Last week we introduced the Open Shop Project or OSP as I will refer to it here in the blog. You can check out all posts about the OSP by clicking the category for “Open Shop Project” in the sidebar.
We have been hard at work setting up our little shop. We have added products to our shop and wanted to create a storefront.
The secret is in the blog
We decided to use a blog as the front page of our shop for a couple of reasons
- Blogs are cheap (usually free)
- We are using WordPress because I love it. WordPress is a blog tool that is free and easy to use. You can host it on your own srver or use WordPress.com where they host the blog for you (yes - all for free). WordPress.com is good but does not offer many ways to customize your blog. (For a comparison Blog.Spreadshirt.com is a WordPress.com blog, IheartPGH.com is a WordPress.org blog. You will see that I have added lots more stuff to the sidebar of IheartPGH.com)
- Blogs easy to set up and manipulate the look - we used the same header from our shop in our blog
- We used the same code in both headers, when you are in the shop and click on the link for WW blog, it takes you to the blog. If you are on the blog page and click shop, you move to the Spreadshirt store page. By using the same header the transition is almost seamless.
- Instant rss feed
- Every time we add a post or an update, anyone who is subscribed to our blog feed gets an update and a reminder that Washable Wisdom exists.
Do you have a storefront page for your shop? Do you have a blog for your shop? What works well? What doesn’t?
Lindsay Patross
Dave
I’m currently using a blog as the front end to my spreadshirt store and finding it extremely effective - the stories help create an image of the brand. It also provides lots of juicy content for being picked up by the major web eyeball properties - Boing Boing, Valleywag, and Joystiq have all linked back at one time or another. If you’re a spreadshot owner and have some decent writing chops this is a fantastic way of creating repeat viewers who can then be persuaded to become customers.
I also like the idea of the OSP - one question though. I noticed that while there are quite a few different sayings you’ve only created one shirt for each. I was under the assumption that it was better to put the same saying/logo on multiple styles and colors to give the user a selection and get exactly what they want. Is there a reason why you’ve opted for the one saying per shirt style/color?
That is a great question about the open shop project that we have learned ourselves. We are working on adding more styles/colors for each design.
We also decided to use a blog for the shop. I like using Wordpress and it is super easy to set up and edit a blog or a website. Even if you don’t want it to look like a blog, you can set the index page to be one of the blog pages.