2% of revenue on top of existing payment processing fees seems steep. I guess convenience has a price and this will be great for shops that want to get going quickly and are not price-sensitive.
Seems like you are self-selecting for small payment amounts. If I had a $100 item I'm not sure why you should get $2 as opposed to 20 cents on a $10 transaction. I believe Shopify used to use this pricing model but changed as they were losing out on potential customers with higher priced products.
2% is something we re-evaluate often here at Celery in the continued effort to price fairly. The Celery fees are only charged when the orders are charged so for delayed pre-orders a merchant could be set up in 90 seconds and use our software to capture tons of demand, interact with customers, manage orders, receive guidance and support from our team - all without paying a cent up front.
You're absolutely right in that the 2% makes a lot of sense for the convenience and for the stage a lot of hardware startups begin. We do also offer tiered breaks on the fee at different sales volumes right now and are overall still trying some things on pricing. Really appreciate the feedback.
The FTC finally dropped the hammer on Butterfly Labs for not delivering on "pre-orders":
http://www.ftc.gov/news-events/press-releases/2014/09/ftcs-r...
Here's the FTC's Mail Order Rule:
http://www.business.ftc.gov/documents/bus02-business-guide-m...
This spells out what has to happen when a seller can't deliver on time. There are time limits. Extensions on delivery times require the buyer's explicit consent. If the buyer doesn't do that, a full refund is required. Without the buyer asking for it.
Responsibility to comply with the rule falls on the "seller", the "person soliciting the order". If another party actually ships the product, and they screw up, that's the seller's problem, not the buyer's. So you don't want to set up a platform where you take orders for a third party and give them the money up front. If the stuff isn't delivered, you, the platform operator as seller, have to pay out refunds.
I'd also like to style some of the checkout to be more branded - is it possible to change the colors or logos?
Good job on clean styling of the checkout. Also, will there be support for Amazon Payments in the future?
In fact, the default product at Celery is exactly one of these "easy to set up" copy-pasted checkouts with just pasting in 2 lines of code to get a checkout. This DIY checkout offers something that none of the copy-paste checkouts, including our own, offers: Total customization over every aspect of the checkout interface and flow.
Not only could you change all the style and position of the elements, you can even insert steps afterwards, like your own survey, for example. You could even change the language to Klingon if you like. We're excited to see what people can come up with.
Branding is totally open to your own styles. Colors, logos, assets, transitions and animations - you name it.
Amazon Payments is a feature that we'll be keeping a keen eye on and prioritize it based on demand and product fit.
Thanks for the questions!
You just have to edit the templates and styles of the repo https://github.com/airbrite/diy-checkout/tree/master/src/tem...
For pre-orders, how many backers do you lose by not obtaining actual shipping details upfront? Do you pre-bill them sans shipping address and then hope that they input it later?
>Do you pre-bill them sans shipping address and then hope that they input it later?
In this DIY checkout example, your customers are charged at the time of checkout. Then you could follow up with them en masse to fill in their shipping address before you're ready to ship. This is a self-service feature https://dashboard.trycelery.com/status and the credential parameters can be pre-formed so convenient links can be dynamically created for each customer to take them right to the correct spot.
Once a customer has paid for something, the conversion of them coming back to fill in shipping address to receive it is very high.
>how many backers do you lose by not obtaining actual shipping details upfront?
Bravo. Not many people think of the flow so holistically, even though they should. On one hand, reducing inputs and simplifying checkout can give conversion rates a lift. On the other hand, unfamiliar UX can trip some customers up too. Also it can end up driving more support questions for sellers. eg, "When do I give you my shipping address? How do I input it?"
Overall, we're convinced so far that the shorter checkout is a net gain for conversion.
As for custom and DIY checkouts, August.com is one of our coolest examples of a checkout built on our Celery API and there are some exciting ones in the works right now. Stay tuned!
