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Of old dogs...

Today marks the official launch of our revamped The Patissier in Taiwan website. There are two reasons why we decided to embark on the change

  • The original website was created when we first started our Taipei flagship store in 2019 and mirrored our old website for Singapore. And frankly, the overall look and feel of the website was a tad dated.
  • The other impetus for the makeover was because the online purchase function for our Taipei store went kaput during the earlier part of this year. This was because the payment gateway provider that we were using previously decided to pull out of Taiwan, which left us stranded with no online payment option.

Our first intention was to get a third party to design a new website for us. Although the author is not an IT idiot (he’s actually quite savvy compared to the average Singaporean), we reckoned that this will save us a lot of trouble and pain. But when we were quoted almost S$30K for the job, the boss said to him “why don’t you look at Shopify”? Problem is, the author has absolutely no experience with Shopify. Never even ventured onto the platform once prior to this. Then again, when the boss said “do”, you gotta do. Or at least die trying. So off he went to set up his first Shopify account. Then fiddled around with the functions to set up an online shop. And then realized that it is not rocket science after all. He was also lucky to have a sis-in-law who is quite the Shopify Pro whom he can turn to for advice.

But the most challenging bit was trying to search/identify a new (local) online gateway provider for our new website. You be amazed at how difficult a task this can be when you are physically stuck here in Singapore. Good luck trying to Google for one. The author had to go through two third-parties before he was finally introduced to an appropriate service provider. Then came the actual set up to link the payment gateway to our account on Shopify. This we have to do ourselves, with an instruction manual written in Chinese (no English version available apparently). While the author has gotten a distinction in Chinese back in his school days eons ago, the ability to speak/read Chinese is quite a different kettle of fish compared with trying to comprehend a technical manual in Chinese. But with much struggle and a bit of luck, the author managed to complete the project within 3 weeks. And got to keep his job to fight another day. But more importantly, during the course of his (mis)adventure, the author managed to pick up some new "millennial" knowledge. Quite the achievement, considering he is part of Gen X.

So, whoever says old dog cannot learn new tricks?


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