Posts Tagged ‘shopify Development’

5 Best Shopify Apps of 2021 for Boosting Store Sales

March 3rd, 2021

As Shopify has become the popular choice for eCommerce store development, the number of applications being developed for this platform is also ever-increasing. My focus is mainly on the apps that help your store boost its sales. If you are like most eCommerce business owners that have invested in Shopify development as the platform for their website, you are probably also hired Shopify eCommerce SEO experts to bring traffic on your site. However, all that effort will be for nothing if that traffic does not convert.

Below are the top 5 apps of 2021 that can help your Shopify store increase its sales –

  1. Infinite Options

This app lets you customize your product pages beyond the 3 customizations per page limitation. This is a totally free app that lets you add more product choices per page, hence increasing your chances of selling more to your website’s visitors.  You can check out this app here – https://apps.shopify.com/custom-options

  1. Testimonial Showcase

This app is the perfect way to build trust in the minds of your website visitors. This app lets you showcase the testimonials and reviews of your customers on your eCommerce site. When your new visitors check out the positive reviews you have received, your visitors are more likely to purchase from you.

You get several customization options that let you decide how many testimonials to display, the colours you want to use, various layouts to choose from.  You can find this app here – https://apps.shopify.com/evm-testimonials-showcase

  1. Aftership

One of the reasons for refunds and charge backs for your products is shipping related problems. That is why my next pick is Aftership. This is a free app that lets eCommerce site owners track their product shipping in the following way –

  •    It auto tracks shipments from over 350+ courier companies
  •    Shows the tracking result on your store
  •    Notifies your customers when the product is out for delivery when it is expected to be delivered or any exceptions that may apply

Check out this app here – https://apps.shopify.com/aftership

  1. Product Upsell

This one is a paid app but is also the highest selling app currently available. It is an excellent tool for increasing your sales. As the name suggests, this app lets you upsell to customers when they buy something on your website. For example, if a customer adds a smart phone to his or her cart, this app will show related products like back covers or screen guards that can be purchased with that phone.  This statistically improves your chances of selling more products to the same customer.

You can get this app here – https://apps.shopify.com/product-upsell

  1. Persistent Cart

Cart abandonment is a major challenge for eCommerce stores. Persistent Cart is an app that can help you reduce cart abandonment. This is how it works – when your customers visit your site and add items to their cart; this app remembers the entire list of items. When your customers exit the store without purchasing and return to your store using any other device even, this app automatically places all these items back into their cart.  Try this app for yourself and you will notice a noticeable reduction in your cart abandonment.

Check out this app here – https://apps.shopify.com/cart-persistify

Conclusion:  These are just a few of the apps that I can recommend for your eCommerce store. However, there are several other good apps that solve various purposes like SEO for Shopify or help with Shopify support and maintenance. By combining those apps with the ones suggested here, you can ensure a boost in the productivity and profitability of your Shopify eCommerce store.

How Shopify Web Designers Help Businesses With Dropshipping?

March 3rd, 2021

Dropshipping is an approach to sell products without having a warehouse storing the inventory. Dropshipping lets you sell products, buying them from a supplier that owns the inventory and ships the item for you. Shopify web designers allow you to handle the price that your clients see in your Shopify store, while just paying the wholesale rate to the supplier. Dropshipping model follows a simple procedure.

When a customer places an order online, you purchase the items from a third-party and then ship the product directly to your customer. There is no need for an inventory. Thus, a seller doesn’t have to deal with the products directly. However, products are the most vital part of a dropshipping business. The quality of products that you opt to sell will decide the future of your online store.

Thus, the Trust of the customers in the things you sell is necessary for your dropshipping business to excel. If you have a dropshipping business as a side business, then suppliers can ship your products to the customers directly on your behalf. This saves your time and allows you to focus on your main business as well. These suppliers could be manufacturers, warehouse owners, wholesalers, or just wholesale shop owners.

Shopify web designers make it easy to find suppliers through Shopify’s online marketplace Oberlo, and other dropshipping platforms. But, in the standard retail model, you need to have a full stock of the products only then you can show them in stock in your online store. Thus, you have to handle the products yourself from stocking them to fulfilling the orders.

Dropshipping on Shopify

Many businesses rely on Shopify for dropshipping because Shopify web designers have made it easy to set up. A common approach for dropshipping on Shopify is to seek out a supplier using Shopify’s marketplaces or Shopify app. These apps connect you as well as your store to various suppliers around the world. Shopify not only allows you to start your dropshipping business but also provides you the supplies through Oberlo. It’s a marketplace developed by Shopify Designers that helps business owners find products at wholesale prices to sell.

With Oberlo, you can browse various wholesale stores to import the products directly to your Oberlo linked with your Shopify store with a single click. As soon as a customer buys a product, you’ll be able to complete their order through the Oberlo. Shopify features the flexibility of location in dropshipping. You can run dropshipping business from anywhere with an internet connection to communicate with suppliers as well as customers easily.

The Bottom Line of Dropshipping

Dropshipping is very easy to get started if you are a beginner. Running an online business is much easier with Shopify where you don’t have to handle physical products. Perhaps, the biggest benefit of dropshipping is that it’s possible to launch an eCommerce store without having to invest in and handle the inventory. In dropshipping model, you don’t have to buy a product unless you’ve already made the sale and got paid by the client. Thus, you can offer a wide range of products to the customers, since you don’t have to purchase the products for selling.

Skyrocket your online store growth with Shopify plus web designing

February 26th, 2020

Today, cutting-edge technologies are giving merchants ample opportunities to discover how they can diversify their mainstream business methodologies. With e-commerce being on the front-foot, brands now are able to match the exceeding expectations of customers.

Furthermore, a report demonstrates that eCommerce is expected to grow double by 2023 to more than $6.5 billion.
However, the only challenge begins the moment you have to choose the best among all e-commerce development platforms like WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Weebly and many others. But you don’t have to panic! Shopify is here to save you. Many folks on hearing about Shopify web design think that it works great for small and medium enterprises only. Well, that’s just half a story!

Here if, Shopify supports the small-scaled ventures, its upgraded version Shopify plus assists large-scaled enterprises. Let us take a look at both of the platforms altogether to discover the things in the right perspective. Below you will get to know about different products and services you can sell on Shopify that may give you an idea for your business to grow –

Physical and Digital products

The hand-made products, manufactured ones and also the ones you have made digitally such as Lightroom presets, email templates, e-books.

Consultations and Memberships

Shopify allows you to sell online or personal consultation services whether you are a life coach or an author. Moreover, you can create member-only services for your customers to have access to your content.

Ticketed Experiences

Shopify gives a great opportunity to sell tickets for businesses encompassing travel or adventure services, workshops and many more. If you are an artist running a networking or a collaborative event, Shopify would help you do that too on your website.

While Shopify web design enables everything that you need for the seamless customization of your e-store, Shopify plus eCommerce platform is always a step ahead. For instance, when it comes to shipping through Shopify, you would get flat rates and calculated results. But with Shopify plus, you could access a shipping script to configure more precise rates which means you can modify your shipping options, cart content or even minimum order value. Precisely, Shopify plus gives you great control, both in set-up and customization without much hassle of conventional strategies.

Read on to observe the splendid features of Shopify plus: –

Web design and Templates

The templates for Shopify plus web designing can also be available in different languages that would be further useful in reaching customers from several locations. The basic level customization for your site can be done through the Shopify web editor. By uploading a list of your products, where you want them to be displayed, and divide them into their respective categories. There are plenty of guides out there that can show you how to play with Liquid (Shopify’s theme) to change the appearance and functionality of your e-store. One utmost feature of Shopify Plus for web design is that you get your own dedicated launch manager. They’re there to make sure that you can integrate your new website entirely into Shopify. Shopify plus also let you edit your checkout.

Multichannel Selling

Shopify Plus is the form of ultra-modern eCommerce platform, specially designed for high-volume enterprise brands. Its core advantage is that it provides more control, customization, and automation for your standard commerce setup, combined with faster speeds while covering multiple channels. Shopify Plus is infinitely reliable because the solution is constantly monitored and upgraded to ensure maximum efficiency and robustness. Shopify Plus makes it simple to sell your products on all major marketplaces and cover social networks. Its multichannel capabilities boost customer engagement, improve sales and enhance brand efficiency.

Among many other benefits, the new additions in Shopify Plus that will boost the efficacy of Shopify web development would be as mentioned below –

CHECKOUT APP EXTENSIONS COMING

There will be no more routing to external checkouts in the new version. The new checkout app extension will enable merchants to purchase your app through Shopify’s checkout.

EASIER AND CHEAPER FULFILMENT PROCESS

The Shopify Fulfilment network includes the centers across the globe and has a smart inventory. That optimizes fulfillment for all merchants and keeps delivery costs down.

SHOPIFY POS and PLUS NEWS

Shopify user community will now be able to sell in multiple languages and currencies, thanks to the new translations’ API. As a Shopify developer, you should adjust your apps so they can work with this new feature.
The latest Shopify plus developer tool is the Shopify App CLI, that generates code automatically with a command-line interface tool. It also allows you to generate samples such as products, orders, and test stores. Furthermore, there will be…

  • New libraries coming to GraphQL, with ten most popular libraries (Shopify_api gem, Shopify_python_api) being fully compatible.
  • There would be a developer preview environment available.
  • Shopify developers can also submit their new apps in more languages (up to seven).

Summing up

Shopify web developers as well as Shopify Plus web designers can really benefit from these additions in this platform. Whereas, when it comes to set-up an all-new online store and you do not want to face any technicalities, Shopify web development services with updated features and experience in the eCommerce industry will prove to be beneficial. After all, moving business online should be one time but fruitful investment and you cannot afford to take any chance with your business. Make your business reachable and hassle-free through Shopify web designing.

What’s New in Shopify Website Design in 2018

February 20th, 2018

E-Commerce trends are something that creates fundamental, lasting changes that reshape not just how people shop, but how they live. Particularly, Shopify website design trends, leave behind a residual effect that makes them worthy of the hype. And it’s justifiable as well if you look at the edge it gives to its clients on various levels.

One of them being, Shopify merchants don’t have to leave as their businesses grow bigger (unlike other traditional software in the market) as they are not dependent on the next biggest company to upgrade to get more advanced services during their growth period. Apart from this, you already must be aware of (assuming you are a user) the countless other benefits it bestows upon its users along with massive updates every year that are nothing short of icing on the cake.

Speaking of updates, 2017 was considered an important year for Shopify users as it brought with it some important upgrades such as merging of service design and development, mass disruption to foundational internet services, the rise of diversity Shopify designers, design sprints etc. So, we can safely assume, expectations from Shopify this year will be sky-high as well.

Let’s take a sneak peek at what Shopify has to offer us this year-

  • Illustrations Taking Center Stage

Illustrations work as a brilliant and versatile addition that add fun to your Shopify website through visual elements. This year more and more illustrations will be incorporated into header images, custom iconography, animated visuals and bespoke fonts. Apart from this, unique styles of illustrations will be available to create an entire brand identity.

  • More Organic and Oblique Shapes

Web and mobile design have so long been dominated by sharp-edged and right-angled UI based cards, but things are about to change this year for Shopify users such as primary elements taking more organic shapes, backgrounds will be abounded with almost amoeboid blobs of color, dramatic diagonals etc. Shopify sites will also see double down on straight lines to mix effectively with these organic and spherical shapes.

  • Animation is King

This year, Shopify web pages will not only present us with information but allow us to interact with, and impact that information via the heavy use of animation which, as you know, have the potential to make any experience overwhelming, esp. for those with cognitive disabilities. Even subtle animation can help ensure users don’t miss out on important info by guiding their attention to the right content at the right time.

  • Scrolling on Different Levels

Scrolling, as we know, is the sliding movement of webpage either vertically or horizontally. Till last year, the primary focus was mostly on keeping the essential information above the fold. However, because of users viewing content on all screen sizes, the fold has become more difficult to define recently. 2018 may bring new styles of scrolling to enhance the greater level of interaction to the customer journey.

  • Floating Navigation Menus

Till now conversion focussed sites or those with sprawling menus rely solely on fixed navigation due to its ease of constantly keeping navigation controls at user’s fingertips, simplifying the overall experience. Shopify users this year can expect a visual detachment of navigation controls from rest of the site design which will follow you throughout the site, reinforcing the feeling of navigation as a global object rather than part of any one page.

  • Immersive Multimedia Longform

Since long-form content is powered by a CMS, it only seems viable to publish long text field on the page. But recently, the concept of ‘featured stories’ is on the rise again telling riveting, lengthy stories by combining custom layouts with copy carefully tailored to the presentation thus enriching the narrative with video, sound and much more.

  • Video Implementation

As we have already learned above about the role a moving image or animation play in capturing the attention of a potential customer. Featuring content such as story-telling, advertising, and modern-day photography through videos encourages a greater level of engagement. Facebook, Google, and twitter too view videos more favorably.

  • Microinteractions Everywhere

Animation, as we know, is pretty easy to add on websites nowadays. But a new type of user focussed animation called micro interactions is slowly gaining its way from mobile apps to websites. Microinteractions are animated responses to user behaviors that activate in a realistic way when users click a button or hover to animate a drop-down.

  • Variable Fonts

Today, the massive abundance and diversity of gorgeous typefaces available on the web make it much harder to believe how earlier we have managed to create all our textual content with just a handful of typefaces. The trend of using variable fonts this year which are basically single fonts behaving like multiple fonts is sky-high and as expected, Shopify is going to get a lot better than its earlier types.

Conclusion

The above-mentioned trends for Shopify web design have already started to leave their impression on the web. Lookout for these design techniques to create a positive brand perception to attract more and more customers this year.

Comparing the Benefits Between Magento and Shopify

January 17th, 2018

Location, as we know, have always played a major role in determining the success of any company. Nobody wants to set their shop in a secluded area devoid of any customers. Similar logic applies while you try to set an online store but with a minor difference, you have to choose an e-commerce platform rather than an actual location.

Choosing an e-commerce platform may appear to be a minor difference but in no way, it is to be mistaken for a minor problem. What’s the point of establishing a nice-looking online store brimming to the top with a variety of products where customers cannot find you? It gets, even more, tougher due to the vast majority of options available (each claiming to be no.1) to pick from.

But if you look at things more closely, you will realise that there are very few platforms on top such as WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Shopify, Magento, Big Cartel etc. among which the main competition is actually between two e-commerce giants namely Magento and Shopify. Let’s learn a bit more about them.

Magento, originally developed by Varien Inc. in 2007 and currently owned by eBay, is an open source e-commerce platform written in PHP. Magento website development services are currently available in two versions namely Community (which is free with basic features) and Enterprise (which is paid with advanced features) edition.

Shopify, on the other hand, was launched by Snowdevil founders in 2006 by Daniel Weinand, Scott Lake and chiefly Tobias Lütke as an API (or Application Programming Interface) platform. It is basically a cloud-based e-commerce store platform written in LIQUID which enables the Shopify web design and customization to be extremely user-friendly.

Now that you are aware of them, let’s dive in a bit deeper and learn about their various benefits and what distinguishes them.

  1. Popularity Ratio

 The first thing any client will look for is the popularity ratio and here Shopify seems to hold an upper hand by hosting more than 2,40,000 websites on its domain with Magento slightly behind with 1,60,000 sites to claim its own.

But this tells more about the businesses that own them, not efficiency ratio as Shopify is mostly popular among small businesses whereas Magento is more suitable for medium or large companies.

  1. Web design/Customization

 Both Shopify and Magento provide you with the facility to build your websites from scratch choosing from various themes available which are highly responsive with robust customization capabilities.

The difference lies in the usability, where Shopify works on the drag and drop philosophy enabling easy theme customization, Magento with the help of Bluefoot (a CMS and page builder module) enable clients to build a uniquely designed website.

  1. Apps and Add-ons

When it comes to flexibility, Magento is the clear winner. Shopify with a little over 100 apps and Add-ons comes nowhere near Magento which provides more than 5000 extensions to its clients owning no doubt to the open source nature of the platform.  

  1. Expenses

Since it’s an open source network, the Community edition of Magento is completely free to use and its enterprise edition costs vary according to company’s needs. However, hosting 3rd party services may cost a little.

Shopify, on the other end, works on SAAS (software-as-a-service). Initially, you get a free trial period of 14 days after which it ranges between $29 to $179. Though you may save on hosting as Shopify is self-hosted.

  1. Payment Getaway Options

Shopify offers its users a smooth experience when it comes to payment options. With 70 payment getaways, Shopify clearly holds a major advantage here over Magento which offers far less to its users though it can be increased via 3rd party add-ons.

  1. Inventory Management

 Here you will have to choose according to your requirement as both offers bulk upload features with add and edit options. You can add unlimited products on Shopify with its monthly plans with only one exception i.e. starter pack, which costs $14 and will limit your stored items to 25 only.

With Magento you don’t have to worry about product management as it allows virtually unlimited products but faces another issue, it weighs down your site’s loading time which you won’t find in Shopify.

  1. SEO Management/Driving Traffic

When it comes to generating traffic, SEO plays a very important role as it drives more organic traffic to your stores via search engines. Both platforms are extremely SEO friendly and provide extensive SEO capabilities, however, Magento ranks slightly higher in a study of SEO scores with Shopify closely behind.

  1. Speed and Performance

The speed with which any website loads determines its success rate. If one compares Magento 1.0 with Shopify, Shopify is the clear winner, but things have changed with the coming of Magento 2.0 which is incredibly fast compared to its earlier version. 

  1. User experience

When it comes to user experience, a lot of people seem more satisfied with Shopify than Magento. Even the admin panel of Shopify requires no advance knowledge and easy to maintain whereas, with Magento 1, clients need professional help due to its complexity of setting up their store. But Magento 2.0 with its user-friendly admin panel and readymade extensions have resolved that issue which Magento 1.0 had.  

Conclusion

It’s hard to make a clear assumption as to who should be the winner as both have their advantages and disadvantages. But what we can gather from the available information is that both Shopify and Magento provide excellent hosting platforms best suited according to the customer’s needs. So choose wisely.

Explosive growth of Shopify or Death of Drupal?

December 19th, 2017

Today, 73% of all online stores just run on three platforms: Magento, Woocommerce, and Shopify. No matter, Drupal being the second most-used open source website content management system. But still, the analysis shows that Drupal appears nowhere even once.

Shopify is the leading e-commerce solution – an amazing tool that helps you build high-performance E-Commerce websites within hours. When we look back at past few years we realize that Shopify has enjoyed the explosive growth, which is a vivid sign of assurance that Shopify isn’t going anywhere. Shopify saves our clients with simpler needs time and money and speeds up their time-to-market by orders of magnitude over traditional commerce systems. Interestingly, Shopify recently launched a new enterprise platform called Shopify Plus targeted at high-traffic enterprise stores. They clearly aspire to break out of the low-end market.

Differences between Drupal and Shopify

General Description:

Shopify is a complete e-commerce solution that allows you to set up an online store to sell your goods. It lets you organize your products, customize your storefront, accept credit card payments, track and respond to orders — all with a few clicks of the mouse. It is a cost-effective, compelling commerce platform for clients with modest annual revenue or for teams that don’t need custom integrations with other systems.

Drupal has emerged as a powerful PHP-based open source content management system. This user-friendly platform has millions of worldwide user base across many industry verticals. It helps better publish, manage and update website content. Whether you want a personal blog or an enterprise-grade website, Drupal delivers!

Drupal is a highly secure and scalable framework that is easy to use. It has numerous features and add-ons that further improve its functionality. This open source framework does not require any license and you can simply plug-in and get started. Drupal has the right combination of power, flexibility and is great as a development platform. Also, it offers the best custom theme development features in the industry.

User Experience: When it comes to user experience Shopify is ahead of the game as for Shopify it is 2% to 3 % more than that of Drupal.

Serving needs of a low-end market: Here, also Shopify earns more points as It’s in heavy growth and market adoption phase.

Overall Comparison Score for Drupal and Shopify: If we give Shopify and Drupal overall Score out of 10 then for Shopify it will be 9.8 and Drupal it will be 8.0.

Some of the Challenges that one faces with Drupal:

Abandoned Modules: The major problem with Drupal is that modules that get replaced by an entirely different approach which really sucks. In the early days of Drupal, most site buildings were done by people programming custom modules on top of the Form API and the various other parts of the Drupal internals. Enough of these were generalized and shared back to the community that the next phase was characterized by thousands of single-purpose modules — install exactly what you need for each feature you want to provide, and perhaps need over a hundred on your site.

Now the number of modules you need is getting far less — we have a more general purpose, extremely powerful modules like Views, Rules, Display Suite, Features, and Context. As a result, the single-purpose modules are becoming obsolete, and developers pretty much abandon them.

Media Management and Modules: The most obvious problem Drupal face is the lack of Media management in Drupal’s core. Media Manager is absent, so mastering videos, pictures and other media files in poor to say the least. Because of that, many users prefer WordPress and other E-Commerce platforms, because they are tired of uploading the same image again and again.

Drupal Community: One of the main problems is that Drupal users are not as active in the community as they should be. This in activeness slow downs the problem-solving process for the Drupal experts.

Efficiency: The major reason for Drupal’s inefficiency is Caching. Caching is how it gets around the memory hogging problem and lets your site load quickly but it also means that sometimes things don’t get refreshed when they should be.

What charms Shopify?

  • Everything works great together for Shopify. Here, is where all the beauty lies
  • N-number of Payment Gateways
  • User-friendly and simple to use as you can get your website ready few clicks of mouse
  • For Shopify, there is good amount of Professional Support and Easy Backend Administration
  • There is option of lot many built-in tools like a blog, coupon codes, upsells, cross-sells, analytics and many more

Conclusion

SaaS is the Future!

Drupal is still alive but SaaS platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce are built in an orderly fashion that caters to the needs of the majority of the users. They define a generalized structure for their system. One way it is good, we can have a stable and robust system.

From all the above points maximum votes are in favor of Shopify as it caters the needs of the low-end market.

Qualities a Good Shopify Web Designer Should Possess

October 23rd, 2017

With Shopify being the go-to platform for designing an e-commerce website, choosing the right Shopify web designer is really important. With so much competition and so many web designers out there that claim to be the best, finalizing on a designer can be tougher than it sounds. After all, the success of your online business depends upon it.

That is why I have devised a list of qualities that you must seek when you select that perfect Shopify web designer for your online store.

  1. Relevant Experience

Web designers create all kinds of different websites using various platforms. What really matters to you is whether the designer has relevant experience. By relevant experience, I mean experience creating e-commerce websites using Shopify. Since the platform and technology used is different from a WordPress site, good knowledge of Shopify features and customization is needed.

  1. A Good Track Record

A good track record can be a very broad term. What I specifically mean by it is whether that designer has a good record of meeting his client’s expectations. This is not something that you can learn by interviewing the designer, but their past clients. Get some feedback and learn what kind of experience the prior clients have had with them.

  1. A Diverse Portfolio

A good Shopify designer must have a diverse and impressive portfolio. Your Shopify website is important and you should not give it in the hands of an amateur. A strong portfolio lets you check what kind of websites the designer has created and how well they match the design expectations that you have for your own e-commerce site. Through the portfolio, you can check out the style of the designer’s work, check the quality of their work across multiple and know that the designer can deliver in a timely manner.

  1. Good Communication Skills

During the entire Shopify web design process, it is important that the designer maintains open communication with you to ensure you both are on the same page. They should be able to express their vision as clearly as possible. Also, exchange of ideas and information is a critical component of any web design process.

  1. Basic SEO Knowledge

Search Engine Optimization is very important for an e-commerce site as it helps increase the visibility of the site in search engines. It helps your website get traffic and customers as well. If the designer has SEO knowledge, it can be implemented while creating a website. Load time of the site can be reduced to give visitors a positive experience. Images can be compressed to make sure the site is not too heavy. Use of videos and animations can be limited as well to reduce load time.

  1. Have a Proactive Approach

A proactive web designer is one that identifies a challenge early on and addresses it rather than waiting for things to go from bad to worse. This is a positive approach that can truly save important time for you and let your team figure out just what the issue is and what is the best way to overcome it. A proactive approach is one the most desirable qualities for anyone in the field of web designing and development.

  1. Expertise in Responsive Designs

The very first demand that clients make from web designers these days is to ensure that their website is responsive. This means that the website will function equally well on all devices, no matter the screen size and resolution. Since approximately 50% of online shoppers use their mobile devices to go online, it is important for your Shopify website to be responsive, hence experience and knowledge of creating responsive websites is an important quality.

Clap Creative offers experienced and certified Shopify web designers

Clap Creative has a team of well experienced and certified Shopify web designers that have a proven record of creating attractive and interactive Shopify websites. We create responsive designs that make your online store run perfectly on all devices. Our deep understanding of SEO principles helps us create websites that are optimized for search engines. To know more about our Shopify web design services, contact us today.

4 Tips for Shopify Theme Customization

October 5th, 2017

Shopify allows users to choose from hundreds of available themes to use for their e-commerce store. These choices let you truly find a theme that matches your vision for your Shopify store. If you still are not satisfied and want a truly customized experience when it comes to your Shopify theme, then you should follow these four tips that will help you with your Shopify theme customization.

1)    Understanding Liquid

Shopify platform allows you to take an existing theme and make modifications to it to create your own customized theme. Whether that is the route you want to take or you want to create a new theme simply from scratch, you need the knowledge of Liquid. Even the most basic themes require Liquid, which is a Ruby-based coding language that is extremely customizable. If you have a ton of experience with Liquid, the sky is the limit for what you can do with your Shopify store. If you are unfamiliar with Liquid, you can study some online tutorials before getting started.

2)    Matching SCSS with templates

Shopify has a very flexible templating that allows users to have a very modular approach to CSS and markup. It is always better to match your CSS structure with the template structure of the online store. This helps not just with the Shopify development but also help with Shopify maintenance to keep the webstore running in an optimized manner.

3)    Familiarize yourself with Timber

Don’t know how to set up a Shopify framework from scratch but want something unique and original? In that case, knowledge of Timber might be just the thing you need. Timber is a bare-bones code that can be edited using Liquid. This way, you do not have to start all the way from zero.

The best way to explain Timber is constructing a house but you can only put up four walls. The outer construct is already provided for you. Timber allows you to put your room wherever in the house you like.  With Timber, the process of creating a new theme becomes simplified and you can take care of more complex customizations at a later time.

4)    Re-using styles for Check-out page

In Shopify, you do not have any control over the markup however you do have control over the CSS. You have to keep in mind to over-write the default styles that are there from the beginning. The best method is always to use code-re-use. Have a checkout style sheet prepared in your CSS folder. It also gets the output to your theme’s asset folder.

Above are just a few tips that can help you with the customization of your website and its theme. If you want professional assistance in creating a truly unique and remarkable theme for your Shopify website, Clap Creative is your perfect partner for this endeavor. At Clap Creative, we offer Shopify theme customization service that will make your Shopify store truly pop up and look unique. Our team of designers takes your vision and turns it into reality.

Apart from this, Clap Creative also offers services like Shopify web design, Shopify development, and Shopify maintenance and support services. To know more about our services or to get a quote, Contact us today.

Is Shopify the Right Platform for Your E-Commerce Webstore?

September 21st, 2017

Once you have made the decision to start your online store, the next decision they are faced with is which platform is the right one for them to develop their webstores? If it is your first e-commerce store, then it only adds to your confusion. You can go online and visit various forums and ask other users of their experiences. There are loyal defenders of each e-commerce platform all over the internet and that might make it even more difficult for you to decide. If you want to go in depth to know what Shopify has to offer and decide if Shopify Development is the right path for your webstore, read on below.

Shopify is an easy to use the platform and if you are someone that wants to start selling immediately, it may seem like the perfect option. There are certain aspects of Shopify web design and development that you need to take a closer look at to understand what they offer for you. Each one of these features of Shopify makes it different gives some value addition to the users.

Let us discuss them in detail –

Store Management

Shopify makes store management a breeze, especially for first-time webstore owners. It creates accounts and stores the information of your customers that you can later use for the purpose of remarketing for various promotional offers.  However, you may need to use external tools like Google Analytics for more in-depth reporting of your website’s performance as the Shopify’s own user behavior reporting does not match up to the detailed reporting of GA.

Shopify also has features that aid in order fulfillment. It has pre-set plugs Amazon, Super Logistics etc. With Shopify, you can set-up an entire communication protocol that starts from sending thank you email to your customers to tracking the dispatch and shipping details. Your customers even get the emails that their products have been delivered.

Shopping Cart Features

When you use Shopify for your webstore, you get a free SSL certificate that makes users trust your webstore and feel more confident about entering their card information there. You have the option to integrate over 50 payment gateways on your checkout page including all-time popular PayPal. You can automatically control shipping costs or offer free shipping by integrating with carriers like FedEx, UPS etc. If that was not enough, Shopify supports 50+ languages too. Shopify has the abandoned cart recovery feature too that reminds those prospective customers of the items that they added to cart but did not buy.

Shopify Storefront

Shopify gives you hundreds of themes to choose from to customize your webstore. Although you can select these themes yourself, if you want to stand apart from other Shopify sites, you can avail the services of a Shopify web design company to help create that perfect tailor-made theme especially for you. Blogging is an important way of getting traffic and engaging your customers with content. Shopify offers a ready to go blogging platform too.

Your webstore will be mobile ready without much effort from you. Shopify sites are responsive and work perfectly on all kinds of devices.

Online Marketing Tools

Shopify helps your online marketing efforts as well. You get a ready to submit the sitemap.XML file that once submitted into the search console will get your website indexed faster. You can set customer H1 tags, Title tags, and meta-tags. This makes your SEO for Shopify that much more effective. Through Shopify, you can also offer discount coupons to your customers that will help you entice them to buy from you.

Shopify will aid you in converting your website visitors with the help of email marketing. Using email marketing all those users to signed up on your site but left without purchasing anything can be sent emails with promotional offers. Some other features include the option for customers to leave product reviews and integration with several popular social media platforms.

 

Now that you know a bit more details about Shopify, you can make a more informed decision as to whether it is the platform you want to use for your webstore. Remember, if you choose Shopify to start your e-commerce store, you need to periodically keep it optimized by availing Shopify maintenance and support services. This will ensure your webstore works as good as new.

How to Choose the Perfect Theme for Your Shopify Store

September 15th, 2017

Shopify is an extremely popular platform when it comes to designing e-commerce stores. It offers you so many themes to choose from and the options of adding your own customizations to these themes. With hundreds of themes to choose from, how do decide which theme is the best for your Shopify web design? Below are some of the things you should definitely look for when deciding on the perfect theme for your Shopify e-commerce site.

  1. It Must Be Responsive

Every design available in the Shopify theme store is mobile friendly. It is a prerequisite when it comes to Shopify accepting any theme on its store. However, there are some developers that choose to hide a few features on devices with smaller screen resolutions like smartphones and tablets.

Mobile traffic consists of almost 50% of all the visitors on e-commerce websites. Not showing all the features and functionalities of your website to such a large part of your audience can be a mistake for you.

You must also find a perfect balance so that you do not overload your website with too many images and extensions that decrease the page load speed which can lead to a degraded user experience.

  1. Don’t Overcomplicate the Navigation

Many e-commerce store owners have the complaint that they get a lot of traffic on their website but it does not convert into customers. One of the major problems that visitors on your website may face is navigating through the different levels of menus to get to the products they are looking for.

During your Shopify development and design process, make your menu and navigation as simple as possible and try to reduce as many steps as you can between your homepage and the product page. Using a mega menu would be suggested if you have too many categories, brands or products that you sell on your website.

  1. Beautiful Blog

Blogs are extremely important for getting your visitors engaged with your website and for generating organic traffic to your website. A blog is a very effective tool for SEO for Shopify. However, some designers and developers can over look this importance during their Shopify design and development process.

Your blog should have beautiful banner images that make it look appealing. There should also be certain features that make it SEO friendly like the option to add tags. As per Shopify guidelines, a featured blog image along with a feature image is displayed on the homepage so your designers need to make sure it goes well with the overall website theme.

  1. Option to add Videos

Adding videos to your e-commerce site can make it look that much more appealing. Apart from the aesthetics, adding videos about your company and the products can help engage your customers even more with your website.

You must choose a theme that allows your designers to add videos on any page and in any section of the online store as and when needed. You can add videos on specific product pages and a company introduction video on the about us page.

  1. Use of Large Images

The usage of large beautiful images makes your website stand out. Using high-quality images of your products is the perfect window dressing needed to appeal to online customers that are more enticed by visuals rather than the written word. The theme you choose must have large imagery to achieve this desired effect.

As stated in one of the points before, using too many high-quality images on your website can result in the reduction of your website speed. While using images on your site, it is important to maintain a healthy balance and to not go overboard with every product image available.

 

Conclusion:

I will leave you with these words. You must choose a theme keeping in mind which products you are selling and which industry or category you belong to. Even if a theme meets all the above criteria, it still may not be right for the kind of Shopify store you want to be developed. Know your business and target audience and then pick Shopify theme customization that is needed.