Anyone else having these issues? Feedback on customisation

Store Design
1

I have been happy to use Shopify so far, but has anyone else been finding the customisation to be a bit difficult and daunting?

Even with the fonts and the colours - it’s not the easiest to find, and I often forget that it’s hidden at the very bottom under “theme settings” - weirdly “theme settings” looks like a descriptor and not a button, so I often forget that I can even press it and spend minutes trying to remember where I need to go to change things.

Also, the names beside the colour changes are not overly descriptive - link text hover, text hover, link title hover text - I go through and make them extreme colours first so I can find what goes where and what is associated with what, but clicking the feature on the page for it to be highlighted in the “theme settings” bar would be much easier. I spend hours trying to find the one colour I need to change sometimes.

Also, the shopify website (very strangely) makes it look as though you can’t do much customisation of the sites at all! The purchasable templates featured are hundreds of dollars and not very exciting. Meanwhile there are sites like Envato - https://themeforest.net/ where you can find AMAZING themes for $60, that blow the official shopify ones out of the water. But unless you know that this exists, it’s nearly impossible to find. I was a member of the Envato website for something else, and it was only a fluke that I found out they have custom shopify themes.

The code page is super confusing. I’m decent - not great, but decent - at finding my way around code, and I have no idea how to change some things that should be quite simple. My biggest example right now is my need to change the icons shown on the front page. The cart, the profile and the search links. It should be easy to change these, but it costs $86 to get it done custom because it’s so buried in the code.

Also, it would be great if shopify added the ability to add a fee to credit card users - i.e. pay an extra 30 cents if you are paying by credit card. That’s my own personal need. Would make what I am doing 10000000 times easier.

Also, just a personal pet peeve, but the slideshow banner is WAY too huge. This again is costing me $86 to get changed, but it shouldn’t take up the entire screen. Customers are coming to visit sites to buy things, not to see some add or intro image that should be a brief, brief sight.

Anyway. These are my primary issues with shopify. I think it’s still great, I don’t mean to sound overly critical. I’ve been able to build something I’ve been trying to build for years, which I don’t personally have the technological capabilities for, but it’s odd to me that there are so many stumbling blocks to some aspects of the customisation.

Also, I have tried to use the formal channels, I’ve spoken to customer service, and to the shopify experts, but everything has pretty much pointed me in the direction of spending more than the budget that I have.

Thanks and looking forward to ideas.
Robyn
www.maptavern.com

2

No apologies, it’s shopifys mistake in poorly naming things and not providing a singular Platform feedback forum, so the feedback forum is a bit ambigous.

For the topic there’s lot to unpack here , most of it really can be summed up as just hire someone to handle theme design.

Learn to delegate and learn not to resent ; and expunge the weird dissonance that comes from working with virtual-systems from your thought process versus physical reality.

If you had a brick and mortar store would you complain how hard it is to build a concrete façade? Or replace the signage 20ft in the air?

Or would hire someone who has the experience and tools to do a job that really has nothing to do with your business model and personal experience and really is just a waste of your time to try and DIY every little thing.

Themes are baselines to start with, not an end result meeting all your needs out of the box.

Again if you had a B&M would you think this way? You have to buy and setup displays, get wall art, hire contractors, run electricity, etc , etc.

It’s virtual dissonance just because it’s virtual doesn’t remove complexity or save you time in learning the systems.

Themes in places like themeforest are cheap for a reason and in the long run tend to cost most merchants more fixing the problems those themes come with.

Performance being the most common issue so that $60 you so carefully budgeted for is costing you hundreds to thousands in conversions.

They are cheap for a reason, don’t fall for a kitchen sink of bullet points for marketing purposes. It’s noise.

The “code page” , the editor in the admin is bare minimum it is not mean a full fledged code environment it’s mean for simple changes.

Nor is it meant for learning how themes are made that is a separate process though it would be nice if there was a map of how the files relate but bit of a moot point because of how complex that is to implement.

but the slideshow banner is WAY too huge.

Ditch any slideshows on landing pages above the fold they are just consistent money losers and money sinks, use a singular hero image and CtA.

Also, it would be great if shopify added the ability to add a fee to credit card users - i.e. pay an extra 30 cents if you are paying by credit card

There is a payments forum that may have solutions for this, or an already existing feature-request thread.

1 Like
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Singular hero image and CTA? Those sound great, where do I find this hero image?

Best,

Robyn

4

Most good themes should have a section “image and button” or image and text, etc.

The image you have to create , typically it’s just the image your already using for the first slide in a carousel.

Example https://www.shopify.com/blog/16480796-how-to-create-beautiful-and-persuasive-hero-images-for-your-online-store

1 Like
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Thanks, I’m looking into this right now!