Getting started
Signup, subdomain, email verification, Stripe, and the welcome checklist for new store owners.
Before we get started, you need to make sure you have the following:
- A referral from someone at the Center for Generative Justice / Artisanal Futures (e.g. your friend, family member, or colleague).
- A domain address (e.g.
coolbusiness.com). Your site cannot be finalized until your domain is connected to your storefront. - A Stripe account (stripe.com). Stripe is our current payment provider. Although you may use other platforms (PayPal, Venmo, Zelle, Square, etc.) elsewhere, at this time we only support Stripe. You can connect CashApp, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Amazon Pay through Stripe, but a Stripe account is still required.
- A fulfillment method. At present, only manual fulfillment is supported. You will need to obtain shipping labels on your own and manually update each order with tracking information so your customers are notified. We recommend PirateShip for discounted UPS and USPS labels, with no extra fees—just the cost of the label.
- Two email addresses:
- One public email address for customer contact (this will be publicly available).
- One for order and site notifications (can be the same as above, if preferred).
- Site materials: Your logo, images, copy/text for your site, and an idea of the pages you want on your storefront.
Meeting
To begin, we set up a meeting with you to discuss your needs and goals for your business.
We offer two different options that we would discuss: SimplePress or WordPress hosting. SimplePress is minimal. Minimal features, minimal customization, minimal business. WordPress is more for those who want to manage every little detail of their site.
For the sake of simplicity, we will focus on SimplePress in this guide.
Sandbox Site
Once we talk about everything we need to, then we get started setting up your sandbox site. This would have temporary credentials to access the site, Stripe that you can play around with payments, and overall just get a sense for what SimplePress is all about.
If you have a website already, we like to try and get all your content up onto the sandbox site so you can do a comparison.
We offer different templates to choose from, but if we have the time, we'd love to recreate your site as a template as well!
Once we have the sandbox site set up for you, then we send you your temporary credentials to access the site. We then move on to our 'testing phase'.
Testing Phase
Because we are a super small team, we want to make sure you are comfortable with the platform before we move on to the final step. So once you get your sandbox site, we are giving you one week to play around with it.
Super Important
Please know that this free to use platform is still in development. We at the Center for Generative Justice / Artisanal Futures operate with a very small development team (pretty much just me :D). By using SimplePress, you acknowledge our terms and conditions. Your feedback shapes the platform and can benefit other business owners using SP. We will do our absolute best to resolve any issues in a timely manner. Any feature requests, cosmetic adjustments, and low risk issues will be triaged based on our current work load with all of our clients and ongoing projects. Please contact me at ahunn@umich.edu for any questions. I do my best to respond within 24 hours, but if I don’t, please send a follow up email. Thanks for your understanding and for your assistance in making SimplePress the greatest resource for small business owners!
During this time, please verify that the 'must have' features for your business are present and working as expected. Verify that your website looks good and that you are comfortable with the platform.
We want to try and resolve any issues or questions you have during this time.
Logging in also gives you a welcome checklist to complete before you can start selling.
Next Steps
Once we have verified that the 'must have' features are working as expected, and you are comfortable with the platform, then we move on to the final step. We get your domain and Stripe connected to your site.
Once both are ready, we do a final check-in meeting to go over the final details and get you set up with your site.
After that, you are ready to start selling!