LemonStand Blog

Our plans for a thriving marketplace

3 | published by Danny H. on Thursday, September 03, 2009

The success of most online products is because of a strong community. That's you. The amount of success you have using LemonStand to build great eCommerce sites will determine our fate. So we're absolutely focused on devising and then implementing tools to support a strong community. The tools I'm talking about would allow you to profit from the LemonStand user base, directly and indirectly.

We're still ironing out the kinks, but we would like to let you all know what our plans are so you can be excited right along with us!

Marketplace for what?

We have hinted throughout the website and elsewhere that we would be building a marketplace around LemonStand. You might have wondered what this marketplace is exactly and why does it matter. Let me tell you.

Modules

Modules allow you to add functionality to LemonStand to accomplish literally anything. We have intentionally kept LemonStand light and nimble. The "killer feature" is it's design flexibility and API. This is what is different from anyone else out there.

By adding an existing module already available, commissioning the development of one or building one yourself, you can bend LemonStand to your will. And it's quite easy to do so. Modules can be to add an extra feature, extend existing features, or add support for third-party services such as payment gateways or shipping services.

Design flexibility and easily extendable. This is a recipe for unique eCommerce websites. Websites your customers will love.

Themes

Ah, themes. Everyone loves them. LemonStand has themes, but they are a little more powerful than most other shopping carts or even CMS'. Maybe you noticed in the CMS section of the online demo the import/export feature. This humble little feature will allow you to build out sites in the comfort of your personal copy of LemonStand, then export them so others can import them.

This means you can implement a custom design, set up your partials, templates, pages and content blocks how you like. Export the entire thing and share with others. It's also very useful for building your site on a development environment, then moving it to the live environment.

Themes on steroids. Or maybe spiked lemonade, we're not sure.

Buy, sell and share

Our plan is to create a seamless online community integrated into this very website where you can buy, sell or share modules for free. We'll provide opportunities to market your creations and much more.

It won't just be a directory. We are developing an innovative marketplace for you to profit from LemonStand. The more your involved with the community, the more you'll benefit. You win by having access to awesome modules created by the community and you also win by selling modules to that same community. It's a viscious delicious circle.

Looking forward to showing you

We're going to release more info along with visual goodies as time goes on. It's going to be really fun to see things come together and get your feedback.