To what degree do you believe ready-made platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, an

Question

To what degree do you believe ready-made platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, and Etsy have contributed to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the United States and abroad? To what degree could you envision using one or more of these platforms if you launched a business of your own?

Squarespace

   Squarespace is a cloud-based platform that allows you to create a beautiful and highly functional website with no coding experience. Here’s how it works. You begin by selecting from one of roughly 70 templates. You pick the template that best resembles the appearance you have in mind for your website. The templates are organized into categories, such as Fashion & Beauty, Food & Drink, Health & Fitness, and Wedding. So, for example, if you’re starting a food business, you can select from one of 10 templates specifically designed for food businesses. Squarespace will then ask you questions about your site’s intended content and

the site’s goals. Once you create an account, which comes with a 14-day free trial, you’ll be introduced to the Squarespace platform. The platform allows you to substitute your information and images for the information and images on the template, and to customize the template in almost any way you’d like. There is a series of helpful video tutorials that walk you through each step of the process. If you’d like to see what the templates look like, go to www.squarespace .com and click the “Get Started” button. You can view the templates without creating an account.

   The end result is a highly polished website that looks like it took a programmer several months and thousands of dollars to produce. You don’t need to know how to code—you simply watch the Squarespace videos and use the provided tools. Over one million businesses and individuals have created websites on Squarespace and are active Squarespace customers, which speaks to the platform’s ease-of- use, quality, and affordability. All of Squarespace’s templates are designed so they’ll look good on a PC or a Macintosh and also on mobile devices. Squarespace has robust customer support. It provides live chat, one-hour e-mail response time, and an extensive library of tutorials and video workshops. Squarespace hosts your site and provides you a domain name. It also provides you a real-time analytics dashboard, which helps you track hourly, daily, weekly, and monthly traffic to your website.

   In terms of pricing, Squarespace costs $26 per month (or $216 per year) for a business. Squarespace provides the option of coupling its website development and hosting service with an online store. Adding the online store increases the costs for a business to $30 per month (or $312 per year).

   Squarespace was an ideal choice for Schroeder because she didn’t have the money to hire a developer or enlist a freelancer to build her a website, didn’t know how to do it herself, and, if she was like many people, starting with a template actually helped her because it enabled her to visualize what a well-designed website looks like. Squarespace has several competitors which offer a similar service, including Jimbo, Weebly, Wix, and GoDaddy. The only downside to utilizing Squarespace rather than hiring a programmer is some potential customization is foregone.

Shopify

   Shopify is a platform that allows you to set up an online store. It lets you organize your products, customize a storefront, accept credit and debit cards, and track and respond to orders. It’s a cloud-based product, so there is no installation, and all the upgrading and maintenance of the software is handled by the company. Shopify integrates with existing websites so if you’ve already built a website, have a domain name, and have arranged for hosting, that doesn’t create a problem.

   Shopify’s set up is similar to Squarespace’s. You start by choosing from over one hundred online store templates in Shopify’s Theme Store. The best way to see what the templates look like is to go to www .shopify.com, click on the Resources tab at the top, and select Theme Store. Shopify organizes its templates into categories such as Clothing & Fashion, Jewelry & Accessories, Art & Photography, and Electronics. Once you’ve selected a template, you can create an online store and customize it so its looks as though it was built from scratch, specifically for your business.

   Everything you need to sell online is included. Shopify provides you a shopping cart which allows you to process orders and accept payment via credit cards, debit cards, and PayPal. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) features are built-in, which generate traffic and sales from Google, Yahoo, and Bing. The platform optimizes its online stores for the web and for mobile devices. You can manage your store yourself. Again, because Shopify is a hosted solution, you never have to worry about installation, patches, and security updates. All of that is handled by Shopify behind the scenes.

   Shopify is a little more complicated than Squarespace. You do need a basic understanding of HTML & CSS. Shopify uses a designer-friendly programming language called Liquid. Liquid is easy to pick up and there are excellent beginner tutorials (written and video) available to help users get up-to- speed quickly. As referred to above, Shopify has a Resources tab on its website. The tab provides access to Guides, Videos, Podcasts, Success Stories, and Forums all designed to assist users and provide access to best practices for utilizing Shopify and for selling online.

size of a business, the number of transactions that are processed, and the features that are desired. Its basic plan is $29 per month plus 2.9 percent and 30 cents per transaction for credit card processing fees. That plan is suitable for a fairly straightforward business with revenues of less than $20,000 per year. Its top plan is $299 per month plus 2.4 percent and 30 cents per transaction for credit card processing fees. That plan is suitable for a much larger business and includes enhanced features, such as the ability to sell and redeem gift cards.

   Shopify was a good choice for Schroeder because, as was the case with Squarespace, it provided her a way to get an online store up-and-running with very little capital investment. It also provided substantial functionality for a relatively small monthly expense. It’s not known whether Schroeder needed help setting up her Shopify store or whether she did it herself. Help from a qualified freelancer could have been obtained for a fairly modest upfront cost.

Etsy

   Along with selling items via her own website, Schroeder has an Etsy store, as explained earlier. Having an Etsy store provides her a marketplace to sell her products. Etsy, which is the subject of Case 4.1, is an e-commerce website that focuses on handmade or vintage items,

as well as unique factory-manufactured goods. These items cover a wide range of product types, including Clothing & Accessories, Kids & Baby, Home & Living, and Craft Supplies & Tools.

To sell on Etsy, you register and create an online Etsy store. You can see Schroeder’s Etsy Store, Inblue, at https://www.etsy.com/shop/inblue. According to the site, Inblue, which is now located in Asheville, NC, has been selling on Etsy since 2008 and has 54,730 sales. It currently has 286 items for sale in categories such as Bags, The InBlue Journal, Pocket Journals, Wallets, and Travel Gear. It has a five star rating generated by 12,668 customers. All items for sale are beautifully photographed and smartly described on the site.

   Creating an Etsy store is free, and the platform provides all the tools necessary to set up a site. No programming knowledge is needed. Each item in the store costs 20 cents to list. The prices in the store are determined by the seller. Etsy takes a 3.5 percent commission on each sale. There is also a credit card processing fee associated with each transaction. All of the logistics involved with the sales process are handled by the seller. The advantage of selling on Etsy is that the company attracts a global audience of buyers interested in handmade goods. It also assists its sellers in numerous ways. For example, Etsy sends out a newsletter which is seen by upwards of two million people. In each newsletter, it highlights one or more of its sellers, and InBlue has been featured more than once. Etsy also rotates images of items made by its most popular sellers on the front page of its site. Similar to its newsletter, one or more of InBlue’s items have been featured. Etsy also provides its sellers development tools, educational material, and offline events to hone their online selling skills.

   For Schroeder, Etsy has provided her a marketplace for her products with very little investment on her part. There is no monthly fee to maintain an Etsy store, other than the one-time listing fee of 20 cents an item. Etsy’s 3.5 percent commission and the credit card processing fee do not kick in until a sale is made. Etsy has been a good culture match for Schroeder and the products she sells. Etsy’s focus is allowing its sellers to build a shop that has a neighborhood feel, and has meaning for both the buyer and the seller. This aspect of Etsy fits nicely with Schroeder’s homespun values and the uniqueness of her handcrafted products.

Explanation / Answer

I strongly believe that ready-made platforms like Squarespace, Shopify, and Etsy have substantially contributed to the entrepreneurial ecosystem in the United States and abroad by making certain processes and tasks simpler for an entrepreneur and a start up. While starting a new enterprise or a business an entrepreneur is initially more focused on getting his/her business model correct. An entrepreneur, in the initial and early stage, is not able to give too much attention on the daily operational and routine tasks.

Entrepreneurs and managers of startups have to juggle multiple responsibilities and it is here that ready-made platforms come into picture. These ready-made platforms eases the burden of an entrepreneur and managers so that they are able to focus on decisions that are strategic in nature and that will have a long term impact on the success of the venture. By making use of services of ready-made platforms an entrepreneur is able to focus on important tasks at hand and on those tasks that have the potential to determine the success (or failure) of their business model. For instance when using a platform like Squarespace an entrepreneur can easily develop a meaningful, functional and attractive website for his venture without investing too much time and money for developing a website. This allows the investors to look into other important aspects like marketing, pricing, market segmentation, deciding on market entry strategy etc.

Assuming that I have launched my own business I envision that I will be using one or more of these ready-made platforms to a great extent. This is because these ready-made platforms will ease my work load in the initial launch phase and will allow and enable me to focus on more important matters and more strategic matters that will have a direct bearing on the success of my venture.

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