Create an Online Store for FREE with Chopin

2020-07-06 • 7 min read

announcement   chopin   ecommerce   google   online-store   sheets   telescope   waitress

Are you looking for a free and easy way to create your online store? We have a solution for you - introducing Chopin by apio: a simple online store creator that allows you to configure your online store with google sheet. It’s a FREE tool with flexibility to customize and integrate with third-party API. No code required - Try now and start selling your products online!

🛍️ Create your store with Chopin in 10mines

🛍️ Why you don't need developers to build a website?

Current Solutions for Online Store

When creating online stores, you have a couple of choices:

Or ………………

  • We’ve created a free and easy way - Chopin. Learn how Chopin generates online stores for FREE with only a few clicks and google sheets now.

Online Marketplace: Customers Can’t Find You

This is probably the cheapest way to start your online business. You might already have the experience selling second-hand items on eBay, Craigslist, or Facebook Marketplace and are familiar with the interface. At sites like Etsy, there are other sellers and customers who share the same market/interest with you. However, it’s hard to stand out from your competitors.

Website Builder: All the Customization You Don’t Need

There are just too many online store builders you can choose from. While the basic plan can be as low as $18 per month, these costs can add up and increase as your business grows due to scalable pricing. You’re already paying a lot of startup costs: web-hosting, domain name, email marketing, why add more monthly fees to your overhead?

To better serve different business models and needs, these services strive for developing as many features as possible. The options available on the settings page and the enormous plug-ins sometimes can be quite intimidating to a new user.

Chopin: Enjoy both the Simplicity and Ultimate Freedom

While our out-of-box option allows you to set up your store with only a couple of clicks, all templating options are available for you to customize by uploading html block. Let us take care of the security, deployment, monitoring, so you can focus on the most important components that helps you grow your business - content and marketing.

Introducing Chopin

It’s hard to decide which approach suits you best, and there are many pros and cons. Why waste time on researching which platform to sell when you could’ve started selling your product already!

Chopin by apio is a lightweight static online store generator. After providing store information and two google sheets (one for catalog and one for order), Chopin will generate a static website with a unique url.

Whether you are small business owners or just looking for ways to collect group orders among friends. Chopin can also be used as selling creative service or virtual products. Read more use cases.

Demo

In the demo store, we’ve configured one google sheet to be catalog and another one to store order.

You can easily update products to the catalog on google sheet and the store will update in real-time. When user submits an order, you will immediately see google sheet updated with order details. Check out the store yourself now.

Watch this 10-min demo video

Benefits

Google Sheet Backend

Chopin made creating your own store as easy as filling out a simple survey. You only need to provide your logo, simple information about your store, two google sheets: one with the catalog and one with order data. That’s, it, your web store is ready to go!

No code required, just use the interface everyone’s familiar- Google Sheet. You can add new items by simply adding a new row in your google sheet. Have you ever thought updating a website can be so easy?

Watch this three-minute tutorial video to get started!

Responsive Design

As much as we want to provide great user experiences for store owners, we also want your customers to have a smooth experience when browsing the merchandise. Chopin’s website design can accommodate different settings on a variety of devices and screen sizes. Your customers will be able to place orders on their phones, tablets, or laptops. You also save energy by not having to develop and test different designs on various devices.

Free and Flexible

At apio, we believe that good technology should be accessible and shareable. Chopin is a FREE solution for small business owners. We operate on revenue from ads that appeared on your store. If you’re looking for an ad-free store with more powerful features, you’re welcome to upgrade to our Basic Plan for as low as $10 per month.

We also welcome third-party integrations and don’t want to tie you down with only the services we offer. While we offer various microservices and APIs through Telescope, we’re more than happy to help you integrate other APIs to your store based on your use cases.

Simple yet Secured

All Chopin generated sites are SSL certified and meet the highest security standard, which means your customers’ sensitive data (email addresses, phone number, names etc.) are encrypted and protected from unauthorized users. This feature doesn’t just protect store owners and their customers, is also the required element for implementing third-party payment gateways (i.e. Stripe, Square, PayPal).

Features

🛍️ Latest and full features of Chopin

Customization

The website is fully customizable. As of the website appearance, you can create an online store that aligns with your brand by providing logo, store description, background color, and background image in Chopin app. More customization options are also available through simple HTML blocks.

Communication

There are a few communication channels designed for you and your customers to create a flawless conversation experience. Chopin enables social plug-ins so your customers can easily reach you via Phone, Email, Instagram, Facebook, WhatsApp, and Line. You also have the option to add announcement to broadcast important updates or discount information.

Each success order comes with a confirmation email sent directly from your Gmail account (opt-in required). Your customers can contact you regarding order details, payment confirmation, or cancelation.

You can also add Facebook messenger chat to your store, where you can provide instant automated answers and enhance customer experience. Like what we do on our website at the bottom right corner.

Payment Integration

Chopin currently offers Stripe for your customers to pay through credit cards. Integrating digital payments allows Chopin to verify the transactions in realtime and post the result to order google sheet, so you don’t have to manually confirm each payment or check the amount totals.

You can also provide your Zelle, Venmo, or PayPal.Me account information as a manual pay option. While these manual transactions can’t be verified, we will record customers’ payment method in the order google sheet.

Category

You can group products into categories, and customers can filter products by category directly from the menu. We also support multiple categories per product. For example, you can set up a “Featured” collection to highlight popular items on the top and still show it in other categories so customers can locate any items easily.

Limit Per Customer/Out of Stock

Set a maximum quantity (per customer) for products in the catalog google sheet for better inventory management. Once the customer’s selection reaches the maximum, the system will show the limitation or out of stock message. which is also customizable. You can change it to “Coming Soon” or “Back in Stock Next Spring.”

Chopin store is capable for inventory management too! Contact us to learn more.

Tax and Shipping Options

Depending on where your business is registered, the tax rate can be set by you. You can also set up shipping rules, including different destinations with different amounts and a free shipping minimum.

Chopin also supports discount function, and you can offer percentage discount or dollar value off for all of your products or just for certain categories.

Summary

So how do you know if Chopin is right for you?

  • Are you operating on a small profit margin and wanting to avoid unnecessary operating costs?
  • Are you just starting up an online business and testing the water?
  • Are you not sure what kind of website you want but you already have something to sell?

If you answer YES to one of above questions, Chopin is the perfect solution for you to kickstart your business! Click here to start creating your online store!

Happy Selling! 💰

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