Launch Date and Referral Program News
November 2018 Update
Welcome to Really Simple Store’s first regular update!
If you’re on the waiting list for a store, thank you for your early support! I’ll talk about an exciting step that’s coming and when you can expect to open your first store.
If you’re an investor, there’s also an update on some of our plans and our timeline.
Starting with this one, I’ll provide updates on a regular basis, but I want to make sure they’re useful. No matter who you are or how you’re related to the project, please comment or email me with anything you want to see more or less of!
Here’s what I’ll cover this time…
- Quick catch up on Really Simple Store
- Pre-launch referral program
- Adjusted timeline
- Current progress
Quick catch up
If you’ve been on the waiting list for a while, a lot may have changed since you signed up. For anyone who hasn’t been following, Really Simple Store:
- Has been rebuilt from the ground up
- Announced an official (re)launch with new pricing
- Added a new feature called “collaborative selling” that involves a crypto-token economy
For more on all of that, here are a few articles that we’ve published over the last few weeks.
Here’s a video that isn’t a polished promotional piece, but you can get a peak at some of the interfaces and interactions in the new platform. (We’re working on a new video that shows more.)
Pre-launch referral program
The next step towards the full launch is a pre-launch referral program.
Although store functionality is only 90% complete, user accounts are ready to go. In the next week or two, we’ll open account sign ups, and each account will get a unique referral link to start earning free months towards future stores.
Whenever someone signs up using someone else’s referral link, both parties get a free month. Each account accrues free months until stores open.
After stores become available, account holders can create as many stores as they want and choose to apply their free months across any of them. This means someone could earn 12 free months and run a store for free for a full year. Or they could test 12 different store ideas for a month, for free, and continue with the most profitable one.
We’ll open the referral program to the waiting list first, and sign ups will only be available through a referral link (no public sign ups just yet). If you’re interested in checking out the program, you can sign up for the waiting list now ⇢
Adjusted timeline
There’s been a small adjustment to the timeline that’s made me rethink a few milestones (for the better).
OST, the company that’s powering our token economy, recently published a new timeline. The Really Simple Store launch was planned for Q1 2019 to coincide with OST’s broader release on mainnet.
However, OST’s new timeline puts that milestone in Q2 2019, so I’ve made the decision to open stores before the token economy and the collaborative selling feature is ready.
Stores launch sooner
There’s no reason to delay launching stores if we’re not waiting for the tokens. I still have some code to write and some testing to do, so I’m sticking to a Q1 2019 launch, but it realistically could be sooner. So if not before Q1, then early Q1. As you can see in the live demo in the video above, most everything is completed and functioning.
Current progress
Lastly, here’s a quick progress overview on a few key areas of the Really Simple Store system.
Stores
Stores are almost ready to go, with the small exception of product options. Right now, everything is one-off products, but before launch, we need to accommodate products with size and color variations.
Products dashboard
This is also done, with the exception of product options.
Layout editor
The store layout editor is close to being finished. Due to the decision to launch without the token economy, I’m building temporary functionality to add products to the store layout, without going through Really Simple Store’s “collaborative selling” marketplace.
Settings page
Settings, including the Stripe setup process, are all complete minus a little polish to the design and UI.
Orders dashboard
The orders dashboard needs the most work of any section, but it’s also pretty close. We’re pulling in orders and design is 👌, but we need to address some form of pagination for large numbers of orders.
Receipts
Receipts are done!
Cart and Checkout
The cart and checkout are complete but still being tested. Once everything’s ready to go, we’ll take payments live, run a few more tests, and we’re ready!
Waiting List
200 people have signed up for the waiting list, all through the reallysimplestore.com website. Most traffic came from my organic Medium posts and tweets, with a spike caused by publicity from OST’s alpha challenge win.
Thanks for reading! 👋
