Why I chose Big Cartel over Etsy
June 2010, Did you know I released a free Big Cartel CSS download? It is an alternative option to the default theme that comes with your fresh store at bigcartel.com. Enjoy.
Considering using Big Cartel or Etsy to sell your products online. I was looking into that also. I have a tech background so my review might be more technical oriented but it seems to help out a lot of people getting started with Big Cartel stores.
Selling Handmade Online
Over the last couple years I have helped my mother-in-law with some web related help around her jewelry. That is when I first stumbled upon Etsy and Big Cartel. Read on to find out how I created a sample jewelry shop on Big Cartel and why I decided Big Cartel was better for me than Etsy. Some of the information will be tech speak but will give you an idea of what can be done.
Minimizing Transaction Costs
Almost all the home based handmade items are now being sold using etsy.com. I have looked over the site and think it is great, but there are many limitations. Since I like to show off some of my web design I chose to use another site for my store, bigcartel.com. Big Cartel offers a free plan with absolutely no fees. I can list up to 5 items and sell as many of those items as I want for no fee. I am just limited in the features the site offers me. This allows me to avoid the 20 cent listing fee and 3.5% transaction fee on Etsy. The only fee I will be held to is the paypal fee to allow me to accept credit cards. This is an unavoidable fee if you want to use credit cards, so I chose Big Cartel.
Styling Big Cartel
Now I can edit the css of the store front to stylize the pages myself. You can only upload one image that is to be your banner for your store. I did this but wanted my site to look even more unique.
For Her, From Him store banner
So I went to the Design tab in the administration panel to add my touch to the store. You can edit the css file directly and even override the theme styles if you know what you are doing.
For starters I created a new background that added some much needed texture to the store. I just love this look of using the water paper filter in photoshop. To add the background simply override the body css element with a new background-image that is hosted on your personal host or another website.
body {background: url(http://yoursite/images/bg.gif)}
For Her, From Him store background texture
Next up was the fonts, button images and forms. I did not like the small font or the small buttons used. So first I chose to remove the use of images for the links for the cart.
#minicart .minicart-view span { display: inline;}
#minicart .minicart-view a {background: none;}
#minicart .minicart-checkout span { display: inline;}
#minicart .minicart-checkout a { background: none;}
To change the font for the section titles is pretty simple as well.
h3 span {font-size: 15px;}
#main-title h2,
#navigation div.pod h3,
#minicart h3,
#minicart .minicart-contents,
#cart-head
{font-weight:bold;}
The contact form was smallish and really didn't have an updated look to it. I increased the font size and the size of the input fields to be easier to click with your mouse. Also the Send button on the page just wasn't cutting it. Several css overrides later it works out great.
#contact-submit {
width: 100px;
height: 50px;
background: url(http://yoursite/images/send.png) no-repeat;
}
#contact-form label { font-size: 12px;}
#contact-form input,
#contact-form textarea {font-size: 16px;padding: 5px 0;}
Since the free account on Big Cartel doesn't allow you to edit the HTML of the pages you have to be creative to take what they give you. Since I am not going to be blogging about the jewelry site but I very well might be tweeting about the experience of making and selling jewelry online, I needed to have a link to my Twitter profile. Under the Store Settings tab you can add an external website link. By default this will show at the top of your store with the words "Back to Site" and they will link to the address you enter. This is where I feel I got creative using css magic.
#website {background-color:inherit; position:absolute: top: 0; left:0; text-indent:-9000px;}
#website a {width:196px; height:138px;display:block; background: url(http://yoursite/images/twitter.png) 0 0 no-repeat;}
I created an image since Big Cartel does not give me the option to edit the link text. Hiding the text, adding the background image and positioning the link in the top corner I believe I created an interesting aspect to the site and a way for shoppers to find my twitter feed.
For Her, From Him storefront
The site is up and running although my items are "sold out". This site has become simply a demonstration of what can be done as I never was able to get the jewelry ready to sell. My wife did love the limited edition one of a kind run that she received as gifts.
Please check out the store on Big Cartel as an example of what can be done with the free account.
