This article was published on June 3, 2010

Vendr (now Wazala) turns your existing site into your own web store. [Beta Codes]


Vendr (now Wazala) turns your existing site into your own web store. [Beta Codes]

When you look at the animated face of Chris Pirillo, everyone knows who it is.  Chris has spent many years with the same logo, building up some brand notoriety.  If he wanted to sell Lockergnome gear, his best bet would be to start a web store aside from his own site.

But not anymore, thanks to Wazala.

Wazala is a beautiful implementation of a great concept.  It allows you to integrate a fully functional store right on top of your existing site.  So not only do you not lose people from your site, you have yet another reason for them to stay.

The best part?  You can get it up and running in 15 minutes, no serious codemonkey needed.  After setting up your products through an intuitive control panel, you simply paste a few lines of code into your website or blog template and your store is up and running.

So what’s it look like?  Frankly, amazing.  There’s a lovely tab that will reside at the top of your page.  Clicking on it will bring up your full web store, in a shadowbox format:

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The entire selection and checkout process is handled in the box, while your site stays in place underneath.

Wazala is set to allow physical, as well as digital products and services, so more people can sell more items.  This truly is the way that e-commerce should be for those of us who have no aspirations to become Amazon.

Wazala has some pretty specific ideas in mind as to who will use their service.  According to their press release, bloggers and internet entrepreneurs as well as musicians, photographers, writers and artists will benefit from Wazala.

Eager to give it a try?  You should be.  First, take a look at three demo sites that will show Wazala’s integration with self-hosted, service-hosted and even blog integration.

For now, Wazala is in private beta.  But, here at TNW we’re happy to be able to give some of you the opportunity to try the service with this beta invite key:

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Plug it in, and once it’s gone it’s gone so you’ll want to hop on this one fast.

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