Introduction
Here goes....
My sister-in-law and I have a brick and mortar store that we opened August 31st 2004. Since before we opened the doors we have been talking about ecommerce. Our business took off so fast that we could barely keep up with learning our new accounting software, Quickbooks. Only recently do we feel "in control" enough to branch out and pursue ecommerce. We have a unique business relationship. She is manages the store day-to-day and I handle the purchasing and all computer related stuff from 250 miles away... thanks to my computer geek husband setting up a remote connection. So, now my task at hand has turned to ecommerce and a web site. I am a mechanical engineer by day so have no prior experience at this. My husband will help me out but my personality won't allow me to ask for help until I am at wits end (usually there are tears and cussing...:-) I learn best by experience.
Our business is a yarn shop. We sell lots of yarn as well as supplies and books for knit, crochet, weaving, spinning (yarn), felting and traditional rug hooking. All things fiber related and fun. Our shop name is Simply fibers (yes, it's lowercase on purpose) and our domain name is simplyfibers.com. Our shopping cart is a GoDaddy cart which we have for a year from last week. We wanted to get our feet wet first and decide if this was a good route for us. With any luck, we will be shopping for a software to own and set up ourselves (myself..:-) next year this time. I have already looked around on the web just to find out what's out there. Our site will be hosted by GoDaddy as well. I don't have the experience, knowledge, hardware or patience to host it myself. I will create my web page using Front Page. This will be a new experience as well. I have also purchased the Traffic Blazer, Traffic Facts and have an email marketing program included. I have a $50 credit toward Google Adwords (?) but don't know what that is yet.
