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Webstore

At Propcart, our mission is to streamline the process of buying and renting props and set dressing for the entertainment industry.

Part of how we do this is by providing affordable, high performance ecommerce websites (webstores) to prop houses, prop fabricators and cleared art galleries. We call these "Propcart Pro Webstores."

Design Goals​

Our design goals for the Webstore are:

  • Be easy to understand and use
  • Be quick and easy to set up
  • Be affordable
  • Be lightning fast to load a page, browse and search
  • Look modern but minimalist
  • Offer a frictionless shopping experience
  • Function just as well on mobile as on tablet or desktop devices
  • Come optimized for SEO out-of-the-box

We use a Template​

A Propcart Pro Webstore is built on an opinionated template that has been battle-tested by prop houses and their customers since 2018. We have good reasons for many of our design decisions. However, we're always learning and every client we work with brings fresh ideas and feature requests that improve the template for everyone.

The template was built from scratch specifically for prop house ecommerce. We're not using a Wordpress or Shopify website builder like some other prop house websites. Having our own custom platform gives us the flexibility to build anything we want without the restrictions of a third-party system.

However, we don't want to create a hairball mess of spaghetti code and configuration options that make it difficult to maintain and explain or hurt performance. Sometimes we have to say no to a design or feature request.

The majority of new feature requests are built for free because they benefit everyone; our customers regularly get free upgrades. Thus, every Propcart Pro client benefits from our community of ideas, be they design, usability or feature enhancements, bug fixes, or security patches.

I want my website to look totally unique​

It's important that a website creates a unique "sense of place" and has a distinct look and feel that accurately represents your branding goals. But being unique can be costly and time consuming, and many prop house owners don't have the time or budget for that.

As more customers choose Propcart, making each of our websites look unique becomes more of a concern for prospective customers deciding if Propcart is right for them. Usually, creating a unique page header and homepage is good enough to satisfy this concern, and we are happy to work with you on this.

However, please note that Propcart is not in the business of building bespoke websites. There's a limit on how much can be customized. And some customizations cost extra depending on the scope and timeline.

Rather than try to list everything that is and is not customizable, just tell us what you want over a phone call and we'll tell you if we can accomodate.

I want to own my website​

Sorry, we don't sell websites. Propcart is a "Software as a Service" company and we will retain ownership of all the code and proprietary technology. Just like you can't own your Shopify or Squarespace website, you can't own your Propcart website. But you'll own the copyright to all of your website's data and content.

Prop house owners who want to own their website often use an open source codebase like WordPress to build their website. If we thought that was a good idea, we'd be building WordPress websites too. WordPress uses old dinosaur technology that's slow and doesn't scale well. It's also a nightmare to maintain since you're constantly battling third-party plugins, themes and security updates.

Another problem with WordPress is that good developers hate working with it. So you'll usually get a below average web developer who ends up hitting the limits of the WordPress technology, thereby affecting the usability and performance of your website. And then that developer will eventually move on and not maintain your website anymore, so you'll have to find another developer to maintain it, which is risky and expensive.

The alternative to WordPress is to hire a developer to build you a custom website from scratch, but this can cost six figures and take years to build. New websites always come with bugs and usability problems, so you'll spend a long time playing whack-a-mole with all these maintenance issues. And then you still risk the developer not wanting to maintain the website anymore.

Let's Get Started​

Now that you're aware of the benefits and limitations of a Propcart Pro Webstore, you can decide if it's right for you. If so, awesome! Let's start building your website.

The next pages will guide you through the setup process so that we can get your website designed and built quickly with minimal rework.

Once you work through the Setup Guide, then we'll start working on individual Pages.

Click "Next" below to get started.