3 Lessons Learned From Picking the Wrong E-Commerce Platform (over and over again)
When I first got the idea for my printable stationery business it was 2006. There weren’t many easy to use online store platforms, Etsy was in it’s infancy (it launched in 2005 and I didn’t know about it) Shopify launched later that year. Neither platform had capabilities to sell downloadable products.
I started with a Yahoo! store. It was janky and awkward but I got it to work.
Then, I heard about Joomla, an open source platform that used ‘plug-ins’, basically apps you could...well, plug-in to the main platform to add any additional functionality you needed. I found a Joomla plug-in that allowed you to sell digital products, in my case editable, printable wedding invitation PDFs. With a little help from my husband we got it up and running.
The Joomla site got hacked and the guy that made the plug-in for the downloads stopped making it. It was so difficult and frustrating to run and I felt powerless to make any changes. I hired a guy to help me and became totally dependent on him.
Then I discovered Etsy.
At the time Etsy offered no capability to sell digital downloads but that was okay. It was a dream, SO easy to manage, and I just wrote in my products listings that I would email a link to the files within 24 hours of a purchase. Thus began the phase where I was constantly and compulsively checking my emails - this was before smart phones!
I also wanted to start selling my products in Germany, enter Prestashop.
Prestashop is an open-source e-commerce platform based in France that offered digital product functionality and multi-lingual support. Hurray! I spent 3 solid months getting my shop migrated and launched on the platform. I hired a developer to build some custom features, and finally launched!
But Prestashop was complex and difficult to use, I was again dependent on ‘my guy’ to make even the tiniest fixes and adjustments.
Then came ‘Panda’ the massive 2012 Google algorithm update. Whatever SEO (Search Engine Optimisation) I didn’t accidentally mess up with the new PrestaShop shop, was wiped out by the algorithm change. My traffic (and sales) tanked.
I finally, FINALLY moved to Shopify. Shopify was like an oasis in the desert, but it was too late. The printable market had become saturated and I had lost all my Google juice.
It was a depressing time. I felt like I had worked, and worked, and worked and although I got a lot of media attention and had a year or two of pretty decent sales, the business never really got the traction I had hoped for.
This wasn’t all a result of picking the wrong platform. As I mentioned, everyone started selling printables, Canva came on the scene, there were a lot of factors at play. However, platform problems plagued me until the end and made life frustrating and difficult.
I think a lot about what I could have done differently when it came to platform selection, I see three main mistakes:
Reduced my requirements - I should have kept it simple and just tried to sell in one language.
I shouldn’t have relied on a plug-in for a core functionality of your business website. When the guy working away in his garage decided to quit, I was screwed!
Not used platforms I couldn’t manage easily - In retrospect, I probably should have just stayed on Etsy (they eventually added capability to sell downloads) This wouldn’t have been a perfect solution, but would have saved a lot of heartache.
I learned a lot through this process, and I was doing the best I could with the information I had and the platforms that were on the market. But it was painful and expensive.
Now, whenever I’m considering new software or a platform, I think hard about my requirements, what do I really need? I take it for a test drive and try out whatever functionality I need and make sure that it not only works, but that it’s EASY to use.
Nothing is perfect. It’s hard, if not impossible to find a ‘goldilocks’ platform that does every single thing you want it to do in a way that is completely intuitive, but it’s important to find something that’s close.
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