Ecommerce For Everyone
There are some web marketing lessons learned best by creating an online store such as:

• Words Matter as they lead (or don’t) to conversion.
• Design Matter as it leads (or doesn’t) to conversion.
• Money Is The Best Metric.
• Money Helps Create The Best Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
• Money helps create a testing culture.

 
Creating a store is so easy, we developed Curagmai's Bookstore with Amazon's Associates tool in about half a day, everyone should have an ecommerce store these days.  

As Rodney said in Back To School - Shakespeare for Everyone!

Read our Ecommerce For Everyone post: 
http://www.curagami.com/magical-thinking/news/shakespeare-for-everyone-ecommerce-lessons/

& Visit the new Curagmai Bookstore
http://www.Curagami.com/books.html 

Do you have an affiliate store you want to share? Email martin(at)Curagmai.com and we will create a gallery of cool stores for personal brands, companies and B2B marketing teams. 
 

Crowdfunding is a new powerful marketing channel similar to what email marketing used to be - high profit, low cost with big social and UGC benefits.

This holiday selling season (2014) will happen as close to real time as any thanks to the social / mobile web. Listening and curating are going to be important, but so is tapping the nostalgia and spirit of the season in creative and collaborative ways.

Social & Mobile Ecommerce
Ecommerce is being transformed by social and mobile. The implications for merchants are VAST. How your Ecommerce site creates conversations and digitally listens will determine its value. No matter how social your online store it isn't social enough for the immediate future.This Haiku Deck can help your site do things like:

* Create conversations that lower costs and increase profits.
* Build an online community.
* Learn to listen "digitally".
* Scale your store to the next level.
* Create an engine that mines User Generated Content.

Can your store be too social? Not so much as it turns out.

Best Online Store Option For YOU?
I've used Magento Go and Shopify. I've also used other Content Management Systems when I managed an Ecom team (for 7 years) including home grown and Magento enterprise.

If you want to start an online store which platform should you use? Let's look at a feature by feature comparison:

Easy To Use - Winner Shopify

Plugin / Add On Development - Winner Magento Go 

Email Integration - Tie (both work well with MailChip et al)

SEO - Magento Go if you KNOW SEO, Shopify if you don't

Promotion - Magento Go if you KNOW ecom, Shopify if you don't

Manage SKUs - Tie
up to about 50,000 after than NEITHER (you've outgrown OPP Other People's Platform if you have more than 50,000 unique stock keeping units SKUs). 

Cart - backend Magento Go
(can do more with logic so ASSUMES you know how to create business rule promotions) frontend (what customer sees) Shopify.

Templates - Tie 

Pretzel Logic - Magento Go
(winning this is not a good thing since it means the platform has its own language YOU must learn or things go bump in the night. Magento Go is willing to be confusing and a pain to add POWER, but 95% will never use that power so if you have a small, fun store steer clear). 

Cross Sale / UpSale
Slight nod to Magento Go again assumes you know ECOM well and cross merchandising is not intuitive but is powerful. 

Overall Winner - Shopify
For most readers of this post Shopify is the best choice.

Magento Go honorable mention
for a specialized niche group that needs powerful business rule based promotion, have between 30k to 50k SKUs and don't mind learning a new language to get the backend power they need Magento Go may be for you.

. If you don't know your crosssale (what you do on a product page to move customers to more profitable or popular choices) or upsale (what you do in the car to build Average Order Value (AOV) then use SHOPIFY.