcome here. Always ready to hear others’ reactions.