If you're a bootstrapper, you're not going to spend thousands of dollars on professional web designers and marketers--you're going to be figuring all of that out on your own. In this episode, we'll be talking about some basic design principles and easy steps to setting up your own ecommerce store when you're not a designer.

To hear the episode, click play below or download in iTunes.

Links referenced during the show:

Design tools

SubtlePatterns.com - Get free tiled background textures for your site

Lipsum.com - Generate lorem ipsum (dummy text) to use as a placeholder on your site

ColorSchemeDesigner.com - Use a color wheel tool to generate ideas for color palettes

Design-Seeds.com - View color palettes based on photos

LogoPond.com - Get inspiration for your logo design

Pixlr.com - A free online photo editor (like a basic version of Photoshop)

Where to get themes for your website

Shopify Theme Store

Mobilia Shopify theme by Out of the Sandbox - My favorite Shopify theme to work with

Hiring tools

Fiverr.com - Get services (like a cheap logo design) done for $5

oDesk - Hire a freelancer

Elance - Hire a freelancer

99Designs - Crowdsourced design

Crowdspring - More crowdsourced design

Helpful Resources

How to take gorgeous product photos - Practical tips for taking your own product photos

A typography tip mentioned during the show:

Use 2 fonts: one serif and one sans-serif. Using too many fonts will make your design start to look cluttered and messy.

Quote of the week:

If you are not embarrassed by the first version of your product, you’ve launched too late.

~ Reid Hoffman

Subscribe to Ecommerce Pulse in iTunes!