July marks the seventh anniversary of Olympic Orchids
perfumes, and it is only fitting that there should be an update of the online
store that has been essentially the same since 2010. A couple of years ago I
did make a halfhearted attempt to design a new website on Shopify, but it never
really took off, partly because I never put all of my products on it, and partly
because Shopify is not the best platform to use. No need to go into its
shortcomings. Website design and implementation has been taking most of my time
for the past week. Such is the life of a perfumer who doesn't outsource anything.
It turned out that I was able stay with my primary web
hosting company and design an entirely new website using a Wordpress front end
and a Woocommerce infrastructure. The URL will stay the same. It’s a nice combination, and extremely easy
to use. I have re-photographed almost all of my products, put them up on the e-store
with pull-down menus for sizes, shipping options, and other attributes, added a
few new products, and added some cool new features. For example, there’s now a
system for customers to receive points for their purchases and redeem them for
discounts or free products. If this website works well, I will discontinue the
Shopify site and consolidate everything on one e-store. This will be a lot less
confusing for everyone. For continuity, I've tried to keep some of the original graphics, but everything is cleaned up.
The hardest part has been completed, but I know there will
be lots of ongoing tweaks and corrections as people use the website. I'll also continue to add new features and graphics. Right now it's pretty bare-bones.
I am tentatively planning on the new website going live this
Wednesday, July 5, and will need some people to test it. I added an almost-free
test product for the first 10 people who are willing to go through the entire
cart, checkout, and ordering procedure on an untested website, so look for this
to appear next week. There will also be a seventh anniversary discount via a “coupon”
that can be added at checkout. I’ll give people the coupon code in my July
newsletter, on this blog, and on Facebook.
I hope people will like the remodel.
[All photos are mine]
Posts
Happy Anniversary!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Nelle25! It's been an amazing journey!
DeleteIt looks really good, congratulations
ReplyDeleteFrederic, the new perfume website is not up yet, as far as I know, but it will look good!
Deletesorry for my English ;-)
DeleteLooking forward to the new website, I'm sure it'll look great :) The reward system sounds neat as well!
ReplyDeleteTarena, I think the reward system is going to be fun.
DeleteCongratulations! Looking forward to trying it out!
ReplyDeleteTriniti, Thanks! Try the URL on Wednesday afternoon and with luck the new site should be live.
DeleteHappy Anniversary! Excited to see the new website design.
ReplyDeleteAnne, thank you! And thanks for your feedback!
Delete