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Shopify POS

shopify.com

91–100 of 124 posts

Re: Shopify POS

#91
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.)

Hi, you can set up weight-based shipping rates so products over a certain weight have different shipping rates applied. You just need to tell Shopify the weight of those products. http://docs.shopify.com/manual/settings/4-shipping/4-shippin...

If that's not good enough there's apps like Better Shipping that can set up more complex shipping rules - http://apps.shopify.com/better-shipping

Re: Shopify POS

#92
post #57
post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is the price you pay for a currency with: 1) Stability 2) A massive user base 3) An infrastructure to support that massive user base BitCoin has none of those things, so I'd expect a discount on it!

It's the price you pay for interchange fees. If only ACH had an instant verify and hold feature...

...it would immediately be a target of fraud and unhappy customers and soon have to charge a more substantial fee. Bitcoin early adopters are willing to put up with more insecurity and inconvenience than most customers.

Re: Shopify POS

#93
post #90

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 Shopif…

As someone who runs a pretty big shopify store (in terms of SKUs) littlebirdelectronics.com, this makes it super easy for us to move from being an online store to a brick and mortar store.

In the past we've tried to sell our wares at Makerfaires and the like, and in the end we'd be getting people to use our laptop or iPad and place their orders through our site.

This dramatically simplifies the whole affair!

Credit where credit is due, this is pretty awesome :)

Re: Shopify POS

#94
post #90

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 Shopif…

The one key advantage that Shopify has, as I see it, is that merchants who use Shopify already have their inventory loaded into the system. Synchronizing their online stock and physical stock now has little barrier to entry beyond the cost.

Re: Shopify POS

#95
post #90

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 Shopif…

As someone who runs a pretty big shopify store (in terms of SKUs) littlebirdelectronics.com, this makes it super easy for us to move from being an online store to a brick and mortar store. In the past we've tried to sell our wares at Makerfaires and the like, and in the end we'd be getting people to use our laptop or iPad and place their orders through our site. This dramatically simplifies the whole affair! Credit w…

For sure, no discounting the usefulness of a seamlessly integrated solution for people with both online and b&m businesses.

I haven't had the need to dig into Shopify in years but will be curious to see how it handles some of the complexities of multi-front retail.

Re: Shopify POS

#96
post #90

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 Shopif…

The one key advantage that Shopify has, as I see it, is that merchants who use Shopify already have their inventory loaded into the system. Synchronizing their online stock and physical stock now has little barrier to entry beyond the cost.

How does Shopify do with multiple locations for stock? Say you have inventory in your physical store and then have the inventory you're selling online at a warehouse elsewhere which you also use to re-stock the b&m.

Re: Shopify POS

#97
post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The one key advantage that Shopify has, as I see it, is that merchants who use Shopify already have their inventory loaded into the system. Synchronizing their online stock and physical stock now has little barrier to entry beyond the cost.

How does Shopify do with multiple locations for stock? Say you have inventory in your physical store and then have the inventory you're selling online at a warehouse elsewhere which you also use to re-stock the b&m.

That's a great question that I don't have the answer to. I have done some development work for a Shopify site recently. As I recall Shopify's default inventory system would likely be limited for a company with multiple locations.

Re: Shopify POS

#98
The iPad POS market is saturated, and Square already has a tremendous foothold. I have serious doubts about the whether this system can succeed so late in the game.

Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer lines and more errors in recording orders. These things have consistently caused a regression of the customer experience in businesses. They're slow, they're unwieldy, and for whatever reason people demonstrate considerable ineptitude at using them. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cash register. Things like Square should be used only in instances where using a traditional register would be untenable. The fact that companies are needlessly adopting these things and subsequently worsening the experience for their customers is tremendously disappointing.

The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register. It wasn't designed to, and companies should stop pretending otherwise.

Re: Shopify POS

#99
post #98

The iPad POS market is saturated, and Square already has a tremendous foothold. I have serious doubts about the whether this system can succeed so late in the game. Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer…

> The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register.

Are you serious? You do realize that most "traditional registers" are used in conjunction with a credit card terminal and/or a computer + monitor POS system right? Both of those things are computers, and the iPad is slowly replacing a very large number of the things that a computer was traditionally used for...primarily because of three main advantages: portability, size, and enhanced UI (multitouch, gestures, etc.). All three of those (especially the last) offer huge advantages for registers and POS systems.

Sure, most offerings are currently somewhat buggy and scrappy. But what new technology isn't? I can guarantee it will get better. This is pretty classic innovation life cycle (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:InnovationLifeCycle.jpg). What you're saying is the equivalent to somebody in 2005 saying "Flash memory will never be used in place of traditional hard drives in laptops." That person would, today, feel pretty stupid.

Re: Shopify POS

#100
post #70

I realize that POS is a term that is widely used as a TLA for point of sale, but it feels like Shopify POS is an unfortunate name given that it's also a TLA for piece of sh*t.

Only to vulgar, childish individuals. The target demographic for this is businesspeople leading honorable lives.

businesspeople leading honorable lives
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