My Shopify Store's soft launch and a 2 week e-commerce review

Oooh what a whirlwind it has been since the soft launch of my Shopify store, These Bare Walls, on December 4th, 2015!

First of all, how freaking fun is it to have your own products and your own online store setup? I've been designing for a long, long time, but I rarely ever sold any decor products, so it all still feels so new to me. As a web designer and an online marketer, I've helped others create their websites, market their products and work on the marketing side of things and I've been waiting for the day when I could finally just do it for myself. When it's not your product or business, you really don't get the final say on well, anything. Now I finally get to control what I design, how my website looks, what the functionality will be and how I'll market it all. It's all actually quite fulfilling! 

I'd say that my Shopify store has been more of a soft-launch and what I mean by that is not proclaiming to the world that I started this new venture, rather putting my website launch out there slowly and letting me put the necessary pieces in place before I shout off the rooftop. I launched the website before I had many things in place; like the social media pages that were customized, the Mailchimp integration, and have actually been tweaking the content, pages and product as well the last 2 weeks. It's been a work in progress, but I knew I'd rather launch now then much later. I always told my customers to just take that first leap and it'll push you to keep working on the rest of it. It was time to take my own advice and I'm happy that I did! 

Here's a list of things I've done in the last 2 weeks to get me to where I am today:

• Complete setting up the social media platforms: Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. I also integrated these platforms into the Shopify theme.
• Setting up a Mailchimp account and integrating it on my site.
• Set up Google Analytics account
• Blog posts
• Create many social media posts on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. Started to follow other businesses and start interacting.
• Continue creating designs and posting them to the store (shooting for at least a new design every 2 days). Check out the fun Lego Patent set that I added today!
• Started Paid advertising on Pinterest for 4 different campaigns.
• Added 3 different Shopify Apps (Better Coupon Box, Alt Text and Plug In SEO.
• Used the new app, Better Coupon Box to create a discount for the Bear Silhouette Be Brave Little One print.
• Hired a graphic designer from Upwork (formerly Elance) to design my shop logo. 

Right now, I'm trying to focus on getting more pieces created and into the shop, but also really reviewing my Shop's analytics to see what is working and how I can push forward. The Pinterest Ads are really starting to generate traffic, so I love to see that people are enjoying my designs and love to look around the website once they get here. 

Today I'm going to go back and reread a few articles by Tim Ferriss and Gary Vaynerchuk to see how I can improve my websites traffic. If you don't follow these guys, their information is gold, I suggest you do if you're an entrepreneur like myself!

Until next time!