Forums: Discussions for entrepreneurs and small business.

A lot has changed since the last time we posted here. For those who didn't see the last topic:

We're a craft supply store who also is trying to venture out to other venues, such as wedding supplies and home decor. We have a walk in warehouse store, but most of our revenue is from online sales. To give a list of some changes:

1. Home page targeting system was programmed. If you visit our site directly at factorydirectcraft.com you'll see our regular home page. However if you come from a referring site or a search engine search you'll be presented with different home page variations based on your theme. If you visit: Google for bridal supplies and click on our site (4th result for me) you'll be given a wedding/bridal version of our home page and your exact search text above it.
2. In addition to the home page targeting, the home page got a redesign.
3. Dynamic page titles were improved
4. Breadcrumb trails were improved (we had a complaint about this in the last topic).
5. Product view page was improved, layout and colors.
6. New image loading has been implemented for larger product images. It no longer loads in a separate page but loads within the current page.
7. New seo url system has been programmed. This not only is seo friendly but has an automatic 301 redirect system made for it. If you visit an old style url, it 301 redirects to the new url. However, it is also self-updating, if we change the product or category name an automatic 301 redirect is created from the old name to the new name:
   
   
   An example of the new seo urls-
   http://factorydirectcraft.com/catalog/categories/2219_2227-string_lights.html
   
   
   Example of the automatic 301 redirect-
   http://factorydirectcraft.com/catalog/index.php?cPath=2219_2227
   redirects to-
   http://factorydirectcraft.com/catalog/categories/2219_2227-string_lights.html
   
   It is also procedural so it updates itself if a product or category name is changed and creates
   a 301 redirect from the old name to the new name:
   http://factorydirectcraft.com/catalog/categories/2219_2227-old_category_title.html
   redirects to-
   http://factorydirectcraft.com/catalog/categories/2219_2227-string_lights.html
   
   
8. Complete checkout redesign
9. New login system
10. Changed category display styling and product listing.
11. Add a customer review section under the product view page. Anyone can post a review, logged in or not, this allows them to post with greater ease. I then programmed a backend utility to moderate the reviews.
12. Added cross-selling within the product view page.
13. Added what i call "impulsive" cross-selling at the shopping cart page. This cross selling list similar products using the last product you added to your cart. The "impulsive" comes from the fact that you can add any of the items to your cart straight from the cross-selling section without having to visit the products page.
14. Did some database optimization that lead to some database queries being 1,500 times faster. This has improved the speed of the product search and product listing in categories, along with extending our max user handling stats.

... and many more changes were done.

Most recently we launched a dedicated custom blog and forum. You can visit the forum by clicking on the "community" button on the top right of the site, and visit our blog by clicking on the "blog" button.

To help jump start the craft forum we have started a contest. The winner gets a $1,000 shopping spree at our online store. All they have to do is signup on the forums, and on September 30th a name will be chosen at random. Click Here To See All The Rules.

So, we're looking for any suggestions on anything, site, blog, forums...etc. Feel free to join and post on our forums too.

Thanks,

Jarrod - Lone Developer

Hello everyone! We have another new addition to the site, its a new menu system.

Now instead of the menu statically showing only the main categories on the left side it expands and shows the sub categories, and sub categories of those sub cats...etc.
Any opinions, suggestions on the new menu? The site in general?

Thanks!

Go here to checkout our Craft Supply site.