Day 3: Iteration and the Art of Online Store Maintenance
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. But if it is broke, just switch it.
After staying up for most of two nights, I thought I had everything working. Except it, as it turns out, not the online store. Somewhere between testing it and going live, I fubar’d something, blah, blah, blah. The point is that we launched it when we launched the Devil’s Advocates and suddenly we were getting hundreds of visits to a shop that couldn’t sell anything to anyone.
That’s when I learned — between following our launch plan for the membership drive, thanking people who generously posted that they’d become a Misfit or a Rogue and trying to do a few of the things I have on my plate most every day — pretending to understand how to code or program is not a strength of mine.
But the online shop is running now. I’ll upload some new products soon, like the rest of the medium and large shirts we have leftover from last summer’s Signal Tree Fest. For now, there are six items and that makes me happy.
Instead of fixing what I apparently broke with WooCommerce, I just moved everything into Big Cartel, which integrates into Facebook so we can sell there and it can be reached via a direct link from our website. It’ll do for now.
The thing that gives me some comfort about being a habitual screw-up is that if I learn from my mistakes, in the long run everything tends to work out. I think our members get that because the support The Devil Strip for the long run. They know that we’re you’re an indie operation like ours you sometimes have to learn your lessons the hard way… …on purpose.
And that’s why we designed the memberships the way we did. We recognized we could probably get more folks to sign up more quickly if we had three or four levels and loaded them with more goodies. If our goal was just money, that’d be fine, but we want to bring our community closer together. Lots of incentives mean being a member becomes mostly about the stuff you get, not so much what we already do.
We want members who want to support us because we support Akron. The rewards you get are our way of saying thank you for stepping up to help us do this. We want you to know we’re thinking of you.
HOUSEKEEPING
- We’ve topped the 100 member mark, which is super exciting …and mildly terrifying. Like when you get engaged and start trying to call your partner your fiancé the first time. Feels weird, but good weird.
- The secret Facebook group is open and the first round of member invites have been out. I’d link there but it’s a secret. Members-only.
- In the next couple days, we’ll send out a member invite to RSVP for the next Drink Tank, which is at 69 Taps downtown. The first 25 Misfits and Rogues to RSVP get their first round on us.
- An email is going out to all the members about the store finally working and it includes a discount code they can use for any purchase they want to make there. Become a Devil’s Advocate and save!
- Soon, the store will feature more work by local artists and designers. Some of it will be Akron-y. Some of it will just be cool, interesting stuff they do.
