A Person who never made a mistake never tried anything new.

Albert Einstein

I have created one plug and play website and that is this one that you are currently looking at. I did some computer programming in junior high: creating a video game with our teacher providing step by step instructions and successfully completed an experiment with coding that directed a mouse to find the cheese. With that sketchy background, I thought I could create a website for my new book, Even Beavers Can Be Heroes, without any issues.  

Website creation, I can now convey, is a lot harder than I expected. I first opened the website on WordPress due to already utilizing it for this blog. I felt it would be a good idea to keep the sites on the same form to make them both easier to monitor and update as needed. I was feeling pretty good about how quickly I breezed through each step. I found a name, updated the theme I had chosen to suit my design criteria. I then uploaded the product. I was feeling confident as I entered setting up the point of sale section. 

As I was riding my computer savvy high and dusting the “Go me” off my shoulder, I decided to test purchasing the book. My confidence took flight when I saw that after hitting the ‘Add to Cart’ button, a little 1 appeared in my grocery basket. However, when I boldly clicked on the ‘buy’ button, I was alarmed to see that I had purchased a 2-dollar recipe for Guacamole dip. Are you kidding me? First, I do not like the looks of Guacamole as it reminds me of baby dribble. Second, I don’t cook, don’t prepare party food and, therefore, have no use for recipes. I realized after struggling to cancel my own order on my own site that this was more than I could handle, and I needed professional advice.  

I was told to use E-Commerce because it was super friendly. I tried but I had unknown issues using a Gmail account for my email despite the site suggesting I purchase G-Suite. I have since gone to Shopify. I have found the website to be easy to manage except for one issue: Any advice on how to solicit information from a buyer on a Shopify website would be much appreciated.  I want to be able to: Give a personalize bookmark (which may be a child’s name for whom they are purchasing the book).

Hopefully, by the end of next week, I can have it figured out and begin promoting the new and improved site. Sorry, no guacamole recipes are needed. 

Moral: 1) Trying new things can be difficult the first time around, but don’t give up. 2) Always test before unveiling; thinking something should work and it actually working are two different things. 

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