The PeC Evaluation: LemonStand is One Candy Cart

The shopping-cart platform that a web based enterprise chooses can have a major influence on its gross sales success.

Choose a cart that’s too easy or fundamental and it might not scale as your organization grows or it might not supply the options you’ll want to cross-sell, merchandise, or have interaction loyal clients. Choose a cart that’s too complicated and you might be placing out lots of more money in growth prices and licenses charges in addition to carrying extra performance-sapping baggage—by way of the underlying code—than is sensible for your online business. Each eventualities can bitter your on-line ecommerce operation.

Enter LemonStand, a brand new licensed buying cart that gives a steadiness of options and adaptability that each website house owners and net designers will admire. In truth, I like this new cart so properly that I’m awarding it 4 out of a doable 5 begins on this “The PeC Evaluation.”

“The PeC Evaluation” is my weekly column dedicated to introducing you to the services and products that I consider can assist you enhance your ecommerce enterprise. This week, let me present you why I believe LemonStand could possibly be a fantastic alternative for retailers contemplating a redesign or a brand new challenge.

Straightforward Order Circulate

LemonStand has a easy, unencumbered order circulation. For instance, order standing data is colour coded in order that it’s simple to establish pending orders, processing orders, and paid orders, simply by trying on the order desk.
And the order desk itself contains numerous filters in order that I can isolate orders by date, standing, merchandise, classes, and even by clients.
It is usually easy to maneuver from one order standing to a different, even going backward within the workflow if you’ll want to—just a little trick {that a} surprisingly small variety of buying carts permit.

Particular person order pages are managed from a easy tabbed administration web page that’s equally clear and comprehensible. In order that processing orders must be a snap.

Straightforward to Perceive Experiences

LemonStand contains an easy-to-read gross sales and visitors dashboard that tracks gross sales over the previous week, and locations visitors information and each day gross sales totals on the identical Flash-based chart.

In case you want extra in-depth information, LemonStand’s experiences part allows you to generate experiences on something from coupon utilization and buyer standing to product efficiency and order subtotals. All the experiences may be downloaded as a CSV file, and you may have your alternative of Flash-based bar, pie, and line charts for on-screen viewing.

In case you are typically a visible particular person, LemonStand’s experiences will make it a lot simpler to grasp how your online business is trending.

Design Flexibility

LemonStand is without doubt one of the most versatile buying cart platforms that I’ve seen. In virtually each approach, it appears to be designed to allow you to resolve how the positioning ought to look and behave.

Navigate to the platform’s CMS part, choose any web page template, and you may be introduced with a sequence of tabbed, syntax-highlighting code editors that help you modify, change, or create your retailer, your approach. There’s even a in-built editor for AJAX handlers in case you wish to create a drag-and-drop or sorting function.

They platform does use is a semi-custom PHP library, which a designer or developer might want to study, however there’s a handbook tab on the web page that gives assist.

Modules

LemonStand can be extendable with a sequence of modules that add options, features, or connectivity. The corporate has constructed a restricted variety of modules and each plans to construct extra and encourage others to construct extra.

On the one hand, modules imply that retailers gained’t must assist and even cope with numerous additional code that they aren’t utilizing, which can enhance website efficiency. Then again it does imply that you just’ll must pay extra for some further options—since most modules will likely be offered.

Pricing

LemonStand is presently free to obtain and develop with. However if you happen to carry up a functioning retailer that’s taking orders, you’ll have to pay a onetime $300 license charge.

Not Good

After all no ecommerce platform is ideal. LemonStand doesn’t have a superb packing slip or bill printing answer. You simply print off the order display. That is one thing that should change shortly.

There was additionally no clear strategy to function a couple of storefront from a single backend, which is more and more a function retailers need.

Summing Up

LemonStand is a superb new buying cart that’s each versatile and straightforward to make use of. It’s a sensible choice for small-to-midsized retailers which have some fundamental net information. In case you’ve by no means used something however a software-as-a-service ecommerce answer, LemonStand will likely be extra work and require extra design experience. However it’s going to additionally present a lot nice latitude in your design, which may make for a greater retailer.