Craft Business Online

Taking your craft business online means you'll need to make some decisions about how to design a web site for your business.

Whether you decide to design your site yourself or hire a designer, there are plenty of simple tools and resources out there that can help you build a great site for your online craft business.

Consider Hiring a Designer to Take Your Craft Business Online

You may decide that you're not confident in your ability to create a site that "wows" your customers. In that case, a designer can create a custom look for your site that is focused specifically on your desired image, your products and the expectations of your target customer. If you decide to hire a designer to create your site, you will typically still have the option to update the site yourself when you want to add new products or information.

Or Do it Yourself

Since this site is all about building a craft based business, I'm assuming you have an eye for design. So, you might decide you're confident that you know (or can learn) how to design a web site that is professional looking and enhances your work.

Ensure that you don't lose your eye for design when you build your site. If you're going to take your craft business online, it's very important that the look and feel of your web site is a good match for your products and the expectations of your customers.

Getting Started with Templates

Your web host may offer templates that you can use for designing your site. Although templates offer limited flexibility in the design of your site, if you look around, you should be able to find one that's a good match for the image you want for your site.

The down side of using templates is that other people may use the same template, so your site may not look truly unique. However, templates are a great starting point if building a website is new to you. If you're not confident that you know how to design a web site from scratch, templates will help you to get a more professional look than you might get on your own, and they eliminate or at least minimize the need to learn HTML.

How to Design a Web Site with HTML Editors

If you have good basic computer skills, learning HTML and using HTML editing software is a perfectly reasonable goal for many people. HTML editors come in two varieties, WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get), and text editors

WYSIWYG editors are typically very easy to use because you don't have to know HTML to use this type of software. Many beginners start with this type of software, and create very nice looking sites.

Text editors, on the other hand, are typically used by more experienced, professional web designers. Once you know how to design a web site using HTML tags, you can usually make edits faster with a text editor, and this type of software doesn't include unexpected HTML tags that can occur with WYSIWYG editors.

If you decide to go the text editor route you might want to check out Ultra Edit, but remember, you'll need to be familiar with HTML tags to use a text editor.

Some HTML editors you may want to explore include:

CoffeeCup
Adobe Dreamweaver
Arachnophilia

Dreamweaver is a very popular HTML editor but is on the pricey end. CoffeeCup is more affordable, and Arachnophilia is free.

Graphics

Good graphics editing software will help you to create images that enhance the look of your site and show off your items to their best advantage. If you're going to be successful at taking your craft business online, great images are absolutely crucial. This is no place to skimp on quality.

One graphics editor that I have used a lot is Adobe Photoshop. You can even download a free trial to ensure the software is a good fit for your needs.

Some good, free graphics editing software programs are also available. Paint.net for PC is a fantastic program and is very much like Photoshop in that, if you know your way around Photoshop, you'll have no problem adapting to Paint.net. For Mac users, Gimp is a good, free option.

If you haven't used a graphics editor before, it will take a little time to learn the program, but once you find your way around the software, I think you'll find it's a lot of fun to use, and the possibilities are endless.

Once you're comfortable with the topic of how to design a web site, you can move on to learning more about other aspects of building your craft business online. The next step is learning how to accept credit cards for your online business.