I do have some questions about the site itself. At first I thought it was supposed to be another packaged solution, or extensions but it's a completely separate entity from the WA developer product line. For the intended audience of this site, how would you describe it in relation to the competition, the main one that comes to mind is Cafe Press.I want to be involved as much as possible in the beta set, the only problem is, I don't have anything to sell! Can I just enter phantom products for testing purposes? Are there or will there be stock products that. Can be branded or customized? And finally, does it support digital products such as music downloads, photography, video loops and backgrounds, or website templates?
Should we have a topic for people to post links to their stores? I would like to see what others are doing with the site. Is there a way to browse existing stores or thrift search?
I imagine a lot of these questions are already answered by exploring more, But these are things that came to mind in the context of m initial impression, and maybe some of these questions will be addressed in the overview video when is completed.
I figured I would chime in here. I haven't used another online e-commerce such as Cafe Press but have used a software from another company and this beats them HANDS DOWN as for all the features and ease of use. So as for comparing this to other online e-commerce solutions I can't answer that but hopefully someone else can.
As for making a "phantom store" you sure can since that is exactly what I have done. As Cafe Commerce recommends you clear out the "stock products" that are there when you start to give you a fresh start. Trust me I started just altering the "stock inventory" that was added then decided it was way easier to delete and start over as they recommend. The images that I have used are ones that I personally took of "fake products" so I could get the "feel" of the site with images.
Also as for Cafe Commerce supporting downloadable products such as MP3, images, e-books and other digital files such as website templates. The files can only be 100MB max but that can handle most digital files unless you are trying to sell monster files but if you can zip the file down below 100MB you should be fine.
As for seeing the other peoples stores I don't think it is possible unless they sign up to activate their store.
Hope this helps answer some of your questions.
Have a good weekend.
Kevin
