Creating a digital Art store - Planning and preparation
by DFX Digital:
One of the most important parts of any journey is the planning but if we are honest, most of us are not that good at it. All those jumbled thoughts in your head, the ideas, the lists, pieces of paper and drawings. How do you bring it all together and move forward?
There is no right or wrong way, you just have to do your best using your own style of organization. However, planning is essential, so let us go through a few basics of what can help you move forward.
Most of you will be planning your digital store or products on your own, so it's very important to put down and some of your ideas and thoughts into something tangible. Paper is a good start but you should transfer to a digital platform as soon as possible (if you have not already) so you don't miss that great idea you noted down in one of your notepads.
Planning and organizational Tools
As you can imagine there are a plethora of digital tools and apps to help you plan and organize everything in your life. Some of them you might be using already but this is more aimed at those of you who are not so tech savvy.
Many of these planning tools have monthly fees attached and in some cases are basically pimped up excel sheets with some additional tools that can be more beneficial to people operating in the team environment.
Perfect ways to start solo
1 Note editors - Your computer or mobile will have a notes editor or text edit
2 Microsoft products (for PC) and Pages/numbers (Mac) - Perfect to start planning and adding notes on pages or excel
3 Google Docs - This is what we chose to work from. The reason is because Docs has plenty of options, exporting, sharing between client and easy cross platform ability. Perfect for beginners, individuals and teams alike. Also it's free!
Note: Make sure you add 2 factor security on google accounts to keep those plans more secure.
An idea of what to plan
Good practice is to start creating a few different documents
1 Text document: Write down Item types, ideas, collections and points on you brand. List suppliers, be diligent, double check delivery times on ordered products for your part of the work and others
2 Text and Excel sheet: Finalize designs, sizes, and materials - the process
3 Excel sheet: Plan prices including purchase, sale and profit on decided items and suppliers including postage
4 Text doc: Marketing plans/ideas, are you planning on spending on Ads? Which platforms? Do you have a content marketing strategy or want to create a content calendar? Mailing list?
Does it sound daunting now that you see it broken down? You will be surprised by the amount of information you may have gathered in your mind or on notes already. It could be very easy to slot all this into a similar plan, it's just the initial building of the documents and having the right info.
Finding some free word or excel templates online is also good idea to help you put the plan together.
Good luck starting the planning of your brand, any questions let us know... part 2 will be soon.
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Thank you for the support
Pdi Sports Admin