Starting website, need name Created 14 years ago2009-12-07 21:14:51 UTC by zeeba-G

Well im going to be starting a website pretty soon to sell teapots and other ceramics I make. Right now im thinking of the name. Anyone wanna give it a shot? Im from Texas and some words that have to do with it are sculpting, throwing, stoneware, ceramics, kiln, fire, glaze, vessel, functional pots, pottery etc.

I came up with "just add fire". My bro came up with "lone star stone ware".

Super basic depiction of my first idea.

Just add fire is a great name, only I dont know if it correctly appeals to the ceramic ware client?le. I dont guess I know though, heh.

I do like it, definitely. Has a ring to it.

www.justaddfire.com
Or, if that's taken:
www.justaddfireceramics.com
edit: OMG, we have autolinks?

Thanks. Yea thats my biggest concern, that I target the right crowd/ clients. Adding ceramics to it is a good idea to help do so.

Under the title its going to say

Hand Made
High Fired
Stoneware

Here's a few names I came up with. I apologize ahead of time if they sound too corny:

Texan Forge
Texan Firepot
Lone Stoneware
Southern Ceramics
Fire Pitt Creations
Tex'sculp

Now that I got that out of the way, I have a few questions:

Have you decided yet on what type of store front setup you are going to use for your web store? What I mean is, are you going to create your ecommerce website from scratch or use some kind of remotely hosted, all-in-one easy to use solution, like for an example these here:

www.vstore.ca

www.ecrater.com

www.vendio.com/ecommerce/free-ecommerce-site

I myself use ecrater.com for one of my online shops, which I sell tropical snacks, you can see it here in action: http://coquimart.ecrater.com

I have some experience setting up web stores from scratch and their shopping carts, so if you have any questions or need some tips, send me a personal message (PM).

cool, southern ceramics sounds awesome! Thanks for the ideas. Well I may use a preset type program for my website but I really have it in my head already how I want it to function. I definitly would appreciate help. Tomorrow I will pm you sort of how I want it to function and maybe you can help me decide which path I should take. I also know it will cost some and as of right now im jobless and spent every last penny on christmas. Im going job searching tomorrow though.

Wow neat website! Thanks in advanced for the help!!

Go for "Planet Pot" and see how many complaints you get for not stocking 'the right stuff'.

"Zeeba-G's Sculpting, Throwing, Stoneware, Ceramics, Kiln, Fire, Glaze, Vessel, Functional Pots, Pottery, etc. Emporium and Warehouse"

.com

Actually, I still like Lone Star Stoneware the best. It's incredibly ringy.

www.texanvessel.com

www.justaddfiretotheclaysoitsolidifiesandthebettexanceramicsaremadebyzeeba.com

or www.firevessel.com

lol. Hmm some good ideas, Texas vessel sounds pretty good. Yea I still like lonestar stone ware the best so far though. Warehouse seams a bit big for something being done in half my garage. Same with planet though someone owns that domain anyways and is selling it for 2 grand?? Haha, lonestar isn't taken yet but another one that I liked "high fire ceramics" is. Texanvessel isn't either. I like it but I want to sell some sculptures too. Wow wtf "just add fire" is taken, well I guess I would add ceramics to the end of it anyways.. The main thing I am going to sell though is teapots! Heres my first thrown teapot I finished. Its for my mom for christmas.It has an interlocking lid and a built in strainer. This could easily go for around $300.

I would totally get my fianc? something like that for Christmas. She's a big tea drinker. Can't quite afford to spend ?150 odd on a set though.

I could sell them cheaper to people I know And I would be more than glad to take special requests like size shape and colors. Oh lol didn't catch on penguin. Now thats quite catchy, ill go with it for sure!

Have you tried selling your stuff on eBay? Depending on what your startup budget is, you can open a basic store front inside eBay for $15.95 a month. Of course, when selling on eBay you have to be careful on what and how you list the items. If you list a lot of items and they don't sell, you are still stuck with eBay's insertion fees, regardless if you sold them or not.

Now, there's also this other online auction site that's just like eBay called Wigix. It might not have eBay's huge visitor traffic, but they still have a respectable amount of visitors. But at least they are free to use, Wigix does not have insertion fees like eBay does. If your budget is tight, you should try them out, you got nothing to loose with them. www.Wigix.com

One last thing, if you have not done so yet, you are going to need to open a PayPal or Google Checkout account (or both). On my ecrater store I accept payments through either one of these two payment gateways, they are both free to use anyway.

That looks reasonable and pretty good, but I want to start a website and make it known and popular.

This potter has a website somewhat how I would like mine.
www.oestreichpottery.com

But I would want more sections. Instead of gallery, map and home I would probably have "Gallery, shopping, info" The gallery on my web would only be pictures of how I make the stuff and my studio and everything. Shopping would bring you to more choices like "teapots, mugs, scupltures etc. Selecting say "teapots" would bring you to pictures of each teapot with a little description and price and place to add it to your cart. And info would bring you to a browser that explains how I make everything and how to use them and what they cannot be used for.

You can either use an off the shelf e-commerce package for that, or build it yourself. If you design everything yourself you can expect it to do exactly what you need, but that comes at the expense of (possibly) some more bugs. Although I'm sure it would be fun.

Don't forget also, if you build the site from the ground up, you will need to apply some proper Search Engine Optimization (SEO). I once read somewhere that 8 out of 10 ecommerce sites fail within the first year of online operation, and the number one reason for this, is poor SEO. Optimizing your website's meta tags for maximum relevance in the major search engines like MSN, Yahoo and especially Google is super critical to your web store's success. If you want to learn more on SEO, you can start here: http://tools.seobook.com

Hmm, so are links just based on text used in the website? And by fall apart, you just mean don't get any business?

Try making a cool site with www.wix.com
For you own domain and space you need to pay, but you can try for free (yousitename.wix.com) just to see how cool it is.

I would like to help you out with this, I would. My company offers a years technical support, an hours free training and a fully optimised E-commerce system which shows up on the first page of google.

However, this would come to about ?800GBP+ which is a bit steep for sole traders in todays climate.

Hmm, so are links just based on text used in the website? And by fall apart, you just mean don't get any business?

Falling apart means making only a small amount of sales or maybe none at all. Good Search Engine Optimization for your website means your website will be found listed high up on the search engines.

Let me give you an example pertaining to your case:

Let's say that a potential customer looking to buy a ceramic teapot, visits a search engine, like for an example Google, types in the key words "ceramic teapot" on Google's search text box. After pressing the search button, Google will return the search results just like these:

http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&source=hp&q=ceramic+teapot&aq=0s&oq=ceramic+tea+&aqi=g-s1g9

Now, if you look at your website's HTML source code, at the top there should be a section called the "head" ( <head></head> ). In the head section are what are called the "Meta Tags". One of these meta tags will have listed the "Key Words". The key words are pretty much the words or phrases that describe what your website is all about.

So in your website's case, the meta tag key words will be words like teapot, ceramics, pottery, Texas....and the list goes on, I'm sure you get the idea. Now, you see all those websites listed on Google's search result listed above? If you were to check their meta tag key words, they will the key words "ceramic teapot" on them. Well, if your website has those key words too, then your site will also show up on Google's search results for those particular search words.

That link you gave earlier for that oestreichpottery.com website, let's take a look at their meta tags as a working example. This is a copy & paste of their head section:

<head>
<title>Welcome to Oestreich Pottery</title>
<meta name="description" content="Oestreich Pottery - Site now features an online gallery of pottery work created by Jeff Oestreich titled, 4 From a Firing: A Collector's Gallery.">
<META name="keywords" content="oestreich pottery, jeff oestreich">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=iso-8859-1">
</head>

I hope this helps you to understand better what SEO is in part about.

Well, if your website has those key words too, then your site will also show up on Google's search results for those particular search words.

Google ignores "keywords" meta data. What's important is that you write semantic HTML (or semantic XHTML).

Expand, potatis.

I'm assuming he's referring to the website's content information, which I guess will act as the key words for Google. But it still does not hurt to have plenty of meta data key words for the other search engines that do use them.

Cool, thank you Tito for taking so much effort to thoroughly explain to me. As soon as I start making my real website "As soon as I make some $$$" I'll ask for your help guiding me through. And so, you used one of the seo programs to find out his tags? And what exactly do you mean potatis? You may both be right and different search engines probably take tags from different places. What is semantic html? Well I guess I can look it up. And striker ill give that a shot for experience.

Quote from the Wikipedia article on Semantic HTML:

Semantic HTML is the use of HTML markup to reinforce the semantics, or meaning, of the textual information rather than merely to define its presentation (look).

For example, <hX> (where X is a number between 1 and 6) tags should be used for headers and the <ol> (ordered list) and <ul> (unordered list) tags should be used for lists instead of <table> or <div>.

...
<img src="http://twhl.co.za/images/logo_final2.jpg" alt="">
<br>
<br>
<br>
<b>Contact us</b><br>
You can find us here: PO BOX 1688 - Bellevue, WA 98009<br>
Or you can contact us by email: <a href="mailto:contact@valvesoftware.com">contact@valvesoftware.com</a>

is not semantic HTML.

...
<img src="http://twhl.co.za/images/logo_final2.jpg" title="The Whole Half-Life Logo" alt="Our logo">
<h2>Contact us</h2>
<address>
You can find us here: PO BOX 1688 - Bellevue, WA 98009<br>
Or you can contact us by email: <a href="mailto:contact@valvesoftware.com">contact@valvesoftware.com</a>
</address>

is.

Google and other search engines treat text in <strong> or <hX> tags as more important. Image search engines read the "alt" and "title" attributes on <img> elements. The "alt" attribute is used by text-to-speech programs, too.

But it still does not hurt to have plenty of meta data key words for the other search engines that do use them.

That is true, Google is the most used search engine but there are many others and some read "keywords" meta data.

Edit: Oh and I haven't read the whole thread, but I take it you are going to code the website yourself?