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Shopify POS

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Re: Shopify POS

#81

Post by theory11 »

adammcnamara wrote: post #14
smickie wrote: post #12

I have repeatedly had clients on a budget choose Magento over Shopify due to a lack of fine grain control. It's very frustrating that they can release a POS system, however fail at, for example, complex sales reports. I wish they'd get it together because they would blow everyone out the water.

A beta of Shopify Reports actually launched today as well. We're starting with point of sale customers, then bringing all merchants on shortly. http://docs.shopify.com/manual/your-store/8-reports

This is fantastic.

Re: Shopify POS

#83

Post by Ave »

The page seems to crash the tab after 40 seconds in Chrome Canary Version 31.0.1602.0 canary - also there's a js error after closing the signup popup.

Re: Shopify POS

#84

Post by erichurkman »

smickie wrote: post #12

I have repeatedly had clients on a budget choose Magento over Shopify due to a lack of fine grain control. It's very frustrating that they can release a POS system, however fail at, for example, complex sales reports. I wish they'd get it together because they would blow everyone out the water.

Their shipping options completely suck for anything but trivial sales, too, unless it has changed in the last month or two.

(Example: most products are free shipping but a few large products are not free; there was no control to exempt products from free shipping, nor any control to say products were not eligible for certain shipping methods. Not all merchants can overnight a 50kg box, for example.)

Re: Shopify POS

#85

Post by callmeed »

adrr wrote: post #80
callmeed wrote: post #65

In the POS 2.0 space (referring to new, tablet/cloud services), how many players will survive 5 years down the road? Is this a "winner take all" or "winner + 2nd place take all" space? I feel bad for the local cafe that hitches their wagon to an eventual loser–especially if their data is locked in.

Speaking of the space. Are there any card readers that lets you bring you own payment processing? Would love roll my own POS software but have yet to find a card reader that has an open API.

CardFlight http://techcrunch.com/2013/05/08/cardflight-partners-with-st...

and others at

https://angel.co/search?q=card%20reader

Re: Shopify POS

#86

Post by callmeed »

mrgreenfur wrote: post #77
callmeed wrote: post #65

In the POS 2.0 space (referring to new, tablet/cloud services), how many players will survive 5 years down the road? Is this a "winner take all" or "winner + 2nd place take all" space? I feel bad for the local cafe that hitches their wagon to an eventual loser–especially if their data is locked in.

I think most of the newfangled POS vendors will help migrate data across. Maybe not historical sales data, but certainly inventory. I also think it's not long before everyone can search local inventories nearby. Unless one of them dominates from the beginning, I can see many POS + web front ends competing for a long time.

My counter to your first argument is this: if someone's proprietary digital wallet service takes off (like Square's) or someone with a huge base of users with payment data (read: Apple or Amazon) gets in the space, all other POS vendors will get hammered by churn.

Re: Shopify POS

#87

Post by ericingram »

HyprMusic wrote: post #39
smickie wrote: post #12

I have repeatedly had clients on a budget choose Magento over Shopify due to a lack of fine grain control. It's very frustrating that they can release a POS system, however fail at, for example, complex sales reports. I wish they'd get it together because they would blow everyone out the water.

Agreed. The control they give their theme developers is shamefully woeful. You're actively encouraged to use Javascript as a work-around for their very limited templating sytem. If they were to add querying, or even just a few more options for selecting products (e.g. by type, brand, etc.) then Shopify would be a great contender to other e-commerce stores. Currently it feels they're only focused on things that can br…

I'm the founder of Forward Commerce (http://getfwd.com), a new platform focused on giving developers more template control without all the pain.

One of our early adopters was a very notable/early Shopify customer who encountered the kind of problems you describe with templates and customization. I am pleased to say they have been successful using Forward and Shopify combined in order to solve these problems, and are planning to migrate completely when the time is right.

Shopify is a great solution for small business without irregular catalog and checkout requirements. I am however surprised that they haven't done more to support businesses that grow beyond this stage.

Re: Shopify POS

#88

Post by deadlysyntax »

As the director a development agency, we cannot use Shopify for our clients until they create the ability for products to have custom fields. Some products need to present more information than is standard, such as a wine store that needs to display vintage, alcohol. volume etc. Til then this excellent new technology is useless to us.

Re: Shopify POS

#89

Post by wheels »

deadlysyntax wrote: post #88

As the director a development agency, we cannot use Shopify for our clients until they create the ability for products to have custom fields. Some products need to present more information than is standard, such as a wine store that needs to display vintage, alcohol. volume etc. Til then this excellent new technology is useless to us.

That's been available for 4 years:

http://www.shopify.com/technology/3032322-new-feature-metafi...

Re: Shopify POS

#90

Post by jonah »

This seemed very familiar to me. I remembered seeing Square offering a POS kit[0] just this spring. Interestingly though, they no longer sell it and instead are only offering a (very slick) stand/reader[1].

I wonder why they stopped offering the whole kit. My only guess it was a MVP style trial balloon offering to gauge interest before building their own hardware. Or, it didn't fly, which may not bode well for Shopify either.

[0] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/20/square-launches-ip...

[1] https://squareup.com/register/hardware

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