Now that I've successfully split my rather large cart into two carts, one cart mostly my jewelry and the other cart, jewelry created by other crafters.

Back to my jewelry, I have a category that is pretty much dead, magnetic jewelry. I don't make any health claims, just pretty and inexpensive jewelry. I currently own the domain name www.handcraftedmagneticjewelry.com which I forward to a sub-directory of a very old website. I have to decide whether to direct this to a category in my CC cart or to split my magnetic jewelry into another CC cart. The Chinese have flooded the world with cheap magnetic jewelry. Also, some sellers make magnetic jewelry sound like Snake Oil. as for me, it seems to help but then I have an active imagination. My concern is that including magnetic jewelry in my CC cart may have a cheapening effect.

Any thoughts? Thanks

Domain names are cheap enough to have more than one site.

Sometimes if you don't feel comfortable about grouping items together 'under the same umbrella' then a totally separate site is probably the way to go.

If you feel the magnetic jewellery will cheapen your other products, I would definitely have a separate site.

On the downside though, having two sites could lower overall hits and results in search engines for your primary site. It could also have an effect on combined sales. While they are there they may buy a magnetic item as well??

I would have a good think about it. I had a look at your magnetic website, and I don't feel it would cheapen any jewellery products, but then I'm not in that business. They look like nice products to me.

Thank you Bren. Actually when I was working on the magnetic jewelry cart I remembered how pretty much of the jewelry is. When I sell at markets there are so many vendors selling cheap imports that are cheaper then my stuff. I have dozens upon dozens of bracelets I've made that are packed away. So this cart will grow.

Well, I've split my cart into three carts. I keep hearing how off markets are from vendor friends. I'm down to one winter market and a few little summer markets. Meanwhile I have lots and lots of mostly Native American crafted jewelry languishing in boxes and display cases. As an example nearly 300 sterling and stone rings and dozens of earrings. These I'll add to the swe cart. BTW, I don't like to sell rings at markets, too much time involved and rings can be used as a diversion by a group of shoplifters. Another plus to rings in my cart is little storage room required. So time allowing my swe cart will get rather huge.

Back to what was my original cart, it was mostly my jewelry. Here too I have boxes of jewelry not in my cart as well as hundreds of strands of beads that I'll likely add later for other jewelry makers. I have many designs rattling around in my brain and the beads and sterling findings to make them. More stuff to make and list in my mhj cart. One thing that I find really helpful for me is the ability to unpublish categories. When I travel milk crates full of strands of beads are a pain to haul around. With SCC I can leave them at home.

Should I ever want to recombine my carts I think I could do it by coping from one cart and pasting into another cart.

So much software, so many beads, so much jewelry to list, so little time. Guess I have an addictive personality.

Sally,

What about creating Categories for your specific styles instead of separate stores? Wouldn't this give you better exposure to one store that carries more items, and of course bring all the traffic together and more possible impulse sales that way on things they maybe didn't expect to find there? Just a thought. Especially with the Pro version introducing sub categories you could create a Magnetic Jewelry category or a Handcrafted Fashion Jewelry category (or whatever you come up with lol) and then have the subcategories contain the types of jewelry they are. Lots of things you can do that way too. Seems like a lot of work to separate it all and have a lot less traffic at them.

Hi Jo Ann. I understand your reasoning and may later reunite the carts into one massive cart. More likely to once SCC Pro has more than one level of sub-categories as I understand is the case with the first release.

Meanwhile, SCC and SCD Pro are such superior software packages that I'm in control of my carts. I love my coffee!

You will also have to use separate payment modules for each cart. So, if someone wants something off another cart, they would have to pay a second time.

yep there's that too, which I didn't even think of lol. And I'm not sure how tha works if you need to have separate PayPal accounts for them or if you can use the same one for all, probably can use the same one though, hope so.

Don't think it's a problem as I've sold though several selling venues all going to the same PayPal account. I don't think I'll be reuniting the carts as I can envision them growing to a thousand items in both the mostly Native American shop and my jewelry. I doubt that the magnetic cart will grow much past two hundred items.

I think each cart will appeal to a difference set of buyers. But the good thing is SCC is so easy to work with should I decide to combine them, no problem..

You can have multiple shops on your PayPal account. In Europe that is up to eight separate ones, each with its own unique address. Likewise you can have multiple sites all linked to one trading name/email adddress. It's not a problem.

One practical thing to consider when you have hundreds of different items on a site, is good navigation. Get that wrong and half your stock items will never even get seen. Very few visitors will ever look at every page on a web site and it would not be a realistic proposition to expect them to do so. That is why the search feature in the pro version will be essential to those with large inventories.