Trollbeads Trail – Complete e-Commerce site with shopping cart all in WordPress
June 19, 2009 by admin
Filed under Advertising, Client Websites, Internet Marketing, News, Search Engines
Smart small business professionals see the opportunity of being able to market and sell on the internet. Your business can have a dialog with current and potential customers 24/7/365. Of course the challenge is being noticed with all the competition on the web today. Having your website rank high enough with general search terms to actually get traffic that will convert to customers is a challenge. And if your website does not place well in organic search your website investment and monthly site costs can be sunk. The big retailers have entire IT departments to constantly do that, but what chance do small businesses have?
A very good chance with the right platform. We know that blogs can get powerful search attention, so I use WordPress as the right platform for an entire website. Amazon or Walmart and other big retail business can’t, but WordPress scales just right for small business owners. Due to their underlying program structure blogs are well recognized by search engines, so my approach has become to use a blog’s program structure for an entire website … with outstanding search marketing results.
Such was the direction a few weeks ago when I was asked to develop a new website for a jewelry and gift shop owner who has been a Trollbeads retailer for over a year with strong store sales. She wanted a site that she could manage and easily add content to, that would meet the requirements of the US Trollbeads distributor, have a complete online shopping cart system and most importantly would have a good chance of high search engine rank and resulting sales increase. Well yesterday the site was approved by the Trollbeads distributor and the site owner was able to make it live on the internet. Introducing … TrollbeadsTrail, the newest of Trollbeads retailer websites.
- trollbeadstrail.com
TrollbeadsTrail is an all WordPress website, even the catalog shopping cart system. I had used ZenCart in the past but wanted a catalog that would share all the theme elements of the website, so I used WP e-Commerce. In addition to shopping cart, dynamic page features, a blog with threaded comments and the rest of the features expected of a Web 2.0 website, it also includes two way Twitter account integration and more social media incorporation. All on one domain, on the same host. The operationg cost of the website with the cart is less than $25.00 a month Much less than the price of third party shopping carts like GoDaddy’s low cost shopping cart.
Plus it looks good! Please take a look and leave a comment if you wish. Anyone else want a website with a complete integrated shopping cart and excellent search page placement? The low cost could surprise you. Particularly in relationship to the great returns,
Hi Marc;
Nice implementation of WordPress but I can’t figure out how you’ve integrated the WP ECommerce plug-in. I do some work with Louise over at Trollbeads Gallery and was interested to see how you used WP.
Thanks.
Thank you Peter, I appreciate that. There is some work yet to do as the site progresses.
As it’s a plugin, WP e-Commerce integrates pretty well into WP inheriting a lot the css of the active theme. The cart areas/functions also have their own css. Like any cart system it is not simple and the documentation/support may seem a little rough compared to some like ZenCart or OS Commerce. But it works, becomes part of WP and it all does keep moving in the right direction with upgrades and bug fixes.
Marc, very good looking site. it looks like a great way for independent retailers with a real special story to tell to get their story told verry attractively, and on a platform that will generate traffic organically. Thanks for the tip.