Website for business

[geejay]

Hi all,
I am starting up my own part-time business and looking to include an e-commerce part and a portfolio on my website. I don't have the time to construct my own from Dreamweaver or Wordpress and wondered what others use. I am considering PhotoShelter, Weebly, Clckpic etc as I don't feel I can afford a custom made website yet. After a year or so i may be in a position to pay a designer or build my own but not yet. All experiences, thoughts and suggestions would be much appreciated.
Graham

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

For my sins I'm a website designer and if your looking for a easy solution then WP is the way forward. Once you've addressed a few basics on adding postings & pages its extremely easy to use and can be picked up within a morning.. I use a theme called photocrati thats a photo theme with a shopping cart already installed - all you then need is to add your PP details - its not free but I think is only about $50

I would recommend your own space & domain especially as this is going to be a business that will hopefully grow, plus its dirt cheap to set up

There are some free platforms you can use that work in a similar way to WP, but even with the free ones you'll have to invest some time in learning what to do, so you mite as well do it properly on your own site

[geejay]

Re: Website for business

Thanks Ian, I have three domain names and put up a temporary page with one first using Dreamweaver and then more recently using WP. I am conscious of the need for a site to be of high quality both for showing my portfolio to magazines, selling for stock and for clients hiring me for social photography where I would like them to be able to view and choose. I had my work first published in 1978 and have been using computers since about 1975 when all work involved programming! My preference would be to produce a simple site myself and then improve it as work develops. My web host has a couple of e-commerce packages included but they need a bit of coding to fit in. I think you have convinced me to go down the WP route, the only issue I have is that it is a 'live' system as far as I know and not really suitable for developing a site offline and then uploading.
Graham

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

I agree if your selling its got to look the part

Yes WP is a live site, but you could post up a holding page, then all the other pages save as a draft till your happy to publish them, many of my clients do this until I sign them off.

You can get plug-ins for PP shopping cart that are easy to install into the theme - I would recommend going down the paid route for the theme as they are better quality and most will also offer you free support should you get stuck - in fact if your blog is a photo blog the theme I mentioned have there own forum as well and the guys and other users are always happy to help

[geejay]

Re: Website for business

Hi Ian, I took your advice and purchased Photocrati last night. Spent a short time finding out how to get round Safari unpacking the zip file but got it sorted in the end. Had an error message about the file being too big but have contacted my web host for their advice. I also got something else working just using WP on my old website. I will change to one of my other names for the main site. I am also asking my web host for their advice on using my other names to point to specific pages or to have subdomains. I will trawl the internet for advice as well. many thanks again for your suggestions. I will let you know when it is up and running.
Graham

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

personally I would use URL forwarding on the other names straight to the site

Also as your hoping to turn this into a business I would install Statcounter - its a free plugin for WP and it will give you details on the traffic your site gets, but also the pages viewed, this is very handy when analysing whats gaining the most interest within the site, also will help you develop further content and information on that

Looking forward to seeing your blog

[celtex]

Re: Website for business

use Wp a lot (not for photography) I just use the WP Jetpack - is statcounter a better option? cheers
Ian

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

use Wp a lot (not for photography) I just use the WP Jetpack - is statcounter a better option? cheers
Ian

With Statcounter you can also import Google analytics as well so offering more data which can very useful. Also you can monitor multiple sites ( I have about 300 in one account ) - You can instal the plug in and see which one you prefer as WP will allow as many different reporting tools as you want - I would suggest trying it out and seeing if you like it. I don't know Jetpack

[geejay]

Re: Website for business

I have had some very useful responses on here and on other sites. I will now have to decide which one will give me the exposure I want in terms of quality and quantity and then consider my longer term aspirations and do I get a bespoke site built. I will publish the outcome on here in the next couple of weeks. Part of my problem has been my interests are nature and wildlife but my past sales have tended to be editorial and landscape. historically i have had no interest in social photography but friends and people I have met through their work, on seeing my nature and landscape work, have been offering me commissions to photograph their pets, children, events etc. I now need a site for social sales and stock images, probably using different domain names and possibly different sites. I will probably take Tigger's advice and have the names pointing to my site.
Graham

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

TBH a bespoke CMS would be a waste of money and a better way forward would be to buy a quality theme - if you want to tweak layouts or the way the site works theres plenty of WP developers that can code this for you still keeping all the functions within blog -

I've seen some very good photography themes and if you have the content to fill it check out Magazine themes as some of those are quite stunning and still under $100 - for example http://kami.bk-ninja.com/ - $58 !! you could not get a bespoke design like that for under 1k and theres loads more in Themeforest.net

As for you business plan / way forward, think niche !! its the only way to build a business within a field like photography

[geejay]

Re: Website for business

Thanks again Ian, niche is very much the way I have been thinking. I have in mind a local custom service offering high quality prints for pet photography. There seems to be the demand for it and I have already made some excellent links through word of mouth.
Graham

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

great idea pet photography is a good niche and you have lots of marketing possibilities using SM - if you don't have a decent portfolio offer to take some photos for free, and if they use FB maybe offer to throw a freebie photo in as well, nothing beats owners posting up pics of there pets and hopefully feeding likes to you

[LukeGrayson]

Re: Website for business

Hello,

I know this post is out of date but if you are looking at seeing the traffic coming into your site then Google Analytics is the way forward. I am an E-Commerce Analyst currently and I live in web Analytics programs day in day out. We use session cam, GA and some other tracking tools but the best free one is Google Analytics.

Any help or tips with Google let me know if you want and I would be happy to help in any way I can

Also I hope its working out for you

[Tigger]

Re: Website for business

TBH I prefer Statcounter as you can view data across more than one site all within the same login page, plus should you want input analytics data