Website, from zero to hero

[wynn]

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

[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 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?

[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?

[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.

[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 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

[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. So Hotfrog is closely watched by some.

[tonyflanigan]

Hey Ian. You seem incredibly excited!

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.

[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

[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? That will go on to my todo list once we have more products.

[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!

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!

[garthu]

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

[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.