E-Commerce Adventure 2012
I've wanted to create an e-commerce site for awhile, but when I first started out, I couldn't fathom the difficulty of programming a website (even if made from a template). Thus, here is a running journal of my progress. Ahem...the journey of a programmer who doesn't really program:
December 2011:
Began working on osCommerce (newest build), but it was so buggy that I couldn't even get into the installation portion. I downloaded an older version and figured out how to fix the installation part, but there were admin panel errors that wouldn't go away. Frustrated, I trashed the entire project and vowed to begin anew in 2012.
January 2012:
Started to research other open source e-commerce sites in mid-January. I was mostly impressed with the amount of features within Prestashop, so I tried to download that. The program had over 5,000 files and took forever to unzip! Also, the store did not install properly. I tried an autoinstaller on my web server, but there were errors - also ended up trashing Prestashop. I tried Magento (super clean design, as I saw on their website) and it was the first program that worked. Funnily enough, I found out later that where I installed the site and where I thought I installed the site...did not coincide - which was probably one reason Prestashop did not work properly. Here are some updates:
I finished the frontend design for the website!!! It's super simple, but clean - pretty good for not knowing PHP (and most programming languages). I spent 1/3 of the month tweaking the look and feel of the website (adding content for most of the pages), 1/3 of the month updating the product catalog, and 1/3 of the month scouring forums for hints on managing the ordering system. At first, I tested the ordering system using Paypal Sandbox, but I wasn't able to log in from the site, so I used a real-time solution instead. I created a test product worth $0.01 and bought the item so that I could go through the entire process from the customer's perspective. After figuring out where to find email templates, I edited them and re-tested the email functions. Though the customer sales emails didn't work at first, another few days of scavenging led me to the solution (hint: use customer service emails hosted by one's own domain). March will be a month of SEO implementation and Internet marketing madness. I'm also looking forward to populating my product inventory with more goodies =D...and documenting the entire process of growth.
Looking back, Magento is not the most intuitive e-commerce solution out there, but it surely has the cleanest interface that I've seen thus far. While setting up my page, I had problems with email messaging and finding out where each of the files were located, among other basic necessities.
March 2012:
Finally finished the website and launched the SEO campaign. At the very beginning, my long-tailed keywords (many of them) reached #1 on Google. Then, I realized that my URLs weren't optimized (too long, not descriptive enough), so I remade them without a 301 redirect. Bad move. I lost some of the link juice, so Google got confused. My links disappeared from Google and I had to re-crawl all the new links I made. After some time, I went from not being in the top 100 of Google to becoming part of the top 10. I also launched a PPC campaign that was mildly successful this month. The day I got my first order, I was ecstatic...
April 2012 & May 2012:
However, amidst the link-building and funnery, I disappeared for a bit. My links hovered around the top 10, but I haven't been able to go up in rank, due to my disappearance from the SEO-sphere. I almost crashed my server uploading about 3000 items onto the database (and making small revisions). Not sure what to do now to elevate my main keywords to the top of Google, but I will go full force back into SEO starting in June. My goal is to get even more sales than the inaugural month.
June - December 2012:
During this time, I was more involved in a few other entrepreneurship projects, so I wasn't able to spend as much time in SEO. Sales jumped quite a bit in the middle of the summer, but dipped back down during the fall. I can think of a few email campaigns that will allow the sales to increase, but that will have to wait until 2013. As of December 2, I have my main keywords on the front page of Google - many of them are in the top 5 - I'm so ecstatic!
There was one point during the summer that I modified the code a bit and killed my site. I had to pay $15 to restore the entire site... Scary.
Right now, I have another e-commerce project in the works, but I have to code it using HTML/CSS, and this is in addition to the myriad of start-up projects I have on the side. For now, I will leave this entry as a journal of experiments/failures regarding my first e-commerce venture in 2012, so I can revisit this the next time I decide to build an e-commerce website.
December 2011:
Began working on osCommerce (newest build), but it was so buggy that I couldn't even get into the installation portion. I downloaded an older version and figured out how to fix the installation part, but there were admin panel errors that wouldn't go away. Frustrated, I trashed the entire project and vowed to begin anew in 2012.
January 2012:
Started to research other open source e-commerce sites in mid-January. I was mostly impressed with the amount of features within Prestashop, so I tried to download that. The program had over 5,000 files and took forever to unzip! Also, the store did not install properly. I tried an autoinstaller on my web server, but there were errors - also ended up trashing Prestashop. I tried Magento (super clean design, as I saw on their website) and it was the first program that worked. Funnily enough, I found out later that where I installed the site and where I thought I installed the site...did not coincide - which was probably one reason Prestashop did not work properly. Here are some updates:
- 1/24: Got familiar with the site and tested out the product page. Began refining the "Contact Us" link.
- 1/25: Completed the "Contact Us" form (for the time being)...and it works =D...but it took 1-2 hours to figure out. Designed a simple logo and favicon (HAAAA, awesome). Revised the header and footer.
- 1/29: I did a full restore of the site (started from scratch). It was strange because my address had a subdomain that I had not set...and it was superannoying. Example: mysite.com/default.
- 1/31: Good progress made today (2 hours of work)! Loaded products into my catalog with descriptions (to be revised later). Navigation (top navigation bar and site map) was automatically created when stock inventory was set to 1.
I finished the frontend design for the website!!! It's super simple, but clean - pretty good for not knowing PHP (and most programming languages). I spent 1/3 of the month tweaking the look and feel of the website (adding content for most of the pages), 1/3 of the month updating the product catalog, and 1/3 of the month scouring forums for hints on managing the ordering system. At first, I tested the ordering system using Paypal Sandbox, but I wasn't able to log in from the site, so I used a real-time solution instead. I created a test product worth $0.01 and bought the item so that I could go through the entire process from the customer's perspective. After figuring out where to find email templates, I edited them and re-tested the email functions. Though the customer sales emails didn't work at first, another few days of scavenging led me to the solution (hint: use customer service emails hosted by one's own domain). March will be a month of SEO implementation and Internet marketing madness. I'm also looking forward to populating my product inventory with more goodies =D...and documenting the entire process of growth.
Looking back, Magento is not the most intuitive e-commerce solution out there, but it surely has the cleanest interface that I've seen thus far. While setting up my page, I had problems with email messaging and finding out where each of the files were located, among other basic necessities.
March 2012:
Finally finished the website and launched the SEO campaign. At the very beginning, my long-tailed keywords (many of them) reached #1 on Google. Then, I realized that my URLs weren't optimized (too long, not descriptive enough), so I remade them without a 301 redirect. Bad move. I lost some of the link juice, so Google got confused. My links disappeared from Google and I had to re-crawl all the new links I made. After some time, I went from not being in the top 100 of Google to becoming part of the top 10. I also launched a PPC campaign that was mildly successful this month. The day I got my first order, I was ecstatic...
April 2012 & May 2012:
However, amidst the link-building and funnery, I disappeared for a bit. My links hovered around the top 10, but I haven't been able to go up in rank, due to my disappearance from the SEO-sphere. I almost crashed my server uploading about 3000 items onto the database (and making small revisions). Not sure what to do now to elevate my main keywords to the top of Google, but I will go full force back into SEO starting in June. My goal is to get even more sales than the inaugural month.
June - December 2012:
During this time, I was more involved in a few other entrepreneurship projects, so I wasn't able to spend as much time in SEO. Sales jumped quite a bit in the middle of the summer, but dipped back down during the fall. I can think of a few email campaigns that will allow the sales to increase, but that will have to wait until 2013. As of December 2, I have my main keywords on the front page of Google - many of them are in the top 5 - I'm so ecstatic!
There was one point during the summer that I modified the code a bit and killed my site. I had to pay $15 to restore the entire site... Scary.
Right now, I have another e-commerce project in the works, but I have to code it using HTML/CSS, and this is in addition to the myriad of start-up projects I have on the side. For now, I will leave this entry as a journal of experiments/failures regarding my first e-commerce venture in 2012, so I can revisit this the next time I decide to build an e-commerce website.
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