Hi there,
Being new (5 years) we thought retailers were greedy. But we’ve learnt the hard way that retailers are just trying to survive, or are trying to self-fund growth in order to survive - especially when in a small market.
Yes, the items below were considered advanced 10 years ago but if you’re not implementing this stuff in 2022, your site will have limited to no success - so now they’re considered basic.
And by requiring an App, Shopify classifies these things as advanced, which lulls new merchants into a false sense of security about what’s really required to survive in 2022.
It’s time to classify the following as basic, not requiring an App…
- Proper free gift with purchase (make it effortless for customers)
- Bundling of product SKUs
- Cart offers/upgrades
- Pre-order system
The problems associated with pushing these basics to Apps include…
1. Huge increase in costs
No explanation required, we all understand the impact.
2. Limited app integration
For example, no pre-ordering of SKUS which are also bundled. Any App that modifies variant selects or buy buttons will always have trouble integrating. Yes, some App developers work together but then you’re forced into a mini App ecosystem, not necessarily the best Apps for the task - a kind of App soup within an App soup.
3. Different UX standards
We signed-up to Shopify because of standards. Yes, we could stick to Apps that adhere to better standards but we also require features. Let’s have both via Shopify.
4. Different support standards
Yes, we could only use Apps that provide the same support hours as Shopify but we also require features. Again, let’s have both via Shopify.
5. Theme hacks
This aspect is horrible - right? And if you think uninstalling an App gets rid of the mess, think again - multiple version of jQuery and jQueryUI etc. We stick with Debut, hoping most App widgets will look like our theme but every App we’ve used required many !important hacks. And some, which use iFrames, require JS hacks - just to look like the rest of the site.
As soon as our main Apps support Shopify 2.0, we’ll switch to Dawn but there will always be limitations, requiring hacks. However, if the above items were supplied by Shopify, we could limit the amount of hacks for the basics.
OTHER PRESSING ISSUES…
6. Stop showing ‘Unavailable’ variants
In our experience, 99% of customers think ‘Unavailable’ means sold-out and leave. But it doesn’t. It means the combination of variants selected has resulted in a product that doesn’t actually exist - silly no?
No matter how complex the fix is, most theme developers provide a solution so why can’t Shopify? Showing products that don’t actually exist is truly mind-numbing in 2022. I’m sorry but it just is!
7. Merge customer accounts
There are a million reasons why customers end-up with multiple accounts, all of them understandable, all of them human. Allow for human beings and let us merge orders into one account.
Yes, there’ll be trade-offs/complexity but everything else can be updated, orders cannot. This affects a customer’s ability to quickly see what they ordered so they can re-order. But it also affects VIP statuses, VIP points, email and marketing segments, customer experience and retention etc - the works really.
8. Proper asset management
Imagine trying to work when you can’t rename or replace files. And if you want to delete something, you have to go to System Settings! Painful right?
Well, that’s how asset management works in Shopify. We desperately need basic asset management (replace, rename, delete) and make it all part of the 2.0 content editor.
Once you’ve used a CMS which has replace, you can’t go back. No more trawling your site to find all the places an image/asset was used, then updating each of them one-by-painful-one. Come on, Shopify 2.0 shows so much promise, let’s get this sorted - right?
9. No visibility on feature requests
Sending feature requests into a black hole is painful when you’re trying to run a business. Every business requires at least some certainty. So we need some understanding of what Shopify thinks is a priority.
And finally, a big thanks to Shopify for finally recognising that web design is actually content design, and providing proper content design tools in Shopify 2.0. Just update the asset editor as noted and we’ve got a powerful solution that while behind many platforms, is still incredibly useful.
Hopefully, we can get high-quality, 1st-party solutions to the basics listed above, like we all know you’re eminently capable of providing.
Cheers, Ben