Ubercart

If you are looking for a marketing slogan then "Ubercart: E-Commerce Made Easy" is the way to go. Folks are looking for something that is easy to use, modify, install and maintain. It sells itself.

However, you are correct in that this slogan may not tell the whole truth!

My thought is it doesn't have to have the "cool" factor of "One cart to rule them all..." but it can still be smart and meaningful. imo, the ones listed for example, are bland and don't say much about Ubercart or its strengths. I could see almost any other cart using the same thing.

What are Ubercart's unique characteristics? Well, the obvious one is its relationship to Drupal. This brings in all the benefits (and drawbacks) of using Drupal when someone's setting up their store, but we try to make it easy on the newcomer. I think what will continue to move Ubercart forward as it's tied to Drupal will be its ability to help you do any sort of commerce through your website. No longer just selling physical products, but selling services, access, customizable products, user defined products, etc. Those things are all possible to some extent and will continue to be simplified as Ubercart matures. Maybe we should be looking for where we want to go... more community involvement and internationalization along with the flexibility that doing commerce on top of Drupal provides.

So, how in a few words, can you condense Ubercart's flexibility and do-it-yourself nature into a few words that you wouldn't feel goofy wearing on a shirt or putting on a business card? I guess that's where the brainstorming starts.

Cool! I was thinking about this very thing just the other day.

I think Andy and Ryan hit on the key things already. I went through a few questions:
What do we want evoke emotionally in potential users? A tagline shouldn't be a literal description, it needs to have feeling of "yeah, I want that!"
What makes Ubercart unique? Really, when we compare it to ALL the possible solutions out there, from a PayPal button to a Yahoo Store to a custom online store solution -- the integration with Drupal and flexibility are Ubercart's strengths
What do we want people to take action on?

Ubercart + Drupal is all about connecting the dots -- combining your physical product with your community, your customers, and things like multiple product formats or subscriptions. Lots of C-words here... commerce, community, content, combination, connection, customers...

It sparked any idea I'll throw into the ring here:

Connected commerce

The alliteration and balance between the words has a nice feel, and the "connected" is open to multiple interpretations.

Ubercart
Connected commerce

Some random thoughts:

Ubercart - a Smart eCommerce Solution for Drupaller
Ubercart - an Uplifting Shopping Experience
Ubercart - a Moneymaker for Drupaller

Long time reader, first time post -- blame it on the bikeshed effect.

This discussion has been an interesting insight into what is ubercart. I agree that it's not always easy. Maybe more like adaptable, or accessible, versatile, and profitable.

I'm excited about a new tagline that communicates more clearly what Ubercart is/does in a way that is still cool. I think "connected commerce" does that pretty well.

"Shopping Cart for Drupal" is probably too boring?

Ubercart: Because E-Commerce should be easy.

Thanks for all the great ideas so far. Keep them coming! A few thoughts so far:
Who are we trying to reach?
The key to a good tag line is understanding your target audience. Our target audience is the person who makes the decision as to which e-commerce application to use. I tried to break down our target audience and came up with the following categories:

People who are developers/ a development shop, an independent business owner, or a "CIO" of some sort.
People who love Drupal, know of Drupal, or have never heard of Drupal.
People who want Ubercart for personal use, small business, or big business.

These groups are all intermixed, poorly defined, and sometimes have conflicting interest. The challenge is choosing which ones to target and how to target them best.

I think using "Drupal" in the tag should be avoided because most of our target audience does not know what "Drupal" is, and using an unknown word in a definition / tag line is likely to frustrate people. People who love Drupal will naturally choose Ubercart, and we should not waste our tag line selling people who have already bought in. Only people who know of Drupal; don't love it; don't hate it; just "like" it will be positively influence by using the "Drupal" in the tag line. That being said, we are proud to be a Drupal module and proclaim it in the first sentence people read on ubercart.org which is imho, where it should be.

Another area of contention is between "cool" developers and "square" CIO types. The current tag line is cool as cool can be, but there is an entire audience we are currently not targeting. Even most developers / development shops have square customers / bosses.

Personal users, small business types and big business all want easy, flexible, and feature rich, but personal users tend to focus on easy while small and big business tend to focus on flexibility and features. I think we should focus on small and big business mainly because Ubercart / Drupal is usable by "Joe" user, but still has a long way to go before "Joe" user can install, maintain, upgrade etc. . . I think "Joe" is better served by a hosted model like Yahoo Stores which is not to say someone can't provide a hosted solution using Ubercart, but that is not Ubercart, that is "Hosted Ubercart".

So who is our target audience? Our target audience is someone who is choosing an e-commerce application. Someone who is not very familiar with Drupal or CMS's in general. Someone who's web site is big enough to justify getting hosting and installing/configuring Ubercart/Drupal. Someone who has some coolness, but also has square customers / bosses. Someone who wants easy and flexible and feature rich, but tends to be willing to sacrifice some easy for the flexibility and features they need.

I think I have managed to slight every single group within the Drupal and Ubercart communities in a single post! If I have offended you, it is not my intent, and I apologize in advance.
Cheers,
Andy

Here are some of my favorites so far and why:

E-Commerce Made Easy : Good-> This addresses a key concern for most people trying to set up an e-commerce site. In addition, it will force us to focus on making Ubercart easy. Bad-> I believe that Ubercart is easier then most other e-commerce apps, but Ubercart is not easy. This is mainly because e-commerce is not easy. This may be turn-offish to big business CIO types who think easy = simple = not capable of handling a large site. I believe our competitors would certainly spin it that way.

Connected commerce : Good-> My favorite so far. An excellent segway into the one page "elevator pitch" explanation of Ubercart. Bad-> It's taken

commerce & content simplified : Good-> Simplified has most of the positive of easy without most of the negative. Hints at Ubercart's relationship to content (Drupal). Bad-> Something about the & doesn't work for me.

flexible commerce & content : Basically the same good and bad as above, but uses flexible instead of simplified.

Connected. Open. Commerce.
Connected Community Commerce : Good-> Same as "Connected commerce" but more robust due to the added words. Community and open are both popular terms now. Bad-> I am uncertain how Open or Community will affect our target. Our audience is not looking for "community" even if we know they need it. Open has a positive ring for those of us who support FOSS, but is somewhat threatening to the corporate world.

Social commerce : Good-> "Social" is a hot buzz word. Bad-> "Social" is a hot buzz word. Social probably does not describe what most people are going to do with Ubercart.

Easy - open - endless : Good-> It sounds like Ubercart is just what you need, whatever you need! Bad-> It's vague

Because E-Commerce should be easy : Good-> similar use of easy without actually saying Ubercart is easy. Negates most of the bad of the other "easy" lines. Bad-> Doesn't really address what makes Ubercart unique.

After reviewing the list I think we can break it down into two general categories: 1. "Ubercart is easy" type lines. 2. "Connected. Community, Open..." type lines. I believe the "connected" type is a little better approach since it has broader appeal and more (at least some) coolness potential. The "easy" type has strong appeal to individuals, but is potentially seen as negative to developers and business types. Maybe the best solution is to use a connected type line and include "simplified."

If you have an opinion or critique, please share it. In the mean time, I will present these tag lines to potential Ubercart users and see how they react.
Peace,
Andy

Every time I turn around I find yet another new opensource shopping cart. Why do they keep trying to reinvent the wheel? Obviously, the developers are frustrated by what the other cart makers are not doing right. So they come up with their "own" remedy.

As long as your try to be the "one cart to rule them all", all you'll every have is "yet another shopping cart". A shopping cart by itself is only one very small part of e-commerce so it doesn't qualify to be called and e-commerce system either unless you are willing to live with the criticisms of it's lack of enterprise-style order processing.

If you want to be better than the others, break out of the shopping cart metaphor entirely and turn this into a proper order processing system that an enterprise can use. It will still be able to do "shopping cart", but it won't be limited to that.

Ubercart seems to be a mythical place where it can be anything you want it to be, as testified to by the depth of the conversation about who ubercart is trying to talk to with the tagline.

so what about the idea of ubercart as a place and using 'where' in the tag line?

ubercart: where content and commerce meet.
ubercart: where content and commerce connect.
ubercart: where content and commerce hook up. (small joke on hooks)

on ubercart's tendency to bring people to drupal, what about--
ubercart: come for the cart, stay for the community.

ubercart: all the things you didn't realize you couldn't live without in ecommerce. (a bit wordy)

ubercart: multidimensional ecommerce solutions (might not be true)

Just some more thoughts.

I've been evaluating Ubercart vs some other solutions in the last days, and I've been thinking how it would fit into a business offer. Therefore I could share my personal point of view here.

Ubercart as an "easy" e-commerce solution is a wish, not a reality. You will bring a lot of deception among beginners and people w/o any Drupal knowledge. Drupal in itself is already difficult to learn (I know that by spending hell of a time helping in forums) Even if you have an ubercart distrib you still have to spend hours to get a decent, good looking store. We are far from an out-of-the box solution and I am not sure it is even the way to go. To me Ubercart is used by serious guys, web dev companies not site owners, to build customized web sites with e-commerce capabilities/

According to me, the key value argument for Ubercart is its tight integration to Drupal and so the possibilities it brings relative to building a full community site with e-commerce capabilities (or a full e-commerce website with community functions). It also brings great flexibility in the final result.

This is where we differentiate from :
* Magento --> excellent for big specialized e-commerce sites
* Prestashop --> excellent for basic e-commerce sites

So we should focus on Ubercart actuel strenght, communicate on its Drupal integration and what it brings. Then, we will be able to compete in Magento field (adding more features) and Prestashop field (one click install).

So to me the tag line should get these ideas :
1)E-commerce
2)Community
3)Flexibility / power

This is why I like the "Connected e-commerce" tag line.
It could also be :
* Ubercart, Flexible e-commerce solution
* Ubercart, Connected e-commerce solution
* Ubercart, Integrated e-commerce solution
* Ubercart, Where e-commerce meets e-community
* Ubercart, Where e-commerce meets social networking
* Ubercart, Next generation e-commerce sites
* Ubercart, Community shop building
* Ubercart, Community and e-commerce bound together
* Ubercart, Selling to your e-community
* Ubercart for Drupal : Publishing, Networking, Selling
* Ubercart for Drupal : Publish + Network = Sell more
* Ubercart for Drupal : Publishing + Networking + Selling
* Ubercart for Drupal : sell more !

I like a lot the last one, as long as you can explain that, by combining Drupal Publishing and Networking functions and Ubercart Selling functions, you will grow your sales one step further.

Sorry this is a bit long...

OK, it is time to wrap this thread up!

I think we can all agree on a few things:

1. macrocosm144 is right, there is no reason we have to have just one tag line. For right now, let's keep "One Cart. . ." for the developer / community pages and choose a new one for the squares. In the future we may even have a third highlighting Drupal for those who have drunk the coolaid

2. ineation and a few others are right. Ubercart is not as easy as it could be. Ubercart is feature rich. Every feature is a choice and every choice requires choosing, which is not easy. So we should avoid that word.

3. The square tag line should focus on Ubercart's flexibility / CMS / Drupalness which are all the same thing really.

With that in mind I will choose 5 - 10 of the suggested tag lines and create a poll for people to vote on. If you want to influence which lines make it to the poll, PM me with your pitch. Otherwise expect a link to a poll shortly.
Peace,
Andy

I set up a poll for people to vote on their favorite tag line. Here it is: http://www.ubercart.org/poll/which_ubercart_tag_line_do_you_best
We'll leave it open for voting until the end of Drupalcon (March 8th).
Thanks to everyone for their great suggestions and insightful discussion. I feel like we have a much better understanding of our community and our goals as a result.

What about

Ubercart on Drupal - e-commerce for your e-community

or

Drupal & Ubercart - Community and Commerce

(I haven't read the whole thread so apologies if someone has suggested this before.)

Colin

(ps - but I really still like "One cart to rule them all.")

A few more concepts/words from brainstorming to keep the ball rolling...

Community commerce building
Bringing your customers together
Conversation
Exchange
Marketplace
Flexibility
Growth
Interactive
Beyond commerce
E-commerce that grows with you/your community
Grow your community, grow your business
Connecting the pieces of commerce
The Marketplace Builder

I think the real question is

Do we need a tag line?

Without looking it up, how many of you know the Drupal tag line?

next question is what does the Drupal tag line mean, and have you ever used it to describe Drupal?

Can any of you name the tag line from an any open source project, without looking it up?

Personally, I don't think we need a tag line, let alone a new tag line. Look at the examples from the new Drupal style guide, and you will not see the tag used anywhere. It's still something many Drupal developers know, and It's important to them, but it's not widely used.

In my opinion we should keep our current "One cart to rule them all", as our tag line, to simply be used among ourselves. Instead of focusing on a better tag line, we should focus on our overall message, marketing, and Ubercart itself.