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Shopify and the Power of Platforms

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Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#91

Post by rchaud »

MuffinFlavored wrote: post #76
sushilewis wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's a great take that others miss. Marketing is 100X harder than setting up a platform.

Devil's advocate: go make a listing on Amazon for a product that already has other competitors selling. How are you going to "market" yours to the top?

The answer is to pay even more money to Amazon to place yourself as a "sponsored" listing that goes right to the top of search results. Partly why Amazon is rapidly becoming a dumpster fire of an e-shop. It looks more like the search results page on Google these days.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#92

Post by rchaud »

rafaelm wrote: post #77
_csoo wrote: post #4

Shopify is just the next closed-source iteration of WordPress and Magento. WordPress has one of the largest platforms and they've taken over (and open-sourced) blogging, content management, learning management systems, and ecommerce. They and Magento are better examples of a platform than Shopify. In the long-term, "platforms" like Shopify lose because they don't have nearly enough developers. They have ~3000 "apps"…

To add to this, Shopify is the equivalent of Medium for blogging vs WordPress. Sure, it's easy to get started, but once you're locked into their platform and you need a more custom solution, it's going to be hard to move out of it.

That analogy only works partially. Medium has a more attractive front-end than Wordpress, as does Shopify vs. WordPress/WooCommerce.

But people post on Medium primarily for visibility. Same with people who sell via Amazon; that's where the people are. In that respect, Shopify is more like Wordpress; as the article says, you can't buy anything on shopify.com, just like you can't find any content to read on Wordpress.com

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#93

Post by larrywright »

thegagne wrote: post #71
ysavir wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. So all the average person needs to set up shop is design skills, software engineering skills, understanding of server…

And manage patches, worry about security, PCI compliance, data loss, etc.

And HA, site monitoring... the list is long.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#94

Post by larrywright »

organsnyder wrote: post #47
omouse wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I’m a technical user, and if I needed to sell goods online I’d use Shopify. It’s precisely because I’m a technical user: I know all the things you you have to worry about, and I’d rather not. There surely a scale where it makes sense to roll your own e-commerce platform, but it’s substantially higher than people seem to think.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#96

Post by odorousrex »

RickS wrote: post #42
_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 U…

I wish I had 100 upvotes to give you.

I'm currently converting a homegrown multi-million dollar eccommerce platform to Shopify and it's been a dream. Most of the significant lifting was done in less than 2 weeks.

Their graphql api has just been amazing, not to mention all the other developer services they provide.

OFC, I do feel like I'm coding myself out of a job, as I've spent the last 7 years building and maintaining that system.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#97

Post by organsnyder »

larrywright wrote: post #94
organsnyder wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I’m a technical user, and if I needed to sell goods online I’d use Shopify. It’s precisely because I’m a technical user: I know all the things you you have to worry about, and I’d rather not. There surely a scale where it makes sense to roll your own e-commerce platform, but it’s substantially higher than people seem to think.

Yup. I've taken some MBA classes, and one (in retrospect obvious) thing I latched onto is the idea of opportunity cost: you can never do everything you are capable of doing, and each thing you do comes at the expense of something else. So, focus on doing the things that (depending on your goal) are most fulfilling and/or most profitable.

Amusingly, grasping that concept was a big factor in my decision to put my MBA degree on hold...

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#98

Post by akulkarni7 »

idlewords wrote: post #95

I just want to plug the Stratechery newsletter, which whether you agree with the author's conclusions or not is consistently excellent, and a spur to thinking about our industry,

I just took a look at it thanks to this comment and wow, that is some terrific content. Thanks for sharing!

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#99

Post by lifeisstillgood »

odorousrex wrote: post #96
RickS wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U…

I wish I had 100 upvotes to give you. I'm currently converting a homegrown multi-million dollar eccommerce platform to Shopify and it's been a dream. Most of the significant lifting was done in less than 2 weeks. Their graphql api has just been amazing, not to mention all the other developer services they provide. OFC, I do feel like I'm coding myself out of a job, as I've spent the last 7 years building and maintain…

Can you talk more about the home grown multimillion part?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#100

Post by nemothekid »

joking wrote: post #51
RickS wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 U…

you seem to forget about the credit card rates, which are the 2.9% of your sales. I don't know in other countries, but where I live you can get the same conditions than for a physical pos terminal from a bank with around 1% rate. a 2% of your sales can easily grow to something that you can optimize.

For 40 hrs/wk at $60/hr, is $10,000/mo.

If Shopify means they hire this guy for a tenth of the time, they save $9000.

They would have to be moving 300k/mo for hiring a full time to even break even.

In any case you can do what everyone else does, bake the fee into your prices and call it a day - it's not like you can compete with Amazon on the low-prices front anyways.

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