30bees needs theme makers and exposure

[madaload]

Hi!

 

I hope this is the right place for my post. I want to share with you my thoughts on Thirty Bees. 

Let me start by saying I like it. It is fast and more stable than Prestashop. However, there are some serious problems with this project. 

Exposure

I have researched the hell out of free e-commerce but found exactly ZERO references to Thirty Bees. The way I found you was via SUNNYTOO, the maker of one of the most popular Prestashop themes. The self advertising word-of-mouth approach has been tried in the past. How many people are using Essentials phone or how many have even heard of it?

Lack of themes

This issue is on par with the lack of exposure IMO. It is all good that 30bees is customizable, but if a bird doesn't display its feathers it simply won't get a lot of action.

Name

The name is just horrible. At least establish an acronym that doesn't sound like a disease. But preferably change the name. 30bees is much better than spelling "Thirty". Why? Because the bulk of your developers and users won't be native English speakers and spelling "thirty" is just awkward. You won't find many languages where "Th" is a sound. And have you tried to google for "TB" or "TB e-commerce"? Once I made a shop for a customer who despite my best efforts to explain the marketing side of things insisted on calling her shop "Prideandjoydogcouture". You can imagine how that ended. I just know my marketing. Unless you're willing to invest heavily in advertising, don't use more than 3 syllables or names with high probability of spelling errors.

 

Reluctance to change approach

So, without trying to sound overly critical, I have read a thread here in the forum where a top representative of Thirty Bees gave his take on Why TB over Presta. And I understand the sentiment, but sentiments won't boost a business where exposure, vibrant community and choice are the main attractors. You don't win customers over by saying how inept the competition is and that you're here to fix it for everyone. Please, don't be offended by this, but that's the impression it left on me.

I seriously dislike Pretstashop for their shady business practices, abysmal support and unstable code. You can break that thing by simply updating their own modules. However, I must choose to use their solution, because I don't have a month to spare to play around with designing the store from scratch. I need to use a theme that I'll just modify and be done with in a few days. It is also nice and good to have a section called "Shops using Thirty Bees" but it doesn't do you any favours when those shops are down. It makes Thirty Bees look like an abandoned project.

Why don't you guys get together with some decent and proven designer and aim for the stars? For example Panda is such a versatile theme, but SUNNYTOO have 90% of their business riding on Presta. Unless you become popular, they won't bother updating the old version for TB. I find it astounding they even released the old one for TB. You've been around long enough now to make some headlines in the e-commerce world, so what's holding you back? There surely is a way to incentivize theme makers. Even if it's just one. Bundle a decent theme with the shop that shows off the main features. It doesn't need to be polished and fully featured, just usable, but also pretty. Something to get merchants and developers interested and talking. If you're afraid of diverting revenue to the developer, then look at the current situation. It is already the case and you've no control over it at all. You could at least become selective about the developers officially utilizing your solution. With that and superior stability, you'll steamroll over Presta in a year or two.

I wish you good luck and I'll check back every now and then to see how this project is doing, but for now, I reluctantly have to go with the other crowd.

Peace!

[haylau]

 

[Briljander]

15 minutes ago, haylau said:

 

I am not sure this was supposed to be something saying different than TS. I only shows that its taking waay to long to close the deal. It's not Amazon that's being sold...

[haylau]

It was only to show that hopefully, imminently, things could change. 

[datakick]

3 minutes ago, Briljander said:

I am not sure this was supposed to be something saying different than TS. I only shows that its taking waay to long to close the deal. It's not Amazon that's being sold...

Yes, it's a little bit frustrating. 

[Messenger Bee]

On 9/21/2020 at 4:54 PM, datakick said:

Yes, it's a little bit frustrating.

Lol. Indeed 😀

We're just as eager to get this thing resolved as you all. Even more so. At least it's close now...