Perch Shop v1.0

Today we are extremely pleased to announce the launch of Perch Shop – a flexible and powerful e-commerce add-on for both Perch and Perch Runway.

It was way back in summer last year that we first announced we had begun work on an e-commerce add-on for Perch. Traditionally, when it comes to adding e-commerce to a project, designers have had to reach for a different sort of tool than the one they normally work with in order to meet the project requirements. Sometimes that means abandoning their familiar CMS and reaching for a clunky dedicated e-commerce platform, and other times it means a compromised sub-site hosted on an app somewhere else, with awkward links back and forth.

We didn’t want that for Perch, so since last summer we’ve been working hard at developing what we believe is a truly first-class addition to Perch, and something that’s more than just a basic add-on. Along with the help of more than 100 beta-testers, we’ve been building, testing and refining a full set of e-commerce functionality to help you to delivery really great online stores to your clients.

Perch Shop is free

So what do you need to know? Perch Shop is free and is available right now as an add-on to Perch and Perch Runway. If you want to start selling today, the only costs above your Perch license are the payment processing charges levied by the payment provider you choose.

Perch Shop is for Perch and Runway but it’s designed mostly for Runway. If you’ve got a small handful of items to sell, you’ll be fine on Perch. If you’re building out a full e-commerce site, you’ll want to use Perch Runway. Advanced features like multiple currencies and trade pricing are for Runway only.

You can sell physical and digital products and services. From products that need shipping weights and sizes, through to ebooks, event tickets and website membership, you can sell it all through Perch Shop.

It’s all just self-hosted like the rest of Perch. Apart from your payment provider and any additional services you opt into, Perch Shop itself is hosted as part of your Perch install on your own web hosting. You’re not reliant on a service provider. (This is a change from our early plans, which you can read more about )

Just like everything else in Perch, the design is up to you. We’ve worked really hard to make sure this isn’t a cart process that you have to ‘skin’ without being able to fully control. How things look and more importantly, how they work is down to you. We’ve provided a set of tools for you to design the shopping and checkout experience that most fits with the project you’re trying to deliver.

Just the start

It’s taken a lot of hard work to get to this stage, and there’s still lots more we want to add. From support for more payment gateways, to more order management tools, and building out the developer API, we’ve got big plans for Perch Shop going into the future. You can find out more on our dedicated Perch Shop site, which includes a roadmap where you can vote on what features you need to see implemented next.

If you’d like to take a closer look, we’ve updated the Nest Running Club demo to use Perch Runway and Perch Shop, and so you can get a flavour for how it works there. The files are also all on GitHub as usual.

Once you’re ready to go, you can download Perch Shop from the Add-ons section and then visit the docs to get started.