Shoprocket: the biggest disruption to the ecommerce world!

Jan 21, 2015 5:46:03 PM

We were lucky enough to have the Shoprocket boys pop in for a cuppa and a chat, and we were blown away by their game-changing product! So we thought we'd do our first good deed of the year and let you in on this well-kept industry secret...

Read below for the questions we fired their way!

cranberry panda: Tell us about Shoprocket - What is it? 

Shoprocket: Shoprocket is a complete ecommerce solution that can be added to any website with a single line of code. (Like embedding a YouTube video) In essence, that line of code is a link to our API that then feeds all of your products, payment gateway, and complete checkout process into your website, seamlessly. 
It’s like a SAAS based Magento, but so much more easier to integrate and manage.

cranberry panda: Why do you think the market needs Shoprocket? Do they benefit from increased conversion?

Shoprocket: Commerce software has completely stagnated over the last 10 years, there was once a real buzz about it, but that seems to have tailed off and the majority of online shopping experiences now look the same, they’re inheriting mistakes that were embedded in 2005.

These incumbent solutions have enjoyed a monopoly for too long; they haven’t improved their offering or adjusted their pricing. It shouldn’t still be this hard for businesses to sell online. There are some great template solutions out there, but they’re no help for sellers who already have a website and don’t want to start again from scratch. They’re also not very useful for developers who want to build truly beautiful & unique ecommerce websites for their clients. We believe it’s time to disrupt this market and offer something completely different.

cranberry panda: Are you ‘just’ a solution for those starting to sell online?

Shoprocket: No, we’re for everyone! If you’re selling handmade socks, we’re perfect, if you’re an enterprise level client with 100,000 products, we’re great for you too! 

Imagine being able to set up an ecommerce website in a couple of days instead of months. All those pop up sales or seasonal sites are now really easy to do. We did a demo at Iris Ignite a few weeks ago where we took the Abel and Cole’s website, added Shoprocket and even made them a pop up cheese site as an example. It took us 20 minutes to do both sites! 

cranberry panda: Are you seen as the ‘disruptive’ pain in the ecommerce platform butt?

Shoprocket: Absolutely. We’re saving brands and retailers money by not having to spend a fortune on development. We continue to improve our product, and as it’s SaaS based, every single customer can automatically benefit from these changes without having to make any code changes. We think websites should evolve with trends, not need to be redesigned every 12 months!

cranberry panda: How long does it take to set shoprocket up?

Shoprocket: Our record is 7 minutes from signup to go live. You can see that one here: (fantastic falafel by the way) - but on average, with setup, integration, tweaking, design amends etc. most sites take a couple of hours to get up and running. It really is incredibly fast. Most people don’t believe it until we show them. 

Why would clients move to shoprocket? Do they benefit from increased conversion? 
Absolutely - when we started out, we didn’t try to build an ecommerce solution, so we didn’t inherit the outdated beliefs associated with it (long checkout forms, signup to checkout, confirm your account by email etc) we built something that would make our lives easier actually generate sales, so we completely rethought the buying process, as a result, on average our basket abandonment rate is 8%. The industry average is 70%.

cranberry panda: How much do you charge for Shoprocket?

Shoprocket: We built Shoprocket in a way that ensures our running costs are incredibly lean, as a result, we’re able to offer the service for free to everybody. We simply take a small 2% commission on successful sales, meaning we only earn when our clients succeed. This alignment with our customers’ goals is an ethos that runs deep in our business, we call it fair commerce. 

cranberry panda: Finally, what is the aim for shoprocket?

Shoprocket: In keeping with the theme of fair commerce, we intend on continuing to improve our product, and ensuring that all updates are offered to customers for free. We want our customers to be successful. If they aren’t, we fail. 

Our short term goals are to educate businesses across the world that ecommerce is for everybody and doesn’t need to be a daunting process. We also have exciting plans around the development community to help improve the way they work too. Allowing them to spend more time coding what’s really important, and less time on weeks of back end work that is usually just old code rehashed again and again. 

Shhhhh don't tell anyone... Shoprocket will be hosting monthly meet ups for ecommerce professionals to network and discuss what innovations are out there. If you’re interested in these sessions, please email sessions@shoprocket.co.uk

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