Quilter's Guide to Placing Your Business on the Web

By Jeanne Neath
jeanne@quiltprofessionals.com

Setting up a quilt shop or other quilt business on the Web is a challenging undertaking. We have put together this guide to provide quilt businesses with the information you need to make good decisions about putting your business on the internet. 

Domain Name or Address: One of the first decisions you need to make is what you want your web site's address to be. There are two major options available:

Reserve your own domain name

Reserving a domain name provides your site with its own address, such as www.yourquiltshop.com. The first step in getting your own domain is to find out if the name you want is available. You can check availability of any domain name at  Verisign. A number of new domain categories have been added lately so if the name you want is not available as a .com address, you might consider reserving, for example, a .biz address (e.g. www.yourquiltshop.biz). If you are an organization rather than a business a .org domain would be appropriate. 

You can reserve a domain name at many of the web hosting services. The fee varies depending on where you do your reservation, but can be as low as $6 or $7. You may be able to get a better price if you reserve the name for two or more years. You may even be able to reserve a domain name free for a year or two from your web host in return for signing up for at least six months of web hosting. At any rate, it is often a good idea to select a web host first and then reserve the domain name through the web host. This may save you lots of aggravation and a possible fee for transferring the domain from wherever you reserved it to the web host you end up using.

"Subcontract" an address

You can also locate your web site on a domain that has already been established by another business or organization. If you choose to "subcontract" there will not be any fees to reserve your name, though you may have to pay a monthly fee for web hosting. Some Internet Service Providers (ISPs) offer free web hosting for small sites. Alternatively, you can locate your website on a site serving your local community. If you "subcontract" your site will have an address such as www.yourhost.com/yourquiltshop.

Comparing the options

Reserving your own domain name has the major advantage of giving your site name recognizability, and the secondary advantage of making your address shorter and easier to remember. If you want to sell merchandise on your site through your own "standalone" store, you will need to reserve your own domain name.

"Subcontracting" saves money by eliminating the yearly domain name reservation charge and by probably reducing the monthly fee paid to a web hosting service. If you locate your site on another site that already has many visitors of the target audience for your site, then your association with that site may help promote your site and bring you visitors.

Web Design: Your first decision in developing a web site is who will do the work. You may choose to design the site yourself or have a family member or friend do the work. Alternatively you may want to hire a professional web site developer. 

Designing a site yourself

Designing a web site is a major undertaking, especially if you do not have prior experience. However, there are a number of tools that can assist a moderately computer literate person in designing their own site.

Using web design tools available on your web host's site. Some web hosts have tools right on their web site that will allow you to develop web pages while you are logged on to their site. This can be a convenient and quick option, as you do not have to purchase any software to help you create your site. One such web host is Homestead which offers drag and drop site-building tools, helpful wizards, and reasonable hosting fees. Possible downsides of this option are that the appearance and functionality of the site you design may be limited in sometimes major ways by the the tools used. Additionally, you might not be able to transfer the site you create to a different web host if, for any reason, you become unhappy with the web host's services.

Buying software to help you design your site. A number of user-friendly and reasonably priced software packages can help you design your site. We recommend Microsoft Frontpage  for easy use and Macromedia's Dreamweaver MX for advanced use. Each of these web authoring tools has a "what you see is what you get" option which allows you to to easily insert text, graphics, and special features such as forms, navigation bars or animation on your web page. (You can also see and edit the HTML code behind the web page, if you want to.) Moving your newly created site from your computer onto the server at your web host's computer is likewise made easy by these tools. 

Although software like Frontpage and Dreamweaver make designing web sites possible for the novice, you may find creating web pages to be considerably trickier than using word processing or desktop publishing software. Even though you don't have to code your web pages using HTML, the placement of items on the pages is still governed by the rules of HTML coding and you may find it difficult, for example, to figure out just exactly how you can get things placed where you want them on your page. 

There are also a number of considerations that you, as a web designer, need to take into account in designing your site. For example, you may want to make sure that you create a site that can be viewed by most browsers. Frontpage and Dreamweaver will help you with this, but you still need to know enough to ask your software to do this for you. Similarly, you will want to take into account the fact that different users who will view your site may not have the same resolution monitor that you have and your page could appear much larger or smaller to them with parts of the page not even showing for some users with low resolution monitors. 

Another consideration is that if you use some of the advanced features available in Frontpage or Dreamweaver (such as forms, site searches, e-commerce, message boards) you will have to sign up, and possibly pay more money, with a web host that supports, for example, Frontpage Server Extensions, Microsoft Access databases, or CGI scripts. 

Another important consideration is the need to design your site so that it will be highly rated by search engines and place high in the list of results for keyword search phrases relevant to your site (e.g. "quilt shop" or "quilting pattern"). This is called "search engine optimization". Factors such as the size of type you use on the page, the placement of key phrases on the page, the use of html meta tags, the frequency of key phrases on the page can all have a big influence on whether or not anyone will see your site come up on the major search engines. See our Guide to Promoting Your Quilt Shop on the Web for more information.

Hiring a professional web site developer

Hiring a professional web site developer will save you time and aggravation, but will probably cost you more money than developing your own web site. The primary reasons to hire a professional are to design a site having: 1) a professional appearance that will be attractive to your customers, 2) good usability by users with a variety of different browsers and monitors, and 3) the ability to rank well with search engines. In addition, the web developer can help you navigate your way through the maze of choices available to you in designing, hosting, and promoting your site. There are a number of questions you should ask yourself about a web developer you are considering hiring:

• Do you like the appearance and functioning of other web sites created by the developer?
• Does the price estimated by the developer compare favorably with other estimates?
• Do the developer's customers provide good references?
• Do you like and trust the developer? Do you feel that you can have a good working relationship?
• Do you have reason to think that the developer will follow through and create your web site in a timely fashion?
• Does the developer have an adequate understanding of your business and your customers? Will the developer design a site that will be attractive to your target audience?

There are a number of avenues you can pursue in locating the developer you want. Ask for references from other business owners. Check your local phone book or business directories. Search the web for relevant keywords such as web design or web site development. Check out directories of web designers such as the one offered by CNET.com. Go to web sites you like and find out who developed those sites. There will usually be a hyperlink on the site you like that will take you to the developer's web site. Once on the developer's site look for more samples of web sites they have developed, pricing plans, and information about the developer.

Do realize that hiring a web site developer does not eliminate all of your work. You will still have to provide the developer with information about your business, your customers, the image you want your web site to convey, as well as pictures of your store or products. If you are setting up a store to sell merchandise online, there will be additional tasks for you to do, including preparing your store catalog.

Selling Merchandise: In order to sell merchandise on your web site you will need a product catalog (which lists the items you have for sale along with pictures of the items), a shopping cart (which is the means by which the customer orders the products), and a way for the customer to securely provide you with their credit card information. If you want to have credit cards processed online, you will need either 1) an internet merchant account with a payment gateway, 2) a third party payment processing vendor, or 3) an e-commerce web hosting service that offers a package providing credit card processing.

Shopping Cart

A shopping cart is the scripting added to your web site that allows a customer to select and order merchandise at your online store. Developing a shopping cart is a task suited only to programmers, so you will need to either purchase a shopping cart and add it to your web site yourself, hire a web site developer to add a shopping cart to your site, pay a monthly fee to your web host to provide you with the use of a shopping cart, or obtain a cart (possibly free) from a business (e.g. a third party payment processor) that wants your business for some other reason.

Purchasing and adding a shopping cart to your site. You can find a number of shopping carts available for purchase by doing a search for "shopping cart" using one of the search engines. The primary advantage of purchasing your own shopping cart is to save money. While there will be an initial fee to purchase the cart, you will not have to pay an ongoing monthly fee to your web host for the cart and you may save money in the long run. However, you may find that a shopping cart vendor, like many web hosts, will charge more money for a cart that handles more products. In other words, you may pay one price for a cart that handles 50 products and pay more for a cart that handles 100 products. One disadvantage of buying a cart is that you may have to install the cart and deal with any possible malfunctions that may occur. Make sure that any shopping cart you buy is well supported by the vendor. Buying your own cart may not be the way to go unless you have some significant computer skills or have someone to install the cart for you.

Hiring a web developer to add a shopping cart to your site. Most web site designers should be able to add either their own or a purchased shopping cart to your site. Here again you will have the one time fee for purchasing the cart, plus the additional fees of your developer for installing the cart. But, you will not have to pay a monthly fee to your web host for using their cart. This could save you a significant amount of money in the long run, especially if the cart your developer installs allows you to sell a large number of products. Another possible advantage to having your web developer install a cart is that they may have the skills to customize the cart for you. Customization can get expensive, but it can also be nice to have a store that looks a bit different from all the other stores out there. Make sure that your developer will support the cart that they install. Be aware also that some web designers may be primarily designers and have limited skills in scripting (i.e. programming).

"Renting" a shopping cart from your web host. Most web hosts offer an e-commerce option which will provide you with a shopping cart and usually other useful features too. The monthly fee for e-commerce sites is almost always higher than for sites that don't sell. Plus, most web hosts have a variety of e-commerce plans and charge a higher monthly fee if you want to sell more than 50 or 100 products. Pricing of e-commerce plans seems to vary widely among hosts, so shop around if you want to use one of these plans and find a plan that fits your needs.

A major advantage of signing up for an e-commerce plan from a web host is in the additional services that may be provided. Secure ordering may be provided through the web host, saving you the time and expense of obtaining a SSL certificate. You may also be able, for a fee, to set your site up to process credit card transactions online, with payments sent directly to your bank. You can obtain secure ordering and online credit card processing without signing up for a comprehensive e-commerce plan from your web host, but these plans do make it easy and quick to get started. Of course, you may not want to spend the extra money to process credit cards online when you can fairly easily do it yourself at your own storefront (if you have one). 

Other considerations: Purchasing an e-commerce plan through a web host usually does not prevent you from designing the rest of the site yourself or from having a web designer design your site. However, you should make sure that the host will support all of the features you have built into your site (e.g. provides Frontpage Server Extensions, provides CGI scripts, if you have used them).

E-commerce plans often require you to enter your product catalog, including product pictures, product descriptions, and product names, into a database that the web host maintains. Because the host has your product catalog, if you become unhappy with the host's services, you may find it difficult to move to a different host (i.e. you would have to recreate your entire product catalog at the new host). Some hosts allow you to import your catalog (e.g. from Microsoft Excel) and this feature would make your store much more easily transferable to a different host.

Product displays vary from shopping cart to shopping cart. Shop around and find a web host that provides a product display that works well for your products. Be aware that there will be lots of stores having product displays looking a lot like yours when you purchase an e-commerce plan from a popular web host.

Obtaining a shopping cart from a business with other financial interests. You may be able to find an inexpensive or free shopping cart through an internet business having a different financial interest in providing the cart to you. For example, PayPal.com is a third party payment processor that will provide you with a free shopping cart provided you use their service to process your credit card payments. Be aware that these shopping carts might not be as fully functional as you might like. For example, the PayPal cart does not have much flexibility in handling shipping charges, nor does it use a database, which is inconvenient if you have a large product catalog.

Using a shopping cart that specializes in quilt shops and other quilting businesses. You may want to choose a shopping cart developed specifically for quilt shops and related businesses, especially if you are selling fabric. A shopping cart developed for quilt businesses will have a way for your customers to purchase fabric in quarter, third, or half yard increments. Other carts are unlikely to handle fabric sales in anything other than one yard increments. Quilting specialty carts may have other desirable features such as a fabric calculator or design board.

Product catalog

Unless you are offering a small number of products for sale, you will probably want to store your product information in a database of some sort. The database will contain all of the pertinent information about each of your products: name, product id number, product description, name and location of the graphics file containing an image of the product, current product availability, and possibly information such as color or size of the product. The shopping cart you use will have a database integrated into it and should allow you to log onto your web site, or possibly your web host's web site, to easily enter information about your products into the database. 

Unless you have hired a web developer or someone else to maintain your site (sometimes called a "webmaster"), you will need to obtain a digital camera or a scanner to create graphics files to upload to your web site. In addition, you will need software that allows you to work with these graphics files, sizing and cropping images, adjusting brightness, and creating files that are in the appropriate format for a web site (i.e. GIF or JPEG file formats).

Be aware that when you purchase an e-commerce hosting plan from some hosts your product catalog may not be transferable to a different web host. Thus, if you become unhappy with the host's services, you may find it difficult to move to a different host (i.e. you would have to recreate your entire product catalog at the new host). Look for hosts who allow you to upload your products from a database or Excel file you maintain on your own computer.

If you have your own shopping cart (purchased by you or provided by your web designer) you will need to make sure that the web host you use provides all of the features needed by your shopping cart, including the database associated with the cart. Not all web hosting plans support use of a database or use of your specific database. Different web hosts use different operating systems on their servers. If you have designed your site using Microsoft products your site will probably function best with a web host that uses a Windows operating system on their servers.

Many independent online shops use a Microsoft Access database. Be aware that an Access database is suitable only if you do not have a very high volume of sales. If your site grows, you will want your web host to allow you to upgrade to a  database that can handle high volume traffic (e.g. SQL Server). 

Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) Certificates

Customers purchasing products on the Web want to know that the businesses they provide their credit card information to are legitimate. They also want to know that their credit card information is protected from prying eyes. 

Web sites selling products can safeguard their customers private information by purchasing a SSL certificate from a reputable company such as VeriSign or Thawte. The web business must send application materials demonstrating that they are a legitimate business to the certificate provider. The certificate provider then allows the web business to install their company's SSL certificate on their web site.

 Once the certificate is installed the web site can protect any of its pages by linking to that page with https:// coding (rather than http://). Pages protected by SSL certificates are encrypted with coding that is pretty much undecipherable. 

SSL certificates vary in price (in the neighborhood of  $150-$350 per year for popular certificates) depending on factors such as the company providing the certificate and the number of years of protection purchased. 

There are several ways to avoid the expense of purchasing your own SSL certificate. One possibility is to sign up with a web host that provides secure ordering as part of their e-commerce package. A second option is to sign up with a third party payment processor who will provide you with their own secure socket layer for taking credit card information. A third option is to take private customer information over the phone rather than through your web site. With this method of doing internet business, the customer makes their selections from your online catalog and provides you with limited personal information (e.g. name, phone number) when they place their online order. Your shop then calls the customer and takes the credit card information over the phone.

Online credit card transactions

Processing credit cards in your shop. Some small web businesses secure their sites with SSL certificates and take orders online. But, instead of making arrangements to process credit card transactions online, they process the credit cards at their brick and mortar store. If volume of sales on the web site is not formidably high, this arrangement can work well. Make sure that your shopping cart encrypts the credit card numbers before storing them in the database.

Third party payment processing. If you want to process credit cards online, but don't have adequate online business to justify paying all the monthly fees involved in having your own merchant account and payment gateway, consider a third party payment processor such as PayPal.com. A third party processor will handle your credit card transactions for you. Your customer selects items from your shop catalog in the usual manner, but when they are ready to check out they click a "Check Out" button which takes them to the secure web site of the third party vendor for credit card processing. The third party vendor takes a cut for each transaction and forwards the payment to you.

Third party processors generally charge a higher fee per transaction than you would pay if using the standard combination of payment gateway and online merchant account. However, if your gross monthly sales are under $500, or even $1000, per month you may save money using a third party vendor. Expect to pay in the vicinity of $.30 per transaction plus around 3% of the gross sale price.

If you are considering using a third party vendor, you may want to decide on one to use before getting too far into designing your web site. For example, PayPal has its own shopping cart that you might want to use if using their payment processing services.

E-commerce web hosting packages. If you purchase an e-commerce enabled web hosting package from a web host, you can generally purchase an add-on service for online credit card transactions. You may be charged any of a number of fees for the service: a monthly fee for the basic service, a fee for each transaction, a percentage of monthly sales, a minimum transaction fee for the month, and so on. Obtaining one of these e-commerce add-on services from your web host may save you the trouble of searching for your own payment gateway. If you want to use an e-commerce enabled web hosting package and want to process credit cards online, shop around for the best package for the type and volume of sales you anticipate.

Internet Merchant Account. If you want to accept credit card payments on your web site, and don't want to use the preceding options, you will need a merchant account that handles online payment processing. Your shop may already have a merchant account that allows you to take credit card payments. However, the account you already have might not handle online payment processing in which case you will need a second account specifically designed to handle online transactions. These transactions take place nearly instantaneously while your customer is on your web site placing an order. Fees will generally be higher than for non-Internet merchant accounts. Shop around for the best deals using your favorite search engines or web directories. Price is not the only consideration. Be sure and find a reliable service. You don't want your account to be down when a credit card transaction comes through.

Payment Gateway. The payment gateway is the pipeline through which a credit card transaction initiated on your web site is quickly transferred to your internet merchant account. The payment gateway is a special, extremely secure connection located off of the Internet that links your site to the banking network. You pay a monthly fee for this pipeline and may pay a setup fee or other fees as well.

Web Hosting:  

Your web hosting needs depend greatly on the goals you have for your web site.  If you have a small site used primarily for advertising or providing information to customers, you may be able to host your site for free with your internet service provider (ISP). Or, you may find it advantageous to locate your site, for a low fee, with a quilt-related host or with a site promoting your local business community. With these options you would not need to obtain your own domain name and your address would read something like: http://www.yourhost.com/yoursite.

When selecting a web host an important consideration is whether the host supports all of the features you have built into your site. For example, if you have designed your site using FrontPage and used some of FrontPage's advanced features you'll need to make sure your host provides FrontPage Server Extensions. FrontPage-developed web sites are best supported by hosts using servers running Windows operating systems. Other features commonly used which require support from the web host include CGI scripts and databases. If you will be selling merchandise on your site, be sure that your web host either provides everything that you need to sell (i.e. through a complete e-commerce enabled web hosting package) or supports the various features that you have already built into your site or that you require such as: your shopping cart, product catalog, installing a SSL certificate or payment gateway. 

If you are purchasing an e-commerce web hosting package, carefully compare the the features offered and prices of different services. There is a lot of variation in the deals offered and, depending on the number of products you plan to sell, some plans may be much more cost effective than others. Realize also that you may be able to have a more economical site over the long run by paying a web designer to set up your online shop (so you own rather than rent your store) rather than locking yourself in to a high monthly rate with a web host's e-commerce package.

Be sure to select a web host that offers high reliability, good toll free 24/7 technical assistance, server backup, and fast connections. Look for services that have 99.9% uptime. If you anticipate growth in your business, look for a host that offers both inexpensive introductory hosting packages and more advanced packages that will allow your site to grow. Don't jump into selecting a web host. Consult with your web site developer. Check out reviews of web hosting services in computer magazines or on the Web (e.g., www.webhostingratings.com, www.CNET.com, www.pcmag.com). The least expensive deal is not necessarily the best deal.