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Shopify and the Power of Platforms

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Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#41

Post by asaddhamani »

delecti wrote: post #15
_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

"Just combine these 6 things and it's just as easy as a single tool that does it all for you." Is this satire?

Do this, and this, and this, and that, and this, and that and this, and in a few days, you're halfway to this readymade offering that would have you up and running in minutes. I don't understand how anyone can type that out and not realise halfway through how ridiculous they're being.

Even for technical users / developers, their time is better spent than fiddling around with 10 different tools.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#42

Post by RickS »

_csoo wrote: post #11

"We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. WordPress + WooCommerce, PrestaShop and Magento already do that. Drop $10 to $20/month on hosting on DigitalOcean, install Wordpress, install WooCommerce, buy a cheap theme, buy whatever extra plugins you need, setup your payment system (PayPal and Stripe are supported), and you're off to the races. And it…

I am plenty technical to do this and it still sucks. We moved to shopify from a plumbed-together solution like that and it's a world of difference.

First, shopify is like $30 for a month. I'm $30 for a few minutes. The cost savings are laughably huge. And shopify's better anyway! Their plugin ecosystem is great, the admin tools are built specifically for merchant admin types (as opposed to boil-the-ocean blog admin UI with merchant UI hacked on top of it), so my cofounder/brother, who handled listing and fulfillment and that sort of thing, had a much easier time with it.

Shopify could literally 10x their price and it would still be a great deal. And this is for a lifestyle-sized biz. few $k/mo in transactions. For anyone doing this "for real", it's a rounding error.

Their plugin and theming is a joy on the dev side as well. Great docs, easy to get a sandbox account, theming in Liquid is a joy for anyone who's done jinja/handlebars/etc, their default themes have beautifully documented CSS.

I would, as the developer, literally pay my own money for shopify to be part of the stack just to abstract all that crap away from me. The time savings for me alone justify it.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#43

Post by naringas »

chiefalchemist wrote: post #14

> "To that end, I would argue that for Shopify a high churn rate is just as much a positive signal as it is a negative one: the easier it is to start an e-commerce business on the platform, the more failures there will be. And, at the same time, the greater likelihood there will be of capturing and supporting successes." Yes and no. The excessive lowering of the barrier to entry is self defeating. That is, more store…

but Shoppify's model doesn't involve marketing, they leave all that up to the merchants. so shoppify itself isn't directly affected by this.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#44

Post by superhuzza »

omouse wrote: post #21
delecti wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Just combine these 6 things and it's just as easy as a single tool that does it all for you." Is this satire?

I've set up ecommerce sites quite a few times and it was honestly 1 to 2 days of "work", install + configure and then the rest was customization which clients pay for and are patient for. We were ready to sell product within a day basically and then iterate from there based on client needs. I guess I wasn't clear enough in making my point: Wordpress + Woocommerce can be setup very quickly and with minimal fuss and th…

So someone could avoid paying you for setup and maintenance by paying an extra $15 bucks a month to Shopify?

Seems like a pretty obvious choice for a small business.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#45

Post by bluetidepro »

bhouston wrote: post #25

I predict that Shopify will eventually create an Amazon-like system where products from its merchants can be listed in a unified e-commerce frontend site all together. Not sure if I will be correct about this but I might as well try for a third correct prediction about Shopify: * Fulfilled by Shopify ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18524131 ) * Shopify POS ( https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6289827 ).

Fun fact: The startup Storenvy [1] tried that model, and I'm not sure how well they are doing these days. Each store on their platform goes into a unified site, but then they also have unique url's websites for each of the brands on the platform.

[1] https://www.storenvy.com/

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#46

Post by jasonsync »

asdfokd8 wrote: post #34
j4_hnews wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Amazon Basics?

Some products will always remain predominantly in the category of a commodity. And probably all products will have a commodity category. But I think overall the trend is toward beloved brands for more and more things which were once commodities, like mattresses or reading glasses. And when Brands are sought, retailers/aggregators are just more expensive middlemen.

My beloved brands keep getting eaten up by big brand knock offs like Amazon Basics, or, keep getting bought out by the big brands.

I would love to see this happen with mattresses actually. Buying a mattress is currently ridiculous. Why do I need a guy in a suit showing me around like I'm buying a car?! What's the difference between these mattress brands that I have never heard of. I'm not loyal, because it's a one time purchase every ten years. The brand I purchased last will probably no longer the exist next time.

My latest eye glasses were purchased at the grocery store optical centre, not a mom and pop shop or specialized brand. Much cheaper that way, and good quality. I wouldn't be surprised to see Amazon take over this category as well. Hasn't Walmart already?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#47

Post by organsnyder »

omouse wrote: post #35
simonh wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, it's the standard response from some open source people for any proprietary end-to-end solution. The most famous example was this response to the launch of Dropbox: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9224

some open source people Hey now, stop with the name-calling :P I work on and use proprietary end to end solutions for ecommerce (but not Shopify). Woocommerce wins for me because it lowers development costs and costs are lower overall. My perspective is definitely someone who has developed ecommerce sites, not solely as a non-technical user, and for me it's very advantageous to lower costs by using and modifying GPL'…

I'm a technical user, and good UX and good defaults are something I often spend money on.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#48

Post by valueprop »

Hi,

Considering about working on an open source with turnkey SaaS hosting modern alternative. Drawback: MVP is quite big. Would you see such a need, or is everyone happy with Shopify?

Some questions, if you can spare a few minutes:

What are top 3-5 issues with the platform that you're currently using?

What do you like most about the current platform?

What would be the must-haves of another store platform in order for you to switch to it?

Appreciate your insights!

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#49

Post by valueprop »

valueprop wrote: post #48

Hi, Considering about working on an open source with turnkey SaaS hosting modern alternative. Drawback: MVP is quite big. Would you see such a need, or is everyone happy with Shopify? Some questions, if you can spare a few minutes: What are top 3-5 issues with the platform that you're currently using? What do you like most about the current platform? What would be the must-haves of another store platform in order for…

I guess downvoting means Happy with Shopify :) Good to know!

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#50

Post by jasonsync »

AznHisoka wrote: post #39
j4_hnews wrote: post #3

As Amazon gobbles up more product categories, there may be less viable categories that potential e-commerce startups might venture into on their own. This could mean over time, more Shopify merchants would be selling overlapping product categories (the ones Amazon has not yet gobbled up yet). Which would mean that as a Shopify merchant, you would competing with other Shopify merchants (not Amazon). How do you differe…

"when the Shopify platform makes the same set of selling advantages available to everyone?" Shopify doesn't make advantages like branding, brand awareness, marketing, market research, etc available. It simply makes setting up an online store more convenient for people do. Convenience != competitive advantage. You can extend this argument to cloud platforms. AWS, and Azure make setting up and scaling a SaaS easier, bu…

Isn't the point of the article that the Shopify Fulfillment Network will be available to all merchants (that pay for it)?

Most of the Shopify plugins exist to give a store owner an advantage in sales, conversion or marketing. Sure execution counts, external branding counts, but Shopify is a closed platform. You use their plugins and approved apps. And most store owners rely on these plugins to some degree, to help them build brand awareness etc.

Eg: https://apps.shopify.com/browse/sales-and-conversion-optimiz...

Shopify levels the playing field which is great. But if everyone selling Bananas is on the same field, using the same plugins, switching fields could be a great way to differentiate and possibly optimize beyond what Shopify can help you with.

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