Tylls

1 hour ago, mertzrock said:

These are things you should probably NOT admit if you're trying to eventually sell people on a service...

 

I've used Bigcartel for 6 years now and love them...

Because what I know now of htaccesss is relevant to what eventually the service becomes? 

Why do you love them? 

6 hours ago, ntslash said:

Dude, set up some 301s. 

Yeah, should've done that. I'm not too good with htaccess rules, so I tend to steer clear.

2 minutes ago, stl_ben said:

Tried checking the site out....but....

Any time I click a link I get "404 Not Found", so hard to see your pricing, features, FAQ and so on.

 

 

edit - found the links at the very top of the site actually work, links past that do not

Oh, my apologies. I recently swapped it from HTML to PHP, forgot to update the footer links. Should be good now. Thanks for telling me.

1 minute ago, just a normal guy kevin said:

How can we fully tear you apart/further insinuate that you are stealing our golden suggestions if we don't have a link?

See post above yours!

5 minutes ago, stl_ben said:

Maybe post a link then?

I considered doing that in the initial post, but seeing as Vinyl Collective is a seller too, I thought that might violate some terms or something. 

But sure, here you go. 

http://backstash.org is my main site. 

https://neuroparecords.com/ is one of my customers (label that released Carpenter Brut's Trilogy repress recently)

Customers that are enrolling at the moment are: Consouling Sounds, Hypertension Records, Onderstroom Records, Wool-E Tapes.

If you would like to test it, just send me a message and I'll upgrade your account to a paid plan for free.

EDIT: the design is one of those things that needs improvement based on feedback. The new design I'm experimenting can be viewed here: https://backstash.io/newshop/products.php?shop=neuropa-records (complete not functional, only just began working on it)

2 hours ago, TGSNick said:

Oh yeah, works super well with International orders. In fact, we just launched our International Shop on-site back in September and momentum and traffic has been great. Fees have not hindered us at all, although if you're a smaller player in the game I can see how that may enter into it.

 

But, between seamlessly integrated digital delivery apps for MP3/WAVs, built-in Fraud Filters, and about a million other things, I would say it's by far my favorite platform. 

How much are you doing in sales to not have to account for the losses of the fees? 

What would you say is the benefit of using the integrated digital delivery apps for MP3/... as apposed to for example iTunes or Bandcamp?

3 minutes ago, stl_ben said:

Are you building this service...or you wanting us to build it for you?

 

It's already built. I'm refining it based on the user feedback I can gather. Message me if you want to discuss it further.

3 minutes ago, Velocity of Sound said:

You can set a shipping price for an item for a country and then you can set another price 'for additional' items. For instance, if a German customer buys three 7"s, BigCartel will charge whatever you set the price for and then another price for "additional items".  

Also, Big Cartel isn't interested in taking a percentage of your sales. We pay $9.99 a month and keep every cent of every sale. 

I can imagine that working if you have no competition on your products. If you do, shipping becomes the sole reason why people will buy somewhere else (alongside the initial cost of the product). So offering a more complex way of setting up shipping costs, that are closer to the real costs you have, is something certain labels are looking for. 

Speaking of sales, is credit card really sufficient? Here in Europa, nearly every country has a different payment gateway that consumers use. Like, Germany uses Sofort, Netherlands use iDeal, Belgium uses Bancontact, and so on. Seems America only uses credit card, Stripe (again credit card) and PayPal (again credit card if you're not pre-loading it).

5 minutes ago, Velocity of Sound said:

You can set up different shipping rates for any country you wish. VERY user friendly. They also have a help line if you need to call and speak to someone. 

Oh, didn't know. Friend said it didn't do shipping the way he wanted too. Specifically because it wasn't calculating the price, it was just one fixed price per product. His problem was that sometimes people would order 1 vinyl and 2 CD's, in which case the CD's could be shipped in the same packaging sleeve as the vinyl. Thus costs could be saved on shipping and it could be offered more cheaply. Bigcartel wouldn't allow him to finegrain that sort of shipping detail.

22 minutes ago, stl_ben said:

@Tylls do you have a label?  Are you a shipping company?  What exactly are you gathering this info for?  That would probably help people tailor their answers to your needs.

No, I do not have a label. I'm gathering this info because I'm developing an online store service specifically for record labels and stores. I was looking for ideas on how to improve it, without shamelessly plugging my service.

19 minutes ago, TGSNick said:

Shopify is great. Definitely recommended, and integrates super well with a ton of apps. 

Do you feel it works well for international sales too? I noticed they charge an extra % when you allow users to pay using third-party services. 

I don't feel like paying 3.4% PayPal fee + 2% Shopify fee. 

2 minutes ago, Velocity of Sound said:

We use Big Cartel and absolutely LOVE their service. 

What do you like about their service specifically? Reponse time? Friendly? Problems get fixed?

I've heard from other labels that they don't really offer a robust shipping solution. Like, you can't finegrain the shipping to specific countries for example. 

I was wondering what online store system you guys are using, and what you like/don't like about it.