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Shopify and the Power of Platforms

stratechery.com

101–110 of 176 posts

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#101
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…

This comment should be preserved in amber for when future generations ask, "What was HN?"

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#102
post #53
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"…

Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store) Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period. Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting. Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figur…

Is there a good example of someone being successful doing both?

Seems like if Shopify is a way to create your own venue, and Amazon is a venue in-and-of itself, there might be a case for doing both.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#104

I am Shopify app developer and I earn my living from 3 published apps in the Shopify marketplace. I can answer any question you may have.

Thank You.

1. Do you see the Market for shopify apps growing? Any indications would be helpful from your experience.

2. Best way to get started on Shopify apps for developers?

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#105
The main reason I don't use Shopify is the merchant fees. I can do better paying a developer to WooCommerce. and we have a pretty good system for doing all the patches and everything and haven't had any security problems or anything like that. and if I'm not happy with my hosting or with some feature I can just change myself. I don't depend on this other company which has already done a few things that were kind of heavy-handed in my view.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#106
The main differentiator between Amazon and everyone else continues to be Prime. Having people paying $120/year to come back and shop on their site is an advantage that nobody can compete with. Shopify could try and compete by creating a similar membership service, and perhaps they will, but at this point I'm skeptical it would gain much traction. The main reason people use Prime is to buy commodity goods with fast free shipping. In this case I'm defining commodity goods as those where the supplier isn't that important and the alternative is driving to a local store and buying the same thing.

Shopify is almost at the other extreme: the sites that sell goods on its platform must differentiate themselves with niche offerings and consequently, I'd bet that the average Shopify customer makes purchases a lot less frequently than the average Amazon customer. People shop on those sites because the local stores don't have what they are looking for.

Another reason I'm a bit skeptical about the "Shopify is a threat to Amazon" narrative is that at a certain scale it seems that stores would leave Shopify and just manage their own websites and inventory. So Shopify is sort of a business incubator that is extremely valuable when a business' scale is limited. But the few that become huge hits would likely leave to save transaction costs, so Shopify would lose that business.

Totally agree with the Wal-Mart analysis though. They seem to be all over the place. I sometimes wonder why Wal-Mart doesn't at least try to start a subscription service. They would definitely have to undercut Amazon on price and eat losses for a while, but I don't understand the idea of advertising a no-subscription required model when that model clearly works so well for so many other businesses. The most obvious issue is that they are at a huge disadvantage in distribution center build-out, but why couldn't they start regionally in a couple of densely-populated areas and expand from there? Price the service aggressively and maybe give members discounts on groceries or other in-store products, an area where Wal-Mart has a massive advantage over Amazon.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#107
post #53
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"…

Here's my hot take (with 2 years of running a #1 trending shopify app + multiple attempt in starting a store) Shopify DOES NOT help you sell. Period. Amazon will win in the long run because at the end of the day it's all about if the "platform" can move merchandize or not. Amazon captures top of the funnel all the way down to personalized targeting. Shopify will never do that. they are just the tool to help you figur…

I have a theory Shopify does sell - however only from their own stores and with access to the data goldmine deciding what to sell, who to target in advertising, etc.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#108
post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think "number of plugins" is a good comparison metric here. The Shopify app store is regulated + tested by Shopify before getting the approval to go live. WordPress plugins are the wild west, many of them incompatible with each other.

Regulated meaning a tightly controlled and closed "market"? Number of plugins isn't the greatest metric but it's a good leading indicator. It's kinda hard to estimate how many merchants and customers and volume of transactions have been processed when they aren't being tracked by a central entity ;)

If only Shopify was some sort of publicly traded company that publicly reported these numbers. If only...

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#109
post #51
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.

2.9% is the rate for their $30 a month plan, their $300 plan is 2.4% which leaves you within 1% from most of the cheapest payment processors while getting a ton more 'value' IMO.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#110
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…

Shopify is only $30/month for its basic plan. I can't imagine a situation where somebody with a successful online store would be sweating that $10. I also can't imagine a store that would be successful at $20/mo on WooCommerce, but not at $30/mo on Shopify. I say this as somebody with several past and current Shopify stores.
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