New Website: Coast Chimes

Coast Chimes: New Website
WWW. Coast Chimes

I've made half a dozen different websites for Coast Chimes, starting back 20 years ago. They have ranged from okay to not very good. The further back in time you go, the more easily one could get away with a sloppy website, as at the start people did not expect much! These days, you better have a pretty decent website if you hope to sell.

Today you need to go beyond just okay. You have a fraction of a second to grab the attention of the new visitor, a visitor with a very critical eye, or their finger hits the back button and goodbye potential customer.

Even without any prior website building experience, I believe any artist-crafter could build a fairly decent looking website using Shopify without too many headaches. Taking that website beyond the basic shop to where I feel a website needs to be in today's competitive world will be more challenging.

After my basic shop was up, I felt like I hit a wall. I had ideas I wanted to implement, but the supporting documentation for Shopify was frankly scary complex, and I was scared of really messing up my website.

I approached several experts for hire. Prices were far steeper than I had hoped they would be (in the thousands was not unusual). Also, very few provided a clear vision of what they hoped to accomplish for my site. Why would I hire them if they had no vision? Do they do the same site for a seller of imported plastic toys as for an artist?

So I got thinking, and decided the first thing I should do is figure out exactly what I wanted for my site. That way, I could tell the experts what I needed, and they could tell me if they could do it, and how much it would cost. This seemed a much better approach than my initial: 'my site is a mess, how much to fix it?'.

However, after figuring out what I wanted for my site, I realized that maybe, just maybe, I could tackle this thing myself. So defining what was needed helped enormously. A logo was number one, as everyone says this is extremely important. They also say it is a big deal, and a job for a professional. This can cost in the hundreds, easily. Wanting everything as simple and clean as possible for my own site, I did my own simple and clean logo. It took me 15 minutes. I doubt it is up to professional standards, but I think it looks fine.

The biggest challenge was to arrange all my stock into different collections, and make clickable buttons (rather than visitors having to scroll through 12 pages of mixed stock). I decided on 9 categories, and got busy reading how to make collections in the Shopify help section. It seemed overwhelmingly complex, but once I got going, following each step in the instructions as I went along, it turned out to be not too bad after all. Then I just made small buttons from pictures I already had handy (a picture of driftwood, for example, for my driftwood section), figured out how to place these on my homepage using a grid, and made links. Not bad at all.

Could someone with zero website building experience accomplish this? Probably, given enough patience, asking for help on forums, being bold and trying. I would say the written instructions make things sound a lot harder than the reality, which is often the case with technical things.

So instead of spending a thousand dollars or more, I got to learn some cool things, I got the satisfaction of doing it myself, and, most importantly, I got a much better looking website that I am proud of and happy with.

Advertising a New Website

My New Website: Coast Chimes

With the launch of each new website, I always run a little advertising campaign to help get it going. The launch of my newest version is no exception.

I don't recall it being very challenging to set up a campaign with my first several websites . But this appears to be an area (along with online selling in general) which has not gotten easier, or cheaper, with time.

With the new Coast Chimes Shopify site, I thought I would go in to Adsense, click a few buttons, fill in a couple of lines, and advertise. Ha, ha, ha.... nope. Not really.

It is true that I could get a very basic add with a bunch of keywords up and running quite quickly, but the number of various options / screens was, to say the lease, overwhelming. I didn't have any idea what many of them even meant.  I decided to give Google Adsense a phone call to consult with an expert, for free, as offered in an email sent from Adsense.

The first phone call lasted about a half hour. A very nice and knowledgeable service representative went over a whole lot, and we decided it would be best to pause my current campaign and arrange an appointment with a higher level technician, so that I could maybe get some images into my ads.

I knew a little about what would be needed, so I started looking at my old Google Merchant account prior to consulting with this next expert. Wow. What a tedious, multi-tasking sort of chore that is! I fooled around, but in the end decided to wait for the expert's phone call.

When I talked with the expert, he got me to share my screen with him, and led me through many, many steps. The job took over an hour. Now there will be a few days until the team approves my set up!

Then it will be back to the expert, to finish the process of integrating my images with my ads.

Then back to the initial contact, to help with the keywords and bidding amounts etc. etc.

All this, just to get a little ad campaign going. I had no idea. Truly, I think it is quite amazing any ads appear on Google!

From what I saw before pausing my initial ads, this is likely to be far too expensive for me to use anyway! Those clicks cost so much money!

Coast Copper: Canadian Wind Chime Website

Below, part of the homepage for Coast Copper—

a new Canadian website for wind chimes

Coast Copper has a nice selection of my wind chimes. All prices are in Canadian dollars.

It has been too cold here these past several of days for me to go out and do much glass, metal and woodwork. So I used the time to finally get my Canadian website made and launched. It has a great selection of my large wind chimes, and all prices are in Canadian dollars. It is called Coast Copper.

Coast Copper, New Jewelry Website

Click on the picture to see it larger

Flowing Copper Necklace with Matching Earrings
Visit Coast Copper for Handcrafted Artist-designed Jewelry

A sister website to Coast Chimes is now up and running: Coast Copper.

Artist Tim Kline has created a very limited edition of necklaces with matching earrings. Using his years of experience working with copper and stone producing original designs for the home and garden, he now offers some astonishing, one-of-a-kind necklace and earring sets.

Like his home and garden creations, these are not to be found anywhere else. This jewelry is completely handcrafted, totally original.

To see seven unique necklace and earring sets, visit Coast Copper.

Website Coast Chimes Updated

Click on the picture to go to the website

A new, cleaner look. Coast Chimes website.

The other day was very cool, and very wet, here. A perfect day to find any excuse to stay inside and feed the fire! Cleaning up and changing the look of my website is always a good way to kill a few hours.

So a new, fresh look. Some lower prices. The high-quality, unique designs, and expert service remain.

I also fixed a bug that interfered with multiple orders. You should now be able to add as many items to the shopping cart as you like. Safe, secure shopping through PayPal. And you do not need to even be a member of PayPal to shop-- just about any credit card will do.

Don't forget, ordering from Canada can take a bit longer. If you are located in the USA, once in a blue moon things get hung up at the border: avoid holiday disappointment, shop soon.

One thing I did not change— every order receives a free gift of my handcrafted cold forged earrings. Also, speaking of gifts, if you are ordering a gift and need it shipped directly, that is no problem. In fact, send along a personal message, and I will be happy to include that on a nice card for you.

Enjoy.

vs.5, New Coast Chimes Website

A partial snapshot of the homepage of my new website. vs. 5~ it's been a long haul! Why not take a moment and explore~ it's a pretty site, with pretty things. To see my new site, just Click Here.

As so often happens, what at first seems so easy becomes more and more complex. Why is that? While it was approximately a million times easier and more fun building a website using nice software, it soon became apparent that there were also many neat new things that could be tried, and that brought with it a steep learning curve.

Since I do almost all my actual work (making neat things) outside in unheated space, designing this new website provided the perfect excuse to sit inside, away from the snow and cold. It is amazing to me, though, just how much time and effort can go into a website. Just choosing titles for each page is a major task, not to mention colors, and.... well, you get the picture.

I know vs.5 will not be the end of it, either. But at least I have gotten it to the point where I feel quite proud.

New Website!

I'm not a huge fan of New Year resolutions. But oddly enough last year I resolved to make a website. I did that. This year I resolved to make a good website. I think maybe I have made progress towards that goal, too, already. Here is a screen shot of the homepage:























It's now called Coast Wind Chimes.

If you ever visited my old, cobbled together site, I think you might enjoy visiting the new site and seeing how much easier it is to navigate, and some of the neat new features, like a slide show.

I would like to thank the folks at Realmac Software for their Rapidweaver web design software. Rapidweaver made putting my new site together such a pleasure, especially after the HTML nightmare of the old site. The forum at Rapidweaver is great, too, with such clear answers from those who know what they are doing.

It's been cold, wet, and windy, and so it was nice to stay inside and work on the website. But now it's time to get out and make some new, interesting things.