I know how to design websites and maintain the content for several paying clients. I used to have my own website which people could order from directly via Paypal/credit or debit cards. I closed it when I had to move away from doing my craft work when life got too busy. Now things are quieter, and I have restarted my Folksy shop, I also began setting up a new website but after a while began to wonder what benefits this would bring over and above my Folksy shop. Any thoughts?
Here’s some:
- Owning your audience
- You choose your product categories
- Having the functionality you need
- Having the visibility you need
- Having multiple payment options
- Having the ability to offer subscriptions
- Having abandoned cart functionality
- Integrated newsletter signup
- Ranking better on search engines
- Better stock management functionality
- Back in stock email notification functionality
- Reporting tools
- App integration
- Video functionality
- Proper search functionality
- Integrated blog
- A category image that you choose instead of the image of the first item that you list in that category!
- Not being drowned out by a mass of other sellers
That’s just a few to get you started.
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Well that’s telling me! Great points Poppy. Thanks for responding. A lot to think about.
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I’m in the process of nurturing my own website at the moment. It’s more of a portfolio website at this point. It doesn’t have ecommerce functionality yet. I direct to Folksy for sales. But after a long hard slog, I am starting to get some traction so for all the reasons @PoppyKayDesigns has mentioned, I’m seriously considering taking the plunge and adding a shopping cart.
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I have my own websites. Two of them. And I do OK with sales. Much better than here.
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Thanks for your response Chris. Poppy has convinced me I should get a website back up again. I just used Paypal last time and added individual products to the Paypal account on an individual basis. This was OK but with a growing number of products it became very time intensive. I did, however, also offer a direct delivery service option via the website to customers in the closest postcode areas. This meant physically driving to their homes or offices but I sold more this way than via Folksy and I calculated the petrol cost worked out a bit cheaper than the postage. I’m old enough to get a bus pass now so I could probably get to most of these addresses for free. It’s also good fun doing it this way but obviously restricts the available customer base quite a bit.
Chris
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Hi Maddie. Thanks for your reply. Yours and those from other crafters have now convinced me I should get on with rebuilding my website.
I’ve had a website for years and it’s never worked, I’ve rarely had a sale! At the same time I’ve always had at least 2 other selling sites, like Folksy running as well and my my main income of craft fairs and galleries. I used to hav a fully functioning one, anyone could buy from anywhere but once the German packaging came in and then Brexit, I wasn’t IT competent enough to figure out how to just restrict to the UK and really, I didn’t try that hard, as for the previous 10 years it hadn’t been worth it at all. So now it’s just a showcase and though it’s on my business card that is given out everywhere and with every sale, its a very odd person wants anything from it - if they do, they can use the contact page and I talk to them directly via email, use paypal to pay and that way, I know they’re in England, Scotland or Wales.
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Hi Silvana. Thanks for your reply. I am wondering if part of the problem with the website might be that if you are looking at a product, there doesn’t seem to be any way of buying it directly from the product page. There is a general reference to Folksy near the bottom of the Home page but wouldn’t it be better if each product on the website contained a link to its page in Folksy. Or am I missing something here.
I own a number of ecommerce websites and they are very successful.
For a start, wouldn’t know how! However that doesn’t matter, the stock on there is more generic, I do those designs quite often and they’re likely be in the stock for craft fairs, so it’s now just a showcase and a signpost elsewhere - for more of my designs not necessarily what they see on the website. I sell on 2 online shops with completely different stock (about 300 pieces) with more one-offs and then there’s more different ones that I take out to the craft fairs and galleries. To keep tabs on so many designs in different places and keep removing/altering once one gets sold would be more than a full time job. This is how it’s evolved over nearly 20 years, it wasn’t always like this but because it wasn’t working as a full shopping basket facility with worldwide access, I felt my time was better used in places that were more productive and more easily managed. You probably don’t get it as you’re an IT person, I’m definitely not, I’m a front-end research specialist (or was) and we look at things from a totally different persepective, so I prefer to work on things I can do and more effective use of my time - it does no harm for it to sit there but if I knew then what I know now, I never would’ve got one in the first place. It’s best to play to your strengths and in my case, IT is not it. I’m best actually dealing with real-life people in person, craft fairs are where I sell 90% of my stock and I enjoy it. I work on the premise that if I don’t enjoy it, I don’t do it - and I’m at that stage in my life that I can do that.
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I understand entirely, Silvana. We all need to play to our greatest strengths and it would be a very dull world if they were all the same.
I have my own web site and mirror what is for sale here with it. As some have said it means I have more control over it generally but to keep life simple everything links to the Folksy store.
This worked well when I moved here from another platform - just updated the links.
Hy Steven
Thanks for your response. This also looked to me the easiest way to handle things. On the previous website I had set up for my craft sales, I did create a separate Paypal system so that sales could come either via Folksy or directly via the website. But now, although I can see that there are benefits to having a website, I propose to use Folksy’s in-built payment handling system, so I will just link the appearance of the product on the website to its appearance on Folksy and have all the payment processing organised from there.
Chris