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Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

tinystore.app

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Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#61

Post by gman83 »

vira28 wrote: post #54

Since its relevant going to ask for recommendation here. I am setting up an online store for my parents. I can host and manage it at least for the initial days where they can validate the idea. These two looks promising. 1. https://woocommerce.com/ 2. https://magento.com/ Found more alternatives https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-woocommerce-alterna... Wondering anyone has experience/feedback on any of these pr…

I recommend something like Cloudways for Wordpress. It's like a layer on top of Digital Ocean/Vultr/Linode.

Try the Blocksy theme with Woocommerce.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#62

Post by jonny_eh »

hapiben wrote: post #9

I made a simple web app for merchants/small businesses who use Shopify Lite Plan and want to have a simple/minimal storefront. I built this initially for my wife. She owns two online stores in Shopify. With her Lite plan, she only pays $9/month/store versus the Basic plan for $29/month/store. Since the Lite plan doesn't include an online store, TinyStore allows merchants to have one. The app is still new. I appreciat…

Clicking a product scrolls to the top of the page, it's quite annoying.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#63

Post by hapiben »

whylo wrote: post #31

I'd really encourage you to download a screen reader such as NVDA (or use VoiceOver if you're on a Mac), make use of the Lighthouse accessibility audit in Chrome dev tools, and try using your site with just a keyboard to test for accessibility. At the moment the biggest problem is you've used divs with click handlers rather than tags for your product links, which can't be focussed with the keyboard, so anybody using…

Agree. Thanks for this feedback. I'll put it on top of my backlog. :-)

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#64

Post by hapiben »

jonny_eh wrote: post #62
hapiben wrote: post #9

I made a simple web app for merchants/small businesses who use Shopify Lite Plan and want to have a simple/minimal storefront. I built this initially for my wife. She owns two online stores in Shopify. With her Lite plan, she only pays $9/month/store versus the Basic plan for $29/month/store. Since the Lite plan doesn't include an online store, TinyStore allows merchants to have one. The app is still new. I appreciat…

Clicking a product scrolls to the top of the page, it's quite annoying.

I noticed that as well. Should be an easy fix. :-) Thanks.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#65

Post by hapiben »

vira28 wrote: post #54

Since its relevant going to ask for recommendation here. I am setting up an online store for my parents. I can host and manage it at least for the initial days where they can validate the idea. These two looks promising. 1. https://woocommerce.com/ 2. https://magento.com/ Found more alternatives https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-woocommerce-alterna... Wondering anyone has experience/feedback on any of these pr…

I've used WooCommerce before for my wife's online store. I hosted it in DO. It's okay, but not as good as Shopify in terms of payments, inventory management etc. I also ended up having to install a lot of plugins which most of it are in trial.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#66

Post by hapiben »

alanz1223 wrote: post #58

I am looking to experiment with ecommerce a bit and Ive signed up for shopify trials but since I want to extensively customize my store, learning liquid has been something i keep procrastinating on and this seems like a more approachable and affordable way to launch experimental stores but I want to understand what exactly you offer. You're charging $5/month for the front end and hosting of the tiny store/website and…

That's right. You will end up having a bill of $14/month in total instead of $29 for the basic plan. TinyStore doesn't offer much customization atm. You can add pages, announcement banner, logo and social handles. With more feedback from users, I can improve the store with more features in the future.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#67

Post by hapiben »

harrisonjackson wrote: post #59

Love how minimal the landing page is but maybe an FAQ or something below the fold? I see you have an FAQ hidden in footer but I'd drop something more on the apex landing page. Some context like... Shopify Lite is Shopify's Cheapest Plan. It does not include a hosted storefront but they do give you a "Buy Now" snippet which takes you straight to a checkout page. TinyStore gives you a hosted storefront to display and c…

True. There are a few comments here about improving the landing page. I need to put more context into it and explain what it does and the value for the users. Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it. :-)

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#68

Post by hapiben »

throwarayes wrote: post #46

I’m going to be the contrarian here :) I would just pay $29/month for Shopify basic plan. Is the $20 difference worth self hosting and tweaking a custom thing? You’ll quickly lose that $20 in time better spent running your business. I’d rather have reliable hosting... Not to bash a cool side project. Just want to say it’s not a panacea.

Some small businesses don't require a full online store. I'm putting my wife as an example. I agree that $15/month savings is not a big deal, but overtime, it will be. I also noticed that most customers don't care about how the site looks, as long as it's functional and they can do their purchase.

$15/month savings can be spent in FB/Instagram ads or something that can drive more customers. In 3 months, you save $45 or $180/year.

I'm also planning allow users to add multiple stores. The site is hosted in DO and can scale up easily.

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#69

Post by hapiben »

fuadnafiz98 wrote: post #55

Would you tell me what tech stack is used?

- Ruby on Rails - VueJS for the store. Just the part where I render the products - PostgreSQL - Bulma CSS - PostgreSQL - DigitalOcean - Cloudflare

Two important JS libraries from Shopify: - Shopify BuyButton.js for the product modal, cart and checkout - Shopify JavaScript Buy SDK for product pagination

Re: Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

#70

Post by hapiben »

bilater wrote: post #60

Nice work. I went down this rabbit hole a few weeks ago and built an open source Next.js Shopify Store that hooks up with the Shopify Storefront API. Feel free to check it out: https://github.com/btahir/next-shopify-starter

This is super neat and fast as well. Well done!
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