Online shopping is not exactly a very new idea but it is definitely one of those areas that has seen quite a lot of innovation and implementation of newer ideas over time. It started with services like Amazon, eBay, Craigslists, etc and has continued to expand with newer services. Leveraging the same idea Shooples has made it out as the latest startup from Denmark as an online webstore provider.
Shooples provides users to leverage its platform to create their own webshops that is by all means professional. In my opinion Shooples is more like the Real Estate Agent on the Internet providing users with a space to start their webstore, put their products and services, an administrative panel that provides you all the vital information about your online store all the way to payment solutions. The idea is to help aspiring web store owners to concentrate more on the product and services they need to offer and not worry on things like transactions, payment methods , etc.
The question is how does Shooples stand out from its competitors? I mean users or those looking forward to utilize a service don’t want a service that makes them look like a replica of services like eBay or Amazon or something along the same lines. However they do look forward for newer services that help ease the task and add more value. Shooples stands in a slightly different league as it differentiates itself by:
- You can accept credit cards directly on your site without any monthly or annual fee. The cost is 1.9-2.9% per transaction. No sales, no costs.
- It’s easy to run and customize your shop at Shooples.
- It’s 100% free. You can try it out and create your online store without paying anything if you don’t want to.
I also had a chance to have a brief conversation with Maria and Rasmus who were kind enough to answer a few questions on the product. Following are a few question and answers from the interview:
AS: Does Shooples cater to a niche market or is it region centric?
Maria: I guess the market for online stores is a bit of a niche market at present with a lot of providers targeting big shops with expensive solutions. This is exactly what we want to change by making it easy and cheap to create an online store. We want to make it possible, not only for the big companies, but also for the average internet user to sell things from their own online store.
Rasmus: Exactly. Shooples relies on volume. The product as such can be used in many different niches and has already been translated into 4 different languages; English, Danish, Polish and Dutch.
AS: A webstore for anyone [please correct me if i have interpreted this wrong], how do you think this helps people, both sellers and shoppers?
Rasmus: Basically it presents a lot of people with an alternative or addition to an ordinary job. You don’t need any startup capital and it takes less than five minutes to set up the online store.
Maria: …. and it helps storeowners to sell their products in a cheap and easy way. Actually two of the things we usually mention when explaining Shooples to others is that “it should be just as easy to create an online store, as it is to create a Facebook profile” and that “this solution lets our users focus on what they’re good at and minimize their time on administration of their online web store”.
AS: What platform are you using for Shooples and does it integrate with social services like Twitter/Facebook?
Maria: Yes. Shooples is based on WordPress, which we chose for its user friendliness. It integrates with Facebook, Twitter and other social services. A main focus is to make it easy for our users to market their shop, and social media are always in the back of our heads when we’re developing our solutions.
The team:
Maria Flyvbjerg Bo is in charge of sales, marketing and PR at Shooples.
Rasmus Steen Kristensen: Programmer at Shooples and had held positions of IT coordinator, consultant and project manager for numerous computers.
Miki Foo is the Graphic designer behind Shooples and had previously been involved as project manager and designer for Dwarf.pk and numerous others.
Jacek Lawniczak is the Programmer Shooples holds a graduate degree in computer network engineering and is a self taught programmer.
