Website Resources

[ArtfulMarket]

I just found a great tool to track and analyze the traffic to and on your website. It is called Google Analytics and it is free!

http://www.google.com/analytics/

[ArtfulMarket]

When I began to look at creating a website for ArtfulMaket (www.artfulmarket.com) it was a bit overwhelming. I had no idea how to go about setting up a website with a shopping cart. There are many options for a shopping cart. Many of them mean you pay a monthly fee to use it forever.... I found a shopping cart that i was able to purchase. It is called cs-cart (http://www.cs-cart.com/). It has great features and was relatively inexpensive compared to having to pay a monthly fee for a shopping cart. I paid for it one time and it is mine to use forever. The only down side to it was that it was limited with the design unless you have some experience with website design using code. I found a website designer to create the look of my site using the cart. I figured when looking at the fees that would be charged by the month for something similar on google or godaddy I would pay for the site in a year or so. I will have no recurring fees every month to use my website and the cart. The cart also has many more features those services also. It allows me to track inventory, complete a mailing list, send invoices and many other features. For my purposes it was a great solution.
If you have your own website I would like to start a discussion about anything that would help other artists create one of their own. Let's share information on good sources for design, shopping carts, templates etc. How have created your website? Do you know any good website designers for artists? I know there are some companies out there that specialize in that.