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.

Interesting idea. Great demonstration of using flash for good rather than evil.

My tip: instructions are sparse – hit the forum for the most helpful information.

Who is linking to your competitor’s site, but not to yours?
http://www.linktree.info/

What is the overall visibility measure for your site?
http://www.marketleap.com/publinkpop/

Want all the gory details on a URL?
http://www.faganfinder.com/urlinfo/

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Nulla in neque. Duis ultricies, nulla non hendrerit feugiat, nunc odio consequat sapien, id vestibulum orci lectus eget wisi. Donec porttitor tempor mauris. Sed massa purus, fringilla et, vestibulum ut, blandit eu, eros…

Look familiar? Lorem Ipsum, or Lipsum for short, is simply dummy text of the printing and typesetting industry. Lipsum has been the industry’s standard dummy text ever since the 1500s, when an unknown printer took a galley of type and scrambled it to make a type specimen book.

Need some Lipsum for your project? Generate your own or read about its history here:  http://www.lipsum.com/