Background: I agreed to design and launch a customized e-commerce store for a luxury menswear brand in just 3 days. My adorable client landed some very high profile press and wanted to maximize the exposure and get the cash register ringing. I’ve built many, many e-commerce sites and I prefer custom builds over hosted e-commerce because the hosted services are horrid time-sucking trolls (yes, I’m looking at you Yahoo! Stores). 3 days, however, is not enough time to get a custom build out the door nor is it enough time to get a merchant account and gateway processor installed. So… hosted e-commerce was the best solution and I decided to take Shopify out for a spin.

What I like about Shopify:

• Using CSS to control the design made the customization quick
• Simple admin tool with drag and drop ajax features makes administering quick and pleasant
• Ability to customize interactions like confirmation screens, store logic, and various customer emails
• Payment gateway documentation and support is great
• Easy Google Analytics integration (web analytics)
• Easy Campaign Monitor integration (email newsletters)
• Custom packing slips
• Slick order processing workflow
• Offline designer tool for customizing the store theme

What I really don’t like about Shopify:

• All 4 images (thumbnail, small, medium and large) for a product are scaled versions of the original so you’re stuck with the same aspect ratio for everything in the layout unless you do some (crappy) CSS workarounds.
• No relationship between the product variants and the image so when adding the green sweater to your cart, you see which ever thumbnail is the default image for the product . The support forums make it clear that the developers think this is absolutely fine and they have no intention of changing it.
• You have to upgrade to a hefty monthly plan to be able to offer coupons/discounts
• No free shipping option in the coupon tool which is a HUGE oversight
• Anything above basic CSS styling requires a working knowledge of Ruby, which is fine for me but not so much for someone without a geek badge.
• Checkout flow isn’t connected to the store template by default, requires lots more work

What I somewhat dislike about Shopify:

• Inventory management: no single-page data entry view for updating product on hand. This means 10 products with 10 variants (colors) = 300 clicks to open – edit – save if you need to do a mass update and are afraid of the spreadsheet uploader (typical clients are scared) or worried about the uploader’s lackluster documentation. Ugh.
• Out of inventory workflow should offer a ‘notify me’ option; I did a quick hack with a bit of logic and a call to a special Campaign Monitor mailing list but it’s not ideal.
• Directions for updating DNS so you don’t have shopname.myshopify.com as your store URL are wonky, so beginners will definitely struggle with this and I would bet more than a few kill their email routing in the process.
• Fee structure; you pay monthly for the store hosting (doesn’t include email hosting) and then a % of sales which is separate from the % of sale and transaction fee you’ll pay with the credit card processor. It adds up quickly!
• Coupon management is tedious – repetitive tasks like this should be streamlined for control via spreadsheet/csv uploads

Conclusion:

Shopify is a decent solution if you have low expectations and intermediate technology skills. You’ll pay a premium for the turn-key e-commerce but it’s a good starting point for those with low budgets and tight timelines. I would consider it a quick-launch starter option that’s far superior to other products but definitely not a long-term platform recommendation.

Consumers are actively shopping in store, online and catalog channels. Store shoppers also purchase 16 percent of their items online and 5 percent from catalogues. Online shoppers buy 43 percent of their merchandise in stores and 6 percent from catalogues. Catalogue shoppers buy 19 percent of their goods in stores and 11 percent online.
Source: DoubleClick

ONLINE ADVERTISING THAT FOCUSES LOCALLY MAPS TO THAT TREND
Spending on local online advertising reached $2.7 billion in 2004, up 28 percent from 2003. That figure is expected to grow 46 percent in 2005 to $3.9 billion.
Source: Borrell Associates

YOUR RETURNING VISITOR VS NEW VISITOR DATA IS PROBABLY NOT WHAT YOU THINK IT IS
Nearly 58 percent of online users delete cookies and as many as 39 percent delete them on a monthly basis. More than one-third (38 percent) say they believe that cookies put their browsing security and privacy at risk.
Source: Jupiter Research

NARROWLY FOCUSED SEARCH PHRASES CONVERT BETTER
Keyword search phrases with four words are the most effective at converting browsers into customers. Four-word phrases for keywords in the top 100 group of words that produced the highest traffic rates converted 38.28 percent of unique visitors into customers in December 2004. Three-word phrases converted 21.89 percent of unique visitors into customers. The conversion rate for five-word phrases takes a considerable dip to 9.69 percent.
Source: Oneupweb

A while back I wrote about affiliate programs from the side of the affiliate wondering why they are considered so unimportant in the provider’s world. While those words were written in the frustration of the moment, I still stand behind them today. The big affiliate programs don’t care about the affiliates because they collect big monthly fees from the merchants. That’s where the game is, and where my next story begins.

I am now a merchant on BeFree, managing an affiliate program for a client. After looking through all of the options out there, we chose an entry level package with BeFree of $500 a month – or $6000 a year for the privilege of being a merchant on the BeFree network. Not bad considering that the next package up was $1500 a month for a total of $18,000 per year.

What do I think of BeFree?

I was once a fan and now… not so much.

The reporting tools are TERRIBLE, slow and have an interesting feature of having no headers so you get a huge table of numbers with no context for their meaning. ISN’T THAT WHAT I AM PAYING $500 A MONTH FOR – REPORTING?

They hold your FAQ page hostage and charge $100 to make edits to the page. That’s right!! As you get smarter about your affiliate’s needs and want to use that page to save yourself answering the same questions, you’ll have to cough up $100 for the privilege. THIS IS JUST BAD CUSTOMER SERVICE.

They make it hard to get all of your affiliate data in one place. Want to have a nice grid you can run pivots on? Maybe do a broadcast email to your affiliate list? Keep notes on conversations with your affiliates? NOPE. You have three key pieces of info on an affiliate that you need and they are stored in three different places, so you have no easy way of pulling it together. This is, in my opinion, because they want you to use their email system at 3 cents per email to communicate with your affiliates. But as your affiliate list grows, 3 cents per can add up!

None of the features work on a Mac – not even basic java scripts for things like ‘download to pdf’ or ‘download csv’ for reports. IN TODAY’S WEB CLIMATE OF CROSS-PLATFORM FRIENDLY DEVELOPMENT, THIS IS JUST BACKWARD THINKING.

My two cents on BeFree. Maybe this post will keep some of you from some merchant heartache. If I had it to do again, I would choose differently.

-Kimberly

Another note to add: the search tools on the merchant side don’t work either, so don’t plan on being able to search for an affiliate by name or URL.

The idea is interesting – encourage online merchants to display standard color tags on their items so the shopper can do a quick @ home lookup on their pantone swatch book and see if that shade of pink is just the shade they were looking for. It would certainly make both company and customer happier and more confident about their online purchases. Fewer returns, less anxiety – a minimal amount of investment on the company’s part. Good basic ingredients for adoption.

But take a look at the marketing copy below. Calling it a “portable color memory” is on par with calling my wallet a “cash management system”. Pantone manages to undermine a strong idea with terrible, irrelevant fluff. (learn from their mistake)

“Consumers of home and fashion products have a long acquaintance with paint chips, magazine clippings, catalogs, and rug and fabric swatches for coordinating the colors of their prospective purchases. Now with the PANTONE SHOPPING COLOR GUIDE, the customer is able to bring a Portable Color Memory™ to their point of purchase.” —extracted from Pantone’s site 04.07.2003