From the Box or Made From Scratch

Presented to Digital Fertilizer, 4/14/14

Transcript

1. From the Box or Made from Scratch?
3. Andrew Hooker Spree Commerce, Inc. Sales and Support Engineer vigorus.co Co-founder Looking for Beta Users @GeekOnCoffee Twitter, GitHub, LinkedIn
4. No Easy Answers :(
5. Discussion Points Varying Forms of Ecommerce Making the Decision Pivoting Questions? Bonus Content!
6. Ecommerce
7. Just a Cart, Right?
8. Not Today! Ecommerce is Hard!
9. No-commerce a.k.a. GIMMEMONEY I don’t need no stinking products! Stripe, Paypal, Recurly, etc. No e-commerce features, just the ability to collect money Handle Subscriptions to establish ongoing revenue Generally a small wrapper around larger functionality built on your Site
10. Custom Built Store Flexibility Familiarity Fully Controllable Makes Custom Functionality Easy* Slower Speed to Market Larger staff on-boarding time
11. Marketplaces Etsy, Fulfilled by Amazon, etc. Sell directly on somebody else’s site Eliminates most of the day to day management No need for hosting No room for customization Pay fees per Listing and/or Transaction Provides marketing, other services
12. SaaS Platform Shopify, Goodsie, GoDaddy, etc. Handles Simple E-commerce Template and Design Options Limited Functionality Eliminates scaling and hosting concerns Comes with Support Recurring Costs
13. Self Hosted Platform Out of the box Functionality Outside input on Security, Functionality, etc. Larger base for potential developers Support Contracts Available Plugin Ecosystem Harder to Customize* Requires Server Setup, Scaling, etc.
14. SpreeCommerce Bringing the best of Custom to a Platform Uses standard Ruby and Rails techniques Modular System - Use only what you need Fully Open Source - Code 100% Free Partner Program - Certified Agencies to Hire Commercial Integration Product Sustains OSS
15. Decision Making Factors What am I selling? What wheel am I hoping to make money (re)inventing? Is the customer’s purchasing experience a top priority? Will my customer benefit from a non-standard experience? What in-house talent (development, sysadmin, etc.) do I have to support my Ecommerce efforts? What are the upfront and ongoing costs of this solution?
16. Making the Decision Different for every stage of every business Will it be a good fit until I’m ready to reevaluate? Which option is more likely to allow me to move my business forward faster? Is the upfront pain worth ongoing success? NOT set in stone!
19. Pivoting is Hard Throwing away lots of work Requires Design, Implementation, Testing, Training Takes focus away from core business Timing is Key
20. Pivoting can be Critical to Success Many stores start on a SaaS platform Validate their idea Establish their brand identity Get stuck by the constraints of the system! Once they’re established, it’s easy to justify switching to custom or self-hosted platforms
22. WeMontage Started out Custom, being built by contractors Realized they were reinventing the wheel of Ecommerce Started their pivot only replacing basic custom Commerce functions with Spree Got up and running in a few days Sped up their ongoing development cycle Pulled in Extensions (gift cards, Twitter Bootstrap Theme), stock functionality, and solutions from community to solve problems
23. Groupon Started as a WordPress blog offering daily deals Bare Bones Commerce - No Product Customization Any Product Customization was done via email Coupons were generated daily using a script and sent using Apple Mail on a Desktop Proved the Concept Worked Now Fully Custom, Automated, etc.
24. Questions?
25. Bonus Content!
26. Blog / Marketing Site
27. Platform Well Established Options Wordpress, MovableType, Squarespace, etc. Built in Features SEO, WYSIWYG Editor, Comments Extensive Plugin and Themes Sysadmin Potentially Required
28. Custom Flexible Full Control Easier Custom Functionality? Slower Speed to Market
29. Infrastructure
30. Platform (Infrastructure as a Service) Heroku, Ninefold, etc. Handle most things for you Security, Upgrades, Scaling“Anybody can do it” Monitored for you Expensive
31. Self Hosted More Control of Environment Cheaper Responsible for Everything Requires somebody with SysAdmin knowledge Often requires dedicated employee/team to keep on top of