This is a good point. I'm super worried i'm "They front-load the problem with objectivity" as you put it.
My problem is more like I've potentially found a way to streamline/improve this process. Concern is however will it be important enough to get users attention, let alone monetizing down the line.
It's a problem I discovered in my previous role over a number of years. And the issue is there's no clear pain point, it's numerous, and it affects more than one party i.e brands, users and media.
Lived in SZ for 2 years, the comments in the media are too negative. Shenzhen is losing manufacturing, all the while the city's GDP continues to grow. Why? Because it's moving into more higher value areas such as software. I don't see any downside for SZ, it's location at the heart of the region, between HK, GZ etc, makes it well placed to continue to thrive.
Thanks for the reply. We haven't really got a sufficiently large budget for marketing as it is so perhaps we should try and see how far we can go without one. (knowing we'll need one later anyway)
People build their own still for a multitude of reasons, one of these being may be that they don't want to be locked in to a single platform. If Shopify shut down tomorrow, would your business be in trouble?
This is correct and sums up the hosted vs self-hosted arguement. It really depends on your needs and resource - if you have Devlelopers/IT folks for example then building out your own site would be sensible. Yet if you have less of those and more marketing people, hosted might make more sense.
Wordpress or Squarespace. Both are hosted. Wordpress is especially nice as you can export and deploy your own self-hosted site with all of your content later.
Ask people will they buy it. If they want it, you have something. From there, it's fairly easy to setup a CMS or Ecommerce store - either hosted/self-hosted - and you can get immediate feedback in the form of orders or messages of interest.