The difference here is that Carte supports every store immediately. Carte doesn't need to integrate with retailers in order to support their ecommerce stores. Basically, every store that can deliver to you is supported by Carte right off the bat.
@moizali We see credit card injections/screen scraping systems come and go. You can support several stores immediately but you break every retailers' T&C when you do. Retailers have strict controls around customer acquisitions and externalizing their customers' data, particularly credit card information. To say it's frowned upon would be an understatement. You and your publishers will fight legal battles that are not worth fighting IMO. The smart publishers want to know where you are getting your product info, pricing, inventory, etc. When they find out how you're doing it, they will not sign on.
That said, best of luck! Been doing this for awhile now, let me know if I can be helpful in any way.
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@moizali@alexadelman I think the biggest thing here is that if y'all can truly solve the online problem that many retailers face, it's a win for everyone. Good luck, guys!
@alexadelman@pe_feeds Couldn't agree more! I started www.caskers.com about three years ago, and optimizing the checkout funnel helped marginally, but customers always complained about going through another checkout funnel and having to provide the same information over and over again. Also, we'd have people try to use coupon codes from 2 years ago and ask why they weren't working. Carte can fix this!
@alexadelman@pe_feeds@moizali What @moizali described is definitely a real pain for end users. However, I agree with @alexadelman that scraping is not a solution.
When I was working on @TaggTo app, a social ecommerce app, unified checkout was the No. 1 requested feature. However, none of my retailer partners was willing to do it. They actually didn't mind me crawling their websites for product information, but not scraping for checkout. The last mile checkout experience is too important for them. When I was working for Shopping.com 10 years ago, we also tried to do similar things but it went nowhere for the same reason.
Actually, robots.txt files on most retailer websites state clearly that scraping cart, login and checkout pages are not allowed.
@alexadelman@pe_feeds@moizali@TaggTo@ychw
If unified checkout is No 1 requested feature why do merchants oppose scrape+inject so much? it seems to be against their benefit: they are loosing sales, especially on mobile. Am I misunderstanding how Carte works? It scrapes the checkout page and auto-fills the form, doesn't it? So, the merchant gets all the user info and it's the merchant who charges the card. Right? (Technically, browsers could do it, too) Why do they oppose it?
How do you guys plan to monetize this great idea?
Also, one demographic you can target are overseas shoppers who uses freight forwarding services that sometimes doesn't support certain merchants. :)
@edtoh There are a few thoughts on monetization, including affiliate fees (the RetailMeNot model). We're also in discussions with a few dozen retailers to add a "Buy with Carte" button directly next to "Add to Cart" buttons on retailer websites. This would allow us some more flexibility in terms of monetization.
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site doesn't say what it does. but seems simple to get started - just paste a url: doh, then it says you have to sign up.
waste of an opportunity. no way I'm going to sign up if you don't show me what you actually do.
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Interesting concept, but isn't Cosmic Cart also going into this?
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