I thought, why not create a site similar to Scriptandstyle.com and Nettuts.com.  Keep in mind, this site does not come close to either of those sites, but that it takes the philosophy from both.  Attempting to expand the wealth of knowledge in a willing community.  The main difference being the site focuses on singular product and what I believe to be a superior product in e-commerce.

The site will not solely focus on Shopify, of course, it will broaden to all sorts of relevant applications, especially those that integrate directly with Shopify.  Blog posts and articles related to Shopify are always welcome, as opinion and dialogue are often needed on techniques, strategies and services to determine what is and what is not.

The website is called Shopify Links by ZooThemes.com

The site will go through several stages before maturing. I plan on compiling a long list of links of articles and websites that already exist for helping Shopify store owners, many from the Shopify forums mainly from (Caroline, Christina and Matt Beck) Eventually, I will receive submissions for links, it seems the Shopify community isn’t as big as Open Source projects. Though, this is expected, I see the Shopify development community expanding every week and more and more companies are signing up for Shopify to run their e-commerce operations.

Eventually, I will write full tutorials on topics directly related to Shopify/Liquid as well as relevant issues of CSS and Javascript but may not only pertain to Shopify.

I plan on creating a template club for Shopify similar to WooThemes for WordPress or JoomlaBamboo and Yoothemes for Joomla.  I guess you can tell I the domain name came directly from this group, and was the only logical name left and went in alphabetical order.  Again, inspired by but in no way will I compete directly. Woothemes is expanding into Magento templates for e-commerce so perhaps we will intersect one day.

But the Zoothemes will eventually create templates for Shopify as well as extensions once Shopify releases their API for their future App Store for Shopify extensions.

It’s in the works!

Fortunately, we have had success with Shopify in this situation in the recent past. It was a great opportunity to test the ease and success of a Shopify e-commerce website.

The site was designed to be very minimalist, easy to use and complement the products well. We decided not to use heavy colors or graphics and focus more on the products and words. Sometimes e-commerce sites focus too much on how fancy they look. We sought not to replicate typical garden sites with plush graphics but to emulate sites like Dell or Macy’s, with very little graphics and heavy use of CSS design.

Shopify also has a useful blogging section that would help discuss new and existing proucts with the public. The Shopify system also gave Adirondack Iron great search engine exposure since it was built with SEO in mind.

UPDATE: Adirondack Iron decided to merge their two e-commerce sites since maintaining two sites, both with low sales volumes, was financially unsound.

I occasionally post on Ebay, just less often and more to drive traffic and keep a reputation on the community.  Most of my inventory is on my website, not Ebay.  Plus, I love Shopify much better.  It’s easier to use than Ebay, and I get equal SEO with it, as I rank at or above many items.

Don’t believe me? Well, I don’t have the time to prove it to you. But just go searching something about coins, and I might come up.