7 Examples of a Customized Shopify Checkout

by Stuart Whitman on December 14, 2010

Customize Shopify Checkout

One of the most common misconceptions about Shopify is you can’t customize the checkout pages. While it’s true you can’t change the field inputs you most definately can style the checkout to suit your store and carry the theme throughout the checkout process.

As the chaps at Boagworld pointed out a lot of ecommerce solutions fail their customers by producing checkouts that fail users. Not so Shopify whose enclosed checkout process is optimized and conforms to current best practice. This means that you get a proven method of reducing cart abandonment with no distractions for shoppers whilst having a simple way to theme your pages within the constraints.

1. Penny Aracde

Penny Arcade Shopify Checkout

2. DODOcase

DODOcase Shopify Cheeckout

3. Brooklyn Slate

Brooklyn Slate Shopify Checkout

4. Nicola Whitman

Nicola Whitman Shopify Checkout

5. Lady Bugs Picnic

Lady Bugs Picnic Shopify Checkout

6. Centre for eBusiness

Centre for eBusiness Shopify Checkout

7. Airside

Airside Shopify Checkout

What would you like to do on the checkout?

{ 8 comments }

A shop in minutes. A business for life.

by Stuart Whitman on November 9, 2010

Post image for A shop in minutes. A business for life.

Now I know what your thinking – I’ve heard that somewhere before.

Well it’s Shopifys’ tag line and used to feature quite prominently in various marketing promos. The thing is you shouldn’t just treat this as some throwaway remark.

It’s true.

In just a few minutes ANYONE can have their own shop up and running as a Shopify store. But, just because you can open a store in between the ad breaks doesn’t mean you should. If you really do want a business for life then think about these things first before you get carried away.

Price

Anyone can sell for the least money, but can you really survive long term making 20% margin? Remember cheap and value are two different things. Even with the world economy as it is now people still appreciate quality. And quality has a value. You only have too look at Shopify itself for this to be true. Shopify isn’t the cheapest ecommerce platform and in fact as well as a monthly fee they also charge a transaction fee on each sale. Has this hindered their growth? No. They currently have over 10,000 stores that believe what they are offering is value for money.

System

Now I’m not necessarily talking about computer or software system here, more the processes which define your business. This is important. All successful companies have systems which make them unique and set them apart from the competition.

McDonalds – They worked out a system years ago of how to create fast food that’s the same the world over. You may not like it but wow what a business model.

Amazon – Possibly the most well know ‘system’. Jeff Bezos created the ultimate ecommerce destination by figuring out a great business process. Just seemingly simple things like 1-click ordering make Amazon easier to use and more efficient than there competitors.

LingsCars – Now most of you will probably have never heard of Ling, but just bare with me on this. Ling is a Chinese imigrant who runs a successful and ever growing car leasing business here in the U.K. Nothing particularly special there. But instead of being like every other car leasing company and having a pretty site, not really updating it and getting people to phone for information Lings website is her whole system. All communication with customers from when they first make an enquiry to when the car gets delivered is driven from within the website using her self-made processes. Now you might not like her website but the system is genius, especially when you consider the items being purchased.

And this leads onto…

Scaleability

Yes, you may be a startup running out of your front room, but scaleability is key to your success. If you can scale faster, easier and cheaper than your competition you can get economies of scale. And this is where it gets really interesting. You can now get your widgets even cheaper and make more money from each sale. You  now invest that money in your process and…

You are on your way. Just start and repeat.

So now you’ve got your Shopify store you can also use it to drive your business for life. It’s not just a piece of software that’s installed on a server somewhere and has a shopping basket built into it. This is an ecommerce platform that can be the centre of your business, easily extend into different systems and scale with no hassle.

From $25 a month I reckon that’s amazing value.

{ 0 comments }

Why you can’t out Amazon, Amazon.

March 18, 2010

Following on from my blog post about why your store shouldn’t be like Amazon it seems like Seth Godin has the very same message. After going into Walmarts’ headquarters 10 years there was a banner on the wall “YOU CAN’T OUT AMAZON, AMAZON” And it all comes down to this: “If Walmart has said we [...]

Read the full article →

6 Reasons why your Ecommerce site shouldn’t be like Amazon

March 10, 2010

When developing ecommerce sites I frequently get asked about doing things ‘the same Amazon’. While Amazon maybe a reference point during your quest to get an online store up and running there are several reasons why your site shouldn’t be like Amazon: 1. Biggest doesn’t mean Best Just because they’re the biggest online retailer doesn’t [...]

Read the full article →

Example Shopify product import file with variants and multiple images

November 13, 2009

A few clients have wanted to import products into Shopify but have trouble understanding exactly what information should go into the different columns of the import file. One of the easiest ways I find to explain this is to see what a ‘live’ import file looks. The attached import file is taken from the Doc Black [...]

Read the full article →

A simple step-by-step guide to customizing your Shopify checkout page

October 3, 2009

I recently posted on the Shopfy forum of a simple method to customize your Shopify checkout pages. This provides an easy way to keep the look of the checkout pages whilst adding your own logo / telephone number and help text. Even for those with limited css / image editing skills you should be able [...]

Read the full article →

How To: Link an External Landing Page to your Shopify Store

July 9, 2009

Some times it may be beneficial to buy external domains and create landing pages on these to link to your Shopify store. I have recently done this for one of my stores that sells compatible stationery for Sage, Iris and Pegasus accounting and payroll software. After deciding what keywords and phrases I wanted to target [...]

Read the full article →

How To: Create Dropdown list of Quantites using Liquid

June 2, 2009

When I first started using Shopify one of the first things I wanted to do was create a dropdown list of quantites in the product.liquid template as I prefer them to having input boxes where a user can type in a number. The simple way would be: <select> <option value=”1″>1</option> <option value=”2″>2</option> <option value=”3″>3</option> </select> [...]

Read the full article →

Why I’m hooked on Shopify

April 22, 2009

In the five years since leaving the cosy umbrella of full time employment and setting up my web development business I’ve used a lot of ecommerce software. I started out with osCommerce, Zen Cart and the like but didn’t know much PHP at the time so settled on Cactushop a classic ASP application. It did [...]

Read the full article →