Print Catalog

[dogmom327]

Has anyone put together a print catalog?  Is there any particular software that would be good to use?  I'd like to find software for that purpose where I could just plug in the products, etc. and not have to do all the tedious formatting in Adobe.

[Galatea]

I dunno, but I want to know, too.  Will your cart do it?

[dogmom327]

Originally Posted by Galatea 

I dunno, but I want to know, too.  Will your cart do it?

Not that I can tell.  I wish it would!

[Galatea]

I thought mine did, but when I looked around, I think it was my old cart that did that (Pappashop.)  Hm.

Your new cart looks great, BTW.  Who did you end up going with?  And did you have a professional design or install?

[dogmom327]

Originally Posted by Galatea 

I thought mine did, but when I looked around, I think it was my old cart that did that (Pappashop.)  Hm.

Your new cart looks great, BTW.  Who did you end up going with?  And did you have a professional design or install?

Thanks!  The cart is Magento.  We drew the picture of what we wanted the home page, product pages, etc. to look like and then we did have it professionally installed and coded.  It was a horrible process.  I'm hoping it's 10 years before we do it again :(  But I do love the final product.  We're still tweaking it but Magento is a good cart and I'm thankful we went with it.

[Galatea]

Originally Posted by dogmom327 

Thanks!  The cart is Magento.  We drew the picture of what we wanted the home page, product pages, etc. to look like and then we did have it professionally installed and coded.  It was a horrible process.  I'm hoping it's 10 years before we do it again :(  But I do love the final product.  We're still tweaking it but Magento is a good cart and I'm thankful we went with it.

We had a consult for a Magento cart 2 years ago, and they wanted $10,000+, so we said, "No thanks!"  But maybe now I regret it, b/c yours is lovely. 
 

[dogmom327]

Originally Posted by Galatea 

We had a consult for a Magento cart 2 years ago, and they wanted $10,000+, so we said, "No thanks!"  But maybe now I regret it, b/c yours is lovely. 
 

LOL  Actually ours ended up being 2x what we were originally quoted (and the quote was high).  Magento is crazy expensive to program unfortunately.  It was worth it though (business surged).  But yeah, we learned the hard way not to build a Magento site unless you've got lots of money to spend :(
 

[Galatea]

Originally Posted by dogmom327 

LOL  Actually ours ended up being 2x what we were originally quoted (and the quote was high).  Magento is crazy expensive to program unfortunately.  It was worth it though (business surged).  But yeah, we learned the hard way not to build a Magento site unless you've got lots of money to spend :(
 

What about Magento made business surge?

[dogmom327]

Originally Posted by Galatea 

What about Magento made business surge?

Related to Magento: Better SEO due to better control over sub-domains, control over meta tags, etc.  We aren't limited by what a programmer has done with the program since very single thing can be customized.

Not necessarily related to Magento: Nicer website seems to directly correlate to lower bounce rate, increased time spent on site and higher average sale.  The new site went up on December 7th and in the first three months of this year we grew 250%.

Ultimately Magento has given us a ton of flexibility as to how we set things up and we now can grow as much as we want without a fear of out growing it.

One more thing about Magento (if you decide to take the leap)...it's a resource hog in terms of hosting.  We are on dedicated hosting which is technically more than we need but at least it's fast this way.

[Galatea]

Thanks!

[dogmom327]

Anytime :)  I'm still bitter over how much it cost and how much stress was involved but I figure if others can benefit, it makes it a little better.  If you guys end up looking at switching just let me know and I'll send more info :)

[Galatea]

Originally Posted by dogmom327 

Anytime :)  I'm still bitter over how much it cost and how much stress was involved but I figure if others can benefit, it makes it a little better.  If you guys end up looking at switching just let me know and I'll send more info :)

Not in the near future, as we don't have any money to burn, but maybe!

[dogmom327]

LOL!  I hear you!  We got a little lucky in that it took longer than it was supposed to so I had a bit of time to gather extra money but ultimately I'm extremely grateful business went up right after that because we needed that to happen to recover.