# Own website + CafePress, PrintMojo etc - How Does It Work?



## Ross B (Apr 28, 2006)

I'm in the process of designing a website that will become my online T-shirt store, which I intend to publish through my current web host. I have finally come up with a domain name I like that is not already taken, and am about to register it. But before I do, some questions...would really appreciate some advice from those who know.

Despite reading through the CafePress and PrintMojo help sections, I don't understand whether it's possible or even desirable to have your own online store with its own domain, hosted separately, incorporated into your CafePress, PrintMojo or other fulfillment company store. Can this be done, or must you simply link your own website to, say, your CafePress store (and vice versa - if this is possible and within the rules?)? 

Ideally, I would like to either duplicate my self-hosted registered domain online store at CafePress and/or PrintMojo, or somehow incorporate it into both so I don't have to separately design the fulfillment stores. However, I don't understand the plusses and minuses to doing this - if, indeed, it is possible. Could someone please explain?

If someone could also outline the possibilities and options that exist, should there be others I have not mentioned, that would be great.

Thanks.


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## BWS (Mar 30, 2005)

It's possible to display content from both Cafepress and Printmojo on a domain of your own, but it works a little differently for each one.

Printmojo provides a custom script that you can install on your own server. With Cafepress, you need to use a third party script to do it. Many of us use one called CPShop.

In either case your customers will stay on your web site until it's time to check out. At that point they'll complete the checkout process at the vendor's own site. You can configure this to happen in a new browser window.

It can get complicated if you're trying to use both of those vendors at once; you have to make it really, really clear to the customer that they can't place a single order for both types of products. I do that [at shop.webomator.com], for example, where in fact I use Cafepress for most products (through CPShop), another company for archival prints, and even [shop.webomator.com/special_pirate.shtml] "Special Edition" shirt from Printmojo.


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## Ross B (Apr 28, 2006)

Thanks for your very clear advice, BWS. 

A few things I'm still not sure of, though. 

Let's say I set up my own site so that customers wanting stuff on my CafePress store check out through CP once they've made their selection.

1. Can I also offer Ts on my website that are not in my CP store, and work things so that for these items clients check out using my site's shopping cart? 

2. If I set up my own store displaying Ts that are only in my store, as well as displaying content from my CafePress store, do I also have that CafePress store as a separate entity on CafePress (ie: as a CP subdomain)? 

3. If yes is the answer to 2, should I work on separately promoting my own store as well as the CP store? Or by promoting my store exclusively, will that drive the same traffic to the CP store?

4. Is there any reason not to set up a CP or PM store before registering my domain name and setting up my own online store?

5. If answer to 4 is no, is there any advantage to having the name of my CP store the same as the domain name I'm about to register for my own store.

Apologies for my lack of tech savvy and no doubt dodgy terminology. Hope my queries are intelligible.


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## BWS (Mar 30, 2005)

Ross B said:


> 1. Can I also offer Ts on my website that are not in my CP store, and work things so that for these items clients check out using my site's shopping cart?


You can put anything you like on your own web site. But CP items will use a Cafepress shopping cart, while your other items will use a diffenerent cart. Or even carts, I guess. You have to make it ridiculously clear to the customers that there is more than one shopping cart. This can get unwieldy if you stock a lot of products for each cart.
Also, under their terms of service you can't use the Cafepress version of your shop to promote products from competing services. So anything like that can exist at your own domain, but not at the Cafepress version of your shop.



Ross B said:


> 2. If I set up my own store displaying Ts that are only in my store, as well as displaying content from my CafePress store, do I also have that CafePress store as a separate entity on CafePress (ie: as a CP subdomain)?


It wouldn't be a subdomain, but otherwise, yes (provided it's a Cafepress premium shop we're talking about). 



Ross B said:


> 3. If yes is the answer to 2, should I work on separately promoting my own store as well as the CP store? Or by promoting my store exclusively, will that drive the same traffic to the CP store?


A well made custom shop on your own domain should bring in much more search engine traffic than your shop on Cafepress. Because it's you r own brand you'd like to develop and promote I don't think it makes any sense to promote the CP version of your shop if you're also hosting the shop at your own domain. Remember that the domain will still be yours even if you someday decide not to use CP, or if their office is hit by an asteroid.
Promoting your own domain will not drive traffic to your Cafepress shop. It'll just drive traffic to your domain.



Ross B said:


> 4. Is there any reason not to set up a CP or PM store before registering my domain name and setting up my own online store?


None I can think of. When I put together a new site I do usually like to have the domain already, though.



Ross B said:


> 5. If answer to 4 is no, is there any advantage to having the name of my CP store the same as the domain name I'm about to register for my own store.


This is nice at checkout time because the user sees that although the shopping cart is hosted at Cafepress, the shop name is the same. But it's not strictly necessary - for example, the "name" of the custom shop I linked to above matches the "name" of the Cafepress shop; but neither one of those is the same as the domain name.


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## Ross B (Apr 28, 2006)

BWS said:


> It wouldn't be a subdomain, but otherwise, yes (provided it's a Cafepress premium shop we're talking about).


I thought CP stores were subdomains? It seems I'm wrong. So, let's say I wanted to name my store Gotees (not the name I have in mind - no doubt Gotees is taken!). I register gotees.com as a domain name, but am not ready to publish my own site. So I open a CP site with that name. How does the CP site address look with a) a free CP shop, and b) a Premium shop? 



BWS said:


> A well made custom shop on your own domain should bring in much more search engine traffic than your shop on Cafepress. Because it's you r own brand you'd like to develop and promote I don't think it makes any sense to promote the CP version of your shop if you're also hosting the shop at your own domain.


OK. But what if my own Ts are all screenprinted on top quality T blanks, and I have some other designs I consider marketable that are multi-coloured and more suited to the DTG printing that CP does? Let's say I am not interested in offering my own DTG or heat-pressed Ts, but would like to have the designs better suited to this sort of printing for sale on a CP store. In this situation, would it make good sense to categorise the CP DTG designs in one section of my own website, and link them to my CP store? The screenprinted ones could be in another category and both offered for sale via my website, or perhaps via a screenprinting fulfillment company such as PrintMojo. 

Or would I be better off keeping everything separate and simple, having a CP store for all the designs best suited to DTG, a PM store for screenprint-friendly designs, and my own store offering only screenprinted Ts I have in stock, ready for purchase?

I guess this is the fundamental question I am grappling with, and in my current state of half-ignorance I am not sure of the plusses and minuses of each option.

BWS, I'd like to thank you sincerely for your help here. Really appreciate someone with obvious knowledge and experience, such as yourself, being willing to address these issues, which to me might seem hopelessly complex without someone like you to untangle things and set my thinking straight. 

Big cheers!


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## BWS (Mar 30, 2005)

Ross B said:


> I thought CP stores were subdomains? It seems I'm wrong. So, let's say I wanted to name my store Gotees (not the name I have in mind - no doubt Gotees is taken!). I register gotees.com as a domain name, but am not ready to publish my own site. So I open a CP site with that name. How does the CP site address look with a) a free CP shop, and b) a Premium shop?


The Cafepress URL would look like this: http : //www.cafepress.com/gotees
It'd be the same for either a Basic or a Premium shop.



Ross B said:


> Or would I be better off keeping everything separate and simple, having a CP store for all the designs best suited to DTG, a PM store for screenprint-friendly designs, and my own store offering only screenprinted Ts I have in stock, ready for purchase?


It sounds like you'd have three different types of merchandise, and possibly a lot of designs of each type.

Whatever you do, it'll likely involve some trial and error. But I think that overall you would want a domain with your branded name. Regardless of how you do things beyond that, that would be the keystone.

That domain's root level would be able to link to everything else you do, and its address would never change, so any promotion you do would continue to work for you in the future.

Beyond that, there are just all sorts of choices you could make. Here are some.

1. Your domain promotes all your product lines. Products you fulfill yourself are also sold directly through this domain. When a user clicks on a link for your CP or PM merchandise, a new browser window opens with the Cafepress shop or the Printmojo shop. Each of these shops looks similar, but is clearly not exactly the same as your own pages. This helps the user understand that orders placed through these pages aren't the same as orders placed on your domain's pages.

2. From a user's standpoint, this option looks exactly the same. The difference is that you are hosting the CP and PM products on your domain, using the Printmojo script and a third party script like CPShop.
Every page (until checkout) is actually hosted at your domain. But those CP and PM pages still pop up in a new window, and still look slightly different, so that the user understands that he or she can't place a single order for each type of merchandise.
This has advantages over #1, since search engine traffic wil be coming to your own pages; you don't have to worry about competing with other CP or PM merchants for that site's search engine results; and depending on how you've done things, your pages may remain usable even if there are server problems at CP or PM.

3. You host everything at your own domain, as in #2, but you don't pop the CP and PM products up in a new window. Everything happens in that single browser window.
This looks more integrated to users, but you have to work much harder at making them understand that there are three different shopping carts.
In a case where most merchandise is fulfilled by one company, and just a few products come from elsewhere, this seems best to me. But if you have a lot of products from every source I don't think it'd be practical to go this way. It would confuse your customers, and I think it'd make a bad, unprofessional impression.



Ross B said:


> I guess this is the fundamental question I am grappling with, and in my current state of half-ignorance I am not sure of the plusses and minuses of each option.
> 
> BWS, I'd like to thank you sincerely for your help here. Really appreciate someone with obvious knowledge and experience, such as yourself, being willing to address these issues, which to me might seem hopelessly complex without someone like you to untangle things and set my thinking straight.
> 
> Big cheers!


Well, you're welcome - it's no problem. When it comes down to it I've just been making my own mistakes for several years now. At some point you'll need to decide what seems to make sense, and then go for it. You'll make some mistakes of your own and figure out how to do things better.

Actually watching the way people work their way through your sites, through Statcounter or another method, is really important. This is especially true when you've just launched a site. Seeing how they do (or don't) do what you hoped they would really helps you to see what changes you should make to your site's organization. Things that seemed to make perfect sense often just don't work out at all, and you have to be ready to make changes when you see that kind of problem.

These things are always a work in progress - so you should probably get started as soon as you can!


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## Ross B (Apr 28, 2006)

Thanks so much, Bradley. Brilliant.


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## splathead (Dec 4, 2005)

This may have been suggested in the posts above, I had a hard time following some of what was said. But can't you set up the Cafepress items on your own website with your own cart, then turn around and order the items yourself from Cafepress when a customer buys and have them shipped direct?

The major drawbacks to multiple carts is confusion, redundancy, and multiple shipping costs.


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## BWS (Mar 30, 2005)

splathead said:


> But can't you set up the Cafepress items on your own website with your own cart, then turn around and order the items yourself from Cafepress when a customer buys and have them shipped direct?
> 
> The major drawbacks to multiple carts is confusion, redundancy, and multiple shipping costs.


Yep, you can do that too. You'd have to figure out how to charge for shipping when up to three different vendors are calculating those costs differently, but what nixes this for me is that returns and exchanges get way more complicated. (Your customer gets instructions about how to make a return or exchange with the shipment, but that doesn't work because the customer didn't place the order with the vendor.)

But it's certainly another way you can go, if you're willing to spend your time making those orders as your own cart's orders come in. I don't think I know anyone who's actually done that on a very large scale.


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