This is what I’ve been doing for 3 months of my life. And I am sooooo happy it is finally finished. Well I think it’s finished. I’m sure some problems will pop up during the transition- but that always happens. Why the new site? Let me count the reasons.
- I’ve been thinking about this for oh 4-5 years! We were never really happy with how Sweetwater was presented online. We had a whole bunch of sites, with a whole bunch of products. Of course, we had our blog. Then we had our main website. Which no one ever looked at. And if they did, it was way out of date. Then we had a different site if you wanted to sign up for the Sweetwater Label Crew. Oh and then we had our Etsy site. It was all too confusing, too disjointed and it drove us crazy. I’m sure it drove some of you crazy too.
- Etsy. Oh I do love Etsy. And it has been very good for us. It is simple to use, new people discover us and we love being a part of the Etsy community. But we have almost 400 products. And about 15 different product categories. And the way Etsy is set up, it is hard to separate those categories in an attractive way. So one of our quilt patterns may be right next to one of our art prints, which is right next to an iron-on label. There is no rhyme or reason to it- the way the products are displayed totally depends on what the last product we sold was. That product goes to the front page, at the top of the list no matter what. That’s why everything is just jumbled up. We hope you have a more enjoyable experience with this new site.
- Then there are the Etsy fees we pay for each sale. Yikes. Need I say more. But don’t worry if you love Etsy. We are keeping our shop over there just as before. We just wanted you to have the choice.
- Everything is finally in one place. Our blog, our products, the Label Crew- everything!
- We will be able to do more things here- like having a Block of The Month- which is coming soon!
So this is a very happy day for me. When we first started doing this, I kinda thought it would be easy. Um, no. Was I ever wrong. We always have to do things ourselves. It doesn’t cross our minds that maybe we should hire someone to do something we have no idea how to do. But we’re stubborn like that. I have learned way too many things about web hosting, page creation, SSL certificates, html, coding, page cache, etc…….. Yuck! I’m excited to get back to doing what I do best. And it’s not website design!
So because I am so happy and in a great mood, I thought we would celebrate our new site with a couple of things.
First of all, we would really love to have you subscribe to our new blog (on the right side of the screen). We have so many subscribers to our other blog, and we don’t want to lose any! So, if you would be so kind to subscribe, just leave us a comment at the bottom of this post. We will then enter you in a contest to win some fabric! And it will be from The Boat House!!!
And, we will be giving away some of our new jewelry from our Sweetwater Marketplace:
So again, to enter the contest you need to do two things. First, subscribe to our blog in the box in the upper right side of this post. Second, leave us a comment letting us know that you did.
But that’s not all. We are feeling so happy that we want to do something special. Every order placed this week (ending next Friday) will receive something extra in their package. We call it our Random Acts of Kindness Week. It’s all random, so you may receive a mini charm pack, a cute label or even some scraps from The Boat House. Here is a couple of conditions, though.
- Purchases must include at least one physical (not downloadable) item to receive the gift. You can include a downloadable pattern in your order, but it must be combined with a regular item so we can ship your gift.
- To receive the gift, the order must be made through this site, thesweetwaterco.com.
- One gift per customer.
Hooray! I’m done. But like I said, probably not. If you have any problems with the site, just send us a message using the “contact us” tab. But I’m done for today!