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 pretty much what I wanted, had a good feature set and with full access to the source let me modify as required for my clients needs.
At first I used to try and do everything – so I’d come up with a design, then ‘crowbar’ this into a Cactushop template, configure all the options (there were about 200 of them), configure and load the database and resize all the images. This used to take quite a chunk of time and as a consequence increased my costs. Not only that I used to have to have to look after the hosting and make sure everything was ok.
As time went on I would do more and more bespoke modifications which became ever more complicated to the point where I’d just had enough. There must be another way of doing things.
Seeing the light
It was only recently that I discovered Shopify and it’s been a true revelation. Never has the KISS acronym been better illustrated in eCommerce. Something that used to be complicated and time consuming is now straightforward and ‘no worries’. I don’t have to worry about the server, the database, the OS, resizing multiple images, ‘hacking’ some code so the template will work with the CSS, upgrading the software and/or database. Now I can concentrate on getting a shop up and running as quickly as possible without any hassles – what a joy.
To those who say Shopify is expensive – I say you don’t understand the true value of what your getting. The guys at JadedPixel are providing you with a solid platform on which you can establish a simple, easy to use system for selling your goods and services that is way beyond anything else out there at the moment. Sure it doesn’t have all the bells and whistles of some other systems but then does it need to? I think, based on the 80/20 rule it covers most requirements that business owners have when selling online.
I for one applaud Tobi and the team for building Shopify into what it is today and trust they will keep the simplicity and elegance that sets them apart from the competition.
I’ll be posting some tips here on an adhoc basis about how you can utilise some of the less well known features to optimize your Shopify store to the full. A lot of these are probably already in the Shopify forums but I’ll be expanding on many of them so you can judge if they’ll be fit for your requirements. I don’t pretend to be an expert but just want to share my experience of what has helped me since I started on my Shopify journey.
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