Self-Hosted E-Commerce Shop
- Client: Belle & Blaire, LLC
- Industry: Online Retail
- Features: Self-hosted shopping cart installation, responsive theme design, search engine optimization, install Google analytics, social media integration, and email list setup
- Website: https://belleandblaire.com
Belle & Blaire is an online retail shop that sells handmade bath & body, skincare, haircare, and personal care products. Understanding the benefit of selling on another platform as an alternative to Etsy, a decision was made to set up a custom domain (belleandblaire.com) on Big Cartel. In a course of a year, as the number of product listings outgrew the Diamond plan (100 products), financially it was no longer feasible to upgrade to the Platinum plan (300 products).
After considering several popular hosted e-commerce solutions, the owner chose to self-host a shopping cart on WordPress. The website relaunch in November 2014 featured a self-hosted e-commerce shop powered by WooCommerce. Overall, a self-hosted website allows for flexibility to have unlimited products, blogging capability, content control, and customization that would be more cost-effective than a hosted e-commerce solution.
Redesign 2021 – An upgrade to a new theme designed to work seamlessly with Gutenberg blocks. The redesign improves site performance and minimizes the number of plugins required to run the site with full functionality. Install Google Analytics and monitoring.
- A full transition from a fully hosted solution to a self-hosted website to allow for flexibility while having complete control of the e-commerce shop without additional costs to scale the product line.
- Implement a new responsive website design, plugin configuration, and on-page search engine optimization.
- Configure WooCommerce settings to adhere to the product, tax, checkout, shipping, accounts, and email requirements.
- Creation of multiple pages for doing business and content creation.
- Set up a Mailchimp email list, signup forms, and template customization.
- Basic WordPress training (add new listings, create pages & blog posts, and core website maintenance).
- Ongoing support and maintenance.
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