Catching up
December 2019 was an exciting time period for me. After a lot of research and even more trial and error, I launched Online Shop by White Wolf Enterprises. I love learning so even though there were some frustrations, I enjoyed putting this together and expanding a little at a time.
In my previous post I mentioned creating this e-commerce site as I rebuilt the original site I use for my Independent AMSOIL Dealership. Having used WordPress (.org) to create my blog, I decided to continue on for both other sites. That is pretty much where the similarities end but it serves as a great advertisement for the versatility of WordPress.
Obviously White Wolf Musings is a blog which is how WordPress really made their mark. The base White Wolf Enterprises site is predominately for advertising my dealership as AMSOIL handles much of the e-commerce portion for me. Online Shop on the other hand is a full-blown, product, review, inventory, and billing capable e-commerce store powered by WooCommerce.
There is nothing like finding out how little you know about your OS or platform once you are knee-deep in a start-up… All kinds of tuning was necessary on the firewall, the host OS, the host VM, the reverse proxy, WordPress, and WooCommerce… Wow.
Current State
Now that the site is live and getting some attention, I am focusing on making it better. This includes learning, tweaking and adding multiple things. For instance, I am identifying additional vendors and drop-shipping companies to add more products and variety. Niches are important in e-commerce so I need to decide which will be the heart of the site. Oh and then there is SEO and advertising.
I am convinced that SEO and advertising will be the death of me. These are two components I was sure would be really simple. Well, apparently not for me. Keywords, focus phrases, Meta descriptions, item descriptions, images and the ever-long list of restrictions on advertising platforms… shoot me now.
Okay, so it is not that bad and technically, I asked for it. Luckily there are plenty of on-line resources and also WordPress apps to help. That said, if anyone surfs across Online Shop and has any (constructive) feedback, please drop me a line. Thank you!
