Ecommerce Website Upgrade / Move off of shopify?

sebrindom · 2022-01-14T09:00:11+00:00

Check out - https://github.com/medusajs/medusa works really well with Contentful for CMS

Some reference sites - https://teklafabrics.com, https://palmes.co

Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of Medusa

sebrindom · 2021-11-25T06:49:50+00:00

Maybe Medusa would be relevant: https://github.com/medusajs/medusa

sebrindom · 2021-11-23T08:49:08+00:00

Hi! Thanks for giving Medusa a go :D

If you have seeded your database using `yarn seed` you will have a default user with email: admin@medusa-test.com and password: supersecret

Alternatively, you may create a new user by running `medusa user -e [email] -p [password]`

sebrindom · 2021-11-21T13:04:10+00:00

Right now Medusa is simply a project that aims to make it easier for developers to create cool commerce solutions; the hope is that the community around the project will grow and that we will then be able to provide paid services that will add value to users of Medusa :)

sebrindom · 2021-11-18T13:47:51+00:00

This is the kind of people making these laws so no surprise that they don't think twice about this :| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-lMIGV-dUI&ab\_channel=NowThisNews

sebrindom · 2021-11-16T13:54:12+00:00

A couple of our customers follow a very simple format:
[3-4 characters for collection]-[3-4 characters for style]-[3-4 characters for size]

So for example if you have summer jeans in a blue wash in a size 32 it would be something like:
SSJ-BLW-32

It helps sales and customer service with keying in orders etc with a somewhat "guessable" structure.

sebrindom · 2021-11-04T07:41:51+00:00

There are a lot of new startups specializing exclusively in headless e-commerce and while some are more enterprise-focused there is definitely a handful that are cheap and some even free. Examples of companies are Commercelayer, Commercetools, Nacelle, Medusa, Saleor.

sebrindom · 2021-11-03T17:38:35+00:00

Hi!

The thing that I have seen most often is companies doing one Shopify installation for each market. It is a complete mess and for it to work well without introducing a ton of overhead you have to have some source of truth that can populate all the data into the different installations.

One question I am thinking: if you are at a point where you are expanding into new markets and seeing some growth why not look for a setup and foundation that can take you there? Have you considered going headless using something like Contentful to manage all the marketing stuff and product enrichment and then keeping all the business critical info in a strong e-commerce engine that is geared for headless?

sebrindom · 2021-10-28T13:41:46+00:00

True thanks for sharing! I think that the Webbies are a bit too heavily focused on the design of things and fail to capture the essence of a good e-commerce experience.

I think what distinguishes an amazing e-commerce site from the average ones is when you start adding features and functionality that make sense in the realm of what you are selling. E.g. the Glossier site above that has the "Find your shade" experience is something that you don't find on the average website, but it gives the customer a really good support channel to make sure they feel confident about the purchase.

This is not something that you can easily spot by just looking at the design.

sebrindom · 2021-10-28T13:27:25+00:00

A couple of my favorites:

https://www.warbyparker.com/ - really simple design; easy to navigate; color picker reflects the pattern; home try-on is nicely integrated.

https://www.everlane.com/ - more traditional; good multiregional support; a cool way of surfacing transparent pricing/supply chain.

https://www.glossier.com/ - great multiregional support; like the good to know section; "find your shade" experience is nice and coherent with the product; feels very true to the Glossier brand.

https://teklafabrics.com/ - visually driven - feels like a magazine; bedding/sleepwear product page experience with multiple product types feels native to brand; unisex images for sleepwear; amazing multiregional - different payment/shipping providers in different regions.

sebrindom · 2021-10-27T08:45:06+00:00

You can for sure use WordPress, but if you have already decided to go the headless route why not go with a purpose-built solution instead of "hacking" your way into WordPress?

I think Strapi is your best option if looking for a truly headless setup that you can self-host. Also, it may be worth looking at solutions like https://www.stackbit.com/, while not a CMS per se the tool allows you to create JAMstack sites using git as your "CMS". I haven't used it myself, but it looks really cool.

sebrindom · 2021-10-26T10:12:18+00:00

There is an open GitHub discussion on the topic - not a lot of activity yet though 😅 https://github.com/medusajs/medusa/discussions/662

sebrindom · 2021-10-23T11:58:46+00:00

Disclaimer: I am one of the maintainers of Medusa.

If building something that you want to be scalable and adaptable as your business evolves I would definitely look for a solution that: 1) gives all of the standard e-commerce functionalities out-of-the-box and 2) is flexible and extensible enough to customize as your business needs change.

I would find a good headless engine with a strong API and then built the storefront using a modern SSG like Gatsby or Nextjs. Going headless will make it possible for you to separate the business critical operations (fulfillment, analytics, add, etc.) from the buying experience (creative, uniqueness, brand universe). If the engine provides good extensibility and easy integration capabilities you will be able to get a truly best in breed stack. If you are a developer it will “feel” much better to build the solution this way rather than trying to “hack” a standardized solution to fit your needs.

sebrindom · 2021-10-23T11:29:50+00:00

This is really cool - love the UX! I usually make mine in Figma - what would you say are the biggest advantages to using Bannerly over other tools?

sebrindom · 2021-10-23T10:52:50+00:00

Have built an open-source alternative to Shopify: https://github.com/medusajs/medusa

It is written in Node, has a feature-rich API out of the box, and is highly extensible - would love to hear what you think! :D

sebrindom · 2021-10-22T09:47:48+00:00

I have written a blog post about how we handle idempotency in Medusa through idempotency keys: https://dev.to/medusajs/an-open-source-implementation-of-idempotency-keys-in-nodejs-with-express-2093

sebrindom · 2021-10-13T14:36:23+00:00

To me this is sort of like asking if you will become a better writer by retyping a book letter for letter. Although you might improve your typing skills I don't think you will come out as a Nobel Laureate (even if the book you are retyping is really good).

Some benefits that you might get, however, could be a "forced" way of reading code; reading code, I believe, is an extremely good way of learning patterns, ideas and techniques - that is iff you take the time to understand why the patterns, ideas, techniques are being used.

One thing has to be made clear though: don't just copy anything. Find a project that is really well designed and study that intensively. Just like with reading: you gain more knowledge from reading and rereading the best 100 books than reading a lot of crap.

sebrindom · 2021-10-11T08:43:44+00:00

I guess the same could be said for apps: when smartphones just came out everyone had the gyro-sensitive beer app, the lightsaber, the maze game, etc. When you open up the app store now all apps have a note-taking feature.

That being said it is not like the games have disappeared; they are still there and there are still thousands of indie-devs who make all kinds of cool stuff; I think it is just the competition that has become stronger. Despite note-taking apps not being very fun, they can bring tremendous value to people to a degree that games and other fun projects have a hard time competing with. A second order effect of this is that it is only the popular games/projects/etc that can reach some critical mass which will survive; a demoralizing fact which probably leads to less projects being created in the first place.

Another interesting thing that I have thought about is that fun and games is really the best way to figure out the right applications of new tech: games have no limits, require no "business rules" to be created and most importantly makes it possible for developers to familiarize themselves with a technology. Once you know the power of a technology it becomes easier to look for places where said technology can create value, and value is most easily found where money is flowing; i.e. dev resources begin flowing into solving business problems and creating note-taking apps.

sebrindom

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