Home > News & Events > NYT: Shopify vs Amazon
NYT: Shopify vs Amazon
Yiren Lu shares her experience of setting up a Shopify store in the New York Times magazine. Ms. Lu reports the setup process was easy, but her online Shopify store failed because it lacked marketing, aka eyeballs and orders. In her next article, I hope Ms. Lu tries Bridge. Bridge Store helps members fill the marketing component that Shopify is missing. When a store joins Bridge, Bridge instantly points hundreds of links to the store from other Bridge members, which Google sees and uses to boost traffic.Article highlights:
- Shopify is popular among “direct to consumer” brands that don’t want to share their profits or see their brand weakened on Amazon, Wayfair, or Walmart.
- For those that sell on Amazon, Amazon is charging them 17% - 40% of the sale.
- There is an anti-Amazon alliance that includes Google and Walmart. Please add to that: Bridge.
- Indie businesses dream of offering the same features as Amazon, including two-day delivery, easy returns, strong customer service, and online ease.
- Amazon's draw to shoppers is massive selection and the lowest prices.
- Amazon is seeking to commoditize products sold via its network, and that comes at the cost of sacrificing product quality.
- Amazon is marketing itself over the brands it sells, as evidenced by the ubiquitous brown boxes with the Amazon logo.
- Amazon is building an empire, and Shopify is arming the rebels, says Tobias Lütke, CEO of Shopify.
- Shopify has a partnership ethos while Amazon's ethos is more predatory.
- Shopify reduces the cost of opening an online store to almost zero (opening a Shopify store starts at $29/month), but doesn't ensure success. The author closed her Shopify store after just a month. Note: opening a Bridge Store is free. That's a savings of $300+ year over Shopify, and one will likely sell more using Bridge.
- Shopify's behind-the-scenes nature is nice for stores but becomes a liability in that it's providing little marketing to its clients.
- The author says that building an e-commerce business today is often a marketing exercise, and that can't be outsourced to Shopify. One way that some 'businesses' accomplish this is via social media. Kourtney Kardashian, who has millions of social media followers, started the lifestyle blog and website Poosh to direct her followers to her Shopify store. In this case, she is the marketing.
- If you're not Kourtney, a business often has to spend money on ads as a way to build traffic, but this increases customer acquisition costs. High CAC costs are often deadly for businesses.
- Bridge Store comes with free, built-in marketing programs. These features are 'on' by default and thereby allow the store to immediately get more traffic and sales. One of Bridge's most popular marketing programs is the Smart Products service which is free for retailers and interior designers.
- Marketplaces serve an important marketing role because they expose your products to new customers.
- Web Smith, an e-commerce pundit, wishes Shopify would group more Shopify sellers together and do more advertising to drive traffic to members and create a marketplace.
- Joey Zwillinger, co-founder of Allbirds, a sneaker company, wishes there was a marketplace like Amazon where the brands could control their products and not give up 17%-40% of the sale.
- Nikhil Basu, a venture capitalist, shares that consumers often want convenience, quality, and price. Amazon delivers convenience and price--but the quality is up for grabs.
- Facebook 'owns' social, Google owns search, and Shopify seeks to own entrepreneurship.
Ms. Lu, please sign up for a Bridge Store and compare your Shopify experience with that on Bridge.
Read the full article:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/11/24/magazine/shopify.html
View Post on Shop Local
