Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan

Show HN: TinyStore - A minimal store for your Shopify Lite plan(tinystore.app)

144 points by hapiben 5 years ago | 71 comments

whylo 5 years ago |

I'd really encourage you to download a screen reader such as NVDA (or use VoiceOver if you're on a Mac), make use of the Lighthouse accessibility audit in Chrome dev tools, and try using your site with just a keyboard to test for accessibility. At the moment the biggest problem is you've used divs with click handlers rather than <a> tags for your product links, which can't be focussed with the keyboard, so anybody using a keyboard to navigate (such as someone with reduced mobility or using a screen reader) won't be able to use the site.

berkes 5 years ago | |

And for people reading this and going "In my app, I don't care about that demography, b/c that niche is too small/effort too big etc": Search engine bots are almost exclusively "disabled" users of your site.

So, if you need to convince your managers or yourself to spend effort/money/time on accessability, SEO and traffic from search may be convincing if other reasons are not.

kpwagner 5 years ago | |

I'm not usually a nut for accessibility, but you make a good point. Using semantic HTML tags and a few other basic best practices (e.g. alt/title attributes, sufficient color contrast) goes a long way.

whylo 5 years ago | | |

I'm more of a nut ;) but I think anyone selling a service like this, or building any kind of front-end framework, has even more of a responsibility than individual site owners to make their stuff accessible, because any issues are multiplied out across all of your customers, and ultimately affect any of their customers with accessibility needs.

Depending on the juristiction your customers operate in, any accessibility issues could also expose them to legal liability for non-compliance with various laws (eg ADA in the US, the Web Accessibility Directive in the EU for public sector bodies)

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Agree. Thanks for this feedback. I'll put it on top of my backlog. :-)

wdb 5 years ago | |

I think for some common patterns e.g. (clickable or partial clickable) cards, and similar we could use some good guidance documentation. Maybe my Google skills aren't up to scratch but I can't really find out how to handle these correctly. There always seems to conflicting issue e.g. selecting text and using an anchor element for the whole card etc.

kevincox 5 years ago | |

Additionally you loose out on basic browser features such as opening in a new tab and copying the link.

hapiben 5 years ago |

I made a simple web app for merchants/small businesses who use Shopify Lite Plan and want to have a simple/minimal storefront.

I built this initially for my wife. She owns two online stores in Shopify. With her Lite plan, she only pays $9/month/store versus the Basic plan for $29/month/store. Since the Lite plan doesn't include an online store, TinyStore allows merchants to have one.

The app is still new. I appreciate any feedback.

Thanks!

InvertedRhodium 5 years ago | |

If there's one thing I'd suggest, it would be putting a blurb something like the above on your website as well - as someone with 0 contextual information about Shopify, there was no obvious problem the application was solving, even after reading the FAQ.

jordanmoconnor 5 years ago | | |

Agreed - saying something like "Having a storefront on Shopify would normally cost you an extra $20/month. TinyStore does this for $5/month." would sell pretty well I'd assume.

netfortius 5 years ago | | |

If this is meant to be used with Shopify, why would someone w/zero contextual information on such would even be interested?

0x62 5 years ago | |

Surprised I haven't seen a comment about this yet - there doesn't seem to be a way to link to or share individual products?

I've tried clicking on products from a few places and it always seems to show in a modal (with no pushState, FF 89).

jonny_eh 5 years ago | |

Clicking a product scrolls to the top of the page, it's quite annoying.

hapiben 5 years ago | | |

I noticed that as well. Should be an easy fix. :-) Thanks.

bbx 5 years ago | |

Great use of Bulma ;-)

hapiben 5 years ago | | |

Thanks. It's 99% Bulma defaults.

blairbeckwith 5 years ago |

Agree with some of the other commenters here – this seems really really smart, but only because I live and work deep in Shopify land. It was immediately obvious to me what this means, but there's plenty of Shopify merchants and partners who aren't even aware of the Lite plan, and if they know it's there, are unclear of the limitations.

I can definitely think of people who this would be great for – it's almost like headless commerce for the extreme low end. I'll be interested to see if you build this out further and what you decide to add. I'm surprised more haven't attempted to build full, wholesale replacement of Shopify's frontend outside of enterprise alternatives like Shogun Frontend.

A simple theming system and more customization would be a natural next step.

mritchie712 5 years ago | |

Why would someone use this + Shopify Lite instead of just upgrading to "Basic Shopify" for $29 per month? You'd save $15 (29 - 5 - 9) a month, but is there another reason?

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback. There's a lot of good feedback here that will make my weekend busy.

My wife is a good example where she doesn't need a fancy storefront. She gets her customers from Instagram/Facebook. She only needs a super basic/low-end storefront for her customers to do their purchase.

there's plenty of Shopify merchants and partners who aren't even aware of the Lite plan, and if they know it's there, are unclear of the limitations. - 100% agree.

victor106 5 years ago | |

What’s a good way to learn the shopify platform?

fiftyacorn 5 years ago | |

Its a good idea but there are other companies in the tinystore market worth having a look at too before opting for shopify

ako 5 years ago |

Haven't read the full terms of service for shopify, but i could imagine that this doesn't align well with the strategy of shopify?

wraptile 5 years ago | |

Seems like that's the whole point of Shopify Lite[1]. It sells you the DB and payment backend without front-end; or am I misreading this?

> Whether you’re on WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, or anywhere else, with just a few clicks you can turn your website into an online store.

1 - https://www.shopify.co.nz/lite

neither_color 5 years ago | | |

It's been a few years since I built a Shopify store but iirc they give you an HTML/JS/iFrame "snippet" of your products you can copy paste anywhere you like.

mr_ploppy 5 years ago | |

Indeed. Nice work, but it feels like you're circumventing the exact restriction of the Lite plan. I imagine they'd shut you down if you got too much business.

astura 5 years ago |

I would not shop at this store - it's completely broken.

I went to "live demo" to check it out. Scrolled to bottom and clicked on LED Hightops. Read the description. Hit "back." Suddenly I'm not at the "store" demo anymore, now I'm back at the landing page, which would be the previous site if this was a real store. Fuck, that's annoying. Clicked live demo again, remembered the site it broken so I have to open new products in a new tab, long pressed another product, no context menu comes up so no way to open in new tab (because, according to another poster products links are not links).

I give up, I'll buy something else somewhere else.

throwarayes 5 years ago |

I’m going to be the contrarian here :)

I would just pay $29/month for Shopify basic plan. Is the $20 difference worth self hosting and tweaking a custom thing? You’ll quickly lose that $20 in time better spent running your business. I’d rather have reliable hosting...

Not to bash a cool side project. Just want to say it’s not a panacea.

berkes 5 years ago | |

I've ran and helped with very low volume shopify websites[0]. With such, reliability is less of an issue, yet the yearly $240 is the difference making the profitability.

I do see a niche for tinystore, but, like you, I also see that anyone making some real money off their store will gladly pay some extra's for more reliability and less fuss.

-- [0] the ones now often reaching to woocommerce or equivalents. A hobby-, bootstrapping, "try this idea, see if it sticks".

quickthrower2 5 years ago | | |

Then the way to go is offer a 9$ a month store with stripe integration and cut out the shopify. Even cheaper and easier!

twalling 5 years ago | |

I was wondering this too. The price difference is actually $16 not $20. Shopify Lite ($9) + TinyStore ($5). It seems like a pretty narrow niche and easily killed should Shopify address the narrow gap there. I would also wonder if Shopify already has the data to be able to make the judgement call that this narrow price range doesn't have the demand.

giarc 5 years ago | | |

>I would also wonder if Shopify already has the data to be able to make the judgement call that this narrow price range doesn't have the demand.

They have obviously made the decision that it doesn't make sense for a $134b company to solve this problem. But it probably makes sense for a guy solving his wife's problem to create this solution.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Some small businesses don't require a full online store. I'm putting my wife as an example. I agree that $15/month savings is not a big deal, but overtime, it will be. I also noticed that most customers don't care about how the site looks, as long as it's functional and they can do their purchase.

$15/month savings can be spent in FB/Instagram ads or something that can drive more customers. In 3 months, you save $45 or $180/year.

I'm also planning allow users to add multiple stores. The site is hosted in DO and can scale up easily.

vira28 5 years ago | |

actually savings is only $15.

Hamuko 5 years ago |

I'm not that particularly impressed when I click on a category and it flashes "No products to display" on my screen for a second before it loads in the data.

bdcravens 5 years ago | |

Sadly so many sites these days do the same thing, flashing a default state while the true state loads. While it's prettier and faster, so much of the web functions more poorly than it did 20 years ago.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Thanks. The site is still new, I'll fix that bug. :-)

vira28 5 years ago |

Since its relevant going to ask for recommendation here.

I am setting up an online store for my parents. I can host and manage it at least for the initial days where they can validate the idea.

These two looks promising.

1. https://woocommerce.com/ 2. https://magento.com/

Found more alternatives https://www.wpbeginner.com/showcase/best-woocommerce-alterna...

Wondering anyone has experience/feedback on any of these projects. Thanks.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

I've used WooCommerce before for my wife's online store. I hosted it in DO. It's okay, but not as good as Shopify in terms of payments, inventory management etc. I also ended up having to install a lot of plugins which most of it are in trial.

gman83 5 years ago | |

I recommend something like Cloudways for Wordpress. It's like a layer on top of Digital Ocean/Vultr/Linode.

Try the Blocksy theme with Woocommerce.

teknolog 5 years ago | |

Safely hosting anything on the internet today is a HUGE operational headache.

Woocommerce is built on Wordpress, which is one of least secure platforms out there. You'll have to apply patches at least weekly.

Use a hosted service, like Shopify or Squarespace or anything really.

hellweaver666 5 years ago |

I think you need to work on your landing page. There's almost nothing on there that makes it obvious to me what this actually does.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Agree. Thanks for the feedback. I’m thinking to add a “How it works” section to explain what it really does.

harrisonjackson 5 years ago |

Love how minimal the landing page is but maybe an FAQ or something below the fold? I see you have an FAQ hidden in footer but I'd drop something more on the apex landing page. Some context like...

Shopify Lite is Shopify's Cheapest Plan. It does not include a hosted storefront but they do give you a "Buy Now" snippet which takes you straight to a checkout page.

TinyStore gives you a hosted storefront to display and customize all those "Buy Now" snippets like a full-blown ecommerce website.

The combined price ($9 for Lite and $5 for TinyStore) is cheaper than Shopify's Basic Plan ($29).

hapiben 5 years ago | |

True. There are a few comments here about improving the landing page. I need to put more context into it and explain what it does and the value for the users. Thanks for your feedback. I appreciate it. :-)

bilater 5 years ago |

Nice work. I went down this rabbit hole a few weeks ago and built an open source Next.js Shopify Store that hooks up with the Shopify Storefront API. Feel free to check it out: https://github.com/btahir/next-shopify-starter

hapiben 5 years ago | |

This is super neat and fast as well. Well done!

bilater 5 years ago | | |

Thank you!

AugurCognito 5 years ago |

There is a bug in the demo where discounted price is strike-though instead of the original.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Good spotting. Thanks. I just fixed it.

alanz1223 5 years ago |

I am looking to experiment with ecommerce a bit and Ive signed up for shopify trials but since I want to extensively customize my store, learning liquid has been something i keep procrastinating on and this seems like a more approachable and affordable way to launch experimental stores but I want to understand what exactly you offer.

You're charging $5/month for the front end and hosting of the tiny store/website and on top of that I need to have the additional $9/month shopify lite plan correct?

hapiben 5 years ago | |

That's right. You will end up having a bill of $14/month in total instead of $29 for the basic plan. TinyStore doesn't offer much customization atm. You can add pages, announcement banner, logo and social handles. With more feedback from users, I can improve the store with more features in the future.

dstick 5 years ago |

Will this work with the other plans as well? I was looking into Shopify the other day, would like to accept non-credit card payments as well (so need a higher plan) but I love the minimal design of your theme.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Thanks. Yes, it will still work with the basic plan and above.

If you need the POS, I think it's included in all plans (including the Lite plan).

https://www.shopify.com/pos/features#Payments

asaddhamani 5 years ago |

There should be an option to see images full-screen

wraptile 5 years ago | |

yes, clicking on an item weirdly makes the image even smaller on my screen.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

Thanks for the feedback. I agree. I'll put it in my backlog.

quotha 5 years ago |

If you have this, what exactly does Shopify provide for the 9$ ?

wraptile 5 years ago | |

Seems like Shopify Lite provides product, invoice CMS and payment gateway: https://www.shopify.co.nz/lite basically just no front-end and some other advance features by the looks of it.

hapiben 5 years ago | |

With Lite plan, you get the whole experience except that you don't have a storefront to sell your items.

https://www.shopify.com/lite

fuadnafiz98 5 years ago |

Would you tell me what tech stack is used?

hapiben 5 years ago | |

- Ruby on Rails - VueJS for the store. Just the part where I render the products - PostgreSQL - Bulma CSS - PostgreSQL - DigitalOcean - Cloudflare

Two important JS libraries from Shopify: - Shopify BuyButton.js for the product modal, cart and checkout - Shopify JavaScript Buy SDK for product pagination

block_dagger 5 years ago |

Strikethrough pricing shows higher prices?

andreasha 5 years ago |

Looks good!

Could add a favicon.

HazalKaya 5 years ago |

Great

chmaynard 5 years ago |

A landing page for a closed-source commercial web app doesn't seem like an appropriate use of Show HN.

https://news.ycombinator.com/showhn.html

simonbarker87 5 years ago | |

Not the OP but this submission looks ok to me

jonplackett 5 years ago | |

So long as he made it, I'm fine with it.

What do you think it contravenes in those rules?