"The second idea is to create a POS system that integrates fully into Shopify. Thus one can use Shopify to manage sales for all the store's inventory both those that one sells through the web and also those that one sells from the physical store. The POS front end for Shopify will allow for Shopify to expand into those with both an online presence and those who also have a storefront. This is perfect for small businesses. I believe it could be very disruptive to the POS market because it would be very easy to adopt for customers."
Agreed. The control they give their theme developers is shamefully woeful. You're actively encouraged to use Javascript as a work-around for their very limited templating sytem. If they were to add querying, or even just a few more options for selecting products (e.g. by type, brand, etc.) then Shopify would be a great contender to other e-commerce stores. Currently it feels they're only focused on things that can bring them more revenue.
I felt like that too. My country payment options are lacking, api has some old bugs and shortcomings like no SKU search, taxes system doesn't fit for many business that have products with different tax type, no multilang, and plenty of ugly liquid and js solutions.
Also, checkout has a small legal nitpick here in europe, where a check has to be somewhere and in shopify is not. That means plenty of EU stores might be in a grey zone. Same with cookies in the checkout, but that's another story. I guess they will fix it but i guessed that 7 months ago.
I like Shopify in many ways, but after two (small) stores with them i have two main issues:
- EU distant. I feel US market is the main thing for them and EU is left behind using weird solutions for complex tax cases or pricing, few payment gateways, and so on. The checkout issue ilustrates this.
- Pushin new features while not fixing old ones. Shopify 2, Shopify Payments US, and now the POS are the examples. Meanwhile my app has to do crazy stuff to sync my products ids with their native ids.
Said this i will probably keep using it but Prestabox is tempting me for the next project. Any experiences with it?
Also, Shopify guys, the 15 days in advance warning for an api change in mid august was nice!
I agree, in some areas they are simply amazing. In others, they have a lot of work to do.
For example, the devs at my company that have had to use shopify hate it. Their systems are based on hacking javascript for everything. The deployments are very painful too. No way to see what it will look like without previewing it live on the site.
Their shipping options completely suck for anything but trivial sales, too, unless it has changed in the last month or two.
(Example: most products are free shipping but a few large products are not free; there was no control to exempt products from free shipping, nor any control to say products were not eligible for certain shipping methods. Not all merchants can overnight a 50kg box, for example.)
I realize that POS is a term that is widely used as a TLA for point of sale, but it feels like Shopify POS is an unfortunate name given that it's also a TLA for piece of sh*t.
POS is the standard industry term for this kind of software. Anybody who would actually buy this product would never mistake this. And anyone who might mistake it for the other meaning needs only to click through to see it is indeed a POS system.
As other's have said, it's an industry standard term. Whilst in acronym heaven, I actually had to look up what TLA meant. Three Letter Acronym for those wondering.
I've sung the praises of Shopify on multiple occasions, here and in real life and to various clients. Their products and services just continue to get better and better, across the board.
The site doesn't say that the POS supports a barcode scanner, but the video says that it does (and shows it in use). As a retailer, not having a barcode scanner would be a prompt deal breaker[0]. It should be featured somewhere on the microsite.
[0] lack of a barcode scanner isn't bad if you have 16 products. Once you're managing any serious level of inventory, especially with unique size/color combinations, there's so much risk for error if each item isn't being scanned. Then there's speed of service to the customer; it's just quicker.
Shopify constantly seem to be pushing new ground, although I find it hard to imagine a store on that platform turning over $1,000,000+ just seems to limited unlike Magento.
It's interesting how you mention Magento when talking about online stores with a high turnover.
I work with ATG, Hybris and IBM WebSphere mainly. These are the biggest players in ecommerce and some of the biggest brands with massive turnovers use these platforms.
Magento is seen as a bit of a joke among big enterprise ecommerce players. The kind of thing will a low entry barrier and with a userbase primarily made up of small retailers.
However, I would love to start my own ecommerce agency and the low barrier to entry could make magento the perfect choice for me. I'm not sure if any retailers actually spend serious money on it though, unlike the 3 big players I previously mentioned.
Am I missing something or is there no barcode scanner? It seems like a no-brainer to me. You wouldn't even need additional hardware, just use the camera as a scanner.
The iPad POS market is saturated, and Square already has a tremendous foothold. I have serious doubts about the whether this system can succeed so late in the game.
Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer lines and more errors in recording orders. These things have consistently caused a regression of the customer experience in businesses. They're slow, they're unwieldy, and for whatever reason people demonstrate considerable ineptitude at using them. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cash register. Things like Square should be used only in instances where using a traditional register would be untenable. The fact that companies are needlessly adopting these things and subsequently worsening the experience for their customers is tremendously disappointing.
The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register. It wasn't designed to, and companies should stop pretending otherwise.
This seemed very familiar to me. I remembered seeing Square offering a POS kit[0] just this spring. Interestingly though, they no longer sell it and instead are only offering a (very slick) stand/reader[1].
I wonder why they stopped offering the whole kit. My only guess it was a MVP style trial balloon offering to gauge interest before building their own hardware. Or, it didn't fly, which may not bode well for Shopify either.
As someone who runs a pretty big shopify store (in terms of SKUs) littlebirdelectronics.com, this makes it super easy for us to move from being an online store to a brick and mortar store.
In the past we've tried to sell our wares at Makerfaires and the like, and in the end we'd be getting people to use our laptop or iPad and place their orders through our site.
This dramatically simplifies the whole affair!
Credit where credit is due, this is pretty awesome :)
The one key advantage that Shopify has, as I see it, is that merchants who use Shopify already have their inventory loaded into the system. Synchronizing their online stock and physical stock now has little barrier to entry beyond the cost.
It's surprising to see no Interac support, since Shopify are from Canada. I don't see any store here using this unless it supports Interac debit cards. I use a Square card reader with my iPhone at a merch booth at concerts, which doesn't need the full POS components, but more storefronts here support Interac than credit cards and you would be turning away a lot of business in a storefront context by not supporting it.
As the director a development agency, we cannot use Shopify for our clients until they create the ability for products to have custom fields. Some products need to present more information than is standard, such as a wine store that needs to display vintage, alcohol. volume etc. Til then this excellent new technology is useless to us.
Perhaps think of something inbetween too. Someone who sells online then attends farmer markets/artist events/trade shows/flea markets and wants to do physical transactions.
[+] [-] bhouston|12 years ago|reply
"The second idea is to create a POS system that integrates fully into Shopify. Thus one can use Shopify to manage sales for all the store's inventory both those that one sells through the web and also those that one sells from the physical store. The POS front end for Shopify will allow for Shopify to expand into those with both an online presence and those who also have a storefront. This is perfect for small businesses. I believe it could be very disruptive to the POS market because it would be very easy to adopt for customers."
Back when I applied to the Shopify Fund there were little requirements it just asked for ideas: http://web.archive.org/web/20111018133854/http://www.shopify...
I never heard back from them.
[+] [-] smickie|12 years ago|reply
It's very frustrating that they can release a POS system, however fail at, for example, complex sales reports.
I wish they'd get it together because they would blow everyone out the water.
[+] [-] orenmazor|12 years ago|reply
hit me up here, on twitter (@orenmazor), or email: [email protected]
[+] [-] adammcnamara|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] HyprMusic|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ogig|12 years ago|reply
Also, checkout has a small legal nitpick here in europe, where a check has to be somewhere and in shopify is not. That means plenty of EU stores might be in a grey zone. Same with cookies in the checkout, but that's another story. I guess they will fix it but i guessed that 7 months ago.
I like Shopify in many ways, but after two (small) stores with them i have two main issues:
- EU distant. I feel US market is the main thing for them and EU is left behind using weird solutions for complex tax cases or pricing, few payment gateways, and so on. The checkout issue ilustrates this.
- Pushin new features while not fixing old ones. Shopify 2, Shopify Payments US, and now the POS are the examples. Meanwhile my app has to do crazy stuff to sync my products ids with their native ids.
Said this i will probably keep using it but Prestabox is tempting me for the next project. Any experiences with it?
Also, Shopify guys, the 15 days in advance warning for an api change in mid august was nice!
[+] [-] nahname|12 years ago|reply
For example, the devs at my company that have had to use shopify hate it. Their systems are based on hacking javascript for everything. The deployments are very painful too. No way to see what it will look like without previewing it live on the site.
[+] [-] erichurkman|12 years ago|reply
(Example: most products are free shipping but a few large products are not free; there was no control to exempt products from free shipping, nor any control to say products were not eligible for certain shipping methods. Not all merchants can overnight a 50kg box, for example.)
[+] [-] tvladeck|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] solaris152000|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] programminggeek|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mitchellh|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] xal|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] awwstn|12 years ago|reply
I'm glad we finally have a generation of POSs that no longer fit the pun.
[+] [-] marban|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unono|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] JimmaDaRustla|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kamjam|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] svmegatron|12 years ago|reply
Excellent work, Shopify!
[+] [-] tommccabe|12 years ago|reply
The site doesn't say that the POS supports a barcode scanner, but the video says that it does (and shows it in use). As a retailer, not having a barcode scanner would be a prompt deal breaker[0]. It should be featured somewhere on the microsite.
[0] lack of a barcode scanner isn't bad if you have 16 products. Once you're managing any serious level of inventory, especially with unique size/color combinations, there's so much risk for error if each item isn't being scanned. Then there's speed of service to the customer; it's just quicker.
[+] [-] jules2689|12 years ago|reply
Here you go :)
[+] [-] solaris152000|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adammcnamara|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] twag|12 years ago|reply
I work with ATG, Hybris and IBM WebSphere mainly. These are the biggest players in ecommerce and some of the biggest brands with massive turnovers use these platforms.
Magento is seen as a bit of a joke among big enterprise ecommerce players. The kind of thing will a low entry barrier and with a userbase primarily made up of small retailers.
However, I would love to start my own ecommerce agency and the low barrier to entry could make magento the perfect choice for me. I'm not sure if any retailers actually spend serious money on it though, unlike the 3 big players I previously mentioned.
[+] [-] Ma8ee|12 years ago|reply
Am I the only one that immediately reads it as Shopify Piece Of Shit?
[+] [-] wikiburner|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] compay|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axx|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] scott_o|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ruswick|12 years ago|reply
Moreover, I can't really be brought to care about these types of POS systems, primarily because they're all categorically atrocious. Many of my favorite coffee shops have been replacing their registers with iPads, and the universal result has been longer lines and more errors in recording orders. These things have consistently caused a regression of the customer experience in businesses. They're slow, they're unwieldy, and for whatever reason people demonstrate considerable ineptitude at using them. In my opinion, there is absolutely nothing wrong with the cash register. Things like Square should be used only in instances where using a traditional register would be untenable. The fact that companies are needlessly adopting these things and subsequently worsening the experience for their customers is tremendously disappointing.
The iPad will never be better at taking people's credit cards than a traditional register. It wasn't designed to, and companies should stop pretending otherwise.
[+] [-] jonah|12 years ago|reply
I wonder why they stopped offering the whole kit. My only guess it was a MVP style trial balloon offering to gauge interest before building their own hardware. Or, it didn't fly, which may not bode well for Shopify either.
[0] http://appleinsider.com/articles/13/02/20/square-launches-ip...
[1] https://squareup.com/register/hardware
[+] [-] schappim|12 years ago|reply
In the past we've tried to sell our wares at Makerfaires and the like, and in the end we'd be getting people to use our laptop or iPad and place their orders through our site.
This dramatically simplifies the whole affair!
Credit where credit is due, this is pretty awesome :)
[+] [-] jmcdonald-ut|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] loceng|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lux|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] audiodude|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] deadlysyntax|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wheels|12 years ago|reply
http://www.shopify.com/technology/3032322-new-feature-metafi...
[+] [-] callmeed|12 years ago|reply
Is this a "winner take all" or "winner + 2nd place take all" space?
I feel bad for the local cafe that hitches their wagon to an eventual loser–especially if their data is locked in.
[+] [-] netcan|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jusben1369|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] daredevildave|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] SeanOC|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] fbernier|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] snookca|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Ave|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dlf|12 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|12 years ago|reply
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