Creating my online store for small dog products on Shopify was a remarkably smooth and rewarding experience. Shopify's user-friendly platform guided me through each step of the setup process, making it easy even for someone without prior experience. Their range of customizable templates gave my store a professional and appealing look, and the analytics tools provided have been invaluable for tracking my store's performance and customer trends. Additionally, Shopify's 24/7 customer support was always ready to assist whenever I encountered any roadblocks. Overall, launching my business on Shopify has been a positive experience, and I would highly recommend it to anyone looking to start their own online store.
Shopify is a powerful marketing machine that has driven incredible growth. It's an excellent choice for the store owner who needs to do it themselves, on a shoestring budget, who does not sell complex products and who does not plan to run a hybrid - a store that serves multiple customer bases such as retail and wholesale.
Due to its sheer market share, there is a robust marketplace of apps that can be added to shape the store to fit most needs. There is an equally robust selection of themes and developers who can assist with any size project. They have a terrific knowledge base which I strongly recommend store owners use as it teaches the basics for e-commerce in general and online marketing. This learning should be done prior to developing a plan for your site. That will help root your project for success.
Unfortunately, it's also oversold based on name recognition even when the platform is a poor choice for a specific business. There are both policy and technical limitations that impact suitability.
Shopify stores require many apps, which adds monthly costs and can greatly slow your store down. While ALL online stores end up with some app use, because this allows you to choose the features you want and need, much of what is native in other carts like their most direct competitor, BigCommerce, is not. So you'll spend more money each month and it can be harder to get a fast site.
Among the stores that should probably NOT use Shopify:
- Sells items that are generally prohibited on the platform which includes weapons, weapon-related items, sex objects, tobacco (for some odd reason Vape is currently on the platform but for how long is anyone's guess), alcohol.
- Sells items allowed but that don't qualify for Shopify Payments which expands the above list to include supplements, CBD, vape products and other items.
- Just as above, any store that can't qualify for Shopify Payments or who has good reasons to use another payment gateway. Why? Because if you don't use their payment gateway which they profit from, they will take 1/2-2% of your gross revenues soley because you are using another gateway. For small merchants, this isn't much, for big ones it's a significant cost.
- Stores with multiple price structures or catalogs - such as those who offer VIP tiers or wholesale clients. Why not? Because you can't create true customer groups which on other platforms let you segment the catalog and content for each customer group. Groups are really important for B2B. To accomplish multiple audiences on Shopify requires either a separate app (at an added cost) or multiple storefronts, or ShopifyPlus (which is still creating multiple sites). This can greatly increase your operational costs and work efforts.
- Stores with complex products - these are items with many options, also known as configurable or customizable products. While Shopify does offer the ability to offer up to 3 options per product with a maximum of 100 skus per product, this limit is very easy to exceed. There is also no native path to add modifiers such as those one would use for personalized products (like custom embroidery. While these issues can be overcome with apps, that adds both load time and costs.
Based on our record, Shopify seems to be a lot more popular than BetaList. While we know about 42 links to Shopify, we've tracked only 4 mentions of BetaList. We are tracking product recommendations and mentions on various public social media platforms and blogs. They can help you identify which product is more popular and what people think of it.
BetaList - Gain early access to the future of startups. - Source: dev.to / 7 months ago
Guys..... Just found what I had in mind. https://betalist.com/ It gives early adopters a heads up. My idea however was that you don't even need a landing page and all the site does is containing your add and an email submission form and then you'll take it from there, discord, zoom meetings or whatever works for the people that have signed up. Betalist criteria is a bit different. - Source: Hacker News / 10 months ago
BetaList: BetaList is a platform where product creators and user communities showcase their products and exchange feedback. However, while ProductHunt offers free launches for products without any wait time, BetaList states that it can take up to two months to get listed. There is, however, a paid option to skip the waiting queue. Source: almost 2 years ago
Betalist is good for this: https://betalist.com/ You should also spend the next 30 minutes putting together a very rough description and a mailing list link, and then post a comment with a link. Being on the front page of HN will get you hundreds to thousands of visitors, so don't waste the opportunity! - Source: Hacker News / about 3 years ago
Shopify.com vs store.link which one is better? Source: 9 months ago
With a traditional e-commerce platform like Shopify, you're locked into their ecosystem. You have to use their templates, checkout, and backend. Headless platforms like MedusaJS give you the freedom to build the front end however you want, using any framework or library. - Source: dev.to / 12 months ago
For example, if you want to load firewalla.com, just allowing "firewalla.com" will not work, you will have allow shopify.com and few other stuff ... You can see what sites loaded using chrome dev mode. Source: about 1 year ago
If the shipping and sales tax scares you, it may be better to sell through Etsy since it is a marketplace facilitator and is required to collect sales tax from customers when purchasing your items that are sold. People go to Etsy to find something, not sgalv02.com to find your items. I believe Shopify will help you create a site to sell on, but people don't go to shopify.com to purchase various items like they do... Source: about 1 year ago
Create a online website using dukaan.io or shopify.com and then sell something.. Source: about 1 year ago
Product Hunt - A website that lets users share and discover new products
WooCommerce - A freely available eCommerce plugin that enables shop facilities on your WordPress website. Functionality enabling extensions & beautiful themes available.
AlternativeTo - AlternativeTo lets you find apps and software for Windows, Mac, Linux, iPhone, iPad, Android, Android Tablets, Web Apps, Online, Windows Tablets and more by recommending alternatives to apps you already know.
Magento - Magento is the eCommerce software and platform trusted by the world's leading brands. Grow your online business with Magento.
PitchWall - Browse new startups, and submit your mobile app/games startup's beta page here.
BigCommerce - BigCommerce provides ecommerce software solutions and shopping cart software for online businesses. Try it free and start selling your products online today!