Please. Let me start with… do I seem like a prophet to you? Assuredly, I have no claim to any ability to predict the future. Sorry. So why the “promising title”?
What I can see is the present, today, December 31, 2023 and wow! I’m a bit overwhelmed at the moment.
If I may remind you, I am supposed to be semi-retired. Before you ask how that’s working out for me, lemmetellya – not so much. Of course for the next few months I’ll be helping my wife in her business. This year I might be doing more than just answering the phones. Time will tell. Beyond that…
I’ve been asked to help a friend build his shopping cart platform – Netzcart With that I’m beginning to think “hooboy! what have I gotten myself into?”
Look, it is a great shopping cart system – take it from someone who fought with Volusion for seven years. After finally talking the boss into considering finding a new platform and wading through dozens of cart systems, I finally found Netzcart. Other than the fact it was the only one I found that could do what I wanted, I was able to talk directly with the owner – Avner Netz (yes, that IS his real name!) The project was aborted due to some miscommunications causing the boss to question Avner’s integrity. I rather think the boss lost a bit if confidence in me as well but there were other issues at hand too. In any case, the boss decided to stay with the hated Volusion and I eventually parted ways with them.
It wasn’t until recently I got curious and checked – they’ve now gone with Shopify – ugh. Okay, look, Shopify didn’t get to the be the top shopping cart by being awful. They are not – BUT there are a couple of “gotchas” one must watch out for, like how much the price goes up once you hit certain milestones. In other words, like so many others, you get penalized for being successful.
The other one that glares at me – one you might not notice at all is they are geared to b2b operations. For instance: Netzcart offers this cool order page so a customer who knows the item numbers can simply pop them in to place an order – that can be a real time-saver, especially for those golden regular customers.
Not to mention, Netzcart is VERY multi-sales channel AND multi-domain friendly. If you want to sell from your own domain, AND Facebook AND ebay AND Google shopping AND Instagram – you can manage them all from Netzcart. Retail and wholesale? No problem. Setting Multiple pricing levels is a breeze. No wonder I liked the platfrom so much.
As good as Netzcart is, Avner is a much better developer than a marketer. So he reached out to me. What I thought would be a simple thing has turned into a major project. Like I said – hooboy.
There are so many things to tweak and so much to learn along the way. You’d think with 30+ years of sales and marketing background I’d have some sort of handle on all this but I constantly feel like I’m losing my grip. My knowledge is scattered among several categories and much of it needs updating. For instance, I’ve done email marketing but changes in methods, tools, and perceptions require lots of updating.
Adding to my personal “woes”, there was some bone in my head that decided to pop for a couple of new domains. Like I need that. But I kinda liked the ideas so I went for it. One is “Ishoot22.com” because,, well I want to shoot more and these days, shooting .22s makes the most sense. And I wanted to blog about it so….
Then there’s “indoorplantpro.com”. Oi. What was I thinking! Okay so I’ve
been gardening a lot more in the summer. This fall I decided to “winter” my pepper plants to get a head start on next spring. They are thriving. While I’ve always somewhat held up my “brown thumb” as a sort of badge of honor, my recent successes have caused me to rethink. Then I think back to my aforementioned boss. He was always big on indoor plants. At the time I always thought a plant store would be an interesting venture.
Add to all that the nagging thoughts I’ve had about growing my own herbs for cooking. Long ago we had dinner at a friend’s house. They had a custom built home with a magnificent kitchen because the husband loved to cook. He was fantastic at it too. He grew many of his own herbs and picked them fresh from different pots around his kitchen and adjacent deck.
So I’m thinking I’d like to do some of that. Thus the new site. All I can say is, you got it – hooboy! What have I gotten myself into?
Meanwhile I’ve been neglecting things a bit here at TLC. Fact is, I’m not sure where I’m going with all this. Topping it all off is I’ve still got plenty of ideas for writing projects. Where will I find the time? I don’t know. All I ask is stay tuned and stop back from time to time. If there is something you really want an update on – drop a comment below.
Andy
P.S. If anyone is looking at shopping carts, you already know what I’ll say! I’ll be blunt – Netzcart is NOT the “perfect” solution for everyone but it does tick a lot of boxes. Besides it can’t hurt to get a free quote now can it? I’ll do you one better – put “Andy’s Blog” in the coupon field on the quote page linked here and get $500 off.
