Background: I agreed to design and launch a customized e-commerce store for a luxury menswear brand in just 3 days. My adorable client landed some very high profile press and wanted to maximize the exposure and get the cash register ringing. I’ve built many, many e-commerce sites and I prefer custom builds over hosted e-commerce because the hosted services are horrid time-sucking trolls (yes, I’m looking at you Yahoo! Stores). 3 days, however, is not enough time to get a custom build out the door nor is it enough time to get a merchant account and gateway processor installed. So… hosted e-commerce was the best solution and I decided to take Shopify out for a spin.

What I like about Shopify:

• Using CSS to control the design made the customization quick
• Simple admin tool with drag and drop ajax features makes administering quick and pleasant
• Ability to customize interactions like confirmation screens, store logic, and various customer emails
• Payment gateway documentation and support is great
• Easy Google Analytics integration (web analytics)
• Easy Campaign Monitor integration (email newsletters)
• Custom packing slips
• Slick order processing workflow
• Offline designer tool for customizing the store theme

What I really don’t like about Shopify:

• All 4 images (thumbnail, small, medium and large) for a product are scaled versions of the original so you’re stuck with the same aspect ratio for everything in the layout unless you do some (crappy) CSS workarounds.
• No relationship between the product variants and the image so when adding the green sweater to your cart, you see which ever thumbnail is the default image for the product . The support forums make it clear that the developers think this is absolutely fine and they have no intention of changing it.
• You have to upgrade to a hefty monthly plan to be able to offer coupons/discounts
• No free shipping option in the coupon tool which is a HUGE oversight
• Anything above basic CSS styling requires a working knowledge of Ruby, which is fine for me but not so much for someone without a geek badge.
• Checkout flow isn’t connected to the store template by default, requires lots more work

What I somewhat dislike about Shopify:

• Inventory management: no single-page data entry view for updating product on hand. This means 10 products with 10 variants (colors) = 300 clicks to open – edit – save if you need to do a mass update and are afraid of the spreadsheet uploader (typical clients are scared) or worried about the uploader’s lackluster documentation. Ugh.
• Out of inventory workflow should offer a ‘notify me’ option; I did a quick hack with a bit of logic and a call to a special Campaign Monitor mailing list but it’s not ideal.
• Directions for updating DNS so you don’t have shopname.myshopify.com as your store URL are wonky, so beginners will definitely struggle with this and I would bet more than a few kill their email routing in the process.
• Fee structure; you pay monthly for the store hosting (doesn’t include email hosting) and then a % of sales which is separate from the % of sale and transaction fee you’ll pay with the credit card processor. It adds up quickly!
• Coupon management is tedious – repetitive tasks like this should be streamlined for control via spreadsheet/csv uploads

Conclusion:

Shopify is a decent solution if you have low expectations and intermediate technology skills. You’ll pay a premium for the turn-key e-commerce but it’s a good starting point for those with low budgets and tight timelines. I would consider it a quick-launch starter option that’s far superior to other products but definitely not a long-term platform recommendation.