Hi there,
I wanted to get feedback/validation from existing store owners on an app idea. In a nutshell, I'd like to know whether any of you would be interested in a public forum add-on for your existing Shopify store. E.g. a discussion board that will allow you to publicly interact with both prospective and existing customers.
As I understand it, it's currently quite fiddly to integrate a public forum into existing stores. One usually needs to use an external piece of software such as vBulletin/phpBB which requires your users to create separate logins. As such, you lose visibility into whether each poster is a customer or not. My proposed solution will map Shopify customer accounts directly to the forum (same login), so you will immediately know who you're engaging with and get a sense of customer value etc.
My questions:
1) Do you see a need for a public forum attached to an eCommerce store? If so, are there any core specific features that you'd like to see?
2) What channels do you currently use for public engagement with customers (e.g. do you have a FB page)?
3) What are your thoughts on using public vs private channels to engage with customers? E.g. do you currently prefer to announce new product launches to a subset of users via private mediums such as email, or do you send public announcements via FB, Twitter etc?
Look forward to your feedback. If this idea has legs, I'll try and get a deeper understanding of your needs and we can go from there.
Cheers,
Dhruv