Jigoshop pricing point – what would you pay? (Oh, and a live demo)
When deciding to build a premium eCommerce plugin for WordPress we understood that a project of this scale would be a massive undertaking. But with each passing day we edge closer to completion! On the agenda today…
User-centric
Due to WordPress’ open source nature we’re keen to involve the community in the development of our plugin as much as possible. We’ve demonstrated this by documenting key development steps and requesting feedback on all aspects of the plugin to date. We’ve even asked for your advice on which business model we choose to adopt.
We’d like your opinions on setting a price-point for our product. But first, we’re excited to deliver a front-end demo of Jigoshop, along with an improved backend screencast preview which demonstrates a few new features.
Jigoshop – WordPress eCommerce plugin front end demo
The demo is installed on WordPress 3.1 with the default TwentyTen theme activated.
Jigoshop backend screencast
Price points
Thanks to the feedback we received on this post we’ve come to an (almost) final decision with regards to how we’re going to distribute our shop.
It is almost certain that we will provide a free version, available to download through your own WordPress admin panel via the WordPress.org plugin repository. The exposure we feel this will generate is simply too good to pass up. The feature-set of the free version is to be confirmed later. It’s possible that it won’t include any payment gateways instead being delivered as a “catalog” which users can add their own Paypal buttons to if they want to turn it into an eCommerce solution.
Your thoughts on the free versions features would be greatly appreciated.
Premium editions
We spoke briefly with Carl from Gravity Forms (a business with a stellar reputation) who helped convince us that a subscription model is definitely the way to go with the premium versions of our plugin.
We plan to adopt Gravity’s approach. Customers will pay an annual subscription fee which gives them access to support and updates for as long as that subscription is active. The beauty of this system is that after the first 12 months the plugin is still going to function perfectly for users; so providing they’re running a stable environment it’s likely that first subscription payment is all they will need to ever pay. It also frees us from the fear of offering lifetime support to all customers which the PHPurchase guys have proven to be an unsustainable business model.
Tell us how much you’d pay…
So the question we pose to you is simple; How much would you be willing to pay for a kick-ass WordPress eCommerce plugin, premium support and unlimited updates for a year? Bearing in mind that if you want to continue receiving updates and support you would need to continue your subscription (there may be discounts for year on year subscribers – good idea?).
Looking at our competitors we’ve broken things down in to 3 separate price points we believe we could go to market with;
- $50 – $100
- $100 – $200
- $200+
There are a few benefits outside of the plugin which we offer too. The main one being that we are an actual business, registered in the UK with a real phone number. We’re serious about Jigoshop as a micro-business and have a team of us here working on it. You can rest assured that we will continue to develop Jigoshop improving it’s functionality and adding features.
We’re also well aware of the importance of high quality support and customer satisfaction. We’ve already planned a system for expansion should Jigoshop grow so rapidly that we cannot handle support in a timely fashion by ourselves.
So let us know your thoughts. Besides the product quality the price is the most important detail to get right. We need to offer Jigoshop at a price that covers our costs, but also represents good value.
James
The front end looks awesome and I would be excited to get my hands on a copy once you are done.
I love the idea of a free version although I don’t like it when a developer offers a free version but puts nothing in it at all and it simply becomes an ‘advert with a disappointing end’ if you see what I mean. So providing the feature set is basic but still existent then I think you’d do well with the free version.
For a premium version, it is difficult to be exact but if you are going for the CodeCanyon market I suspect anything over $40 mark is probably going to be a challenge.
As a standalone plugin though sold through the jigoshop site then obviously more would be possible and from what I can see would be well worth the price but I probably wouldn’t pay much more than $100 + an annual fee given that there are a couple of free and paid but cheaper alternatives – ok, not as slick yours from what I can see of your demo but I reckon I would think like a lot of other people and if it is too much I might just settle for one of the alternatives.
Would you not go with the instinct.co.nz model of free with a series of paid ‘ingredients’ which people can add as required? That way there are plenty of upsells and opportunities for future addition partnerships with other developers etc?
I think some custom Jigoshop themes would be a nice idea for some point in the future? Or an extended licence for other theme sites to integrate your plugin?
Jay
Hi James, thanks for your response.
We’re at a bit of a cross-roads with the free version. We want to offer as market-leading product for free but at the same time we need to cover ourselves. If the free version is too good we run the risk of not actually turning users into paying customers.
We’re currently leaning towards providing the free version with a good featureset but delivering it as more of a “catalog”. IE there will be no checkout. That may sound lame but it would actually be very simple to integrate a PayPal shopping cart with a little knowledge which would probably serve a lot of peoples needs. The main issue we have is that the majority of our users are likely to be small businesses dipping their toes into the eCommerce market. These users will likely be happy with a PayPal gateway. If we offer that for free we could be doing ourselves out of ~50% of our customer base straight away.
The above really outlines why we want to offer the whole package for an annual subscription fee. It seems the most robust, sustainable and risk free plan going forwards.
We are actually talking to a couple of big-name theme retailers about developing some custom themes for Jigoshop and will likely build a few of our own. They will be coming out a few months after launch I would imagine.
Anything Graphic
Slick! The front-end is awesome and they way you guys make it look seems pretty easy. I am very excited about this plugin! I have used WP E-commerce and was somewhat satisfied. This, however, looks promising!
I agree with James’ points about the free/paid version, and the $$$ amount on a subscription, but I understand you need to cover yourselves and the endless amount of time and energy that goes into such programs/plugins.
Without playing with it myself and strictly using the demo, I would pay $50 for it. That’s if I used the demo and liked it. I don’t know how much I’d pay for a subscription. But again, that would be the client paying, not me, the designer/developer. Catering towards startup business with a cheaper version without too many bells and whistles, then a premium with all the bells and whistles might be a good idea.
A free trial would be ideal for people like me. I don’t mean the demo version on your website, but a demo version I could install on a test site I am doing to get the REAL feel for what I have to do, what I have to customize, my options, etc. Expires in 14 days
I can’t wait!
Jay
Do you think the free version would be a sufficient demonstration?
Anything Graphic
Good point. I do believe that. However, you mentioned you wouldn’t like to release a free version because not enought people would be paying for the Full or Premium version. That’s why I mentioned an expiry.
James
Just thought I would mention that WooThemes are launching the WooCommerce plugin very soon so that’s going to be a big competitor for you guys I would imagine…
They’ve been working on theirs since 2010 I believe so it is probably nearly ready and they say it will be available some time in 2011
James
Jay
We’re well aware that WooCommerce is just around the corner
Hopefully there’s enough users to go around!
Ashkan
Looks good from the demo although must say for my eyes I the quality wasn’t good enough to be able to read most of the text on the screens, which would have been nice.
Looks like you have included most of the basic functionalities that a small e-commerce start-up would need and definitely looks very user-friendly.
Regarding the price as you have mentioned the subscription model is the best long term solution for people who are serious about running an ecommerce operation but a harder sell to those who just want a cheap solution to test things out. For a new product definitely the support and enhancements will be needed and a subscription model allows for a closer partnership. Might be a good idea to partner with a few ecommerce ventures to power their shop as a proof of concept. Also might be a good idea to tailor your solution for a specific company size or sector and that way fine-tune all the features to meet their specific needs. Personally I am thinking to add a shopping element to my WordPress blog iphoneappcafe.com. Since I am already running the site on WordPress then I guess having the e-commerce element within WP would be attractive. I would suggest to include an e-commerce role! I would definitely need that!
Netsuite provides their full e-commerce/ERP software on a subscription model and in my experience (I have been a reseller) it is just too costly and complicated to use for small businesses, that is why I am looking at alternative solutions now and I have been looking at services such as Shopify and Big Commerce, and I would be interested to see where a solutions like yours would fit in? Would be worthwhile to look at the subscription models that Big Commerce provides.
cheers!
Jay
Thanks for your response. Sorry for the quality of the video but it was getting quite big! If you view it in fullscreen I think it’s a little better.
The main different between Jigoshop and something like Shopify or BigCommerce is that it’s not a hosted solution. This allows you to develop on top of it, modify it and style it to match your theme 100%.
I like your idea about partnering with some online retailers and we do plan to do that as soon as the plugin is useable
We will of course have a showcase on the official Jigoshop site as well to demonstrate it’s flexibility.
Chris
Hi Jay! This looks great! I took the demo for a spin and looked at the video.
One issue that I’ve had with commerce plugins is that the free version didn’t offer enough to get my feet wet. Like Anything Graphic mentioned above a version that ‘expires in 14-30days’ would work well.
Too many times, I bought into a system based on the hype from the website only to find that some areas were too complicated for my client, had a high learning curve or the entire solution was bloated (think BigCommerce, Volusion). The other WP plugins just didn’t ‘feel’ right. WooCommerce seems promising, but so far, it’s just talk. As a designer/developer with clients that often want a quick, easy solution, it is imperative that I myself can manage the learning curve before offering it to my clients. And yes, I know, quick and easy are a developers nightmare… do you see the red flags?! Moving on…
I didn’t see any reporting feature (or maybe I missed it).
This seems to simply work. I’d pay $50-100 hands down. Of course my client would actually pay. At this price point, it would not harm my development costs. I’d also pay for support, if it were necessary.
I’m torn about the free solution. If a product holds true to its promise, I’d buy it in a heartbeat as long as I can play with the really thing for 15-30 days. I tack on 30 days only because after testing a few products at one time and still juggling the workload, I’ve often missed the introductory! But hey, that’s probably my fault anyway!
Can’t wait until it ships! Thanks for the preview.
will craig
hi
we use magento from all our shops, but like the idea of using wordpress as magento it such as large undertaking each time.
regarding the price, yes i would be happy to pay £50-£70 for a standard version with limited support.
I would also consider paying additional payment or a higher band, for more features or some sort of club version where we would request ad ons for your ecommerce plugin.