Yes, that is a massive site wide update.

In the past few days, my website has undergone a sweeping change and while there are still a few tweaks to make I’m happy with it.

The largest change is the double migration. First, I migrated the entire site from Wix to Shopify and now I’ve migrated again to WordPress itself. There was a method to this madness, I promise.

Are you still on Shopify?

Yes – my arts store where I showcase my paintings has its own website and it is hosted on Shopify because, quite frankly, for e-commerce you aren’t going to find better… and I’ve tried them all. This isn’t just my own bias for a Canadian company speaking. I put them all through the test, from WooCommerce, Square, and even Wix. I won’t get into what finally prompted the decision to go Shopify just note that Northern Wolf Books and Kristan Cannon Arts are going to remain on Shopify.

What about Wix?

I do really love Wix. The ability to make a rocking awesome website in the snap of my fingers is a definite plus. I still have websites on Wix because I’m sure the biggest change you have noticed is how focused this website is on just my freelancing and those services.

This leads to the reason I decided to go with WordPress for said freelancing.

Most writers and freelance writers are on WordPress because of how powerful a platform it is for content management. It was built for it. Instead of fighting this, I decided to jump on board and finally build my own WordPress site and finally marry the blog to a site.

It was at this time I wanted to take a look at business focus.

A good site is a focused site that loads quickly and still looks good on any device. WordPress was a learning curve but it was worth it in the end, especially as it allowed me to create a critical aspect my site had been lacking before – business focus.

Focusing on one business on one site makes for better SEO and search engines love that.

It didn’t mean I gave up on the other income streams.

Taking that idea, I also created sites that were focused on those businesses and the links will be on my About & Contact page.

This is what I did:

This primary site, well, this depends on your outlook. If you found me through my books then the books are the primary site and this is my day job, then one of those author sites are my primary site.

The sites and thought process:

1. Kristan Cannon Freelance – My freelancing and blog on freelancing, content management and marketing, the occasional personal post because I am a living breathing human as well as hot takes on some of what’s happening in the niches I write in.
2. Kristan Cannon VA – Another services site but this one for my voice over work. When this is a bit more finished, I’ll share the link on my About & Contact page.
3. The two author sites – As I have two pen names in wildly different genres, it didn’t make sense for them to share a website so I have two. One for “KM Cannon” (sci-fi, fantasy, urban fantasy, speculative fiction) and one for “Eve Morrison” (crime & mystery fiction).
4. My arts site where I showcase my paintings and other arts.
5. Northern Wolf Books – The bookstore my Dad and I work on that is mostly online. It started as digital marketing project and then I starting actually selling books and fulfilling orders so it went from project to real business.
6. Sudbury Urban Farmer – A video blog where I chronicle the journey from taking my overgrown backyard and making it not only a garden that feeds my family but where I can sell the fruits (literally – I have grapes and plums) of my labour at a farmer’s market or two.

As you can see, if I tried to cram all of that onto one site it would have not only been very overwhelming no matter how well it was organized but also an SEO nightmare.

We also won’t get into how confusing it would be social media wise for one FaceBook page to cover it all.

It was just better to give each their own focus.