What's up? MY WEBSITE, THAT'S WHAT

I'm sorry to shout, but I am extremely excited.

Finally! After much work (and only a moderate amount of wine) my website is finally live! I am doing a dance here, let me tell you. A dance that only slightly looks like a tipsy walrus. A very giddy tipsy walrus. No, I am not going to upload it to YouTube. You'll just have to use your imagination.

The old site looked like this:



I think the new site looks a little cleaner and prettier:



Beads, cabochons, gems, and findings! The website is full of all sorts of great treasures. If you're interested, clicky here: Laurel Moon Jewelry & Beads

The new website is nearly done!

The first website was a little challenging. The software was not what I'd hoped it would be. On first glance, it seemed like a good program, with a lot of bells and whistles. Customers could rate products on a five-star system and leave reviews. There was an inventory management system where I could type in the quantities of the products. There were weight fields so that shipping could be calculated. I was a little taken aback by the look of the sites it created, but with a bit of revising, it didn't look like such a bargain-basement site.

Once my website designer and I really delved deep into it, however, it turned into a bit of a headache. The image manager system it used was horrid. With up to four pictures per product, there are a lot of images that have to be stored, and the image manager would lump them all together randomly. You could not sort them by date or title. At the end, I had 42 pages of images and I just gave up sorting through them. Instead I would copy the file name that I'd uploaded to the image manager and just paste it in.

The weight system turned out to not have enough different divisions. There were issues with a lot of different things on the site. One of the most glaring for me was the strange horrible grammar and spelling of the various system messages and displays. One button proudly displayed "IM NEW HERE." There was an error message that read, "I'm not sorry, but that product is not available."

After enough of these setbacks, I decided I wanted to use different software. My website designer enthusiastically agreed, and we've been working on a new site ever since.

Last night, I uploaded the last product. Now I just need to tweak the verbiage and check the photos, as well as test the site. I'm very excited about this and I'm hoping that it turns out to be a better system. I'm already happier with it in many ways. The look is nicer, the error messages aren't rude, and it isn't bogged down by a ton of affiliate bells and whistles that I don't need.

I'm including some of the new product pictures I've been taking, too:



I am crossing my fingers that this will be a better solution to the need for a website than the other software was. I'm already far more impressed with the new site.

A little glitch on the website tonight...

There was an issue with my website tonight, and I apologize if you had any difficulties logging in. It's been ironed out and hopefully it won't happen again.

The latest eBay auctions are up! You can check them out here. This is my last set of auctions until late February, as I'm going out of town on a very long business trip. I've put up another set of the Japanese trumpet flowers. This set is red and topaz and clear glass, all blended together beautifully.



Such gorgeous beads! I have a small assortment of them in different colors. They're wonderfully detailed.

My new website is here! Also, new site for my blog.

It's happened!

After a month of taking pictures, editing pictures, writing descriptions, and tinkering, my website laurelmoon.com is now live!

You can find it here!

Finally, a way to sell in quantity, and to be able to accept credit cards! I'm so happy about this. I like Paypal, but some people don't, so this is a great new development!



And the blog is moving! Very soon I'll be redirecting this blog to my website. You'll be able to find it here.

Thank you for continuing to take this journey with me!

New beginnings

My website is inching out of the primordial ooze. Yesterday I put up the first item and tinkered with it. There are so many features and interesting bits and bobs that I'm a little overwhelmed. Mostly, though, I'm intrigued.

One of the things I'm most looking forward to is having to only put up one photo per product, instead of endlessly scanning things for eBay and Etsy. Once I have the products in their places, people will be able to buy multiple units, and I won't have to constantly list new pictures of the same products. I'm also looking forward to being able to accept credit cards directly. This is pretty exciting stuff and it's such a huge step for me.

This weekend I will be getting into my photography cocoon. I'm going to set up my teensy "studio" and begin taking pictures of beads and cabochons. I have to remember that they're not going to be perfect on the first try, and that I shouldn't try to photograph everything at once.

Opportunities

So I've just been emailed by a magazine. Apparently I'm being sourced for beads, which is very nice, but at the same time, they're not beads that I generally carry--I think they were bought from one of my remainder bins. So I'm a little worried about where this is going. Should I take the time to add them to my website? Hmm.

I can get more of the beads, but the manufacturer is already on the web, and has lots of them for sale. My heart says to send people to them instead. We'll see what happens.

Speaking of the website, it's so close--all I need to do is finish the verbiage for returns policies and such, and write a blurb about vintage beads. Because vintage beads weren't always stored in the best manner, they often have little chips and imperfections, and because the website will have static pictures (I won't be taking a new picture for each piece, like eBay and Etsy), I need to explain that what the customer receives might not be exactly what is pictured. I hate having to do it this way, but there's just no way around it.

This magazine opportunity is really making me wonder what will happen. Because of the nature of the beads I sell, I won't have a lot of chances to be a supplier in a magazine, so I'm hoping that this will be a really good moment for me. If even a few customers stick around to see the beads I have, it could be a good thing.