Hobby & Craft Forums

Design & Quickness VS Usability, Professionalism and Reliability.

I became interested to know why so many craft sites are lacking the professional and trust factor, I don’t mean to be rude as there are some really nice sites out there. (And on here) However in my opinion, design and relative quickness is actually being undermined by paypal links and buttons.

The most important thing should be to inspire customers and at the same time make sales, now design will keep a visitor interested for a certain amount of time, however being able to view your images clearly with tried and tested layouts and descriptions will keep them coming back for more.

Lets start with hosting, gone are the days where you have to spend £10 per month on hosting for a single site, at Interlogy (UK) (http://www.interlogy.co.uk/hosting/plans.html) you can get full CPanel hosting backed by a 99.9% uptime guarantee from as little as £2.99 per month or £29 per year. Some hosting plans offer low prices and then at a later date when you try to install software you find that you have no databases, no easy installation installer, no support and a host that doesn’t really care about you or your site. So why is http://www.interlogy.co.uk so different? Well as we specialise in ecommerce hosting, services and solutions we ensure no matter what plan you are on, you have the neccercery tools to install and run an ecommerce store or website.

So you have your hosting, that’s great but now you need an online shop, so what are the options available to you…

Website Builder Software…
This is what can only be describes as the lazy and cheep option, there are many free website builder software and at least one is usually available through hosting providers. They offer the ability to create a website easily without needing to learn complicated HTML and CSS. The only problem is that they do not always look like a professional ecommerce store and have the consumer usability factor.

Hosted Ecommerce Solutions…
I’m not talking about the ecommerce solutions we provide at Interlogy (UK) (http://www.interlogy.co.uk/solutions). More the sites that provide you with a fantastic site for £30 a month and then you decided you can’t move your domain, site or customer records when you need or want to. So if you close your account then you need to redo your site from scratch and loose potential customers in the process, that’s if they let you have your domain name back. (more on keeping your domain name safe later)

Open Source Ecommerce Cart…
So what is an open source cart? Well in simple language it is a professional ecommerce cart that doesn’t coast any money to buy or lease. There are several available such as OpenCart, Prestashop, Cubecart V3 and Zen Cart (Interlogy cart of choice)

Ok so they do take a bit of learning and I won’t lie by saying you create your online store in a day; however they have forums full of helpful posts and members, also Interlogy (http://www.interlogy.co.uk/solutions) offer a hold your hand service to all it’s hosting clients as well as provide full ecommerce solutions and services that will have your site up and running quickly as well as offering after sales support to all.

So what are the main benefits of using an ecommerce cart? The ability to have a proper checkout process, ability to cross sell products, SEO, Image insertion and viewing are to name just a few advantages as well as having the ability to use a multitude of payment processors including Paypal.

Interlogy also offer a range of Ecommerce services (http://www.interlogy.co.uk/services) to help you make the most of your ecommerce cart, so there is still no need to learn HTML and CSS, making a great site achievable for those of all abilities and it doesn’t need to cost a fortune.

Domain Names…
Above I mentioned some dishonest companies keep your domain name when you leave them, some even register their clients domains in their company name. That is why we suggest you keep your domains and hosting with two separate companies and then forward your domain name to your hosting account.

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So when it the best time to move away from your current system and to a more professional and reliable one? There is no time like the present, however if your current site is not getting many or any sales then it’s time to look at why that is? You can showcase your site on here and get reviews from other members, or ask friends and family, however make sure you are getting honest answers and not having nice comments to spare your feelings.

If you would like a free site appraisal or to discuss your options and requirements then please feel free to contact out support team at http://www.interlogy.co.uk/support or by live help which is available on any page of our site.

It's true! you have a lot of butt ugly websites out there, especially jewelry websites, with a lot of advertising on them.
but a lot of people dont know how to work with html or even beter , a simple scripting language like php, with thout you can make a whole webshop of your own

I'm currently about to up my game with my web site. At the moment I use blogger which is great on one level in that it is free and since its mainly about creating inspiration rather than selling directly the ability to regularly update in and 'engage' with my audience is good.

However, as I say I want to up my game, so this is very interesting reading - thank you

Lighthousegirl wrote:I'm currently about to up my game with my web site. At the moment I use blogger which is great on one level in that it is free and since its mainly about creating inspiration rather than selling directly the ability to regularly update in and 'engage' with my audience is good.

However, as I say I want to up my game, so this is very interesting reading - thank you

Best of luck, if you need any help and advice just let me know,

Shane