Online eCommerce website builder GoSpaces
recently garnered a sizable amount of media coverage with the announcement of
a global expansion.
Evolving from a US only model, the platform
is now in 20 different languages and 38
different countries, in other world's, over a third of the entire population of
the planet.
Yet this isn't the only way that GoSpaces
is quickly making a name for itself. The Shopify-owned brand is also attracting
a wealth of new customers thanks to the fact that it's entirely free to sign up
and launch your own online store.
Drawn in by the platform's recent wave of
publicity, your writer decided to sign up, give it a trial run, and put
together my own GoSpaces review, based on my initial thoughts whilst using it
to set up an online store of my own.
How is GoSpaces Different?
Quite apart from the fact that it's one of
the most multilingual and widely accessible website builders of its type, what
really puts GoSpaces in a league of its own, is that you don't have to pay
anything until your store starts generating over $50 per month.
From that point, you'll be looking at
paying a $9 subscription fee plus 3% per transaction. This actually works out
cheaper than Shopify itself, and one of the lowest cost website builders around, making it a solid
option for those looking to start an online store on a limited budget.
How easy is it to sign up?
As easy as you could possibly hope for.
Just enter your email address, create a password, and you're good to go.
What's the design and layout like?
After logging in, you can start building
your first website by clicking the 'create spaces' button, which brings up a
generic website template with options to customize elements such as page title
and tagline, header image, and body text.
At first, I'm disappointed to note that
unlike the majority of website builders, GoSpaces doesn't offer a choice of
multiple pre-designed themes, nor the ability to change colors, fonts, or
backgrounds.
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Instead, that generic website templates
acts as your basic shop front,and all you can do is change text and images. I
say "all you can do," - that's not entirely accurate. You can also
add new "content sections" which, fitting the keep-it-simple theme,
are boxes where you can add extra copy and pictures. You can also add an email
capture box, and, obviously, new projects.
Though this does mean that all GoSpaces web
stores look pretty similar, the design quality is strong enough that by the
time you're finished tweaking, you're guaranteed a beautiful, minimalist online
store that will showcase your products or services in the best possible light.
How easy is GoSpaces to use?
Since the eCommerce builder offers fairly
limited options for building your site, there’s very little opportunity to make
mistakes. Changing text is as easy as clicking on what’s already there and over-writing
it, adding images can be done by clicking the camera icon and selecting a
picture from your hard drive, and creating new product pages is no more
difficult than entering details into a pre-designed template.
Though I’m of course speaking from the
point of view of someone who does this sort of thing for a living, I’m 100% in
confident in saying that even those with
no prior experience of building websites could launch a fully functioning online store within an hour using GoSpace.
What other limitations are there?
The more time I spent building my eCommerce
site, the more I realized that GoSpaces isn’t really like any website builder I’ve
used before, and that includes its parent company, Shopify.
The ability to add categories, image
galleries for products, and multiple pages to provide information about your
business are all pretty standard features of eCommerce site builders. None of
these appear to be present here.
What kind of business is this website builder suitable for?
Whilst those limitation may not make
GoSpaces a good option if you’re planning to build a large online store with
all the proverbial bells and whistles, it’s landing page type layout does make
it very attractive for those businesses focusing on selling a single core
product.
The fact that you can choose to charge a
one-time fee also makes it worthwhile for subscription-based business models,
whilst the option to sell digital instead of physical products (you can also
sell a combination of both), also means that artists, musicians and even event
promoters can use it as a quick and simple way to build sales landing pages for new works or event tickets.
Hmm, this is quiet helpful. Thanks for the review. I have been researching for gospaces review over the week and this is a good one to add to the list.
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