Step 1. Pick a Product
My fictitious e-commerce site will specialize in selling handmade forged goods, such as chisels, punches, camping axes, hammers, as well as decorative pieces like coat hangers and fire pokers with neat twists and decorative flourishes.
Step 2. Decide on Payment Methods
In my research for this project, I settled on Stripe for a payment gateway. However, I learned that it may be somewhat difficult to set up, so if I run into trouble I will use PayPal. Regardless, I chose stripe because I like how flexible it is with its plethora of features as well as its fees being cheaper than PayPal’s.
Step 3. Decide on Shipping Methods and Costs
I would choose to use USPS ground for deliveries because it seems they would charge a little less than UPS for the kinds of goods I would need shipped. And given my forge is fairly near to the USPS post office in Grand Marais, MN I think it’d be convenient to drop the goods off there before they go across country.
Step 4. Decide on how you would like to setup your website
A. Find an ecommerce site that sells your proposed product (or a product similar) and review their setup. Take Screenshots for your report
For this step I looked at several sites including Etsy.com, Condor Tool & Knife, CRKT, and finally Brent Bailey Forge. The following are screenshots of Brent Bailey’s website, which I think is much more comparable to something I’d be able to do in this class.
*Photos above are from https://www.brentbaileyforge.com
I like how simple Brent’s site is. I also like his color scheme of black, orange, and white. He’s hardly the first to use these colors, but I like the meaning behind them nonetheless. Black reminds me of the firescale that forms as you heat steel. The orange reminds me of a piece at working temperature, and the white reminds me of the blinding color a properly operated coal forge should be. I also like the how he utilizes the categories on the left, so you can find just what you’re looking for, without wasting time. One criticism I have, however, is that many of the products don’t have adequate descriptions. For example, the splitting maul on the top row doesn’t have information about what kind of steel the head is made out of or what kind of wood the handle is made from.
B. Prospective E-Commerce Site Q&A
2. What makes a bad web site?
- Pages that take forever to load
- Pages that are a pain to navigate on mobile because they don't scale well (text is too small or screen is cluttered, etc.)
- Mandatory signup on non membership/subscription based sites. This annoys a lot of shoppers and may even make them turn away to another store.
3a. Goals of the site
The site goal is to provide a satisfactory shopping experience, and to sell unique hand-forged tools and decorative steel goods geared towards outdoorsmen, craftsmen, and those who like metal fixtures with a rustic feel.
3b. Target audience(s) for the site
My target audience would be lovers of the outdoors, craftsmen, and anyone who needs reliable tools with character. Additionally, those who may want rustic decorative pieces like twisted coat hangers, fire pokers, and more.
3c. Color schemes, fonts, page layouts, etc.
*Please see the paletton.com color palette and page layout images below this Q&A section.
3d. Site navigation methods
I will have a navigation bar at the top of each page. I will also have product category nav links in the store, as well as a search bar for customers to find products.
3e. Graphics
One logo will be present in the upper left and possibly footer of each page. There will also be images for each product in the store.
Planned Color Palette:
*Photos above are from https://paletton.com/#uid=10u0u0kr231bKtW++sbqFg0xycI
b. Website Layout and Inter-connectivity
All pages will be accessible to each page, because they will all share the same top navigation bar. Some pages will also have internal links to other pages inside their own content sections.