Thinking of jumping ship

[WallCakes]

Hi all, I got in on the free for life plan, but haven't set up my website yet. This all happened just after I purchased an expensive template for BigCartel.

I'm paying $19.99/mnth for my BigCartel site, but I do love it.

I'm now thinking that I could make up the cost of what I paid for my template by using my free SD account.

One thing that SD has that BC does not is confirmation emails after the sale. I was actually quite surprised by this, as it seems like a basic thing you would need for an online shop.

The only thing really holding me back (besides not being able to remove the SD link) ...which I totally understand because of the free for life, is that SD doesn't seem to have integrated blog, which BC does.

I know you can link to your blog, but it's not the same as having the blog integrated. On BC, when you click on my blog link (which is a tumblr blog) the url is 'mysite.com/blog

This can help with SEO. Does anyone know if this is in the works? I hate paying out over 200./yr when I have a perfectly good website waiting to be built on SD.

I wish I hated BC...would make it easy to jump ship, but I actually really love the ease of it and their customer service is stellar.

How have you found the customer service on SD?

[FleaMarketMuse]

Hi Gina,

Let me preface this by saying I'm not an SEO expert, but I do some reading.

You can point your domain to supadupa. Then, usually, can create a subdomain and you could point that to your blog. This isn't quite as "strong" as the /blog but still helps. You could also do that in reverse (domain to blog and then subdomain to e-commerce) but I don't know if that would be "better" or a neutral thing for SEO.

Of course you would have to have a "place" to put your blog. I know word press charges $13.00 a year to have a domain/subdomain point to your blog there.

If you are "handy" with webbie/techy stuff you could set up your own blog on your own host. You can find basic hosting for under $50.00 a year, but of course you have to be able to run your own blog software in that scenario.

The reason the /blog scenario is "better" for e-commerce sites is because the listings themselves have such little content. Search engines "see" the e-commerce stuff and the /blog together and it looks like more content, plus if you are blogging regularly it shows the search engines you have "new" content.

I haven't dealt with SupaDupa CS, so I can't answer that question.

[Former_Member]

Hi Gina.

I LOVE the customer service to be honest. I have been quite impressed with the response time and direct information in email and tweets.

There is a blog link option. Right now I have it set to go to my landing page while I am still tweaking my blog and site.

But I plan to keep my blog on google with just a link at the top back to my shop which will act as my site.

you can see what I mean by going to my site.

[WallCakes]

Thanks Midwest Crochet.

I use tumblr as my blog and was hoping it could be integrated like it is on BigCartel.

I tweeted SD and they said they have plans to integrate with tumblr in the future.

I'm almost convinced, but I just love how my blog and website match. I just really wish we had more control over font colours and such on SD. I guess I'll get over by saving $240./yr on website fees...that adds up and is quite significant.

I'm trying to figure out where to configure the confirmation email are...or is that just a template that they use and we have no control over?

[Former_Member]

I asked Mary from the SEO team about this and she said that having a Wordpress or standalone blog with your own url pointing to it that links to our shops in every post was the best thing for google SEO. For some reason they don't give as much weight to their own blogger software. I already share one with someone else on blogger and I've just set up my own on Wordpress but I haven't figured out what url to use for it yet. I can't really say anything more than that but I can ask Mary more about it when she's back from her absence from the team. I'm just parroting what she said.

So far my experiences with customer service have been excellent and fast.

[WallCakes]

Thanks Karen.

Yeah, I know about wordpress being the best for SEO, and actually have a site with wordpress and was going to set up my site through that.

It was way too much work compared to having a hosted cart like SupaDupa or Big Cartel. There's always updates to do, plugins to buy and update.

Also, I'm a terrible lazy blogger, so tumblr works great for me. I know it's not the best for SEO doing it the way I'm doing it, but really, I can't stand all the maintenance that comes with a wordpress blog.

I've also heard they're really easy to hack because they're so popular, whether that's true or not, I don't know. I'd rather leave all the worrying and updating to SupaDupa, Big Cartel and tumblr.

[Former_Member]

Mary just said that Wordpress was best for blogs but never said anything about having our shops on that software. I'm just starting on it and fumbling my way around until I learn it. I'm sticking to the free version until I know what I can and can't do. I know that I want to leave my shop on supadupa and not deal with the technical ends of that stuff at all but I'd really like a tab (page, I guess) on my blog that took you right to my shop when you clicked on it so that it seems completely integrated. I don't know if I can do that or not yet.

I'm the kind of blabbermouth that can knock out one long blog post a day in minutes but takes 2 weeks to pick out a mediocre background picture or decide what color to make something.

[Former_Member]

I started my Tumblr blog by way of SD. I am there, few sales, don't promote. I do like it though and the admin is very helpful.

[WallCakes]

Thanks for input Kym :)

I'm trying to figure out if we can customize the automatic confirmation emails.

Does anyone know if that can be done. I'd kind of like to see what they say.

If I can't customize it, I'd like to be able to turn it off so when I send my own, the customer isn't getting redundant emails.

I am liking it a lot and find it to me quite easy to use, but there are still some things that have me sitting on the fence. One of them being that Big Cartel is so well established that you can find answers to questions by googling.

The others are lack of integrated blog and not being able to change template colours on fonts etc.

[Former_Member]

I also have the free for life plan, but also thinking of leaving the site, they really dont have a category for B&B and I get so few hits there.... I switched from weebly and now I am missing it, there is allot more customization control, along with other things at weebly....Not to mention that my traffic was much higher there! and the SEO seemed to work much better!

[WallCakes]

Hi TwistedRiverSoap, I'm actually thinking of going to SupaDupa from BigCartel.

I'm not sure what you mean about a category for B&B. It's not a venue like etsy, they don't have categories. It's a stand alone website.

[Former_Member]

oops, my bad I read it as though you were leaving.... they have category's (PRODUCT TYPE) such as vintage, jewelry, food and so on..... I know it's not a venue but they leave you very little when it comes to SEO and you are limited as to what you can put IMHO....I know when I was at BC I got a fair amount of traffic and sales and then wen to weebly because it was free....

I thought I would really like SD but it is limited in allot of areas, I don't like that for blogs and other links it will not open a new window . and it directs you away from your site.