Website: https://store.decksgo.com/

Description: Richard from DecksGo.com stated, “Way back in 2004 I started a small deck building website called DecksGo.com.  I operated out of my spare bedroom and I had no products to sell at that time.  I just wrote a lot on the subject of building which I loved given that I started out as a contractor.

Then, in 2009, we finally had enough traffic and products lined up that we created a shopping cart and were off and running.  Since then Decksgo.com and our ecommerce site store.decksgo.com have become one of the top places on the web to read and learn about all things related to building a backyard deck.  From the basic to the esoteric, we have an article for you.  In addition to the blog side of our site, we have a very popular store which you can find at store.decksgo.com.  We often review and discuss using certain products in our blog for certain problems, and so it is very convenient for visitors to just click through to our store and shop a growing variety of leading edge products on the market.

Also in 2009, I finally had to move out of my bedroom and basement and into a warehouse.  We have been fortunate and have worked very hard over the ensuing years and we are now nearing a point where we are thinking about where we are going to move to when we grow out of our present location.”

Technologies Used: Richard continued, “We have been using ShopSite and LexiConn since we started back in 2009 and the software has kept getting better and better.  The service team is world class.  Whenever I have had an issue, someone is responding to us immediately.  This is so appreciated!

The blog and the store have a very symbiotic relationship and totally support each other.  We have a newsletter that we publish a few times a year, but it is also incorporated into a series of blasts that go out when someone signs up as an e-course for building a deck.  Thus, they immediately get six or seven weeks of quick lessons on how to design, plan and build their project and we give helpful suggestions of which products can make their life easier.  These are linked back to the store.  The few times a year that we send out just the newsletter, it consists of a summary of some of our best visitor questions and articles.  We carefully manage this list so as not to overdo it given the huge mass of email people get.  It seems to work very well and we offer a 10% discount coupon at our store when they sign up.

We also have a number of materials calculators that visitors can use to tally up what they might need in terms of boards, railing posts and other sometimes tricky mathematical calculations.  When you consider how everything is interlinked with a very robust ecommerce platform like ShopSite, we think we are able to give our visitors a fantastic experience.  And of course, the work continues…”

Advice / Tips: Richard finished, “We have done some great but fairly simple custom coding with one of the site designers ShopSite/LexiConn recommended.  They created certain free shipping limits and coding as well as certain checkout features on some products that we wanted people to agree to certain things before they made a purchase.  It was all quite reasonable to do and the ease with which we can manage this design of what has now become a customized ShopSite store is amazing.”