# General Business Category > Business Online Forum >  Website, from zero to hero

## Pap_sak

A couple of weeks ago I decided to start a darts equipment specific website. It’s more an experiment than anything else, but would be interested if people in SA were willing to start spending on Internet sales yet. It’s not a full “e-commerce” solution; you still need to login and then transfer/deposit funds before shipping…you can’t just tap in your visa number. And it’s not a bespoke website, just one of the freebee’s, but one that I prefer over some others. 

Although this is an “experimental” site, I have all the stock, and when funds clear, I will be posting the stock – and yes, a few thousand bucks was spent on stock.

What I would like from interested parties…guys that are thinking of doing it/ have done it:

*Nice, objective criticisms*. Please don’t worry about hurting my feelings, the blunter the better. But also please give me a solution, if possible, but not mandatory!

*Ideas.* There are things I can do, and things I can’t – but all would be appreciated. For instance, my prices are good (with free postage), but not discounted by a huge amount. Would this put you off, or would you just be happy to find decent service at a price slightly cheaper than you local shop – that probably wouldn’t have them in stock anyway?

I will post progress on the project, with updates on site visits and sales, if any! Only if there is interest, of course.

At the moment site is up, has been indexed by google but not showing yet. Has been submited to ananzi and yahoo - will submit to new directories next week, any you sugest? More products to go up next week.

almost forgot website is http://www.dartsdirect.co.za

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## Dave A

Success for a niche site like this is probably going to heavily reliant on search engine traffic. Have you done the keyword research that would bring this traffic your way?

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## Pap_sak

I haven't done any research yet - but would have thought that ones I do use would kind of cover it. I read somewhere that google do not rate meta keywords much these days (if at all)  - although still put them in, of course!

But you are right, will be trying to get one of the top three spots for the searches: darts za and darts equipment za. I wouldn't have thought it would be too hard - but we will see.

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## Dave A

That's what had me wondering. The domain name can have quite an impact on search performance. While your domain name is good, you might identify some better ones after you've done the keyword research.

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## tonyflanigan

Hey there. we generally get pretty good results for our sites, well, Terry does, as she does the SEO for us. Same as you we have heard that Google does not rely on meta info much, but we still insert it, and do relevancy checks etc. What we have noticed is that content, good solid relevant content does work. 

Another thing, no one (that we have come across yet) uses za in a search term. Target South Africa, and don't assume people will use the 'Pages fron South Africa' option on Google.

As far as Search Engines go, Google is King. We have submitted to the local search engines but have NEVER had traffic from them. Bing is coming up very nicely, and is worth looking at.

That's all right off the top of my head, if you need me to ramble more, give me a shout.

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## Pap_sak

As you say Tony, content is king. Will be working on the site tommorrow, adding a few more products that have arrived plus another page. The vesion of cubecart v3 is not the best for SEO - but then this is a small specific website and I would not have thought it would be too hard to become top in my chosen keywords. Need to get more inbound links and a few going out as well...

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## Pap_sak

Success! 8th from the top (in google) for both darts za and darts equipment za.

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## Dave A

:Thumbup:

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## Pap_sak

First order today, probably should more call it an inquiry - it is a dart not on our website, but will see if it converts to a sale - unfortunately only be in the country in a couple of weeks.

Anyway, unique visits for the month stand at 57 (last month - the first month, 23) so creeping up nicely. Have also revamped http://www.maxsport.co.za using wordpress, very quick and easy to use - need to get more content up ASAP. I think for a small business that would like to update their own website and not spend a fortune doing it wordpress is the way to go.

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## garthu

Hey Pap Sak

Done nicely with word press!! Like it  a lot.

Chuck in my 2 cents. I dont know what darts are??? But soccer boots i do.....

In the landing page "soccer boots" is not mentioned, boots yes but not soccer boots. If content is king then should you not consider soccer boots, or athletic boots, track boots etc. If i was to google then i would google IE "soccer boots" for my son.

Just constructive please, if i a have missed the boat, (which i normally do born in Zim  :Big Grin: ) then so be it. Good luck with a great site

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## Pap_sak

> Hey Pap Sak
> 
> Done nicely with word press!! Like it  a lot.
> 
> Chuck in my 2 cents. I dont know what darts are??? But soccer boots i do.....
> 
> In the landing page "soccer boots" is not mentioned, boots yes but not soccer boots. If content is king then should you not consider soccer boots, or athletic boots, track boots etc. If i was to google then i would google IE "soccer boots" for my son.
> 
> Just constructive please, if i a have missed the boat, (which i normally do born in Zim ) then so be it. Good luck with a great site


Yup, you are right Garthu - trying to get the "home" page (which uploads the latest content), to my "about page", which is static - and I can load it with keywords - might have to add a contact page if it gets too long.

My wife knows, she has www.321design.co.za, but now I am being "man with map", and not asking for directions... :Big Grin:

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## Pap_sak

First sale done!

The grand sum of R87. Good thing I have a few other things in the burner! Will now start playing with a few prices, at the moment they are the same as in store, they might need to be tweaked a wee bit down to start seeing steady sales.

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## Dave A

Where there's one, there's more.



> The grand sum of R87. Good thing I have a few other things in the burner!


 :Rofl: 

At least it's the sort of thing you can develop part-time. Aren't you glad you didn't bet the farm and give up your day-job?  :Wink:

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## Dave U

Site looks nice.  Some SEO tips:

Is it possible to remove the phrase "Powered by CubeCart" from your page titles?  It's a waste of title words.  That leads me to a more general problem: shorter titles are better.  Here's the title for one of your product pages:

_Dartsdirect : : Darts, Flights, Shafts, Dart accessories and equipment from Harrows and Datadart - Harrows Assassin (Powered by CubeCart)._

Now, in this case, you may hope to get some long tail traffic from people searching for the actual name of the product, Harrows Assassin.  So ensure that's the first word in your title and strip out some of the other words when it comes to products pages.  E.g. someone may search for "Harrows Assassin Dart", so definitely keep dart in the title.  But can you imagine someone searching for "Harrows Assassin Equipment"?  I do realise that there may be limitations in the software you're using, which force you to keep long titles.

Since your site is very niche, you can get very far with some proper on-site optimisation.  That, combined with some inbound links, will result in a very good search engine placement.

Please let us know if you tried changing your titles and if it had positive results.

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Pap_sak (04-May-10)

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## Dave U

I had another look.  Here's another SEO tip:

The headings on your pages are not actual headings.  For example, this is the heading your one of your product pages:

<p class="txtContentTitle"><strong>Harrows Assassin</strong></p>

Now, even though this gives the appearance to users of being a heading, search engines don't know.  You need to use proper heading tags (<h1>, <h2>, etc.) before search engines will know that it's a heading and therefore very important.

Once again, some might say that inbound links are more important, but especially for a niche site you can get a lot of mileage out of these kinds of optimisations.

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Pap_sak (04-May-10)

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## Dave U

One more tip:

Hopefully your software has some kind of "Friendly URL" facility.  Instead of using http://www.dartsdirect.co.za/index.p...od&productId=5 as a product page URL, it should be http://www.dartsdirect.co.za/Harrows-Assassin, for example.  In my experience, google does give some weight to keywords in URLs.

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## Pap_sak

Cheers for those comments dave's.

Dave U - unfortunatly cubecart is not very seo friendly and cannot do anything about the unfriendly URL's. I have to pay to remove the (powered buy Cubecart) - at the moment I am still very much trying it out. Darts and dart equipment are the main keywords I am looking at hitting, with a minor in Harrows! Searching in google (za) it seems to have worked or at least I am up there or thereabouts. I was very interested in your comments about headers - I have always just used font size and not <h1>, will start to do so in future on other sites, unfortunatly this backend does not all that.

There will be more sites, next one I want to experiment with is wordpress with the shopping cart plug in.

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## FreelanceZA

Hey Pap_Sak

Well done! I had a look at your maxsport.co.za website. You have a good selection of products. Have you thought about making it easier for your shoppers to purchase via your website?

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## Pap_sak

> Hey Pap_Sak
> 
> Well done! I had a look at your maxsport.co.za website. You have a good selection of products. Have you thought about making it easier for your shoppers to purchase via your website?


At the moment I am just playing around - but the idea is the maxsport website is just for the shops, highlighting products that I feel are good value..but then would link to the direct websites for specific sports and for people to buy online.

I have been pretty lazy latley, but will hopefully get more up this week...

Still not sure if one "big" website is better than many small - sports specific websites - is better. I settled on the latter - any ideas?

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## Dave A

> Still not sure if one "big" website is better than many small - sports specific websites - is better.


Given the cost of an extra domain, why not do both?

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## FreelanceZA

Pap_sak, I see where you are going with it. Many small -sport specific websites- is an option, it is very time consuming to maintain, re: updating catalogs, maintaining databases, etc.

I would have one big sports website that caters for all sports, that way I'll only have one website to maintain and people will only have to remember one website url for all their sporting needs. I'm just thinking of a parent that has 3 kids, one playing soccer, one darts and the other ballet, for example. This parent will have to remember all 3 different urls when shopping around for sports equipment.

Look at Sportsmans Warehouse, they have everything under one roof, why not implement that as an online business.

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## Pap_sak

Cheers dave and freelance

the darts direct was a prototype (sp?) and, on the whole, seems to get me on most darts related searches ahead of sportsmans, but not all, for instance just the word darts. But dart flights, equipment ect I do pretty well.

The problem is, of course, if I have one item that then needs to be uploaded/ and maintained on three/four websites...for instance thermal/compression undergarments could be on the rugby/cricket/running/hockey website.

Of course, in the future, I will update one database, that then feeds to 10 or so smaller websites....ok, wishful thinking - but could happen lol...(if I wasn't such a lazy git it probably could happen now)

Another plus side is that you have many small, niche sites, that do well in google pointing to each other, which should be a major plus in googles eyes.

It is a tough one, as I could also make lots of arguments for one strong site. But that site would need to be "better" (in programming) than lots of smaller, free, of the shelf offerings than I am putting together, so at the end of the day it does come down to cash as well.

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## Pap_sak

Second sale today, R140 + postage - I am a quick learner, lol

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## Dave A

I've been thinking about what are the issues in the big vs many small website contest. Perhaps it comes down to branding vs SEO.

A single big site stands a better chance of building brand awareness and you can build a following that goes "buying sports equipment online? Go to this site" as opposed to searching with Google which may well favour the more targetted niche site.

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## Pap_sak

> I've been thinking about what are the issues in the big vs many small website contest. Perhaps it comes down to branding vs SEO.
> 
> A single big site stands a better chance of building brand awareness and you can build a following that goes "buying sports equipment online? Go to this site" as opposed to searching with Google which may well favour the more targetted niche site.


Very true. For the branding I have tried keeping the names to the same format. So there will be hockeydirect, dartsdirect, shoesdirect....which helps to a certain extent. 

I think they are better (on the whole) for SEO side, as everything is geared for a few keywords. The big downside, of course, is not getting cross over sales...someone comes on to the dart website but is also interested in a hockey stick. What I might try do is duplicating products on one other website, then just seeing in a year or so what gets the most visits and maybe dumping the small sites.

Had my first return customer yesterday  :Smile:

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## IanF

Pap sak
Your websites got me going and now am ready to launch our own site with die cut paper products like cup cake wrappers. We are busy getting the production side worked out and need to start the website. 
Some questions if you have the time. I see hetzner who hosts my site offers osCommerce Shopping Cart and ZenCart Shopping Cart which are open source shopping carts did you look at the open source shopping carts before you chose cubecart. 
Anyway I will keep you guys informed of how this goes in a new thread when the website is ready to go. :Beta1:

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## Mark Atkinson

Very interesting. Had a look at the darts and the maxsports sites. 

Not bad at all. I definitely think that Cubecart thing isn't the way to go though. It looks like it's more of a mission to use than it is helpful. 

For a lot of our sites we use Joomla! With thousands of extensions and a fantastic support forum with over 300000 members, you can't go wrong!  :Smile:  Wordpress is great too, but we tend to just use it for sites containing blogs, as this is what it was primarily built for!  :Smile:  The max sports site is pretty cool looking though!

Soon we'll be launching our own e-commerce site which deals with t-shirts that are very niche-based.  Will let you guys know when it comes into fruition.  :Big Grin:  

I think you will really struggle if you decide to build a bigger site encompassing all the products because you will have far more competition then and even if your page does rank somewhere on the first 3 pages, an unrecognised name is far less likely to convert viewers to buyers than one of the bigger e-commerce sites would be.  :Frown: 

You see, even with an unoptimized (for SEO) site, you're still managing to rank on the longer tail traffic.  If you optimize your site well enough, that ranking will jump up, I'm sure of it. 

Convert all your niche based sites into one that isn't niche-focused, and you're going to have a problem.  The problem can be rectified by spending a lot of time on internet marketing and social networking, in order to get the bigger site up the ranking. It will take a lot more effort than you're having to put in for your niche sites though. 

Glad to see you're continuously working on it!  :Smile:  Congrats on your first few customers!

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## tonyflanigan

@Ian. Imho, osCommerce is the route to take. Until very recently Zen was the Open Source e-commerce platform of choice, but the guys at osCommerce have really pulled their fingers out and are doing some great stuff. Apart from that, I find working the osComm backend easier, and more intuitive than Zen.

@Mark. Some great insights, thanks. I must say that I personally don't dig the Joomla thing too much. Way back when, I started messing with Joomla and Wordpress round about the same time, and for some reason had a mental block with Joomla. Figures can prove anything, depending on how they're used, and right off I need to throw in that Wordpress has had more core downloads than Joomla. WP is not only a blogging platform, although that was its main reason for creation. It is also an incredible cms.

Regarding the size and scope of an e-commerce solution, yes, niche targetting is the way to go. Fortunately Ian is there already.

And in closing (apologies Mark, I am a Wordpress fan. Can't help it.), Wordpress powered sites outperform Joomla with the search engines.

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## Pap_sak

> Pap sak
> Your websites got me going and now am ready to launch our own site with die cut paper products like cup cake wrappers. We are busy getting the production side worked out and need to start the website. 
> Some questions if you have the time. I see hetzner who hosts my site offers osCommerce Shopping Cart and ZenCart Shopping Cart which are open source shopping carts did you look at the open source shopping carts before you chose cubecart. 
> Anyway I will keep you guys informed of how this goes in a new thread when the website is ready to go.


Hi Ian - how was the 10K?

I did look at oscom and zen cart - and found that on default settings that cubecart was the best without having to fiddle too much. I think there are a lot less cubcart sites around, so although not unique, it looks at least a little more bespoke. Standard os com sites are a dime a dozen. Both os com and cubecart are more powerfull than cubecart but you then really need to spend time/or money to get something that looks unique, imo.

I am still not sure which way to go on the sports sites, lots of small vs one big one (besides the SEO side, one big one makes more sense - and wondering if one big site makes it's own "mass" as such), have been working on a site www.sportdirect.co.za as an experiment, just getting lot's of content up and not bothering too much on the finer points...  :Cool: 

I still like cubcart, am using the free version 3, the upgrade to vs 4 is $180 as is much better for seo, so am considering it - need to see how easy it is to upgrade though.

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## IanF

> Hi Ian - how was the 10K?
> 
> I did look at oscom and zen cart - and found that on default settings that cubecart was the best without having to fiddle too much. I think there are a lot less cubcart sites around, so although not unique, it looks at least a little more bespoke. Standard os com sites are a dime a dozen. Both os com and cubecart are more powerfull than cubecart but you then really need to spend time/or money to get something that looks unique, imo.


Papsak
10k was fine, the shoes are a bit too wide on the forefoot so I have to play with making them tighter. But no blisters on the arch so it looks that NB will work for me instead of Adiddas.
For the website I liked the zencart name and they have nice skins but will have a look at OScommerce. Just the one site I use looks home made Brewshop but let me look for skins. Still have to do the logo etc.
The world cup seems to have finished as we just got busy again, I hope it lasts. :Wink:

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## Pap_sak

Ian, couple of things to try would be a different sock and/or insole - my wife swears by the LP range.

Yup, it's that "brewshop" look I was trying to avoid, without working too hard  :Stick Out Tongue:  . 

Depending on how many products you want to upload, and how many varieties of each, the wordpress sites with the e-commerce (free) plugin works pretty well. You probably would end, in my mind at least, with more of a catalogue, than a "shop", but it's quick and easy and is very seo friendly. I played around with it on the maxsport site, and funnily enough it works well - just got an enquiry from Namibia. I do not think it's great for large sites, but for smaller sites with around 20 or so products it works well and you can have an "almost" bespoke site registered and up and running within hours.

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## Pap_sak

Just a quick update on the dartsdirect.co.za site...

Unique visits. Pretty low..may 51, june 43.

So far 4 sales, 3 from 1 customer over the 3 months. So pretty slow, but ticking. Would eventually like to get 3-4 sales a month.

On the bright side, I have managed to find 1 good customer, out of 50 million.

 :Clap:

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## Mark Atkinson

> @Mark. Some great insights, thanks. I must say that I personally don't dig the Joomla thing too much. Way back when, I started messing with Joomla and Wordpress round about the same time, and for some reason had a mental block with Joomla. Figures can prove anything, depending on how they're used, and right off I need to throw in that Wordpress has had more core downloads than Joomla. WP is not only a blogging platform, although that was its main reason for creation. It is also an incredible cms.
> 
> Regarding the size and scope of an e-commerce solution, yes, niche targetting is the way to go. Fortunately Ian is there already.
> 
> And in closing (apologies Mark, I am a Wordpress fan. Can't help it.), Wordpress powered sites outperform Joomla with the search engines.


Thanks for your (biased) commentary there Tony!  :Stick Out Tongue: 

I do think that your points are valid though. I haven't really done enough on Wordpress to provide a completely objective view on both CMS. So I will play advocate for Joomla!  :Big Grin:  I do think, however, that once you completely understand the ins and outs of Joomla! it is far more versatile than Wordpress. 

I won't argue that it does have a steeper learning curve, but the things you can do with it once you've learned are staggering.  To me Wordpress seems a lot more one-dimensional, even though it's still completely effective.

Also, simply stating that Wordpress sites outperform Joomla! sites in search engine results is a bold, yet somewhat unjustified statement to make.  Many variables need to be considered before you can validly point out something like that. 

Out the box Wordpress vs Joomla: Wordpress definitely wins as far as SEO is concerned. The thing is that I can get a Joomla-powered site to perform just as well as a Wordpress site with the right extensions and SEO optimization. Similarly, Wordpress also needs an SEO plugin to make the most of it's already pretty good URL structure and other SEO features. 

To conclude, let me sum up the following:

Out the box: Wordpress wins. 
For bloggers and content driven sites: Wordpress wins.

For Versatility: Joomla! wins.
For developers and designers: Joomla! wins.

I think a tie is a good result in this situation. It just really depends on who you are and what your requirements for a website are. However because I'm a wee bit biased, and because the "!" at the end of "Joomla" just puts it in a league of it's own, Joomla! wins!  :Big Grin:

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## adrianh

*To conclude, let me sum up the following:

Out the box: Wordpress wins. 
For bloggers and content driven sites: Wordpress wins.

For Versatility: Joomla! wins.
For developers and designers: Joomla! wins.*

Agreed

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## tonyflanigan

@Mark and Adrian.

Methinks this is the kind of thing best discussed around a braai with a few beers...   :Chair:   :Big Grin: 

Thanks for the input guys.

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## tonyflanigan

@Papsak:

Since May the only people in South Africa who made any money were the okes selling Vu Vu Zela's, and their buddies around the corner who were selling ear-plugs.

Since the FIFA final it does seem to be going back to normal tho', so "hou uit swaer, beter dinge kom".

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## Pap_sak

> @Papsak:
> 
> Since May the only people in South Africa who made any money were the okes selling Vu Vu Zela's, and their buddies around the corner who were selling ear-plugs.
> 
> Since the FIFA final it does seem to be going back to normal tho', so "hou uit swaer, beter dinge kom".


The sad thing was that I was selling vuvavella's  :Roll Eyes (Sarcastic): , and sales for June were down on last years. Oh well, only second time ever that I have gone down on year on year figures, so will not complain too much. It seems from talking to a few other shop owners, that the industry as a whole is depressed. Julys, at least, are looking better so far. Problem is I am now vat registered, so have to do a fair amount better to earn the same. :Mad:

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## Mark Atkinson

> @Mark and Adrian.
> 
> Methinks this is the kind of thing best discussed around a braai with a few beers...   
> 
> Thanks for the input guys.


Haha too true.  We could go on forever arguing the matter. I guess we'll just have to say Joomla! wins and leave it at that.  :Big Grin:

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## IanF

Tony
I should have listened, I could not even get the logo to display properly :Embarrassment: . After spending the afternoon trying. So now I will try OScommerce. Using softdux.co.za it is quite easy to change and try the different systems.

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## adrianh

I run Joomla on one site, OsCommerce and I have Wordpress in a test directory. They all serve their own unique purposes. Joola is a great general prodyct, OSc is great for selling and Wordpress is great for blogging. Trying to use them for purposes they weren't intended creates problems.

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## tonyflanigan

imho, joomjoom sucks, wordpress is great. With just a bit of research and effort you will realise that wordpress leaves joomjoom way behind. wordpress is a very efficient, and effective cms.

I do realise that trying to convert a die hard is pretty difficult, but I do need to tell you that I have spent many hours with both. joomjoom just could not, and still cannot do what wordpress does. full stop. end of story.

Yes, Oscommerce is hot. Zen cart need to do lotsa work to catch up.

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## garthu

> The world cup seems to have finished as we just got busy again, I hope it lasts.


@Ian  -hope you right, the quietest days we've had..  who would have thought!

Just in the process of trying the Zen cart thing as well. Gotta say the back end is a STEEP learning curve... but having said that, there hasn't beed a single thing that i havnt been able to do... with cuck loads of home work and direct php edit. Can't comment on the OScommerce

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## adrianh

*imho, joomjoom sucks, wordpress is great. With just a bit of research and effort you will realise that wordpress leaves joomjoom way behind.*

I honestly couldn't care less about what sucks and what is great. And no, I am not going to take any effort or do any reasearch. Each product, in its own way, meets my specific need, which is to make money from selling my products.

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## IanF

> @Ian  -hope you right, the quietest days we've had..  who would have thought!


Garth
Yes I am quiet. The progress so far.
Tried zencart and freeway couldn't get it to work. Now I am using opencart and it is working.
The site is paperkutz.co.za and just has 2 products so far. I have had to go back to the drawing board with production. The original board was too light :Slap: , so we are busy with samples then we will takes pictures and load products. 
ITO opencart it is easier for me than zencart, I just learnt the hard way is upload images through the programme and not FTP.
Just for websites I used softdux for this site and he has loads of programmes you can use on your sites I even got a redirect to work

Now just to eat the cupcakes that go into the wrappers. :Wink:

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## garthu

Hey the sites looking very nice, crisp and clean!

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## wynn

Now make the cups in edible paper that can be dipped in melted chocolate after baking and cooling??? :Devil2:

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## IanF

> Now make the cups in edible paper that can be dipped in melted chocolate after baking and cooling???


I  wish, the board in not recommended for eating and just for decoration. 
The site is now ready :Clap:  with 11 different styles of cupcake wrappers. I see google has picked it up so lets see if we can get on the first page.
For the shopping cart I recommend open cart it is free and quite easy to use, I might just buy an addon for $10 to show colours for for the different options.

The next step is to add different categories I am leaning towards bottle tags and wine claims, any suggestions?

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## pyxism

Following humble suggestions:
<title>: 
1. Write a catchy title - max 60 characters - Google does not display chars 61 +
2. Try and get rid of "(Powered by CubeCart)"

<meta name="description" content=..
1. Max 145 characters - again try and be catchy - this is first intro to your site that people see

<meta name="keywords" content=
1. Stick to lower case for all keywords
2. Isolate 5 top keywords - write 250-350 word articles on them and post as pages

<div class='txtCopyright'>Powered by
1. This is last div class just before end of page (</html> - if possible try and get rid of the "http://www.cubecart.com" href and try and replace it with your main keyword pointing to your main page e.g. instead of:
Powered by <a href='http://www.cubecart.com' class='txtCopyright' target='_blank'>CubeCart
have this:
<b>Darts</b>by <a href='http://www.dartsdirect.co.za/' class='txtCopyright' target='_blank'>Darts, Flights, Shafts

Same thing with "Copyright" if possible

Search engines: Ignore local SA search engines - unfortunately (sad to say), they do not have any impact. Focus on Google, Bing, Yahoo. Register local business listing with Google:
http://www.google.com/local/add/

Add your business listing to Hotfrog SA, Brownbook - these 2 are best for ranking and enquiries..

Hoe that helps?

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Pap_sak (26-Jul-10)

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## Pap_sak

Cheers for that Pyxism - for most of that I need to upgrade to Cubecart 4 - something I need to look at very soon as cubecart 3 is not great with SEO.

Cheers for the brownbook link, had not heard of that one before.

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## SilverNodashi

> imho, joomjoom sucks, wordpress is great. With just a bit of research and effort you will realise that wordpress leaves joomjoom way behind. wordpress is a very efficient, and effective cms.
> 
> I do realise that trying to convert a die hard is pretty difficult, but I do need to tell you that I have spent many hours with both. joomjoom just could not, and still cannot do what wordpress does. full stop. end of story.
> 
> Yes, Oscommerce is hot. Zen cart need to do lotsa work to catch up.


probably, but that's just your view point  :Smile:  What works great for you, doesn't necessary work for others, at all. Both Joomla & Wordpress are awesome scripts and excel in their class. They both offer great features, but should also be used for what they we're designed for. And people should use what they're comfortable with  :Smile:

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## IanF

> Add your business listing to Hotfrog SA, Brownbook - these 2 are best for ranking and enquiries..
> 
> Hoe that helps?


Wow Hotfrog are good about 2 minutes after posting my site there I had a call from Media Mountain. They offered to get me on the front page of google. After a conversation with the guy I told him for R150 a month with google adwords I get onto the frontpage. He then agreed he can't match that :Wink: . So Hotfrog is closely watched by some.

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## tonyflanigan

Hey Ian. You seem incredibly excited!  :Clap: 

Let's see if we can keep you hyped up. Try Vottle Classifieds. They're extremely good (for us at least), and (once again, for us) out-perform Hotfrog.

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## IanF

Tony
Yes something new always works for me, I will try Vottle thanks for the tip. We also put up a facebook page last night.

Just what amazed me was how quick and slick media mountain is

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## IanF

> Just in the process of trying the Zen cart thing as well. Gotta say the back end is a STEEP learning curve... but having said that, there hasn't beed a single thing that i havnt been able to do... with cuck loads of home work and direct php edit.


Garth 
Well done with your site, I had a look and yes I can see the cuck loads of work in it. Now how about some feedback on setting it up and sales from the site. I like the idea of gift certificates how is that working? :Innocent:  That will go on to my todo list once we have more products.

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## garthu

Thanks Ian, getting there.

I can you tell the biggest error i made. When i started getting into this i wasnt sure that i would be able to do it so it was an experiment. The more i got into, more excited i got and just kept going. Add this, add that, refine here etc.... then... i wasnt happy with the template and header. I want to get them something similar to original site. Alot of the work that has been done, will have to redone!  :Oops: 

The moral of that story is therefore with Zen cart, make 100% sure that you have your template first before going further. Its NOT like Wordpress, Vbulletin, EZportal etc where when you change the template, everything follows along. A said earlier, there is a stack of PHP edit and changing the CSS changes links to the PHP files... that really could do with a tidy!

Also there is a lack of "easy" edit type stuff. The header, footer, some of the main page have to be edited directly on the PHP files. The support sites are very vague exactly where to find these files sometimes as they can be 4, 5, 6 folders deep. Spent alot of time looking.

Aside from that side, anything i have dreamt of is there, and more.

The gift voucher system seems to be working OK although there is a redemption problem at the moment that working on. Redeeming if you signed up and buy straight away is the problem on your first logon. It doesn't offer the chance to redeem. It does the second time you log though. There are fixes but pretty hectic fixes!! Havnt made any sales directly on site, but have had a telephonic sales as a direct result ( 10 days old)... That makes me happy!

My pointers for anyone trying Zen cart.
Make sure you have your template wrapped up first, no doubts!
Get a very clear and simple plan for categorys - once you get going it can be a pain moving things around, but not to bad.
You MUST try different explorer"s, IE and firefox  have different results (yet to try chrome etc)

Good luck to those giving ZC a bash!

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## garthu

OH... and alot of the tips, ideas SEO, motivation etc have come from here... so you HAVE to be a member of TFSA.....

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Dave A (27-Jul-10)

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## IanF

Garthu,
Even with printing of brochures etc. it is always work in progress. It will never be perfect, just as long as it does the job. The only editing on the footer I had to do was remove the paypal and credit card logos. The rest has all been done in the admin pages, I also added the affiliate link for softdux in the footer, lets see if this can be a passive income.

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