So I am trying out a new FireFox 3 extension that might encourage me to blog a little more.
I did finally get our Citadel site finished. I cannot even begin to describe the various levels of Hell that had to be traversed… Kenan and I decided at the beginning of the year to try to expand our current business. We decided that we needed a more professional store and originally planned to use a new system from Amazon.com called WebStores. After two months of working with the system, we gave up. Amazon is a great system if you are a huge retailer, like Amazon.com, for example. But the cost of complying with their standards was too high for us. Specifically, they have a very detailed taxonomy that you have to use to categorize and describe your products. It just didn’t work well. Additionally, they require UPCs for all products, even though many of our products don’t have them.
So, last week I discovered a new e-commerce platform. It has taken me about a week to get everything done, but the site is live and looks pretty good. We have to finalize a few design things and are waiting for our new merchant account to be activated.
But, we had our first order tonight, so that’s a nice start, considering we just went live with the site on Saturday afternoon. We have been slowly advancing in Google Results, moving up from about 20th when we launched to 4th now. Once we break into the top three, I expect us to see a marked increase in natural traffic.
If you head over to the site, let me know what you think.
