HN Explorer

Storewriter.com, What do you think?

12 points by henryw ↗ HN
I've been working on http://www.storewriter.com for a while and finally got a preview version online. What do you guys think? What kind of improvements would you like to see? Any feature requests?

Thanks in advance.

16 comments

[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 54.8 ms ] thread
omouse
Grr, I was thinking about doing this too. Which programming language are you using? Ruby/Rails? Python?

It looks good :D

henryw
Thanks, it's powered by php5 and mysql5.
nickb
Very interesting screenshots. Let me know when you can build the store.

PS: You should look into shopify.com and see how they do things... they seem to be much farther along than you.

henryw
Shopify has some really nicely designed sites. I like the way they focus on letting web designers shine. I've looked into them, and have implemented a similar (and simpler) templating system that is easy for designers to use. Eventually I would like to have lots of built-in customizable web2.0 style templates. I cannot compare too much though because I put in way more features. I modeled it more after amazon and newegg.
tojileon
I wouldn't have used these words (that too in the home page): ecommerce, web2.0, Ajax, HTML, CSS, rich text editor, admin. Is it just for web programmers?
henryw
thanks for the input. i was a little too focused on developers.
joe
Typo: Should say, "Build your store for free!" under the grey "Coming Soon" button.

Also, your demo sites don't seem to be loading.

Edit: They just took quite a while to come up.

samwise
Whats your business model?
henryw
Monthly subscription.
samwise
every web host and their mother has a tool like this, maybe not as pretty. you have to provide a service that no one else does or does well. You also have to have integration with as many other services as possible. ebay,paypal,amazon and crap like that. wish you good luck.
gscott
I would suggest going yearly, with a monthly subscription there is something more that the client has to think about and they will see bill after bill. Paying up front it is a one time decision.

It might seem that the intial lower cost of being monthly is a good idea, but after 3 months if the customer hasn't setup there site, they will cancel. Paying yearly they will make sure to get the most out of it. It costs the same amount of money to signup someone for a year as it does for a month (in my experience and I have done several similar applications).

nonrecursive
To me it doesn't make sense to use a drag and drop interface for adding items to your cart. Just let people click an "add this to your cart" button. It's familiar and it's less work.
henryw
Thanks for your input. Add to cart buttons are definitely easier and are used in other built-in designs. The drag and drop interface is only on one of the built-in designs, and was added mostly to illustrate the flexibility the templating system.