I’m sorry I wasn’t able to attend tonight’s talk given by local lad, Grant Masterson from Wreckless Skate Board Shop here in Gorey Co. Wexford. I first met Grant when he was working for Webdream Solutions next door door to our own office on John Street in Gorey too. Webdream are a website design and programming company who at the time were specialising in online shops and estate agent websites. Grant progressed on from webdream and set up his own skate shop in the same office once webdream went virtual and moved their offices “online”.
We were delighted to help out Grant in the early days of setting up his business. Having a shop is great, having a shop that is open 24/7 is better. Knowing how to communicate your message through the social media websites and attract buyers to your online shop is all part of what we do every week at Cada Media Ltd.
A small helping hand by giving him access to broadband meant that instead of standing idle waiting for customers to come in, it meant that Grant could do his online marketing and promoting whilst he wasn’t dealing with customers in the shop.
One small piece of advice we give many other people looking to sell on the Internet is to look at Open Source software to help cut down on the initial set up costs. Although they can need some customisation and tweaking as many are originally very basic and have to be configured. I think the programmers do this to give jobs to the ones installing them and setting them us.! Us mainly!
Anyway, you can purchase this type of software, but you should also look at ZenCart or OSCommerce too as they are used by thousands of online shops around the world. We too use and set this us for businesses too.
Wreckless is currently OSCommerce and since its original install it has had many upgrades, many plugin’s installed and configured, many designs. In fact I think its also been totally revamped and the database backed up and the entire site overhauled by Webdream. A fantastic job if I do say and well done to Joel Driver for his work.
Tonight’s presentation will be great for people in Gorey to see how a local lad can come good and really use the Internet and it’s strengths. Remember the snow in January and all the shops closed. . . . Guess who’s online shop was still taking orders?
Well done to grant and all at Wreckless on demonstrating that the web and shopping are ideal partners.
There is also a presentation from someone about a business directory for Gorey, but since we also have one called Gorey Links, I won’t reinvent the wheel there!
