Few things make me feel older, more incompetent, or completely insignificant than trying to figure out how to do something new on my computer or phone. Whether that’s building a website, creating a blog, or just trying to post a f***ing reel on instagram. We all have aptitudes, and patience with screen based technology is, sadly, not one of mine.

Despite that, not too long ago I still managed to painstakingly DIY what could only be called “baby’s first website” on Squarespace. It was fun, as creating something always is. But it was also bonkers frustrating, There was a butterfly effect where one slight misstep with a cursor would make vast, insane changes to layout. Fonts would suddenly be 1000% bigger. Pictures would be reduced to thumbnails. And copy from whatever website-template I was using kept creeping back in. So if you scrolled far enough, you’d find not-so-hidden pockets of info on make-up tutorials or plants for sale.

But people liked it. Mostly. For every five “I LOVE the website,” there would be at least one “You’re website is VERY HARD TO NAVIGATE.” Oh. Ok. The frustration seemed to come primarily from people trying to see what we had in stock or buy online. And it was true. Unless you wanted a shop tshirt, there was no way to buy a bike online. That wasn’t what I wanted in the website anyway. But…

But…

The reality is that people are buying online, and there was no possible way for me to build that kind of site in any way that made sense. So after talking to a friend at another shop who has been using an e-commerce platform, we’re going to give it a go. I can keep my own little bits of flair, but will have a ready to go site with which to sell my wares online. Enh…. We’ll see how it goes. The new-new should be up and running in the coming weeks.

Either way, it seemed appropriate to make a dedicated shop blog that wasn’t built on my clunky Squarespace site.

And who knows? I might even post to the blog more often?

Might. I said might.

-Watts