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Shopify and the Power of Platforms

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Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#141

Post by q_queue »

DenisM wrote: post #135
Townley wrote: post #2

> Shopify is giving merchants an opportunity to differentiate themselves while bearing no risk if they fail. In addition to this being a great position for Shopify, this is an amazing thing for merchants compared to Amazon's offering; it's the critical difference between "We'll sell your stuff" and "We'll empower you to easily sell your stuff" that leaves power and agency in the hands of individual companies. Semi-re…

What about traffic though? Amazon gives you traffic, user reviews, used confidence.

I think to some extent Amazon's commoditization of 3rd party vendors has hurt customer confidence, though surely not enough to make up for the increase in revenue.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#142

Post by opportune »

bluetidepro wrote: post #45
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/

This is basically the story of wayfair too

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#143

Post by gcbw2 »

rladd wrote: post #139
rladd wrote: post #138

Here are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support: Q: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things up like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go directly to a single-page checkout for their subscription? A: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using Recurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring…

Another point about hosted platforms: if they run slowly, there's not that much you can do to fix it. Here's a GTMetrix report for the aforementioned site: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s Fully Loaded Time - 7.8s Not sure anyone would think this is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a page to load.

It's not like you could also do anything about slow page loads if selling via amazon or wallmart.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#144

Post by rladd »

gcbw2 wrote: post #143
rladd wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Another point about hosted platforms: if they run slowly, there's not that much you can do to fix it. Here's a GTMetrix report for the aforementioned site: https://gtmetrix.com/reports/sockfancy.com/gSNvns6s Fully Loaded Time - 7.8s Not sure anyone would think this is an acceptable amount of time to wait for a page to load.

It's not like you could also do anything about slow page loads if selling via amazon or wallmart.

Yes, but Amazon brings traffic and a customer base to the picture. Shopify doesn't.

Shopify is competing with any other shopping cart software, and for companies concerned with performance there may be a case for hosting your own.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#145

Post by rladd »

rladd wrote: post #138

Here are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support: Q: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things up like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go directly to a single-page checkout for their subscription? A: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using Recurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring…

Rather than downvoting my information-sharing, please post something in response.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#146

Post by russelh15 »

odorousrex wrote: post #120
russelh15 wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Have you decided which software you'll be using for fulfilling your orders? Or will you be outsourcing fulfillment?

In the interim we are using our legacy system. I wrote a connector that uses the Shopify admin api to fetch unfullfilled orders and fulfill them. Long term we are thinking Ship Station or maybe ZenDesks ecommerce offering.

O nice. If you're doing a lot of volume (1k+ orders/month) you might want to take a look at ShipHero. You'll begin running into inventory issues with ShipStation at that volume.

Disclaimer: I work for ShipHero.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#147

Post by m463 »

rladd wrote: post #138

Here are some excerpts from my recent conversation with Shopify support: Q: noticed that sockfancy.com is using shopify? is there a way to set things up like they do: user checks off the options they want and then they go directly to a single-page checkout for their subscription? A: A subscription is a recurring order. For recurring orders they are using Recurring Orders & Subscription Box App by Bold, and Recurring…

It seems like it's a stone soup model.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#148

Post by ky0ung »

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 ).

I don't think this makes sense to do. Shopify is great at developing software to help merchants sell online. They have successfully built a relationship with the merchant side of the market...but what is there advantage on the creating a business on the retail customer side? At the moment, Shopify only services the merchants. This being said, it is still possible to build a business on customer side, but the question is...would it make sense?

I'd say it wouldn't make sense to do this. Shopify has no relationship with the retail customer. To build it, they'd have to build traffic from scratch. They'd have to not only build a unique customer brand, but also have to figure out a way to drive traffic, which would likely be through aggressive marketing (Facebook / Google ads), which wouldn't be economical. Secondly, what would Shopify build a brand around for customers?

Amazon's brand is built on the promise of not only providing the cheapest prices, but also the convenience of 2 day shipping (achievable only through scale), amazing customer service (and lenient refunds, again achievable only through scale). This being said, what would Shopify's "brand" promise be?

Curation of their favorite products? Who says that Shopify is qualified to curate?

All of these factors make it hard for me to believe that they'd enter and create a serious business from a unified e-commerce site that'd compete with Amazon.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#149

Post by anbop »

thatoneguy wrote: post #88
greymalik wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> we have a hiring process that really, really finds people of high future potential Did he elaborate on the details of this process?

I know it definitely sounds ageist. Is a 45 year old fresh-out-of-university-to-start-new-CS-career going to be considered and hired by Shopify on a regular basis (i.e. not just hiring one and being like "see, we're not ageist")?

That person is going to have a hard time anywhere. All the drawbacks of age and none of the professional benefits.

Re: Shopify and the Power of Platforms

#150

Post by bhouston »

ky0ung wrote: post #148
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 ).

I don't think this makes sense to do. Shopify is great at developing software to help merchants sell online. They have successfully built a relationship with the merchant side of the market...but what is there advantage on the creating a business on the retail customer side? At the moment, Shopify only services the merchants. This being said, it is still possible to build a business on customer side, but the question…

The issue is that Shopify will run out of growth in their current sector. Thus they need to seek out some way to grow their market by redefining it to be bigger than it currently.

One large issue that I see is that Amazon wins 40%+ of ecommerce because shoppers searches start on Amazon. Shopify stores lose by default 40% of the time because of that.

Shopify with its huge number of merchants and pre-populated product listings and its centralized cloud-hosted platform is uniquely positioned to compete here in a way that Magento and WooCommerce can't with their distributed install base.

Shopify has to have an angle that is unique to them for sure. I am not sure what that is in terms of marketing. But they have generally done well in marketing, so I trust they will find an angle.

I think the centralized store will be an adjunct to the main offering, thus it will be an option, but because it leads to more sales opportunities, because it helps to solve the search issue, most will opt-in.

I think that they can also somehow tie in the existing stores, of which there are 700,000 into solving the need to introduce people to the centralized search. Maybe if these stores act as a funnel to Shopify's central storefront, they will get click through advertising revenue. Thus the centralization is in effect another revenue stream for stores that refer traffic to the central store. E.g. "If you do not get a sale yourself, at least get the referral revenue on the eventual sale."

I wouldn't be surprised as well (another prediction) that Shopify wants to further own the customer relationship between their merchants and their merchant's customers so that Shopify can market on Shopify's behalf to these customers. I see suggestions of this from the breakdown of the Shopify-Mailchimp relationship. Shopify is working to maintain control of its relationships with merchant's customers.

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