Modern cases of online stores and applications created with ready-made constructors: from idea to first sale.
On the Internet, you can find a fairly large number of comparisons of ready-made CMS and constructors for creating sites and online stores, where fierce disputes between adherents of one platform or another flare up in the comments. But there are not so many articles that would be devoted to the businesses themselves that were opened using the capabilities of these platforms.
Over the past 10 years, developers have created so many useful tools and apps that any user can launch not only an online store for selling goods and services. And those who step further into technological progress in order to make life easier for their customers can even create their own applications. Technologies adapt and become available to all users, not just developers. On the one hand, the potential for low quality or lack of flexibility is scary, on the other hand, more opportunities open up and first of all for small businesses that are interested in simplicity and speed of launch. Therefore, it is enough to use typed solutions and high-quality presentation of your product or the presentation of information through selling ready-made templates or designers.
I will give below examples of businesses that in one way or another used constructors to create online stores and applications, perhaps the ideas will be useful to someone to implement their own tasks.
1. Alto's Adventure is an online game, the monetization of which was created through integration with the Shopify platform and the use of a ready-made storefront to quickly sell goods. The creators of the game developed a rich and exciting world, and the idea of commercialization was born on the basis of this world: they decided to sell cute paraphernalia for the characters of the game, and not new levels of the game, as many creators of online games do. Slowly captivating the rookies into their world, the game taught fans to invest in the purchase of virtual trinkets dear to their hearts. The idea was a success, and the creators decided to create not only virtual, but also offline merch, such as socks and T-shirts - for this task, they also implemented TheSnowManStore online store using the ready-made Shopify platform. If I'm not mistaken, Angry Birds went through a similar story with online monetization through merchandise.
2. A young mother loves to draw funny animals, gets acquainted with the Shopify platform, and learns about the possibility of using her drawings as prints on standard products of the Printful platform, which is integrated with the business through the Shopify platform by default. All you need to do is design an online store based on the platform and process orders in a finished production that is integrated with Shopify. Every time a customer visits The MoMeMans website and purchases a product, the order is automatically sent to the factory, where the designated print is transferred to the garment by a local team. The biggest challenge that the store owner is still trying to solve is attracting customers and increasing the store's visibility among potential buyers, because it is obvious that the market for merch based on the model with prints is oversaturated.
3. The creation of innovative products often requires a great deal of concentration on the creation of the innovation itself or the technology that lies within. Therefore, for some budding startups, it is important to quickly implement an online storefront with affordable means. So the creator of vitamin patches for people who cannot take pills because of their large size, was more passionate about creating a technology for introducing vitamins into the human body through a patch, and the Shopify platform only made it possible to quickly implement the sale of finished Nutri-Patch products online. Thus, ready-made platforms quickly open up opportunities for the implementation of a conceived business idea.
4. For those who work with material and can create an interesting hand-made with their own hands - creating an online store is just a must-have. A young couple of Americans came up with the idea to create unusual urns for the ashes of close relatives and animals - Memento. Years of woodworking and design searches have led to the creation of truly unusual urns that definitely help remember your loved ones and pets. To create a website, the couple used a bundle of WordPress + Woocommerce platforms, and the first sale was not long in coming.
5. Sometimes business ideas are just copying a person's life and transferring the idea to a pet. So, the founders of the Scratch service, an online dog food store, took the idea of delivering food to humans and created something similar, but for dogs. Plus, they added a subscription model to their store in order to build trust with customers and work out some kind of guarantee scheme for their products. The Woocommerce plugin in conjunction with the WordPress template allowed to improve and automate the system of subscriptions for the purchase of pet food as much as possible.
6. Absolutely not all founders of online stores use them to sell goods, there is a category of entrepreneurs who, on the basis of ready-made platforms, implements the functionality of selling services and building consulting and educational portals. So a group of entrepreneurs in America created the StilettoGal business portal for women, aimed at creating a community for business people. The main product was the events organized by the creators, inviting the best business women from various fields. Promotion of events and ticket sales, of course, were implemented online. The first sale happened unexpectedly for the business owners, and after a couple of hours they consulted the buyer by phone. This example demonstrates the strengthening of trends in online commercialization of not only classic goods, but also the transition of services to the digital space and the possibility of their rapid implementation online.
7. My favorite case for creating a mobile application based on the GoodBarber builder is the HappynGood fitness application. A young girl Julie begins to conquer the online world from all fronts, offering various practices and nutrition for a healthy lifestyle: at first it was a blog on Instagram and an online store selling books on health and beauty, and exactly a year later, the girl easily launched the application. which is already used by about 350 thousand people. It is worth noting that before the active seizure of online space, Julie was engaged in communications in a large French company and was never at least involved in development, and her brother helped create the application using a ready-made constructor.
To summarize, the technical creation of an online store for small business today is an achievable task for everyone. The article does not show the costs of using ready-made website builders, online stores and applications, but is it definitely within the power of anyone who earns even the average salary in the market? To understand the complete concept of starting an online business from scratch, I recommend that you read the article Top 20 free tools for creating a basic online product.
Over the past 10 years, developers have created so many useful tools and apps that any user can launch not only an online store for selling goods and services. And those who step further into technological progress in order to make life easier for their customers can even create their own applications. Technologies adapt and become available to all users, not just developers. On the one hand, the potential for low quality or lack of flexibility is scary, on the other hand, more opportunities open up and first of all for small businesses that are interested in simplicity and speed of launch. Therefore, it is enough to use typed solutions and high-quality presentation of your product or the presentation of information through selling ready-made templates or designers.
I will give below examples of businesses that in one way or another used constructors to create online stores and applications, perhaps the ideas will be useful to someone to implement their own tasks.
1. Alto's Adventure is an online game, the monetization of which was created through integration with the Shopify platform and the use of a ready-made storefront to quickly sell goods. The creators of the game developed a rich and exciting world, and the idea of commercialization was born on the basis of this world: they decided to sell cute paraphernalia for the characters of the game, and not new levels of the game, as many creators of online games do. Slowly captivating the rookies into their world, the game taught fans to invest in the purchase of virtual trinkets dear to their hearts. The idea was a success, and the creators decided to create not only virtual, but also offline merch, such as socks and T-shirts - for this task, they also implemented TheSnowManStore online store using the ready-made Shopify platform. If I'm not mistaken, Angry Birds went through a similar story with online monetization through merchandise.
2. A young mother loves to draw funny animals, gets acquainted with the Shopify platform, and learns about the possibility of using her drawings as prints on standard products of the Printful platform, which is integrated with the business through the Shopify platform by default. All you need to do is design an online store based on the platform and process orders in a finished production that is integrated with Shopify. Every time a customer visits The MoMeMans website and purchases a product, the order is automatically sent to the factory, where the designated print is transferred to the garment by a local team. The biggest challenge that the store owner is still trying to solve is attracting customers and increasing the store's visibility among potential buyers, because it is obvious that the market for merch based on the model with prints is oversaturated.
3. The creation of innovative products often requires a great deal of concentration on the creation of the innovation itself or the technology that lies within. Therefore, for some budding startups, it is important to quickly implement an online storefront with affordable means. So the creator of vitamin patches for people who cannot take pills because of their large size, was more passionate about creating a technology for introducing vitamins into the human body through a patch, and the Shopify platform only made it possible to quickly implement the sale of finished Nutri-Patch products online. Thus, ready-made platforms quickly open up opportunities for the implementation of a conceived business idea.
4. For those who work with material and can create an interesting hand-made with their own hands - creating an online store is just a must-have. A young couple of Americans came up with the idea to create unusual urns for the ashes of close relatives and animals - Memento. Years of woodworking and design searches have led to the creation of truly unusual urns that definitely help remember your loved ones and pets. To create a website, the couple used a bundle of WordPress + Woocommerce platforms, and the first sale was not long in coming.
5. Sometimes business ideas are just copying a person's life and transferring the idea to a pet. So, the founders of the Scratch service, an online dog food store, took the idea of delivering food to humans and created something similar, but for dogs. Plus, they added a subscription model to their store in order to build trust with customers and work out some kind of guarantee scheme for their products. The Woocommerce plugin in conjunction with the WordPress template allowed to improve and automate the system of subscriptions for the purchase of pet food as much as possible.
6. Absolutely not all founders of online stores use them to sell goods, there is a category of entrepreneurs who, on the basis of ready-made platforms, implements the functionality of selling services and building consulting and educational portals. So a group of entrepreneurs in America created the StilettoGal business portal for women, aimed at creating a community for business people. The main product was the events organized by the creators, inviting the best business women from various fields. Promotion of events and ticket sales, of course, were implemented online. The first sale happened unexpectedly for the business owners, and after a couple of hours they consulted the buyer by phone. This example demonstrates the strengthening of trends in online commercialization of not only classic goods, but also the transition of services to the digital space and the possibility of their rapid implementation online.
7. My favorite case for creating a mobile application based on the GoodBarber builder is the HappynGood fitness application. A young girl Julie begins to conquer the online world from all fronts, offering various practices and nutrition for a healthy lifestyle: at first it was a blog on Instagram and an online store selling books on health and beauty, and exactly a year later, the girl easily launched the application. which is already used by about 350 thousand people. It is worth noting that before the active seizure of online space, Julie was engaged in communications in a large French company and was never at least involved in development, and her brother helped create the application using a ready-made constructor.
To summarize, the technical creation of an online store for small business today is an achievable task for everyone. The article does not show the costs of using ready-made website builders, online stores and applications, but is it definitely within the power of anyone who earns even the average salary in the market? To understand the complete concept of starting an online business from scratch, I recommend that you read the article Top 20 free tools for creating a basic online product.
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