Six months ago I joined a team working on a new start-up called laZook. It’s an online distributor, providing brands with a single route to many existing eCommerce channels and some that we’re helping to develop from scratch. We handle the listing, fulfilment and payment for these brands’ products.
We have various features at varying levels of maturity. One of those is a “microstore” that provides a drop down checkout on a website. This is in use already on several blogs and magazine sites. It needs more work but, as it stands, it provides a publisher with the choice of thousands of products to sell on their site. They insert a javascript snippet on their page and their site is now eCommerce enabled. For each purchase they receive commission, much like in a traditional affiliate scheme. One advantage here is that the purchaser is not taken off site for the checkout flow.
We’re currently using PayPal for the payment processing, but they don’t seem to have moved with the times very much and do force us into some poor user experience during checkout. As a result we’ll likely be moving to Stripe at some point soon. They have some modern APIs and can offer a lot more control over the experience.
If you want to see the Microstore in action (even if it is a little rough around the edges), check out the Ex Cellar Wine Club blog. Please do give us some feedback on what you think!