Shopify Launches GoSpaces to Help Entrepreneurs Get Online
Shopify launched a web presence tool for small businesses called GoSpaces to 38 countries in 20 different languages on Wednesday. GoSpaces provides a stripped-down version of Shopify’s core service, offering entrepreneurs a landing page from which they can graduate to more complex websites and ecommerce.
While small business hosting and web building as a package is not just a familiar, but a competitive market space, the company claims its differentiating factor is its “open, flexible and extensible platform.” GoSpaces was first conceived in 2013, and is still in development. Its API is still in beta testing, and auto-currency settings to let customers view shop with local prices are currently being added.
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“It’s an experiment and we might take the learning from here and push it over to Shopify, and that’s kind of how we’re looking at it,” Shopify VP of Growth Bruno Roldan told BetaKit. “We want to expand into these markets really fast, learn, sit back and say ‘Hey should we expand on this platform, or should we further some of these learnings into the Shopify platform.”
“We’ve found in a lot of markets credit card penetrations aren’t what they are over here; the circumstances around ecommerce are very different. We are looking at this model where it’s not just about ecommerce, it’s about getting people set up online,” he said.
The GoSpaces blog offers up an infographic about the strength of international business environments for entrepreneurs.
Shopify became publicly traded on the NYSE last year, in the midst of a shifting ecommerce market that includes an online store platform launched by GoDaddy in 2014, but will soon not include Amazon ecommerce hosting.
UPDATE: This article mistakenly referred to the Shopify service as Spaces, not GoSpaces. Shopify is listed on the NYSE, not the NASDAQ. The WHIR apologizes for these errors.
Source: TheWHIR