Anyone use Shopify?

[sherm]

Has anyone used shopify? For someone like myself that has no formal training on webites, will it be easy to get up and running?
Is there another e-commerce site you would choose over shopify? If so, why?

[sherm]

wow...did I offend everyone, or do new people not get answered?

[tobiasluetke]

Hey sherm!

A lot of people who follow the 4hour work week principles also love Shopify.

Even though I and my team build Shopify before Tim released his book there was a clear meeting of the minds when we read it. So much so that Tim became an advisor to Shopify and we launched a contest together where we gave away a cool $100,000 to the winners ( www.dodocase.com ).

More specifically to your question: For most people who sing up to Shopify it's their first business. We have a team of "Gurus" who are essentially like virtual assistants that will help you with your questions. We also publish a lot of material on learning to run a online businesses on our blog and through email.

Lastly, if you have read Tim's book chances are that you already know more then most on how to build an online businesses. I say go ahead and give it a go :-)


For the results of the contest you can check this infographic: http://cdn.shopify.com/static/images/other/shopify-build-a-business.pdf

TL;DR: 1,378 businesses where created by people from this forum on Shopify last year.

- tobi
CEO Shopify

[sherm]

Thank you for the reply Tobi...I signed up, figured I had nothing to lose to try it for 30 days....I'll reserve judgement until I use it some more...

[Shaqleen30]

Curious as to what your verdict of the site is after using it for 30 days

[dreadpiraterobby]

hi I have my online store on shopify.. I have found it very convenient to use for the most parts.. I am not a programmer however and some things have required me to do a little research about html and such, but nothing i couldn't find on google.. So if your serious about it i'd say shopify is your best bet. they have some great free templates too for your store.

[outofbandii]

Random comments:

I don't use Shopify, but one of it's competitors, 1ShoppingCart. I'm currently in the final phase of shutting down my account there (they require you to call them via phone when you want to cancel, can't do it online - really don't like that).

Hosted shopping carts are really useful because they save a lot of hassle when you're first starting up. Later on you might want to "graduate" to a self-hosted* solution with your own Magento/Zencart/OScart install and payment processing.

The one problem I find with the hosted solutions is folks outside of the US can find it difficult sometimes to use their own payment processing with the (usually) US based cart hosting service.

Shopify shops are beautiful, they've done that really well.

* easy confusion: "hosted" and "self-hosted" are similar sounding but completely opposites.

[close]

I will say that there are upsides and downsides. The upsides are the back-end is fairly user friendly and once the site is complete you should be able to manage it yourself. The downside that i'm running into now is that the shopify platform is not standard for seo.
For example not every page is setup with a description, and there is no keywords meta tag. There are ways to add a description however they involve what appears to be semi complex coding. On a standard webpage this would be as simple as editing a text file.
But it is a good way to get started, and if you start making money you can always pay someone to move your site to a different back end. Check mine out at www.plussizepeach.com