June 17, 2022
7
MIN READ

What is BigCommerce?

Table of contents

  1. About BigCommerce the company
  2. BigCommerce Plans
  3. The BigCommerce Product and its Features
  4. Brands Using BigCommerce
  5. Final Thoughts on BigCommerce

BigCommerce is an E-Commerce platform. It hosts businesses that want to have an online store, or who already have an online store but would like to migrate to a stronger platform.

Whether it’s a product you sell digitally, physically or service-based, BigCommerce supports those three types of sales without needing any third-party apps.

It is also a Cloud / Open SaaS (Software-as-a-Service) platform. This means that BigCommerce does not need its users / merchants to purchase any kind of web hosting service, and you do not have to install a piece of software somewhere in order for you to create your online store. You simply sign up for the BigCommerce plan you want (there are four, we’ll outline them a little down below) and as long as you pay, BigCommerce will supply you with its service.

About BigCommerce the company

BigCommerce was founded in 2009 by two Australians named Eddie Machaalani and Mitchell Harper.

Ed and Mitch met in an online chatroom in 2003. Only one year after they met they opened their very first company together which was called Interspire. Their first venture together, Interspire, was essentially the baby steps of what was to become BigCommerce. It initially focussed on offering different products for small businesses to create an online presence.

Interspire set the groundwork for what we now know as BigCommerce. It is said that Interspire essentially evolved into BigCommerce over six years.

BigCommerce now has offices in Australia, UK, Ukraine and the USA. They are a global company and one of the market leaders in E-Commerce platforms. Their main goal is to offer stellar service to their merchants and help their merchants sell more at every stage of their online store’s growth.

They not only put their merchants first, they also simultaneously manage to make their employees a priority too. They have a great ethos, stand for solid values and strongly believe in diversity & inclusion.

If you ask the people at BigCommerce, it is through their incredible hard-work, both with their merchants and with their employees, that they have been able to achieve so much in a relatively short amount of time.

BigCommerce boasts 60,000+ merchants, 1000+ full-time employees, 2,800 agency and technology partners and has customers in 150+ countries. If that wasn’t enough, in 2020 they went public and have not looked back since.

Not bad for a company that has only been around for a bit more than a decade.

BigCommerce Plans

BigCommerce offers a range of plans to suit the needs of as many merchants as possible. We get the impression that they are very keen on carrying that sense of inclusivity throughout their diverse workforce and also the size of the merchants that use their platform.

This is the reason that their goal is to help small businesses, mid- to large-sized businesses and massive enterprises alike.

It is only natural that each of these businesses have major differences in terms on:

  • Budget
  • Needs
  • Features
  • Scalability
  • Security
  • and the list goes on

It is with this in mind that BigCommerce came up with four different plans. All with different prices and different features. If you would like to read the extensive list of what each of these plans has to offer, simply check out the BigCommerce Essential Pricing page here. As we know that businesses often make their decisions mainly based on their budget and therefore also the cost of a service, we have popped the prices of each plan below.

  • BigCommerce Standard – This plan, that’s offered for small businesses, will cost you $29.95 per month.
  • BigCommerce Plus – This one will cost you $79.95 per month and comes with extended marketing tools.
  • BigCommerce Pro – This plan comes with even more extensive features and will cost you $299.95 per month.
  • BigCommerce Enterprise – The most advanced plan, that’s specifically targeted at larger and more successful E-commerce organizations, does not have a set price as it depends on your enterprise's specific needs. We’d suggest simply contacting BigCommerce through their sales department to find out all that they can do for you.


If you’re not sure about BigCommerce or how it works, then why not try their 15 day free trial! It allows you to get a first impression of how the platform works. You will be able to see first-hand how you engage with the platform and decide whether you can manage creating your own store or if you need a dev team to help you.

The BigCommerce Product and its Features

With BigCommerce, you can build and grow your online store.

BigCommerce is known for its massive functionality and nifty online features for its merchants. This, however, does come with a certain level of complexity that not all tech novices will be able to handle.

Contrary to Shopify, that has a very user-friendly and almost foolproof number of templates set up to allow even the absolute beginners of web enthusiasts to create their own online store.

Shopify has focused more on simplicity and helping businesses get online quickly! Whereas, BigCommerce feels like it’s focussed more on giving their merchants as much functionality as possible, even if that means that it takes a little longer to get online and is a bit more complex.

BigCommerce offers a considerable amount of detailed functionality, but you’ll need to have a more in-depth understanding of e-commerce and potentially even web development to really get the most out of it. It has a uniquely specific design interface and also provides quite specific terms and details to describe certain features that non-professional users might find hard to understand in the beginning.

Don’t let that scare you off if you’re new to this, though! See it more as a massive learning opportunity. To be fair, BigCommerce has introduced some things to make the lives of those less tech-inclined a little easier. For starters, they have a range of templates that you can customize to a certain extent and create your online store with. They also come with a Store Designer Tool, which allows you to immediately see just how the edits you make will look at your online store.

BigCommerce knows how hard it is for businesses to be seen, which is why BigCommerce offers state-of-the-art SEO features. This will allow their merchants to increase their chances of visibility on search engines like google, which in turn will increase their chances of making more sales! When it comes to SEO, examples of this are:

  • Unique & Optimized URLs
  • Manual management of metadaten
  • Detailed 301 Rewrites & URL Rewrites

In addition to this, BigCommerce boasts some serious reasons for bragging rights when it comes to the features they offer. They do all they can to empower their merchants to be the best version of themselves. Features that BigCommerce offers are:

  • Great performance, flexibility and scalability due to their SaaS infrastructure
  • A focus on Headless Commerce applications and composable architecture, which allows for exciting omni-channel integrations and opportunities
  • Dedicated B2B e-commerce features in their B2B edition
  • Focus on APIs and integrations for great back office operations
  • Strong Security features and European hosting located in Frankfurt, Germany
  • Expert Support by BigCommerce themselves and a broad network of agency partners (like us)

If you’d like to dive deeper into the features of BigCommerce, why not take a look at their website here.

Brands Using BigCommerce

We always say that the proof is in the pudding. If BigCommerce is so great, surely big brands would be using them as their E-Commerce partner? Right you are! And big brands are using BigCommerce. We have listed some of them below:

Skullcandy

Sony

Ben & Jerry’s

Toyota

Final Thoughts on BigCommerce

It is clear to see that BigCommerce was founded on some pretty cool concepts. Ed and Mitch obviously had a concise game plan that is now unfolding as well as possible. BigCommerce is a serious contender to Shopify, Adobe Commerce, WooCommerce, Magento etc.

Learn more about BigCommerce, Shopify and Adobe Commerce in our blog '3 Brilliant B2B eCommerce platforms' here.

BigCommerce has managed to become one of the market leaders in E-Commerce in a very short amount of time, and it’s clear why: they offer a high amount of functionality across a wide variety of business sizes. They have pricing that suits all budgets and are experts in their field.

They operate with passion and drive, and we cannot wait to see all the big things they come up with! Should you wish to know more about BigCommerce or if you need any assistance in setting up your very own online store using BigCommerce as your E-Commerce platform, then don’t hesitate to get in touch with us via email on hello@especial.digital or via the contact form on our website.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 22, 2024
7
MIN READ
January 2, 2023
6
MIN READ

Customer Lifetime Value – What is it & How to Calculate

Table of contents

  1. Customer Lifetime Value – What is it & How to Calculate
  2. Calculation Time
  3. Customer Lifetime Value
  4. Why You Should Do All The Math!
  5. Conclusion

Customer Lifetime Value – What is it & How to Calculate

Welcome to Math class. No, we’re just kidding (not kidding).

Let us start by saying that all customers are equally important. However, some are more valuable than others.

It’s a fact that your customer is the most important thing to the success of your company. Without purchasing/paying customers, your business will unfortunately not survive. Yes, of course, profit, revenue, and sales are of massive importance, but there are also underlying areas that can be improved upon that have a direct impact on your bottom line. We’re here to tell you what CLV is and why it is vital for your business’s present and future success.

As you can see from the title, CLV stands for Customer Lifetime Value. It is a calculation made up of a bunch of things that will allow you to see a better and fuller picture of your businesses.

CLV will be able to tell you how much value each of your customers give you over their customer lifetime period with you.

Why is this important?

Well, for starters, part of the calculation includes needing to work out the average spend of each of your clients. Useful to set up a rough prognosis for future sales. Secondly, as you get on to the CLV, you’ll be able to understand the value each of your clients brings to you, which allows you to work out how much you should be spending on attaining and acquiring them.



Hold on, we’re getting ahead of ourselves. There is actually quite a regimented and straight-forward procedure to getting to the bottom of this, so let’s follow it, shall we?

Small disclaimer. Customer behaviors are very difficult to track in general, which is what we’re attempting in part here, so bear with us. There are a lot more complex ways of working this out, with Oxford University style algorithms and Cambridge University type predictions. We don’t (and you probably also don’t) have the time for intricacies now. Right now, you most likely just need a solid estimate so that you can continue with your workday with a bit more insight and knowledge in your back pocket.

Even with a ‘simplified version’ you will still be able to get a reliable overview of your customer's spending patterns, which is information that you will be able to analyze, understand and then turn into your benefit. We get it, we’re here for you, and we’re about to get into just how you do this.

*bell rings, class has begun*

Calculation Time

We first need to calculate the Average Order Value. This tells you how much each of your customers spend on average with you. This is easy to calculate. You take your total sales and divide it by your total number of orders. Don’t forget to always use the same time frame, so let’s use 12 months for the sake of these examples.

Right, so work that out and jot that number down somewhere on your notepad. (Many E-Commerce platforms have this number readily available on their analytics dashboard, so this should be easy as pie.)

Next thing we need to do is calculate the Purchase Frequency. This will tell you the average number of orders placed by each customer. This you calculate by taking your total number of orders (over the same time period, so 12 months here in our example) and dividing this by the total number of customers.

One more calculation before we hit the big one. We now need to determine the Customer Value. This is a monetary amount. It represents the average monetary value that each customer brings to your business over a specific time frame. This is why you needed the above two figures. You now need to multiply the Average Order Value by the Purchase Frequency.

Now we are finally bringing it home. Last calculation, the big one, are you ready?

Customer Lifetime Value

This you calculate by multiplying the customer value by the average customer lifespan.

Oh goodness, where did this customer lifespan come from? And surely, it’s completely different for businesses that are new vs businesses that have been around for a while? Yes, lifespans differ hugely for different verticals.

We would recommend taking a conservative approach, by looking at your existing customers and taking the average timespan between their first and last order with your company.

Now let’s look at the final formula:

So, the CLV = customer value x customer lifespan

Why You Should Do All The Math!

Working out your CLV will open your eyes on understanding the value of your customers and gives you the means to improve upon your revenue and profit without having to akquire new customers. For example, you could implement some marketing strategies to increase the average purchase amount, or work on a way of increasing the purchasing frequency. Another idea is trying to get your customers to stay with your business for a longer period of time.

The clever thing about CLV is that it gives you an informed look into your clients and which ones and where you should be targeting your marketing to. You want to avoid marketing blindly, so you can use CLV to help you focus your attention on where you should be marketing and to whom.

Simply take a look at clients that have an above-average CLV and compare them to clients that are below-average on this KPI. If you can make out patterns, you can start working on these customers. For example, you could give these customers perks, or try to get the attention of customers that are not as frequent in a more targeted way, as you will then know exactly who you are speaking to.

A higher CLV also opens up possibilities when acquiring new customers, as you can spend more on marketing to get a single new customer, when you know they also spend more over their lifetime with you. This is a massive benefit, as we all know that E-Commerce marketing channels like Google and Social Media ads are skyrocketing in cost.

Well, there you have it. That’s how you get down to the bottom of it, and we worked that out just in the knick of time, as I believe that the bell is about to…

*RING*

Conclusion

Not as tricky to work out as you imagined, right? With this simplified approach, you can work out your CLV and incorporate this information in your business to create more sales.

Keep your eyes peeled for blogs we will be posting about the benefits that working out the CLV will bring you and also how to increase your CLV! Exciting times and blogs ahead. Be sure to sign up for our newsletter so that you don’t miss any of these posts!

If you have any questions about this, feel free to pop us an email on hello@especial.digital or contact us on our website.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 22, 2024
6
MIN READ
April 29, 2023
8
MIN READ

Shopify Plans and Pricing

Table of contents

  1. Shopify Starter Plan Costs
  2. Basic Shopify Costs
  3. Shopify Costs
  4. Advanced Shopify Costs
  5. Shopify Plus Costs
  6. Conclusion – Shopify x Especial

We’re going to jump into the in’s and out’s of all the Shopify plans that are available to merchants.

Whether you’re just getting started, or looking to upgrade your current Shopify membership – here are all the things you need to know about Shopify plans and their *payment methods.

*Disclaimer: All plans include monthly and yearly payment options – so if your budget is on the tight side, or you need flexibility, you can opt for monthly payments to stay more liquid rather than paying on yearly lump sum that may be cheaper but eat away at your reserves.

Shopify Starter Plan Costs

The Shopify Starter plan is the most inexpensive option that Shopify offers. It comes to $5 per month.

It is ideal for businesses who want to get their products online quickly! And when we say quickly, we mean in a matter of minutes! You do not need any code for the setup. It is much more of a ‘add an image and a title and be on your jolly way’ with the Shopify Starter Plan.

You can sell your products on any online portal you can think of, whether it’s through Etsy and LinkedIn or TikTok and WhatsApp. Improve upon how online visitors can shop with you by additionally adding a Linkpop URL to any bio. This is a free tool that can be used to make a shoppable landing page which can be accessed through social media apps.

This plan allows merchants to have access to:

  • A simple storefront
  • No cap on the number of product pages
  • Fast and secure checkout process
  • A page for content on customer inquiries
  • Linkpop
  • Being able to use Shopify apps
  • Order management system
  • Order fulfillment system

The Shopify Starter Plan is a great way to test your business and see if it has some legs to stand on. Once you are more established and have a customer base that you feel you can rely on, then you can upgrade to the next plan by Shopify, Basic Shopify, which offers more functionality.

Basic Shopify Costs

The Basic Shopify plan comes in at a price point of $29 a month. On top of that, there’s 2% a revenue share, which can be offset by using Shopify payments though, which is an additional revenue related fee on top of the fixed monthly amount.

This is the ideal plan for merchants who have a smaller budget who still want good functionality and like the idea of having many products on their site. Attractive for merchants who work well with email, as the ‘abandoned cart recovery tool’ will give merchants saved contact information of customers who have left their cart without purchasing.

This plan allows merchants to have access to:

  • Creating a shopping website with Shopify
  • No limit to the number of products online
  • Discount codes
  • Fraud analysis tools
  • Abandoned cart recovery tool
  • Free SSL certificate
  • Manual order creation
  • Shipping labels
  • And more

There is 24/7 phone, email and live chat support available in this plan.

If you’re going for the basic plan, you can still solve many things on your own. You might want some basic modifications on your store, though. Your main source for this would be the Shopify app store and Shopify theme store. In some cases, it might even make sense to hire a Shopify expert to do some customization.

Shopify Costs

The Shopify plan makes a small jump now and comes in at $79 a month. There’s again a revenue share, yet it’s just 1%, and it can still be offset by using Shopify payments.

It’s a great option for businesses that have an interest in scaling up quickly and needing a plan with slightly more capabilities to match their growth pace. It is ideal for those who are making a monthly revenue of $5000 per month or more.

This plan allows merchants to have access to:

  • All Basic Shopify offers
    +
  • Create gift cards
  • Great insight into business analysis
  • Professional reporting
  • Multiple employee accounts
  • And more

There is 24/7 phone, email and live chat support available in this plan.

At this stage, you probably want to get more out of your Shopify setup. Maybe you even want professional help setting up the store. This is where Shopify experts and agencies come in. They can assist you in any of the customization that you need on your store – whether it’s the tweaking of the layout or improving on the functionality of your store.

Advanced Shopify Costs

The Advanced Shopify plan now makes a considerable jump and is $299 a month. Again, there’s a reduced revenue share of 0.5% that can be offset by using Shopify payments.

If you are a growing company that is doing a decent amount of online business, this plan is suitable for you. The plan allows for third party calculated shipping rates, so you can build more detailed shipping scenarios on it. Combined with the possibility to set different prices for different countries, this truly enables you for international sales. It also comes with advanced reporting features, which will help you track and plan the future in terms of sales and marketing even better. Advanced Shopify is mainly meant for businesses of high expectations or with a monthly turnover of $10 000 a month.

This plan allows merchants to have access to:

  • All Shopify offers
    +
  • Real time calculated shipping rates through third parties
  • Advanced report builder
  • Unlimited number of products
  • Back-end admin access for up to 15 separate users
  • And more

There is 24/7 phone, email and live chat support available in this plan.

When you’re on the Advanced Shopify plan, your online store should bring in a sizable amount of revenue. Thus, it makes sense to customize and optimize it to your and your customer's requirements, to get the most out of your setup. You should think about using a custom design and replace any frontend apps that might slow down your store with your own solution. You should definitely consider bringing in a Shopify agency to help you with this more tech heavy customization and any design/functionality changes.

Shopify Plus Costs

This plan will cost you the most, but also give you the most. It starts at $2000 per month and again includes a revenue share, which works differently than with the other plans, though. (If you want to learn more about the details of price calculation with Shopify plus, we invite you to read our post on Shopify Plus pricing.)

A solid, robust, future-proof, engineered plan that is designed for enterprises with high volumes and/or high growth. It is the only Shopify plan you can get into through application only, instead of just signing up through their website.

Shopify Plus is a fantastic option for businesses with a very high budget and monthly revenue of about $100 000 per month or more – so anyone doing big business through their online store. Shopify Plus comes with up to 10 storefronts and an additional wholesale channel (however, it does have some limitations when it comes to more advanced B2B requirements). This plan can handle a lot of traffic, so it’s ideal for businesses with high volumes and the highest expectations.

This plan allows merchants to have access to:

  • All Advanced Shopify offers
    +
  • Easy to implement and migrate information
  • Built-in automation tools
  • Even more custom fulfillment options
  • Features for a global online presence
  • Advanced data records
  • Even tighter security features
  • A dedicated support team
  • SaaS power
  • Endless employee accounts
  • Up to 10 storefronts
  • Wholesale channel
  • And more

Get the most support with a Merchant Success Manager, Launch Manager There is 24/7 phone, email and live chat support available in this plan.

With a Shopify Plus plan, you can get access to a lot of nifty features that can help you take your business to the next level. With the amount of revenue going through your store on this plan, you need to focus your time on the things that really matter: growing your business. So, we highly recommend hiring a tech team to make the changes your website needs, as any small improvement can have a massive impact on your success. You need to let professionals handle that side of your business, which is exactly where an agency like ours comes in. We can handle the tech side of things and help you build and improve your store.

Furthermore, whilst Shopify Plus may have a wholesale option, it is important to note that certain limitations come with this, as Shopify is built more for B2C in general. Still, many businesses on the Plus plan ask for a B2B option. And there is an ‘Especial’ way around these limitations – Going Headless. This is the process of decoupling your front-end with your back-end and essentially building you a tailor made user interface that can include all the B2B commerce features you need.

Conclusion – Shopify x Especial

Shopify is a phenomenal E-Commerce platform with 5 different plans available to merchants depending on their needs and their budget. It is important to decipher between them and choose one that suits your business best.

Generally, you should consider the larger plans as your business is growing, and you’re making more money from your store. From the advanced plan on, you can highly benefit from customizations to get the most out of Shopify. This is where agencies like ours come in.

We’re honestly best suited to help your business from the advanced plan up, as is where requirements tend to become more detailed and you can really benefit from bespoke solutions. These require a capable tech team, which is exactly what we are – highly capable, highly creative and always ready to answer any tech questions you may have.

We would love to be considered as your agency partner, whether it’s to set up a website on the existing Shopify plus platform or if you’re rather after something more bespoke – either way, we’d love to hear from you. Should you need any consulting when making this decision, please do not hesitate to contact us on hello@especial.digital or contact us through our contact form.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 22, 2024
8
MIN READ
September 30, 2023
14
MIN READ

How To Set Up A Shopify Store

Table of contents

  1. Step 1 – Create a Shopify account
  2. Step 2 – Create your first online store and choose a business name for your Shopify store
  3. Step 3 – Log into the account you want to sync, with the online store you create
  4. Step 4 – Shopify account profile
  5. Step 5 – Create your online store with Shopify
  6. Step 6 – Business information
  7. Step 7 – Shopify Interface
  8. Step 8 – Add a product
  9. Step 9 – Customize Theme
  10. Step 10 – Add pages to your store
  11. Step 11 – Navigation
  12. Step 12 – Add a custom domain
  13. Step 13 – Connect more sales channels
  14. Step 14 – Set up Point of Sale (optional step)
  15. Step 15 – Set up Shopify Payments
  16. Step 16 – Disable password protection
  17. Additional information for you to know about your Shopify store
  18. Conclusion

Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform which enables entrepreneurs to start their very own online stores. We will show you how to set up your store from start to finish with Shopify. We will give you a step for step explanation from signing up, all the way to having your online store ready to publish!

So let's get started with how to set up a Shopify store!

Step 1 – Create a Shopify account

If you do not have an account with Shopify yet, then that's the first thing you need to do.

The page to do so will look like the below image. This is your first step in how to set up your Shopify store and as you can clearly see, Shopify offers a 14 day free trial when you sign up! It's easy as pie to create a Shopify account, follow the steps below to find out more!

Step 2 – Create your first online store and choose a business name for your Shopify store

The first page you're taken to, looks like the below image. You click on 'Create Store' and then the page will change, and you will need to enter an online business name. This is how you can start to create your Shopify website.

Shopify will flag if you have chosen a store name that is already taken, as that is not allowed. All you need to do is enter a store name that is not chosen to create an online store.

This is where you will see that you can create your eCommerce store during a trial period of 14 days from Shopify. Once you have spent time working with Shopify, you may feel more comfortable on the Shopify store and more inclined to choose a Shopify plan to create your Shopify store with.

Step 3 – Log into the account you want to sync, with the online store you create

Here you just need to log in to your account, or create one, if you haven’t done that before. You might want to consider having a strong password to keep all your valuable business information secure. An eCommerce store holds tresures, so be sure to use a strong password to avoid any leaks on your Shopify site.

We'd suggest downloading the app '1Password' which autogenerates long and unguessable passwords for you. Save the password as 'Shopify login' (or you can save and name it as you please) and you can pop it into the folder of your choice. This will be very useful when accessing your Shopify store.

You can download 1Password here to ensure that your Shopify account is well protected!

Step 4 – Shopify account profile

This is where you need to add further information about yourself. There are open fields for you to fill in for your Shopify store, which are:

  • Details – Name, phone, email etc.
  • Connect a login service
  • Stores, programs, and resources – this is where you can create your very own eCommerce store
  • Preferred language – here you can choose the language of your preference to work with. This does not affect the language of your store.
  • Timezone

Step 5 – Create your online store with Shopify

Take note of the URL that we included in the screenshot below. You will already see that the URL includes my store name, which for this trial, I have made 'Blossoming Bakery'.

This is the first step to creating you online store. You need to answer three questions:

1. Are you already selling?

  • I'm just playing around
  • I'm not selling products yet
  • I'm selling, just not online
  • I sell with a different system

2. What is your current revenue?

  • Here you have 5 options of range from 0 to 1 million so you just choose your bracket

3. Which industry will you be operating in?

  • Beauty
  • Clothing
  • Electronics
  • Furniture
  • Handcrafts
  • Jewellery
  • Painting
  • Photography
  • Restaurants
  • Groceries
  • Other food & drink
  • Sports
  • Toys
  • Services
  • Virtual services
  • Other
  • I haven't decided yet

For this experiment, we are going to assume that we're completely new. Not a single day of Blossoming Bakery behind us.

If you don't feel like filling this in, you do not have to, you can also skip it and leave it for later.

Step 6 – Business information

After you have filled in the selection that Shopify provides, you get to the next page where you can fill in your business information, which is a prerequisite for getting paid on your eCommerce store.

Step 7 – Shopify Interface

Now that you are a Shopify store owner, you get to dabble around on Shopify for 14 days worth of a free trial. You can peruse your Shopify admin and see all that Shopify offers for your eCommerce business.

The number of days you have left on your Shopify trial will be written in the bottom-right corner for you to keep your eye on.

Shopify provides a helpful Setup guide that you can follow as a checklist to get your store up and running. Let's run through some of these points so you can get a better impression of what it means to have a Shopify store.

Slowly starting to get the hang of it? Great! Don't be scared to mess around and make mistakes, you can edit things and you have the 14 day free trial to make as many mistakes as possible really so go for it!

See, it's not so hard to navigate Shopify stores and all that they entail.

Shopify has purposefully made it easy for those selling online to do so as easily as possible. They encourage non-tech and small businesses to create their own online store so Shopify has made their plans and store dashboard and store admin as easy to operate as possible.

Let's move on to adding a product and product descriptions shall we? Let us get this online shopping availability going!

Step 8 – Add a product

Let us start at the first point in the Shopify checklist. We need to add a product. This is one thing we will say about the Shopify platform – they are extremely organized. They outline everything for you, and it is the first step for you to be able to have your own online store.

Adding a product to your Shopify store is pretty straightforward. You need to add the title, the description, product images, set up a price, set up the availability, specify the weight and if it's a physical product or not. It's important to add useful information and accurate descriptions that also include some key words to improve in your ranking of search engines.

Each of these points are very important. The availability for example will allow you to keep track of your inventory and stock.

The weight specification can help you automatically link with courier companies, e.g. with DPD in the UK they charge businesses different courier fees depending on the weight. If your item is under 1kg then it is an ExpressPak 1, if your item is between 1 – 5 kg, then it is an ExpressPak 5.

Depending on how your item is weighed, will affect the packaging costs, shipping labels and shipping costs. You need to be as concise as possible with everything.

Filling in weight classes for example is time-consuming for businesses to complete, so entering the weight of the product will automatically make adding the DPD app to your store much easier, as this information will sync so DPD will decide for you which ExpressPak your shipment is.

We would advise using your own product photos for your product pages, as this makes your website stand out and feel more authentic.

Little tip: to increase your search engine optimization, you might want to consider hitting 'Products' and then 'Collections' and scroll all the way to the bottom. There you will see the option to add a search engine listing preview which is how online visitors searching for your store will read about you on the search engine site. Here again you can add things like titles and product descriptions but they will only be visible on the search engine listing.

Want to know more about SEO in Shopify? Stay tuned, we have a new blog all about that coming soon!

Step 9 – Customize Theme

Now we can choose from the Shopify theme store for our online store.

We can either go with a free theme or go with paid themes. Shopify themes are known for offering premium themes that comes with a lot of design aspects and great functionality.

Given that this is only an experiment, we are going to go with a free theme on Shopify themes.

There are many free themes on Shopify that you can look through. They divide them quite nicely by topic, so you'll see that some are seriously designed for a fashion business idea, others for a skin care range etc.

The Shopify theme store options

The one we went for, 'Crave', feels fitting for a food business idea, which is what we have, as we have a bakery! If you want to sell online, you need to make sure that your Shopify store is as appealing as possible. Online businesses need to take time to choose the right things like the correct Shopify theme, as it's the bits in the beginning of your business that you might see as small and insignificant but that have a great impact on your business.

Once you have successfully added your theme, you can hit 'customize' and this will allow you to create your very own online store. Be warned, even if you're doing this with a template, it does take time.

Your eCommerce business needs to be aesthetically pleasing and the Shopify theme store is there to help!

Step 10 – Add pages to your store

This is where you can build on your online store with Shopify.

On the theme store is where you chose the template you want to use for your Shopify store.

With Pages, you can add more information to your online store like a 'Contact' page, an 'About Us' page, 'Our Services' page etc. Store owners should take advantage of adding useful and easy to understad information to their pages. There is no limit to the amount of pages you are allowed to have.

Step 11 – Navigation

This is an important part of the creation of your website as this will help online visitors navigate, i.e., find things on your store.

Here, you can add filters to your website that online buyers can use to make their website search easier. You can add filter by categories like price or products.

You can also create nested menu's that allow you to have a dropdown menu that allows your visitors to find the products or information easier.

Customers easily navigating your website can make all the difference to the success of your online store.

Step 12 – Add a custom domain

The domain that you receive automatically with your online store has your business or store name in it, with the '.myshopify'. This is a default setting for Shopify and automatically becomes your primary domain.

So for a business named 'Blossoming Bakery' the automatically generated domain that Shopify creates is:

blossoming-bakery.myshopify.com (which is not very pretty now, is it).

What can you do about it? Get a custom domain!

You can either 'Connect existing domain' if you already have one. Or you need to 'Buy a domain'.

When you click on 'Buy on domain' you then need to enter the domain name you want, and Shopify will let you know if it is available and it gives you the price. You then buy the domain name and it's a yearly charge and that's it.

Step 13 – Connect more sales channels

This is the stage you connect more apps to your store so that you can increase the chances of your online store making sales.

You need to be visible in order to make sales, and you need to stand out in order to make sales through your eCommerce business.

Now, if you are using a pre-designed Shopify theme as your online store, then you're already going to struggle to stand out as it's a template.

However, if you add some useful apps that make the purchasing experience for your online visitors better and more unique, then you increase your chances of having a successful store.

The almost automatic sales channels are facebook, buy buttons and email, but there are many more that you can choose from.

Adding a sales channel or various sales channels is vital. Shopify is so clever that it understands the type of business you have (that's why we added the industry and sector we're in in stage 5) and so it actually recommends some apps that could be useful to your specific business.

You must explore the Shopify App store so find the best apps out there for your eCommerce store.

Step 14 – Set up Point of Sale (optional step)

This is really only needed if you want to sell at pop up markets or if you have a retail store that you want to sell at.

What Shopify POS allows you to do is make in-person sales. It is only handy if you have some form of brick and mortar store, or if you have physical customer contact and need to make in-person sales. This is what you need if you have actual store visitors.

Step 15 – Set up Shopify Payments

Accept payments online

This is done easily with Shopify Payments, Shopify's very own payment solution.

Revel in lower transaction fees with Shopify payments.

Of course, you can still use third-party vendor and payment provider, sales through these just come at a slightly higher transaction fee as Shopify need to accommodate and process these.

You want to ensure that payments can be made through various payment gateways like the usual credit card gateway of Visa, Mastercard, Amex and then offer your customers additional payment options like PayPal, GooglePay, ApplePay etc.

Step 16 – Disable password protection

The last step before you can go online with your Shopify store for the public to see.

Your Shopify store is password protected which means that only online visitors with the correct password can access your store. You will want to disable this so that your online store can be viewed by the general public.

It’s really easy to do so! Simply do the below steps:

  • Go to your ‘Online Store’ and click on ‘Preferences’ in the left column on your ‘Shopify Admin Page'
  • Go to ‘Password Protection’
  • You’ll see a checked box that says ‘Restrict access to visitors with the password’ so you need to uncheck that box
  • Then hit ‘Save’

Or if that’s too complicated you can also do it easily like this:

  • Go to ‘Online stores’ and then click on ‘Themes’
  • You’ll see a banner that says ‘Your online store is password protected’ and then you’ll see a button that says ‘Remove password’. And that’s it!

You want to get your eCommerce business out there for the world to see so don't forget to disable that password protection.

Additional information for you to know about your Shopify store

Beyond the steps involved in creating a new Shopify store, there is a super helpful Shopify interface that stores a lot of useful information.

You will find various headings on the left of your Shopify page like 'Home', 'Orders', 'Products', 'Customers', 'Analytics' etc.

When you have your own store, you need to know what is happening with your sales and customers and website performance and Shopify makes it so easy to understand. Keep an overview of the performance of your online store easily with this helpful Shopify dashboard.

When it comes to orders, you will be able to see all the orders placed on your online store, you will be able to see the shipping rates that each person paid etc.

With Shopify Analytics, you will have a lot of data on your whole operation, including how often customers purchase, what their average spend is etc.

Shipping is a tricky area with customers. It would be amazing to team up with a service partner whose rates are so low that you can incorporate them as your business expense and therefore offer free shipping to your customers, but this is rather unlikely.

Shipping options are hard to sift through and to find one that is realiable and inexpensive can be tricky. It might be worth adding a shipping page or even just an FAQ section only on shipping to your eCommerce store. This section can include the price of shipping to various shipping zones, the length of shipping time to each shipping zone and explain other shipping options that customers might have, or even collection options from your warehouse, if that is possible.

Be sure to check in with the necessary authorities and read up on eCommerce regulations in your specific country, as these laws change from country to country. It’s always best to consult a legal party about data privacy, data protection and eCommerce legalities before going public. We’d certainly recommend this!

Conclusion

Trust us, we're Shopify experts, we know that this is a brilliant ecommerce platform to use. Whether you want to launch a new business or want to migrate from an existing platform, Shopify can accommodate this.

Shopify is unique in the fact that it can handle a lot of changes, many third-party extensions, app downloads and online traffic.

With a Shopify store, you get flexibility. You want to save on transaction fees? Great, then use their very own payment gateway Shopify Payments. That's not good enough? Fine, in additional to Shopify payments, continue to use all other third-party payment gateways without a problem! Make your eCommerce business suit your needs but use Shopify to do this.

Scared for the future? You want an online store now, but what if in 6 months you want to have your own brick and mortar store? No problem! Shopify has Shopify POS for that.

Truly, Shopify has you covered in almost every aspect that you could possibly need. Give them a try! Sign up for the 14-day free trial and see how you find Shopify.

Should you need any help creating an online store, we're Shopify experts, and we do website conception and design, so please feel free to get in touch with us on hello@especial.digital or visit our website here.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 22, 2024
14
MIN READ
February 9, 2023
6
MIN READ

What is gatsbyJS

Table of contents

  1. What is a Static Site Generator or Static Site Generation?
  2. What makes Gatsby special and different?
  3. How does Gatsby work?
  4. Use Cases for Gatsby
  5. Headless CMS & Gatsby
  6. Conclusion
  7. Do you need a Gatsby agency?

Gatsby is a modern, React-based open-source framework for creating high-performance marketing, content or e-commerce websites and web apps.

Gatsby is known as a so-called “Static Site Generator” and is even suitable for building mobile apps in connection with other technologies.

The first version of Gatsby was released in 2015. Since then, the ecosystem around Gatsby has developed rapidly. Today, more than 2500 plugins and many CMS connectors are available.

Gatsby is developed by Gatsby Inc., which also offers native cloud hosting for Gatsby sites with plenty of various benefits.

What is a Static Site Generator or Static Site Generation?

Static site generators like Gatsby differ from other web technologies because of the way the website and its content are shown to the visitors of a website.

When visitors come to static websites, no conventional web server takes over the generation of the content. (The latter is called “server-side rendering” and is mostly used with any dynamically rendered sites.)

Instead, all files of a static site, including their content, are generated statically in advance and only finished HTML pages with static content are transmitted when a user visits.

This means that, with static site generation, no database connections have to be established, and no plugins need to get loaded. As a result, static websites usually load very fast and are also difficult to attack by hackers.

However, static sites have the disadvantage that all content has to be regenerated if content and data in the CMS (e.g., texts, images, videos, etc.) changes. This regeneration is called the build process and can take quite a while for a large website.

Since this is a known potential problem, Gatsby already offers solutions like Incremental Site Generation (ISG), which massively shortens the build process by not updating the whole page, but only the parts that have changed. Of course, this has a very positive influence on the performance of the website.

What makes Gatsby special and different?

Gatsby is a React-based framework with a large community and numerous extensions for a wide variety of use cases – for example lazy loading to further optimize the performance of Gatsby sites.

Therefore, compared to other static site generators, Gatsby is a good choice if the website developers are familiar with and want to work with React.

For website operators and developers, the large Gatsby community also offers a high level of security that Gatsby will not disappear from the scene anytime soon.

How does Gatsby work?

Many data sources

In order for a website to display content and make it manageable, it naturally needs a source for this content.

Gatsby applications can access a variety of data sources. In addition to the REST-API standard, Gatsby can also process the GraphQL-API standard. GraphQL APIs are particularly scalable and efficient, and are therefore particularly well suited for delivering content to a Gatsby frontend.

Both CMS systems and simple files can serve as data sources for Gatsby frontends. Popular (headless) CMS that are used with Gatsby are for example:

  • Contentful
  • Hygraph (formerly GraphCMS)
  • WordPress
  • drupal
  • sanity
  • Strapi
  • Netify CMS
  • Prismic

Furthermore, Gatsby applications can also be generated from Markdown files and therefore also other file formats such as Word files. For small applications you don't necessarily need a CMS.

Popular and modern technologies

From a technical point of view, frontends that are implemented with the Gatsby Framework are based on React.js. React.js is a very popular Javascript framework that has been used to implement many very scalable applications. For example, companies like Facebook, Netflix, Uber, Airbnb and the New York Times rely on React.js.

A big advantage of React.js, in addition to the good tooling for developers, is the large ecosystem. There are numerous free libraries for React.js that can also be used in commercial projects. For example, image galleries, sliders, drag-and-drop elements or PDF generators.

Built-in performance optimization

Through the many available plugins and internal processes, GatsbyJS supports developers in developing extremely high-performance websites and apps. Gatsby relies on a JAM stack architecture. JAM stands for JavaScript, APIs & Markup. In addition to generating static pages, Gatsby automatically optimizes the pages.

Also, Gatsby ensures that elements that negatively affect loading times are automatically improved.

All of this leads to customers often talking about 3x to 10x faster loading times after migrating to Gatsby.

Premium hosting for Gatsby sites with the Gatsby Cloud

Gatsby websites are compatible with many modern hosting providers such as AWS or Netlify, as they do not require a traditional backend server or database. But the best experience is offered by Gatsby Inc. hosting: Gatsby Cloud.

The Gatsby Cloud offers a very fast CDN, preview functions, CI/CD pipelines and other components optimized for Gatsby. Both paid and extensive free plans are available for Gatsby Cloud.

Use Cases for Gatsby

When to use Gatsby in web development

When does it make sense to build a Gatsby site?

The use of Gatsby, primarily, makes sense if you, as a website operator:

  • want to get independent of ongoing, technical website updates (such as for plugins)
  • want to achieve fast site loads and excellent performance. (Typically, a website built with Gatsby loads significantly faster than a site that rendered on the server side.)
  • want to offer the greatest possible protection against hacker attacks
  • want to optimize your technical SEO (loading times now have a major impact on search engine ranking)
  • have access to developers or an agency who are familiar with React or ideally Gatsby

When to not build a Gatsby site

Gatsby (and Static Site Generators in general) are typically not the best choice when creating an application with very dynamic content. They work great for more static sites, like a company website or blog.

But if you want to implement dynamic web apps, commerce sites or dashboards, for example, then Gatsby might not be the best choice. Instead, you might prefer a server rendered site instead of a static site in these scenarios.

Important: In the newer versions, Gatsby now also offers server-side rendering, so that the implementation of dynamic Gatsby sites and modern apps is now vastly improved.

Headless CMS & Gatsby

Thanks to its powerful API, Gatsby can pull data and content from an exceptionally large number of conten management systems. Even the operation of the blog software Wordpress is possible. However, headless content management systems (CMS) such as Hygraph, Contentful, Sanity or Storyblok are more common.

Depending on the CMS, a variety of integrations are also possible here, such as the integration of a preview mode or a drag-and-drop / WYSIWG editor for creating new pages and content.

Gatsby also offers plugins for many CMS – many developed by the large Gatsby community – which simplify the connection even more. A list of CMS plugins available for Gatsby can be found here: Gatsby Plugin Library | Search 3,000+ plugins

Conclusion

Gatsby is a powerful React-based framework for modern websites and apps. The large ecosystem with its numerous contributors creating plugins, the active Gatsby community, the very stable technical infrastructure and Gatsby Cloud as a hosting platform are a well-rounded package for all companies looking for an up-to-date and scalable platform for their digital project.

Do you need a Gatsby agency?

At Especial, we know Gatsby well. We regularly help our international customers to implement great web & app experiences.

If you require support or free advice regarding Gatsby, please do not hesitate to contact us – either directly via the contact form here on our website, or via hello@especial.digital.

Daniel Kolb
Product Manager
October 21, 2024
6
MIN READ
June 22, 2023
3
MIN READ

Shopify Plus Login

Table of contents

  1. How to log in to your Shopify (Plus) account
  2. What is Shopify Plus?
  3. How to login to Shopify on a desktop
  4. How to login using the Shopify app
  5. Log out of a Shopify account
  6. General ‘Please Notes’:
  7. Over and Out

How to log in to your Shopify (Plus) account

Having troubles logging in to your Shopify (Plus) account and want to know how to do so quickly? You’ve found the right place! Logging into your Shopify or Shopify Plus store follows the same steps. We will be explaining exactly how to log in to your Shopify Plus account easily and quickly, with just a few simple steps below.

What is Shopify Plus?

Shopify Plus is the enterprise plan that Shopify, an E-Commerce company, offers.

Shopify offers 5 different plans to any person out there who wants to have some form of online presence. The plans start to assist the individual wanting to sell their home-made candles through Instagram all the way over to the international corporation selling to countless customers. The latter mention would be the one signing up for the most functional plan from Shopify, namely Shopify Plus.

Take a read of the options that Shopify has for you in our ‘Shopify Plans and Pricing’ blog.

How to login to Shopify on a desktop

If you are using a desktop computer to log in, follow the five below instructions:

  1. Go to the Shopify login page under https://accounts.shopify.com.
  2. Pop in your email address, then click ‘continue’.
  3. You’ll then be asked to enter your password, before being able to press ‘log in’.
  4. If you are using an authenticator app to secure your account (which we highly recommend), you will then be asked to fill in the authentication code.
  5. Thereafter, you will see a list of the stores that your account is registered for and you can choose which store to log into.

If you use the same desktop to log into your online store, then you will not need to do this every time. The device will recognize you. Your store will be saved on the login page. All you need to do is click on your store, and it will take you through and log you in like that.

How to login using the Shopify app

  1. Download the Shopify app either through your App Store (for Apple devices) or through the Play Store (for Android devices).
  2. Open the app and if you already have a Shopify account then simply click ‘log in’ to enter your email address and password.

*Note: Should you have multiple stores linked to your email address then enter the domain ending in .myshopify.com that you want to log in to and then again, hit that ‘log in’ button.

Log out of a Shopify account

  1. Tap on your Store and then click ‘Settings’.
  2. Click ‘log out’.

*Here you will be able to log out of either the account you are currently logged into or out of all (multiple) accounts that you are logged into.

General ‘Please Notes’:

  • If you have forgotten your password for your Shopify login, then please press ‘’Forgotten password?’’ to reset it.
  • Should you enter the wrong password accidentally, at your next attempt you will be required to verify that you are not a robot at your next attempt.
  • If your browser is in private (or incognito mode) then you will need to complete certain authentication steps to successfully login.

Over and Out

As you can see, it’s pretty straightforward to log in and log out of your Shopify account.

Shopify offers stellar support to all their merchants. If you still have questions after reading our step for step ‘Shopify Plus Login’ instructions, then feel free to contact your helpful Shopify Support Team. You can reach the Shopify Contact Support here, and you can contact them, also without needing to log in, as you can see below.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 21, 2024
3
MIN READ
January 7, 2022
6
MIN READ

Headless Commerce: 5 Reasons Why

Table of contents

  1. Headless CMS: 5 Reasons Why
  2. Reason 1 Way more flexibility with room for creativity
  3. Reason 2 Know-how from skilled developers
  4. Reason 3 Easy to store and manage content
  5. Reason 4 Room for third-party integrations
  6. Reason 5 Future-Proof
  7. Conclusion

Headless CMS: 5 Reasons Why

CMS stands for Content Management System. It is an application used for web development that allows creators to produce, edit and publish both copy and images to a website. Examples of this are Wordpress, SquareSpace, Joomla and the list goes on.

Now a headless CMS is any kind of back-end content management system where this said content is decoupled/separated from the front-end, or you could call it the user interface. The content is then delivered for display on any device through APIs, which stands for Application Programming Interface. Examples of this are Contentful, Sanity, Hygraph and the list goes on.

The way that the tech world is developing and growing is leading to a lot more companies going the ‘headless’ route. It is the way of the future and so many businesses are jumping on the bandwagon … but why? What is so great about adopting the ‘headless’ CMS approach?

We’ve listed 5 major beneficial reasons that going ‘headless’ would offer you, so let’s get into them!

Reason 1 Way more flexibility with room for creativity

With ‘classic’ CMS, you are limited in building the user experience, as you are bound to the capabilities of the CMS you are using. With the headless approach, the possibilities of being creative are almost entirely endless! You can create a website that is entirely your own and that is unique to your brand. This will help you set yourself apart from your competition, and you will be able to design the website from the ground up.

Oftentimes, the first interaction and impression that a potential client has of your brand will be through your website. Yes, they may have seen you first from social media or been referred by a friend through word of mouth, but the first time they really sit down and get to know you as a brand is on your website.

We all know that the first impression is key. Building a website from scratch comes with the benefit of being able to stipulate exactly what you want and what you envision for your website. Front-end developers will be able to retrieve data from the CMS and display it any way you want. This allows you to be as creative as you like and represent your brand image as skillfully as possible.

Reason 2 Know-how from skilled developers

Using headless CMS tools will also give your developers the freedom to use whichever framework they are the most comfortable working with. This is a massive benefit as yes, developers are all amazing and the things they do with tech and coding blows the average Joe’s mind regularly.

However, within the world of developers, each developer usually has one or two frameworks that just jive better for them. Certain frameworks that they prefer over others and feel more comfortable using. Now, a developer who is confident with the program he/she is using, is a developer who will create tech magic for you. So, this is really something you want to support as a client.

On top of this, going the headless route will allow the team building your website to work independently of one another, front-end content creators and back-end developers will be able to work on their tasks without having to wait for each other to move on to the next step, which will increase productivity and morale.

Reason 3 Easy to store and manage content

The back-end content and database has no dependency on what is happening with the front-end, which means that content can be easily stored as these two worlds are kept separate. Usually updates take a long time with anything that is built custom as each step of the update needs to be manually triggered to a certain extent and with a traditional CMS that joins the back-end and front-end, this can take a long time.

However, with a headless CMS these two areas are divorced and therefore updates in the front-end can be changed in an instance. A lot of front-end interfaces need to be updated often as designs, styles and ‘what’s in and trendy’ change so fast so front-end developers can stay up to date with the trends and implement quirky and stylish designs, without being buckled down by the heavy back-end server as they run independently of each other.

Reason 4 Room for third-party integrations

With a headless CMS, APIs are crucial. APIs govern which content elements are connected with which front-end. They are connectors that will allow your business to automate its online business operations. The API can essentially make this connection with any third-party platform. Third-party integrations allow you to quickly add features and tools to your website that would otherwise take months to develop on your own.

So for example, if you use Google APIs you will be able to power Google Ads integration with your very own website. Or you can integrate your mobile app which will allow you to display your content on your website and your app, without storing it twice. This is a massive benefit as consumers are becoming more and more mobile prone to do their online shopping, they’re on the go and enjoy using the ease of their phone to do their online searching and purchasing.

Reason 5 Future-Proof

You can’t run away from the truth. The reality is, that you will spend a lot of time, energy and investment on creating a website (whether it’s standard or custom) and then times will change.

Your business will evolve, one of your partners will move on to their next project, new devices will crop up or your business will gain a lot more attention and subsequently your website will have a lot more traffic. You will need to make changes to your website, and you will need both a team and a framework who can implement these changes without halting or suspending your business whilst doing so.

A headless CMS will allow you to adjust content without creating massive headaches for your developers because the two aren’t locked together. Having a headless CMS will also allow you to take your front-end with you as your needs change, you will not be tied down to frameworks that either become outdated or obsolete, so you will never be in a place of saying ‘Oh no, now I need to re-do the entire website again’ as you will have pieces of the puzzle that you can simply pull out and move on to the next framework with. So as your business grows, your website can grow with you and not against you.

Conclusion

We feel that it is now safe to say that choosing a headless CMS isn’t simply a fad or some trend that will go out of fashion any time soon! Taking a leap of faith and going this route is rooted in wanting to work with better technology, being on the forefront of innovation and having both flexibility and limitless creativity when it comes to creating your website.

We specialize in going headless and are always open to talk you through your options. Simply contact us through our contact form below, or email us at hello@especial.digital

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 21, 2024
6
MIN READ
July 8, 2023
9
MIN READ

3 Brilliant B2B eCommerce Platforms

Table of contents

  1. The difference between B2B and DTC
  2. What is a B2B eCommerce Platform?
  3. Who are they geared toward?
  4. Essential features, your B2B eCommerce platform should have
  5. B2B eCommerce software solutions
  6. Conclusion
Ever asked yourself 'How do I get my products/services onto my own eCommerce store but only sell to other businesses?'

It's a fair and important question. B2B eCommerce differs vastly from DTC commerce. In fact, in most cases, they need to be looked at as two entirely different online setups.

The difference between B2B and DTC

The major difference is, of course, their clientele. They target business customers, who usually display a very different buying behavior.

With DTC, you sell to private and individual customers, so normal retail customers.

Whereas with B2B you sell to other store owners, you may cater to multiple companies or brands. These brands benefit from having their own company accounts or a customer profile on your B2B eCommerce platform. The business-to-business digital economy is a business model that is created by one company to sell to another company (not to a consumer).

The latter of the two is more complicated in the set-up and therefore needs to be approached differently from the get-go.

Did you know

In 2020, the world's largest eCommerce market is projected to surpass $15 trillion. This market is buzzing with business and yet almost a third of wholesalers do not have an eCommerce platform.

Statista estimates that the global B2B retail eCommerce market accounted for USD 1.9 billion in 2020 which was five times larger than the market for B2C goods. eCommerce sales will continue to grow through 2022 so if you find yourself in the B2B sector, then consider establishing a B2B eCommerce platform.

If you are unsure what exactly a B2B eCommerce platform is and where to begin, continue reading.

What is a B2B eCommerce Platform?

It's an online store

In its simplest rendition, it's an online store for wholesale eCommerce. But of course there are almost infinite more use-cases and scenarios out there, that go far beyond the usual online store. Yet, we want to focus on this scenario for this post, as it is definitely the starting point for most businesses.

Why is a B2B eCommerce platform important to have?

It's crucial to have a wholesale eCommerce online store to achieve business growth, and you will see real benefits when online transactions on your eCommerce platform increase.

eCommerce platforms, as you already know, are software programs for online businesses to manage their websites from A to Z. Along with different features targeting all the parts of a business, eCommerce platforms become an indispensable component to any digital sales strategy.

B2B eCommerce platforms are beneficial for a myriad of reasons:

  • Create the ability of catering to different customer groups
  • Correctly store customer data for your wholesale customers
  • Create unique sales channels for the unique needs of your wholesale clients
  • Streamline order intake and allow for self-service for customers
  • Have the infrastructure that supports multiple / different price lists
  • Remove internal sales processes through an automated system (e.g. typing up an order from a customer's email → customer can now order easily online instead)
  • At minimum, you will gain an increase in control (if not gain complete control over your eCommerce platform)

Who are they geared toward?

Wholesale business

Your wholesale customers are other businesses who benefit from the products / services that you sell. These items need to be carefully displayed on an eCommerce site of yours. The needs of the B2B sector tend to be slightly more challenging than those of the DTC sector.

In B2B, you need to consider the fact that each of your B2B customers has their own customers they need to continue to sell to. These B2B clients of yours have deadlines and budgets that are set by the company they themselves work for, and so the offering needs to be elite. You must fulfill their business needs.

Essential features, your B2B eCommerce platform should have

A great B2B eCommerce platform caters to the needs of either business (so the business that owns the online store and the business that buys off said online store). A B2B site created using B2B eCommerce systems is able to optimize business performance and maximize productivity. It is vital that you find the service provider that offers the best eCommerce solution for your business.

B2B responsibility

It is true that even when you sell to a business, you are ultimately still selling to a human being at the end of the day. The eCommerce standard remains the same, but the big difference is that the buying procedure is very different from the DTC consumer. B2B buyers have business processes to implement, budgets to meet, and the customer’s requirements to meet.

Let's take a look at some important features

  • Company profiles
  • Price lists | Customized pricing
  • Net payment terms
  • Custom store theme
  • Customer accounts
  • Self-service portal
  • Custom marketing tools

B2B eCommerce software solutions

It is important that you find the right eCommerce platform for your needs. Each eCommerce platform varies either slightly or dramatically in their offering, and you need to find the right eCommerce software that supports your B2B-needs best. Keep a lookout for the best eCommerce platform out there for you.

Take a look at various platforms that you can use to support your B2B eCommerce website below:

Shopify Plus B2B focus

Shopify is an eCommerce platform that has many enviable eCommerce features. It has business features that are rich in capability and has a lot of flexibility when it comes to third-party integrations.

Shopify is a cloud based eCommerce platform that integrates multiple payment options and payment price lists from the get-go.

Seeing as we are talking about Shopify Plus here, we'd like to mention that this price plan starts at $2000 per month. They implement customer-specific pricing, so the monthly price depends on your eCommerce platform needs. You're about to understand why. Below, you will see a host of essential features that this B2B eCommerce platform offers:

Essential features

  • Each B2B business can have their own login to your store
  • Multiple channels can be engaged with from the same back-end
  • Customized pricing per customer
  • Great third-party integrations
  • Brilliant order management system
  • Single dashboard host
  • Ability to offer unlimited amounts of multiple products
  • Tools for SEO expansion
  • Advanced features that include crucial data analytic feedback
  • Fully edit HTML and CSS
  • All you need for shipping methods (e.g., being able to refund shipping costs etc.)
  • Multitude of payment gateways
  • Detailed inventory management
  • Multilingual options for each of your storefronts
  • Easy order fulfillment capabilities
  • Free support 24/7

If Shopify Plus B2B eCommerce platform has inspired you, get in touch with one of their sales reps to see which price point you're looking at. Here is a full list of the Shopify price lists on our blog 'Shopify Plans and Pricing'.

We are proud Shopify partners and believe strongly in our technology partners at Shopify and their incredible service.

Why is BigCommerce's B2B eCommerce Platform top-notch?

BigCommerce is a leading eCommerce platform known worldwide for its highly flexible APIs, efficient ERP integration and competitive pricing, making this online store affordable and also one of the best B2B eCommerce platforms on the market currently.

BigCommerce aims at offering its customers the most advanced B2B services.This means that it almost has no rivals within the eCommerce software industry. BigCommerce is not as easy to use as Shopify, but if you are in the B2B arena, you are probably going to need some developers to help you out anyway, so this should not be an issue.

BigCommerce offers a variety of pricing plans or catalogs for specific customer groups. BigCommerce is an eCommerce platform that allows for a B2C and B2B set up in the most efficient manner. We are going to take a look at important features on their B2B side.

Essential features

  • Readily available templates
  • The possibility of coding and therefore expanding functionality
  • Multiple fully-customizable themes
  • Built-in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript support
  • Support B2B specific payment services
  • Ability to segment customer groups
  • SEO optimisation
  • Customized pricing

When you're at the level of BigCommerce for BigCommerce Enterprise, you need to contact their sales reps to find out more about the pricing plan for your business. They have personalized pricing that is dependent on your needs.

Adobe Commerce

Adobe Commerce (which used to be called 'Magento Commerce') is another option that you're going to need to look at, if you're looking to accommodate wholesale eCommerce.

Adobe Commerce / Magento Commerce has all the capabilities needed to support multiple channels, multiple brands and multiple products. This eCommerce platform has technology for a PIM system and an ERP system.

It will equip you to build a brilliant eCommerce site and is one of the best B2B eCommerce sites out there.

Essential Features

  • Flexible customization
  • Powerful eCommerce site
  • Third-party integrations are easily incorporated
  • Extensive inventory management
  • In demand themes and templates
  • Fulfillment management

Further Fantastic B2B eCommerce Platforms

The three above-mentioned platforms are admittedly some of the biggest B2B eCommerce solutions out there. There are, of course, many many more.

Take a look at some of the below-mentioned ones that could be of use for you and are further interesting software providers.

Headless Commerce Platforms

There is another way to approach B2B eCommerce. This is through taking the Headless approach. Going headless will give you even more freedom to build a bespoke B2B eCommerce experience for your customers. The great part is that all platforms that we write about in this article also offer Headless capabilities.

Moreover, there are dedicated Headless Commerce platforms that can also help you build a B2B eCommerce shop:

Conclusion

User-friendly online store

As a business owner, you want to ensure that the fellow business customers buying do so easily. It is in the interest of your business to have online stores that are easy to use.

Prioritize your wholesale customers

If your eCommerce website is on an eCommerce platform that is highly functional, fast to load and easy to order on – then you will have happy customers. It is important to nurture your clients through customer relationship management. Providing a stellar eCommerce platform forms part of creating positive customer relationship management.

Be visible

You want your offering to be customer-focused, i.e., based on what your wholesale customers truly need. First and foremost, they need to be able to find you, so use your marketing tools and get busy with search engine optimization. Secondly, make sure that purchasing your items is easy, whether directly through your website, on a separate marketplace like Amazon or through Google shopping.

Feedback is crucial to success

Feedback is customers-focused, meaning that you want to ensure that those customers stay elated with your offering.

At the end of the day, you want to know how you can create or expand your online store and start gaining more sales. This is how you do it when you are working with wholesale business.

You choose the correct eCommerce platform to work with, make them your technology partner essentially, and then get cracking. Don't use or work on the same platform you have been using for years that is either not functional anymore or does not offer great B2B options.

There are too many extraordinary eCommerce platforms out there to be stuck with one that no longer serves your business.

Get in touch

Should you wish to get in touch with us so that we can recommend a suitable eCommerce platform for your business, please do not hesitate to do so. Email us on hello@especial.digital or contact us through the contact form below.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 16, 2024
9
MIN READ
April 1, 2024
4
MIN READ

Serverless Computing in Ecommerce

Table of contents

  1. What is serverless computing?
  2. Benefits of Serverless Computing – For Operators
  3. Benefits Serverless Computing – For Developers
  4. Examples of E-Commerce apps with Serverless Computing
  5. Serverless Computing Providers
  6. Serverless Computing – Any Questions?

What is serverless computing?

Serverless computing is a trend that has been getting more and more popular, which is why it is such a top of discussion in 2022. How most web-based software applications worked is with their own server infrastructure which needed to constantly be up and running. However, with serverless computing, this is no longer the case. Now web-based software applications can simply use the power of a cloud provider.

Serverless computing works on a bit of a ‘pay per view’ principle. So depending on what you need, that will determine what you pay for. An example would be if you need to create a specific computing function that allows you to put a product in the shopping cart of your online shop. You’d pay for this specific function.

When we speak of needing a fixed server structure, the opposite of serverless computing, what this means is that: A server will run in the background of your online store 24 hours a day 7 days a week. It will sit and patiently wait for customers to use your site and then support them/complete their requirements as they are made. Due to this constant presence of a fixed server structure you naturally need to pay for this service 24 hours a day 7 days a week, regardless of if there were 0 or 100 visitors in your store during that period.

On the other hand, with serverless computing, applications are programmed in a way that they only need to gain access to a cloud server for specific and individual queries. What then happens is that they share what is known as a "super computer" in the form of a computer farm that has many other programs. The benefit and result of this is that the “super computer” only works for your special program when absolutely necessary/required.

In contrast to the solutions of common cloud PaaS operators such as Heroku or cloud IaaS operators such as AWS EC2, individual dynos/containers do not have to be booked and maintained. This means that the functionality and billing are largely automated and vary. So you do not need to rent the virtual part of a large server and operate it yourself, instead the server is used in real time for specific computing or database operations. Use it as you need it and not the other way around – nifty!

Benefits of Serverless Computing – For Operators

As the operator of an E-Commerce application, the biggest advantage of serverless computing is that peak loads will no longer be a problem in the future. In addition to this, there are also significantly lower maintenance costs by going the serverless computing route. So if you are expecting a large number of customers on Black Friday, for example, you do not have to book a larger server or risk overloading your IT capacities. Also you do not pay the same prices on a random Tuesday at 3am that you would pay for prime time on a Sunday evening at 8pm.

Benefits Serverless Computing – For Developers

Developers and agencies, on the other hand, can benefit massively from serverless computing, since they do not have to provide any major know-how regarding server administration and can thus concentrate more efficiently on the development of applications. In addition to this, serverless computing enables a more precise microservices approach. It promises better ways to easily mix and match different programming languages ​​and systems within the same project, rather than committing to one solution from the start.

We would like to quickly add though that the only disadvantage for developers is the reduced control over individual components of the server architecture. In reality, however, these are only of secondary importance for most cases in E-Commerce.

Examples of E-Commerce apps with Serverless Computing

Since serverless computing has only been around for a few years now, there are not so many software tools that have been developed/released due to it only recently becoming something that forms part of the mainstream tech world. In the field of E-Commerce, for example, Snipchart and Commerce.js are the main two that are making moves toward advancements. Serverless computing is suitable for the development of new and innovative applications (e.g. augmented reality apps or individual B2B solutions) as we develop them every day here at Especial.

Serverless Computing Providers

When it comes to creating serverless computing applications for serverless services and frameworks you can choose between Vercel, Google Cloud, AWS Lambda, Microsoft Azure and IBM Cloud, for example.

Serverless Computing – Any Questions?

If you have any other questions about this, please feel free to contact us. So please send us an email to hello@especial.digital or contact us via our contact form.

Daniel Kolb
Product Manager
October 2, 2024
4
MIN READ
January 21, 2023
8
MIN READ

Why You Should Choose A Custom Theme For Shopify Plus

Table of contents

  1. Why You Should Choose A Custom Theme For Shopify (Plus)
  2. Option 1: Standard Theme
  3. Option 2: Standard Theme with Modifications
  4. Option 3: Custom Design
  5. Say you pick Option 1: standard theme. What would this mean for yourself and your business?
  6. Say you pick Option 2: standard theme with modifications. What would this mean for yourself and your business?
  7. Say you pick Option 3: custom design. What would this mean for yourself and your business?
  8. A guiding note for all
  9. Conclusion

Why You Should Choose A Custom Theme For Shopify (Plus)

Well, hmm, why should you?

When choosing a design for your Shopify website, you essentially have 3 options.

Option 1: Standard Theme

You proceed with the templates offered in the Shopify theme store. You take a crack at picking one (free or paid) and work your way around it until you’ve created a website you feel comfortable showing the world. These are what we’d call ‘Standard themes’.

Option 2: Standard Theme with Modifications

You use a Shopify template and instead of you fiddling around, you hire a Shopify Agency to work on the template for you. They’ll probably be able to do a better job than you, if you tried it yourself, but their customizations are also limited to what the Shopify template can accommodate. There are what we’d call ‘Standard theme’s with some modifications’.

Option 3: Custom Design

You get your very own website built from scratch, with all the design features and functionalities that you have been thinking about. You work alongside an agency that has your best interest at heart, and together you create a website that will work for your brand image, portray all necessary images and copy that your brand needs and be as interactive for your online visitors as you see fit. Moreover, it will be one of a kind! This is what we’d call a ‘Custom theme’.

Say you pick Option 1: standard theme. What would this mean for yourself and your business?

Benefits to Option 1 (Standard Theme)

  • Sit down immediately, browse through options and start editing right this instant.
  • It would require a smaller budget (sometimes even free if you select a free template).
  • You’ll be able to enter the market / start to make sales faster as setting this store up shouldn’t take very long as all the coding and design is already done for you.
  • Apps can help you add features to the front-end, if they are not in the theme, which is great.
  • Shopify offers you free updates and 24/7 support on their website, as well as having an online forum that can answer many of your questions too.

Drawbacks to Option 1 (Standard Theme)

  • If you decide going at this alone, you will need to depend on your tech abilities and e-commerce experience to see you through this endeavor.
  • Yes, theme support is there to help you, but they will only be able to help you with the theme options and errors. They will not be able to tell you which options and settings are best for your business, or help you, when the theme settings don’t cover what you need.
  • Your website will look like countless other websites out there. You may have inserted different images and chosen a unique set of colors for your color palette, but the structure and design itself will be rather generic.
  • You will not be using everything the theme has to offer, yet the unused elements are there in the theme and can have an impact on your site – e.g., reducing its loading speed.
  • Getting multiple apps can lead to a hefty monthly fee quickly. Apps have a high risk of making your store slower. You might also struggle to find apps that do exactly what you want.

Say you pick Option 2: standard theme with modifications. What would this mean for yourself and your business?

This one feels like you could be getting the best of both worlds. But are you really?

Benefits to Option 2 (Standard Theme with modifications)

  • You get to pick from the standard Shopify templates, which makes getting your website complete and live a faster process.
  • You have a Shopify Agency holding your hand and showing you nifty tricks that you can implement that you perhaps wouldn’t have found yourself.
  • Medium range budget as the theme will be relatively inexpensive and depending on which digital agency you select, you can keep your expenditure relatively low for the fact that you’re building a website.
  • Your website will have some custom designs and custom features to suit your brand and your brand image better than the original standard design, so it will be uniquely yours.
  • There is an endless amount of third-party Apps available to you to add to Shopify themes to fulfill specific functions.

Drawbacks to Option 2 (Standard Theme with modifications)

  • The customization has its limitations, as only small modifications really work. The framework of the standard Shopify theme you chose can only alter so much, until you run into problems, so you’re limited with how custom you’d like to get it.
  • Small modifications come with their own drawback, which is that you then lose some of the advantages that come with standard themes, like free updates.
  • With every change, you make to the standard theme, you risk your site becoming slower to load as you will be loading it up with more and more code.

Say you pick Option 3: custom design. What would this mean for yourself and your business?

Benefits to Option 3 (Custom Design)

  • Something we like to call ‘clean code’ which essentially means that we create code for only the functionalities that you need, which leads to easier modifications and faster loading speeds.
  • We can create a unique design for your website and give you full control over the user experience.
  • Less need for apps as app functionality can often be built into the theme
  • Full potential for all kinds of optimization for the user’s experience, as well as for SEO and speed optimization (when you are a bigger brand, even small changes in conversion rate will earn you a good amount of additional revenue. Therefore, big brands are very active in developing and advancing their stores).
  • You get to benefit from the knowledge of a highly skilled team that will be able to implement all the ideas and changes you require on your new website.

Drawbacks to Option 3 (Custom Design)

  • Cost. Creating a custom build website from the ground up with a team of highly skilled software engineers and tech-savvy individuals will cost you. This route is labor-intensive, so that is what will cost the most.
  • Time. You know the saying, ‘Rome wasn’t built in a day?’. Well, that’s precisely what we’re working with here. For us to build you something that is unique, your very own and have all the design and functionalities that you need, it will take a few weeks. Meanwhile, your standard theme setup can be done in just a few days. The time frame depends on the size of each project, so if you’d like to get an idea, just shoot us an email on hello@especial.digital or contact us on our website here.
  • You’ll need to either have an excellent idea of what you’re after and the skill to convey this to the digital agency that you choose. Or be open to working alongside a digital agency while you both figure out what is best for you, so this will require quite a lot of flexibility in creativity on your end, which some could see as a drawback (personally, we see this as an opportunity for a fantastic collaboration).

A guiding note for all

The last thing we’d like to point out, which isn’t exclusive to any of the options above, is the size of your business. We believe that the best way forward is a custom theme and from experience we know that the majority of the companies we have worked with in the past who made the shift to ‘Custom themes’ have experienced massive benefits in revenue and customer experience.

However, we do know that this option comes at a much higher cost. So whilst we’d like to scream from the rooftops that you should choose a custom theme from the get-go, we would like to point out that if you are a small or new business with a limited budget, then taking Options 1 or 2 will probably work for the beginning. In fact, we have helped many young and successful businesses which grew out of the capabilities of their standard theme to switch to a custom one with great success.

If you are a medium-sized company or large enterprise, then you really should look into creating a custom-built website. Not only will it help you to build a better brand experience and highlight your strengths, even small increases in conversion rate, user experience or loading times will earn you a good amount of additional revenue. Therefore, big brands are very active in developing and advancing their stores as they know that even the smallest change can reap big benefits.

Conclusion

We’re a digital agency, so our say is always going to be ‘GO CUSTOM!’

We know that there are reasons why going with the standard theme on Shopify might have its benefits (if you’re a new company or have a small budget) and we appreciate that Shopify has managed to actually offer some stylish options for people on a budget.

At the same time, we just know how great a website can be if you build it from the ground up, and we revel in the fact that we are confident that we can create a site that is perfectly suited and tailored to your specific needs. This is the reason we push this option because we know how great it can turn out, and we know that there is so much more value in having the flexibility when it comes to creating design and features.

If you require supplemental information, or you want our thoughts regarding which option you feel would suit your business best, feel free to get in touch over our website here or pop us an email on hello@especial.digital.

Malte Dietrich
Account Manager
October 2, 2024
8
MIN READ
November 2, 2023
7
MIN READ

The cost of Headless Shopify

Table of contents

  1. The scenario
  2. Initial project costs
  3. Headless Frontend vs. Custom Shopify Theme
  4. Running costs
  5. Cost efficiency
  6. Conclusion
We’ve often shouted from the rooftops about the many advantages there are when combining a headless tech stance, with an E-Commerce platform giant like Shopify Plus. We take the time to expertly explain this dream pairing but of course, the following question quickly arises: “Yes, that sounds grand but what does it actually cost?”
We wish we could give you one perfect figure straight out the bat; however, there’s a bit more to it. For an accurate assessment, we need to dive deeply into the specific requirements, wishes, and goals associated with each unique project. You see, going headless is a very tailored pursuit that will suit your bespoke needs to the tee, which is why having a general cost for this is impossible, as it really depends on your needs.
We do, however, understand that having a rough figure does already help, which is why we will go into which factors influence the costs below. We will not only consider the initial costs but also the running costs of a headless Shopify setup.

The scenario

There are different ways of implementing a headless storefront with Shopify. At this stage, we will exclude the alternative solutions with third-party software for the front-end (such as Shogun or Frontastic) and only consider the development of a completely individual front-end app based on the JAM stack.

Initial project costs

I know, I know — I said it was hard to have figures for something like this, and now you’re about to see some figures. I thought it might be worth giving you a rough indication of the price of our headless front-end projects for Shopify, which range between €30,000 — €350,000 (gross).

Of course, these figures come with a few notes: The lower range mainly includes small businesses with few products and pages, whose websites are more likely to be seen as a collection of a few landing pages. When it comes to the upper range, the effort can also exceed the stated value, depending on complexity regarding design or feature requests.

The following aspects are usually the most important cost factors in a headless Shopify project:

  • The amount of design components that need to be implemented for the online shop (pages, reusable sections, etc.)
  • The complexity of the design
  • (How much do the design elements vary? How complicated are the elements to code? — We generally recommend using a design system.)
  • The number and complexity of integrations with other systems
  • (e.g., CMS, PIM, ERP etc.)
  • The desired degree of technical optimization for the launch
  • (loading times, Google Web Vitals, etc.)

Headless Frontend vs. Custom Shopify Theme

A very interesting thing to reference for the cost estimate is the effort required to implement the same design as an individual Shopify theme. Our experience shows that the costs are often only 10-20% higher in comparison — but that you get significantly better performance results and more freedom with the headless front-end.

Not only that, but if, in addition to a CMS, other software/complex solutions, such as a configurator for example, need to be installed in the front-end, then it can be true that the implementation of a headless front-end costs even less than using a Shopify theme. This is due to it sometimes being more time-consuming to adapt existing solutions in Shopify than to simply integrate them into a flexible headless front-end.

Running costs

In addition to the initial headless front-end project costs, you will of course also have other ongoing costs. That's why we're also taking a look at some of the tool costs and hosting costs to give you an idea of ​​the total cost of ownership (TCO).

Hosting

To achieve rapid loading times (for which headless is known), so-called ‘static page generators’ are usually used. Another advantage of this approach is that the hosting costs are very manageable. When hosting through Vercel, for example, monthly costs are around $20 in most cases.

CMS

As already mentioned, you will probably integrate a CMS such as Sanity, Contentful or Hygraph to control the content of your headless front-end. When it comes to CMS, the cost will depend on the choice of provider. It will also depend on the complexity and amount of content shown on your website and the number of times your shop is accessed. Surprisingly enough, many of the CMS vendors have free plans that often include enough features to get you started. If you do need the paid for service with more features, though, then you’re looking at a monthly cost in the two-to-three-digits.

Maintenance & further development

Once you decide to take the headless front-end Shopify approach, you of course also take responsibility for the ongoing further development of your site — exactly as you would if you went for an individual theme on Shopify itself. While the initial setup (see above) can be even more expensive, it is usually the other way around when it comes to ongoing development.

It is much easier to add new components and features with a headless front-end — especially when it comes to more complex functionalities. This includes, for example, special product configurators or individual quizzes, should these not be mapped by a Shopify app in the desired range of functions.

A headless solution is therefore particularly worthwhile for companies that are very active when it comes to designing and developing their online shop.

More tools

In addition to the components already mentioned, other third-party software is typically used in headless stores. This can be e.g., a cookie consent tool, extended tracking, CRM systems and many other tools.

Cost efficiency

I hope that you now have a rough idea of ​​what the costs of going the route of a headless commerce front-end with Shopify looks like. Moving forward now, I would like to tackle the topic of cost efficiency. I mean sure I could talk your ear off about costs and all the variants involved there but ultimately, what matters most to your company is the result of a measure – i.e., whether the investment in a headless front-end pays off in the form of more sales, more profit or savings elsewhere.

Our extensive experience shows that the switch to a headless front-end has positive effects in many areas of a company:

Of course, there is an increase in performance in terms of loading times (if attention was paid to the optimization for the duration of the project). This factor alone has a lot of influence on your online shop:

  • Visitors browse the online shop for longer (longer length of stay, lower leave rates)
  • Increasing conversion rates lead to more sales
  • Increase in Google Web Vitals ensures a better search engine ranking and thus more visitors to your shop
  • The improved user experience in the shop often has a positive effect on brand perception compared to your competition
  • etc.

These improvements also affect other departments in your company. For example, a higher conversion rate is directly linked to lower customer acquisition costs (CAC), which should bring about numerous smiles in your marketing team.

You also benefit from the flexibility of the headless front-end. As already mentioned, maintenance and further development is usually less complex and therefore cheaper. In addition, this leaves you with more time and budget for developing new features or optimizing the user experience, which can lead to a further increase in conversion rates.

Due to these factors, switching to a headless front-end with Shopify pays off for many companies within the first 24 months.

Of course, there are scenarios in which a headless front-end would, as the saying goes, be like “cracking a nut with a sledgehammer”. I say this because businesses that don’t need a complicated bevvy of features, who are only at the beginning of their success, can often benefit more from other measures than from switching to headless. I just want to be as transparent here as possible — we stand for ‘going headless’ but we do want to make sure that it is the correct approach for your business, which is why I say that headless may be overkill if you’re just starting out. We have already written another blog article about the scenarios in which headless with Shopify is worthwhile or not worthwhile. You can find it here.

Conclusion

Are you interested in expanding your Shopify shop with a headless front-end, or building a headless shop with Shopify? As Shopify and Headless Commerce experts, we are happy to support you. Simply use our contact form for your request.

Malte Dietrich
Account Manager
October 2, 2024
7
MIN READ
January 27, 2023
10
MIN READ

Shopify Plus Cost of Ownership

Table of contents

  1. Shopify Plus Cost of Ownership
  2. Running Cost
  3. Transaction & Payment Fees
  4. Cost of Apps
  5. Build Stage
  6. Shopify Plus agency cost
  7. Conclusion

Shopify Plus Cost of Ownership

When deciding which E-Commerce platform you want to choose, the cost of said platform is often one of the biggest points to consider.

You’re clearly looking into Shopify Plus; Otherwise you wouldn't be here. Welcome.

There is an acronym ‘TCO’ which stands for ‘Total Cost of Ownership’. This is the first thing you need to wrap your head around when it comes to the cost of a Shopify Plus store – or any website, really.

Choosing Shopify Plus (or any E-Commerce platform for that matter) is not a once-off cost. There are buying, building and running costs involved. (Important to note is that Shopify Plus has a minimum 12-month contract.)

Running Cost

The very first cost you will hit is the initial monthly fee that Shopify Plus charges all its users. It starts at $2k per month. This is for all businesses with a revenue of under $800k a month. For those who have a revenue over $800k a month, Shopify Plus will charge them an additional 0.15% of the revenue generated above $800k.

This above mentioned base line fee, what exactly does it cover/include?

Hosting – Shopify is a SaaS E-Commerce solution and as such, all stores are hosted on their platform.

Updates – Keeping your website as up-to-date as possible is imperative with staying competitive in your field. Shopify Plus stays up-to-date and automatically performs a lot of updates on your behalf.

Wholesale – The Shopify Plus plan includes a separate wholesale store, which allows you to enter the B2B business, which can open up a lot of additional revenue on top of your D2C sales.

Support Services – a 24/7 support team is at your disposal when using Shopify Plus. They also have an extensive FAQ forum and a ‘Help’ section on their website for almost every little question you might have.

Shopify Plus Apps – The team at Shopify Plus has done wonders creating useful, tech-savvy and time saving Shopify-built apps that are designed to streamline your operations.

Option of Expansion Stores – Shopify Plus allows you to set up 9 further stores (they all need to be the same brand), which you can use to build international stores, giving you lots of global trade possibilities for the future. If you need more than 9 store instances, you can also pay for more, which will cost you $250 per store, per month.

Transaction & Payment Fees

One of the most crucial parts of e-commerce is payment. You will need one or multiple payment gateways to process and receive payments from your customers. The default solution with Shopify is Shopify Payments, which includes a range of different payment methods from credit cards to Apple Pay, depending on where your HQ is based, and for which they charge around 1.5% - 3.15%.

If you prefer to use a third-party service like SagePay, Adyen or PayPal, their respective fees will apply. Note that if you don’t use ‘Shopify Payments’ you will be charged a transaction fee of 0.15%, so it makes sense to compare the options thoroughly.

Cost of Apps

In order for your website to function as best it can, Shopify has a curated app marketplace, which includes nifty Shopify-built apps as well as third-party apps. You can use these to add functionality to your store and increase its performance. Different apps can do different things. Some help you optimize your workflow, others automate marketing methods and some aid with your internal logistics.

Let’s look at some examples. Seeing as we’re talking a lot about cost in this blog, here are some apps that will help you better manage your finances and costs. For example, the third-party app Avalara helps you work out your tax payments. On the other hand, ReturnGo assists you in managing your returns. (feel free to visit the Shopify App Store yourself, so you can take a look at all the apps they offer)

Most of these apps come at an additional cost and all app setups are specifically tailored towards the respective business, so it’s hard to call numbers for this. For a ballpark figure, we’d say that you’re looking at approximately $1k – $2k a month to build a relatively powerful app setup and up to $7k if you’re a big enterprise that needs many specializations.

When using Shopify apps, you will be billed for your subscriptions and app usage as part of Shopify's 30-day subscription billing period.

With apps, it really depends on what you need. It’s exactly like when you download an app on your phone for personal reasons. Occasionally it's completely okay to go with a free app that offers only little features, if the basics are enough for you. At other times, something is essential to you, and you are willing to pay more for it to include all the features you need.

Build Stage

Now that you have an idea about the running costs of Shopify Plus, let’s talk about the cost for the initial setup. At first, you will need to decide whether you want to do it all on your own, or if you would like to get external help.

If the cost of the minimum monthly Shopify Plus subscription, cost of apps and cost of transaction fees is already stretching your budget for, then Shopify has great themes that you can choose from. With these, you can build your own website. The benefit to this is that it saves you the cost of a Shopify Agency, the downfall is that, well, you’ll have to build your own website (and that it might come out looking somewhat generic).

Most businesses that use Shopify Plus will want to take that last step of creating a custom website, to build a brand-specific store and really stand out from the competition. Now you’ve fallen into the land of web design and web development. If you don’t have an in-house team to tackle this, you should consider hiring a Shopify Plus agency.

The same holds true for integrations. Shopify offers fantastic APIs to connect it with your existing tools and software. If there is no standardized API connector for your tools, you will need the help of professional developers to build custom integrations, which can also be hired through an agency.

Shopify Plus agency cost

The cost of the Shopify Agency will depend on which one you choose and might vary a lot. The better the quality, the bigger the company, the more team members they can offer you, the more priority they can place on your business and the faster the turn around speed on your project, the more it will cost.

In general, smaller agencies tend to specialize in certain skills or niches, delivering very focussed services, while larger agencies will be able to offer a wide range of services, ranging from coding to marketing. Yet, they will probably have a somewhat similar process for setting up a Shopify Plus store.

There are three pillars to the costs of a Shopify Agency.

Pillar 1 – The initial planning

Usually, to receive a proper proposal for a project by an agency, you will first have to present them with detailed specifications of your project. This requires in-depth knowledge as well as writing detailed and lengthy documentation on your side – doesn’t sound very inviting, does it?

That’s why many agencies offer initial consulting, discovery, and planning. This process is worth it for you and the agency. You will be able to run through all your ideas, wants and needs. The agency will be able to see the probability of those coming into fruition and prepare a technical play by play of how achieving your goals would look, while learning about and understanding your business.

This process will cost you money, as it costs the agency time and resources. But it is worth it because at the end, you’ll have a detailed solution plan in hand and a good idea whether the agency can deliver what you need. (And if you feel that they can’t, you can just take the results and talk to any other agency.)

Quick Disclaimer: You might run into agencies that write a proposal without this initial consultation and planning. If you didn’t have an extensive request for proposal that you’ve sent them beforehand, and you enter the project with them, you can count on hitting many bumps in the road with a high risk of being charged more in the end. This is simply due to the fact that they wrote a proposal purely on what they thought was what you require, without checking whether their assumptions are right.

An average ballpark figure here ranges significantly depending on the agency you choose, but it usually starts at around $5k and rises with the complexity of the project. Our experience shows that setting aside about 5 – 10% of your overall budget on planning leads to good results, without overthinking anything.

One more thing that will become clear during the discovery process is if there is a need for a headless website.

A headless website is a highly technical website that requires a team of highly skilled professionals and coders to create a bespoke website.

If you say during the discovery process that you are looking for a website that is extremely tailored to your businesses specific needs, that can look like no other, that has uncommon features and designs that are quirky and yours only, then you will see that you’ll be directed toward a headless website. If you have the desire for a custom-made, digitally forward-thinking, fast to load and high performing website, then going headless is right for you.

Not all agencies can create headless websites. They’re extremely niche and very new to the block in terms of tech. The agency you’re doing the discovery with may not even be able to do a headless website. It’s the action of decoupling your front-end with your back-end so that these two can run together but parallel to each other and are not linked.

If you’d like to read about what going headless means and the costs involved, read our blogs:

The Cost of Headless Shopify

Headless CMS – 5 Reasons Why

An average ballpark figure here ranges significantly depending on the agency you choose, but it usually ends up between $50k – $550k, and therefore we’d only recommend mid to large-sized enterprise with consecutively high yearly turnovers to take this route.

Pillar 2 – Web Design & Web Development

Furthermore, you will need to then pay for them to implement this discovery report and create and design your website. This is known as the project cost.

The project costs vary significantly depending on the size of your business, your online site traffic expectations, fulfillment processes on your website, site layout and design, features that you’d like, shop automation and optimization etc.

An average ballpark figure here ranges significantly depending on the agency you select and the services you need, but it typically starts at around $20k – $350k.

Pillar 3 – Running Costs

You’ll now need the agency to make sure that the website they created stays as it should. To achieve this, they will need to update your website often and implement changes that you will notice needing as time continues. As your business grows and evolves, so must your website and your agency is the team that implements these changes.

Agencies usually work on monthly retainers to offer these services. Depending on how frequently you require them to jump in and tweak certain things and depending on the level of expertise these changes take and how many team members, time it takes will, affect how much your monthly retainer is.

An average ballpark figure here ranges significantly depending on the agency you choose and the hours you require per month, starting at around $2.5k for simple maintenance and small updates and goes up to $10k and beyond when you want rather active management and continuous development.

Conclusion

As you’ve just read, there are a lot of reasons to choose Shopify Plus and a lot of costs involved too. It’s a highly functioning website that comes with a wide variety of things that you can interchange and build to create a website that you can actually afford. We strongly believe in the capabilities of Shopify Plus and believe that if you want to have a successful online presence, this is one of the best options out there. The number of apps and extra features that you incorporate is up to you and your budget.

If you have any more questions about Shopify Plus, feel free to get in touch with us. Also, if you want to talk about going headless, we’re specialists in this and one of the few agencies that bring a high level of finesse when it comes to going headless, so shoot us an email on hello@especial.digital or contact us through our website here.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 2, 2024
10
MIN READ
August 19, 2024
7
MIN READ

The Shopify POS App

Table of contents

  1. What is the Shopify POS App?
  2. How Shopify POS works
  3. Shopify POS Plans
  4. Shopify POS payment processing
  5. Does the Shopify POS app work in your country and currency?
  6. Wrap Up

What is the Shopify POS App?

Shopify is an eCommerce platform that has a POS app which is called Shopify POS.

What does POS stand for?

POS = Point of Sale

The Shopify POS app is a system for making sales in person. It is what the name says 'point of sale' i.e. how/where you can process sales transactions and accept payments for in person sales which often happen directly in your retail store.

The Shopify POS system is synchronized directly to your Shopify store and Shopify admin. So you link it to your existing website. It is amongst the top eCommerce point of sales solutions. The Shopify POS system is an excellent app that empowers businesses who are Shopify merchants.

How Shopify POS works

How it works is that you firstly need to be a Shopify merchant with a Shopify package to gain access to the Shopify POS app – whether you have a Basic Shopify plan, an Advanced Shopify plan or any of their plans. You cannot use the Shopify POS system without being a Shopify merchant.

You can however, use other POS systems with Shopify, like Square POS, LightSpeed and Vend. Using these with Shopify, instead of integrating the Shopify POS system, does come with certain drawbacks as the software is not perfectly in sync, as you are connecting two different companies, as opposed to using just Shopify.

You then need to download the Shopify POS app. You can do so either through the Apple app store or through Google Play. Once you have downloaded it, you log into your Shopify account to start working on the in-person sales channels of your retail businesses.

Which Shopify POS retail hardware do you need?

Shopify POS hardware

Shopify POS is designed for iPads, iPhones, tablets or any smartphone/mobile device. The only piece of additional hardware that you need to invest in to get started with your Shopify payments through Shopify POS is a Shopify card reader. This will allow you to process and accept payments. Shopify POS can be paired with card reader scanners and cashier printers and is suitable in any brick and mortar stores.

The Shopify POS system software syncs everything you sell online with the Cloud for inventory reporting, regardless of where you are.

You can find out more about Shopify POS hardware and purchase Shopify POS hardware here. These include iPad stands, barcode scanners, Shopify Card reader, etc.

Integrated eCommerce

Shopify POS is designed for an integrated sales experience across several sales channel systems. The Shopify POS system is meant to seamlessly link with your online Shopify store and become your Shopify retail POS. It is meant to improve upon your retail business, as well as, improve the retail experience of your valued in-store customers.

Shopify POS Plans

There are two different Shopify POS plans. Let us look at the Shopify POS cost to a business.

1) Shopify POS Lite

Shopify POS Lite is included in all Shopify plans and is free.

What are some of the POS features of Shopify POS Lite?

  • Mobile POS
  • Order and product management:Inventory tracking
  • Customer profiles
  • Product QR codes
  • Send emails to customers who abandon their carts
  • Staff POS Pins
  • Checkout process:Discount codes, camera barcode scanner, customizable smart grid
  • Unlimited products
  • Product collections
  • Product variants
  • Multi-location inventory
  • Cashflow reports

2) Shopify POS Pro

Shopify POS Pro can be additionally added to your existing Shopify plan at a monthly rate of $89 per month, per location.

What are some of the POS features of Shopify POS Pro?

(the Shopify POS Pro naturally includes all Shopify Lite POS features too)

  • Unlimited store staff:Staff POS Pins, attribute sales to specific staff members etc.
  • Smart inventory management:Inventory tracking, stock adjustments, low stock reports etc.
  • Unlimited registers:Custom printed receipts at checkout, etc.
  • Specific staff roles and access granted regulations:Manager approvals, payment method changes by staff members with correct access etc.
  • In-store analytics
  • Omnichannel selling options: Local pickup, buy in store and ship to customer, local delivery and buy through the online store but return/exchange at retail stores etc.
  • Checkout process:Save and retrieve cart, custom payments, exchanges etc.

For the full list of all that you can expect from Shopify POS and learn more about pos features, simply click here.

For more information regarding the pricing of Shopify point of sale (pos) please look here.

Improvement through the Shopify POS system

Both Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro are retail orientated. They are both for businesses that wish to improve their service at their retail locations by means of a Shopify POS system.

Shopify POS payment processing

Accept payment

If your in person customer is using an iPad or iPhone the customer is able to pay via almost any means.

It varies slightly per county. In America and Canada, customers can use their credit card as payment methods. In the UK or Ireland you can also use contactless payments and credit cards with the eMV-compatible Tap Chip and swipe card reader.

However, you may need external credit cards to use in countries other than the US and Canada from reputable merchant banks.

For a customer with an iOS device, you can also offer split payments.

Payment provider

Shopify card readers accept payments from various payment providers. Visa, Mastercard, American Express payments, as well Apple Pay, Google Pay and Samsung Pay. What also works is Shopify Tap and the Chip reader. Of course, you can kick it old school and accept cash payments too.

Shopify POS transaction fees

The fees for payment via credit cards are determined by your eCommerce plan. It varies depending on your Shopify plan.

Here is a graph that we found from NerdWallet, that we think clearly displays the different costs depending on your Shopify plan.

Does the Shopify POS app work in your country and currency?

As much as Shopify is an international eCommerce solution, when it comes to Shopify POS, you need to know a few facts.

You can use Shopify POS worldwide. However, your store needs to be based in a country where Shopify has supported credit card providers.

Shopify has outlined a vast amount of payment information that you can specify by clicking on the continent and then the specific country that you are interested in knowing more about.

For the complete list of payment information gateways worldwide, please visit the Shopify payment gateways link here.

Wrap Up

There are two things that we would like to touch on before ultimately concluding. Those two things are:

Improve customer loyalty with the Shopify POS system

Creating customer profiles leads to customer loyalty.

With Shopify POS, you can store vital customer information by creating excellent and extensive customer profiles.

There is nothing better than a customer coming into your brick and mortar shop and receiving as bespoke a service as when they order from your online store. It is to be expected that when they log in to their online portal on your online store that they see their order history and feel comforted and assured to purchase more from this history.

With Shopify POS, you can offer them the same, if not better, bespoke service. You will be able to see their customer history and be able to advise them on future purchases from that information. If you see the products they usually purchase, you can check your inventory (also possible on the Shopify POS system) and recommend a similar 'hot off the press' product.

You can offer them special discount codes if they are repeat customers or offer a gift voucher for future purchases if they are loyal supporters of yours.

Shopify POS customer service and support

Shopify provides free eCommerce support service for all its merchants and their plans.

Shopify is known for its excellent customer service when it comes to their different plans, and it is no different when it comes to their Shopify POS support. Get in touch with the Shopify team at any time and they will gladly assist you. 24/7 support through chat, email and phone.

The reason we mention Shopify's incredible support is because we know that it might be daunting to introduce a new app like the Shopify POS app. We are so convinced by the Shopify POS system and we think it will work wonders, that is if you're interested in increasing your cash flow and adding on to your existing online sales by incorporating in-person sales channels.

Well, folks, there you have is – Shopify POS.

A stellar app, a great system and some first class software. Use your Shopify POS at your retail store, at your next pop up shop or at any location you please! The Shopify POS system is designed to work for you and around your specific needs, not the other way around.

Not exactly convinced yet? Why not take a crack at it yourself first, take it for a spin before committing! Try your free trial here and see all there is to see from the Shopify POS system.

If you would like to get in touch with us to work on your Shopify store together, or if you have any questions regarding Shopify and Shopify POS, please do not hesitate to get in touch! Send us an email on hello@especial.digital or get int touch.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 2, 2024
7
MIN READ
December 30, 2024
12
MIN READ

Shopify vs. Etsy vs. Etsy Pattern

Table of contents

  1. Shopify Store
  2. Etsy Store
  3. Etsy Pattern
  4. Conclusion – Etsy vs Shopify
Shopify is a platform for businesses to create and manage their own online store, while Etsy is a marketplace for independent sellers to sell their handmade or vintage items.

Etsy also has its own website builder called Etsy Pattern which we will get into more later in the blog.

It's an interesting comparison between Shopify and Etsy: as they're both eCommerce platforms that share some similarities, however, Shopify and Etsy also have some vast differences.

Let us first take a look at Shopify.

Shopify Store

Shopify Features

One of the best things about Shopify is its comprehensive suite of tools and resources for managing the various aspects of an online store, including inventory, payments, shipping, and marketing. This enables you to have a highly functioning Shopify store.

Shopify Payments

Shopify has its own payment service called 'Shopify Payments'. This payment method is beneficial as it charges lower transaction fees than third-party payment gateways.

This enhances the checkout experience for online customers as they will not be re-directed to a different payment sight.

Accepted Payment Gateways

Naturally, Shopify also accepts the usual payment gateways like ApplePay, GooglePay, VISA, Mastercard, Amex etc.

If you would like to learn more about what Shopify Payments is, the benefits thereof and how it can positively impact your business, please read more about it here 'Shopify Payments'.

Shopify POS

This is the point of sale that Shopify offers. This service is offered so that people who have their own business are not stuck to only their online store but can expand upon this by being able to sell in person. Whether this be at a retail store or at a pop-up market, Shopify POS is there for all offline sales. This way to can have both an online and offline Shopify store.

All you need to do is buy the Shopify POS merchandise and get cracking.

There are two Shopify POS plans, Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro. Would you like to know more? Then read all about it here on 'The Shopify POS App'.

Shopify App Store

The area that really allows you to make your online business a custom heaven. It's a double whammy.

The first area in which you can make things custom is naturally through the design. Shopify offers both free templates and paid for templates. You can re-jig the design to make it your own, add some colors that suit your brand, add your products and then start selling!

Now, to actually operate how you wish, you might need some tweaking to your Shopify store. This tweaking can be in the form of Shopify apps.

Third-party apps are a great way to add the resources and features you require. The Shopify app store makes it easy, too. They have already divided their apps into sections and heading depending on what your online store requires:

  • Find products to sell – dropshipping, print on demand, bulk product migration
  • Bring in customers – marketing, paid advertising, SEO (search engine optimization), email marketing, text messages, chats
  • Sell more stuff – discount codes, reviews, reminders
  • Customize your store – custom pages, image optimization, video, translations
  • Deliver the goods – inventory, fulfillment, shipping
  • Scale the business – manage finances, optimize your operations

If you would like to take a look at the Shopify app store, do so here.

Shopify Support

Shopify offers 24/7 support for their customers, making it a great option for those just starting out with eCommerce and with their first Shopify store.

They are known for their incredible 24/7 support. They also have a very useful help section on their website which answers a lot of questions you might have.

Shopify Plans

With someone who wants to have an online store, Shopify is a good option if you would like to build your own website. This can be a seriously simply setup by choosing Shopify's least expensive option, called their 'Starter' plan. This Shopify plan is only $5 per month.

If you require more robust eCommerce tools, then you might consider bumping that plan up to their 'Basic Shopify' plan at $29 per month or even their 'Shopify' plan at $79 per month.

We won't mention their more expansive plans of 'Advanced Shopify' and 'Shopify Plus' as if you're looking for these two plans, then you're probably too big for Etsy anyway and wouldn't need the comparison. You'd most likely be looking to compare with other big eCommerce fish like BigCommerce, in which case, take a read of our blog 'What is BigCommerce?' to know more about their advanced plans and incredible eCommerce tools.

Should you wish to know more about each Shopify plan and how you can build a successful online store on it, please read our blog 'Shopify Plans and Pricing' to gain a better understanding.

Etsy Store

Now that we know a little more about Shopify, we can get into comparing Etsy vs Shopify slowly, slowly.

You can create your own Etsy Shop by simply signing up. All you need to do is visit Etsy.com/sell and select Get started.

Thereafter, is a simple matter of choosing your Etsy shop language, the country and your currency. You then need to enter your Shopify name and that's it.

Etsy Shop

Etsy was founded in 2005. Etsy was founded by Rob Kalin, Chris Maguire, and Haim Schoppik.

Etsy is a website for businesses to sell handmade or vintage items. It offers a great way for businesses to build a following, as it has a large and engaged community of buyers specifically interested in these types of items. Etsy is great for its large and engaged community of buyers specifically interested in handmade items.

ETSY IS Ideal for small business owners

Etsy is ideal for small business owners who want to sell online. Unlike Shopify, Etsy is the website on which you sell, so you create a store ON the Etsy platform, as opposed to creating a store USING the Shopify platform.

This is a great platform that allows small businesses to have the option of increasing their visibility and sales.

We understand that you might be a small business that wants to sell handmade goods, but creating an online store without having loyal customers can seem futile. If you start selling on Etsy, then you are immediately available to every Etsy shopper. Everyone who types in 'Etsy' and is looking for say 'a custom cushion' which you also make, will see it.

To sell on Etsy is a useful option if you do not have the time or means to create your own online website yet.

Etsy Sellers

In order to have your own Etsy listings and products on their website, you need to ensure they offer Etsy Payments in your country.

If you would like to have an Etsy Shop, first just take a look at whether this is supported in your country. Read more about this on the Etsy Help page here on 'Countries eligible for Etsy Payments'.

Etsy Plans

Etsy offers different plans depending on the features a business wants. There are three main plans: Basic, Standard, and Plus.

The Basic plan is free and includes the ability to list up to five items, while the Standard and Plus plans include more features like unlimited listings, lower fees, and access to certain marketing tools.

Etsy offers lower fees for listing and selling items compared to Shopify, this can be helpful for businesses with a limited budget. However, this comes at the cost of not having your own website, but rather your own shop on the Etsy platform itself.

Etsy users can choose which plan suits them best and sign up for that one. Download the Etsy app and peruse other vendors first if you want, to see how your needs might compare to others and use the FAQ section to find out which plan suits your needs best.

Etsy Payment Gateways

Etsy accepts the usual Payment Gateways.

These include ApplePay, GooglePay, PayPal, Klarna, Debit and Credit Cards etc.

For Austria and Germany, they also accept Sofort.

Furthermore, they have their own Etsy Gift cards and Etsy Credits which can be used to make payments.

If you would like to know more, please read on their help section 'What Payment Methods Can I Use to Check Out on Etsy?'

Square Reader

With Square Reader, you can make in person sales that you have the choice to sync to your Etsy shop.

Square Reader is a card reader that allows businesses to accept payments from credit and debit cards. It is available for free from the Square app store.

Square Reader plugs into the headphone jack of a mobile device and can be used to accept payments at trade shows, farmers markets, and other events.

Online sales are important, but as are offline sales. Square Reader enables offline selling too.

Etsy Fees

Naturally, if you sell online, you will have to pay certain transaction fees and payment processing fees. This is what you pay for the reputation and platform that Etsy offers you.

Etsy charges a $0.20 fee for each item listed on the site. There is also a 3.5% fee charged on the total sale amount for each item sold.

We won't get into the nitty-gritty of it, but it's not an additional task you need to think of as Etsy will automatically deduct all fees owed from your payment account.

If you would like to know more about Etsy fees, take a look here.

Etsy Pattern

Etsy Pattern is the next step if you want to create your own website and are no longer happy with only having an Etsy Shop.

Pattern is a software application offered by Etsy that allows businesses to create and manage their own online store. It offers a comprehensive suite of tools and resources for managing the various aspects of an online store, including inventory, payments, shipping, and marketing. Additionally, Pattern offers 24/7 support for its customers.

Etsy Pattern has a 30-day free trial. Thereafter, it costs $15 a month, which is for the hosting alone and does not include your own domain or custom domain.

The Etsy Pattern has its own dashboard, similar to Shopify, where you can set up your pages, add your products, incorporate marketing tools and add a blog feature etc.

If you sign up for only Etsy Pattern, then your products will not be listed on the Etsy Marketplace, as they would be if you simply had an Etsy shop. You will therefore be responsible for driving traffic to your website.

To sign up to use Pattern, click here and provide the required information.

You will need to create an account and provide some basic information about your business. You will also need to provide a bank account number in order to receive payments from Etsy.

Right, so first things first, one is a platform you use to create a website with (Shopify), the other is a platform you create a shop on and then sell through that website (Etsy) and then the third is a very entry-level website builder (Etsy Pattern).

Being an Etsy seller comes with its own set of difficulties, especially in the design area. Etsy is limited in its options for customizing the look and feel of a shop compared to Shopify's flexibility with themes and design.

Whereas on Etsy Pattern you will be able to sell through your very own store and website.

However, it is clear that Shopify is simply more advanced in its offering and features, which is the ultimate difference.

Shopify offers a monthly subscription fee, while Etsy does not, but Etsy Patterns does.

Finally, Shopify offers more flexibility with themes and design, while Etsy offers more customization options for the look and feel of a shop.

Etsy Pattern also does not offer that much in terms of customization, as their aim is to get an online store on its feet without too much fuss. Shopify is more geared toward supporting its merchants to create their ultimate website dream.

On Etsy, you cannot integrate third-party apps to better your Etsy shop. Whereas on Shopify you have access to 3000+ apps that you can use to improve your online business.

Etsy struggles with marketing integration, and Shopify thrives. Furthermore, Etsy does not really provide any reporting or business analytics, which Shopify does in leaps and bounds.

Overall, it really depends on the type of products and brand a business has, as well as their budget and technical abilities. Both Shopify and Etsy can be successful options for selling online.

How are Shopify and Etsy similar? Both platforms offer a great way for businesses to create and manage their own online store. They both offer comprehensive suites of tools and resources, as well as 24/7 support for their customers. Additionally, both platforms have large and engaged communities of buyers specifically interested in handmade and vintage items.

Conclusion – Etsy vs Shopify

Shopify and Etsy have both been round for over a decade. Etsy Pattern was only launched in 2017, so they're the new kid to the block.

Their comparison between the three here is fair, but it is clear to see that their entry level target market is rather different.

With Shopify, users want to custom make their own website, they want to sell through their own website's channel and largely source their own clients.

Whereas, Etsy users rather want to join an existing movement in the form of the Etsy sales channels and sell their handmade products there.

And Etsy Patterns is probably for a business that has already achieved success on Etsy and wants to try its hand at having its own website, but without the design and price commitment of Shopify.

It's not so easy to find your voice in the eCommerce world, however, through research and rigorous comparison, you can find the eCommerce solution for you. If you need help creating your own online store, get in touch with us! We'd be happy to help you create your online shop.

Email us at hello@especial.digital, or get it touch.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
October 2, 2024
12
MIN READ
November 4, 2024
10
MIN READ

Shopify Themes – let's compare Shopify templates

Table of contents

  1. What are Shopify themes?
  2. What can you expect from Shopify themes?
  3. What to consider when you choose your Shopify theme
  4. Shopify theme store examples
  5. Conclusion
Shopify is brilliant when it comes to creating responsive, multipurpose eCommerce website designs that their Shopify merchants can choose from. Some of the Shopify themes are free, others come at a cost, but let's first take a look at what Shopify Themes are and how you can get them, before we look at some of the beautiful ecommerce designs Shopify offers.

What are Shopify themes?

Shopify themes are the templates that both Shopify and third-parties create, which Shopify then has on offer within their Shopify themes store to make it easier for their Shopify merchants to create an online store. Shopify themes are like the ‘blueprint of design’ for Shopify online stores and websites.

Shopify offers some of the very best online store templates / themes out there. This is why Shopify themes are so popular.

Shopify themes come in all shapes and sizes. Shopify constantly comes up with new Shopify themes. Pre-designed Shopify ecommerce themes are a brilliant option for store owners who do not have the need, desire or budget to create their own custom Shopify store.

Different Shopify themes have different colours, layouts, key features, options for product details etc. – each Shopify theme is unique.

Where to get Shopify themes?

Now that you know what Shopify themes are, you might want to learn more about how to get one for your store.

Shopify's very own theme store

The Shopify theme store is where you find the latest versions of excellent Shopify templates. It’s a collection of themes made by both Shopify and third-party developers. Yet, all themes are vigorously vetted by Shopify to make sure they are up to par with their high standards.

All themes on the Shopify store are well-designed, responsive and well integrated with Shopifys’ core features. When you buy a template through the Shopify store, you will always be able to download the latest version without extra cost.

Other Sources

You don’t necessarily need to buy a theme off Shopify’s official store. You can also get themes from a plethora of other sources – like Themeforest, Envato Elements / Envato Market or Templatemonster, which are established marketplaces that sell WordPress themes and other digital resources.

Themes from these sources are usually cheaper than the themes you can buy on the Shopify store. Yet, we cannot recommend using Themeforest Shopify themes or templates from other sources because they are not vetted by experts and often lack features and customization options, or they have invisible technical issues that will come back to haunt you.

What can you expect from Shopify themes?

Greatness.

You can expect eCommerce ingenuity with Shopify themes.

If you are a small business with a limited budget, Shopify themes will equip you with a professional looking website in no time!

If you are a mid-sized business, you will be blown away by the capacity of each template.

If you are a large business, Shopify themes will alleviate some of the pressure you're feeling running a big business and make your online presence a bit easier to create and nurture.

Versatility.

Each Shopify theme comes with its own UX (user experience). You want to ensure that you choose a template that suits your brand and your buyers or shoppers the best. The UX of a website or online store includes its usability, design, navigation, and impression.

The design that you choose will determine the layout of your ecommerce website, it will affect your customers impression of your business, and it will influence the way potential buyers shop on your site.

Organization.

It is important that you choose a Shopify template that suits your business and industry. Shopify themes can be browsed by industry on Shopify. Each option has different features and tools.

Below you will see the main different industries that you can search through. This is by no means the full list of industries you can search. Here is a list of all the Shopify industries that enable you to create an ecommerce website.

What to consider when you choose your Shopify theme

Customers

You want to ensure that you give your customers what they need. Online customers are interested in two main things:

1) Design

The visual aspect of your online store is a big factor in the decision-making process of customers. Hence, you should pick a design that represents your brand and works for your customers. Your imagery must also be inline with your brand image, and it must be appealing, as this will make you more likely that your business makes sales. This also extends to your product images, which are especially important to turn shoppers into buyers.

2) Information

A theme will help you style your store, but the information you put into the theme is also hugely important. How you describe your products is vital for the success with your shoppers, so take your time to craft great product descriptions. Your ecommerce website should be filled with useful information. It should be easy to find the information for each of the products. Especially when it comes to important points on ingredients, for example for edible goods, e.g., allergen information.

Thereafter, customers are also interested in shipping costs and return policies primarily, so make sure this information is clear to see in your FAQ section.

Additional design aspects & features

  • Product quick view
  • Appealing layout
  • Inviting homepage
  • Pre-designed pages (like the contact or FAQ page)
  • Responsive design
  • Video templates
  • Main navigation options (mega menu, slide-out menu etc.)

Choose the best fitting Shopify theme

There are many Shopify themes available on the Shopify theme store. There are off-the-shelf themes that are either free or come at a cost.

There is no “best Shopify theme” or “go-to responsive multipurpose Shopify theme” that just works for any business case. The one that suits you best, is the one that matches your budget and your brand image, and offers the features that you require.

Luckily, Shopify offers many Shopify themes across a wide range of industries, so creating an ecommerce store will be made an easy task with Shopify themes.

To be fair, there is not a real 'best Shopify theme' out there, as it depends on the needs of your business and how you want your Shopify store to look and function. You need to find the right theme for your store.

Ultimately, you want two things:

1) Flexible Shopify theme – with a flexible theme, you will be able to have more freedom around your online store.

2) Responsive Shopify theme – with a responsive Shopify theme, you will have an online store that looks great and is functional on mobile devices – especially smartphones. (Fortunately, by now all themes on the theme store are responsive, so you don’t need to worry about actively searching for a responsive Shopify theme. You can just pick any template off the store and your eCommerce website will look great on mobile devices.)

Improve your SEO

When your online buyers search for your online store in their browser, you want them to find you easily. This is possible by ranking highly on Google or on any search engine they use. You can do this by creating great content for your site. Include product images, product description, video's, blogs etc. Hence, choosing the right theme also impacts your SEO and marketing efforts.

The more engagement and visits you have on your online store, the higher your store will rank in the data and analytics of SEO pages. It's important to rank highly on search engines, as this improves your businesses' visibility.

Engagement will be positively impacted, by offering great content, but also by fast loading speeds and great design – things your theme will help you with.

Shopify theme store examples

Setting up your own online store from scratch is time-consuming. Aren't you glad that Shopify themes exists? Each Shopify theme allows you to first 'Try' the Shopify theme or 'View Demo Store'.

When you hit 'Try' this allows you to sign into your Shopify store and start creating. With free templates, you can hit 'publish' at any time. If you choose a Shopify theme that you need to pay for, you are eligible for an unlimited trial and only pay once you publish your ecommerce website. (If you want to customize it by introducing changes to the code of the theme, you will also need to buy it first.)

If you hit 'View Demo Store', then Shopify themes redirects you to how their Shopify team has set up pre-designed pages. This helps businesses envision what their version of this Shopify theme could look like in terms of the layout, features, home page, etc. as well as certain features like mega menus, color swatches, age verifiers etc.

Each Shopify theme comes with a little description that tells you what this template is good for e.g., if it can be translated in other languages, drop-shipping tag availability, if it's good for visual storytelling etc.

The search bar within the Shopify theme is handy. You can choose between different collections, different industries, select if you want to only see the free templates available or only the ones you need to pay for. Shopify themes make it easy to navigate through all their templates.

Let's take a look at the collection of templates available on Shopify themes.

Get YOUR online store up and running in a jiffy

On the Shopify themes website, you are able to filter the collections by category. This saves time during your search, but finding the correct template can still be time-consuming.

This is why we decided to pick and choose each a free and a paid option for some selected industries, to present them here.


Shopify theme industry: Arts & Crafts

Free Shopify theme

Name: Craft

Paid Shopify theme

Name: Expanse

Shopify theme industry: Business equipment and supplies

Free Shopify theme

Name: Colourblock

Paid Shopify theme

Name: Mode

Shopify theme industry: Electronics

Free Shopify theme

Name: Ride

Paid Shopify theme

Name: Xtra

Shopify theme industry: Food and Drink

Free Shopify theme

Name: Crave

Paid Shopify theme

Name: Fresh

Custom themes

Another noteworthy option is creating your own custom theme for your website.

This means that you are not using a standard theme that is on offer, nor are you using a given theme and then adding your own modifications. No, no, this is one step beyond those two options.

Custom theme is the act of working alongside developers or an agency that helps you create the website design that you feel best suits your needs. This means having full control over the design and the way the website feels and operates. You can optimize your website to the max, as you created it from scratch and have full autonomy over how it interacts with potential customers.

The benefits of going custom are:

  • Your developers or agency would need to code your website from scratch, which sounds more daunting than it really is. What this means is that they will create ‘clean code’ for your website. This code will only include the truly necessary elements that make your website operate at optimum capacity. No dead code or strings of code running in the background that are not needed but slow down your website’s performance.

  • Your website will be one of a kind as it’s completely up to your discretion of how it looks, operates, functions and engages with online visitors.

  • You can build your website how you like. This includes features and apps. Oftentimes, when going with a standard theme, business owners need to add apps and the like to make the website suit their needs more. With a custom theme, you can build all of this into the structure. Reducing the need for many apps.

  • If you hire an agency to fulfill these custom services, your time can instead be spent handling marketing and administrative tasks, as opposed to trying to figure out the tech aspect of your business too. Leave that part to the tech experts and web developers.

Should you wish to know more about the comparison between a standard theme, a modified theme and a custom theme, including the benefits and disadvantages, then take a look at our blog ‘Why You Should Choose A Custom Theme For Shopify (Plus)’ now.

Conclusion

Creating your own online store is made a whole lot simpler with Shopify themes.

With the wide variety of different collections on the Shopify theme Store, online store owners can create the ecommerce store of their dreams without too much difficulty.

Shopify themes make it easy to find the template that will suit your ecommerce store best.

Shopify themes offer great templates and tools to get your online store up and running. You are even able to customize it to a certain point with the different fonts and colours. If the layout that your Shopify themes is not 100% to your liking e.g. the home page set up isn't exactly what you're after, then you have customization options too in the form of changing the colour palette, fonts, sizes of images and copy etc.

Should you wish to know more about Shopify themes or if you have any questions or need any help creating your own online store, then please do not hesitate to get in touch with us on hello@especial.digital or via our contact form.

Natalie Miller
Marketing manager
September 27, 2024
10
MIN READ
November 1, 2023
13
MIN READ

Shopify App Development – Let's Look at Cost & Process

Table of contents

  1. What are Shopify Apps?
  2. Shopify Apps Development Process
  3. Costs
  4. Conclusion

What are Shopify Apps?

Shopify Apps allow Shopify merchants to add more functionality to their Shopify online shop. There are thousands of apps, each one providing features to different parts of a web shop. This includes design elements for the front-end side or automation tasks and integrations with other software on the back-end side.

We have extensive experience in developing Shopify apps – both through our own apps in the Shopify App Store and through projects with our customers. In this blog post, we will share our vast experiences and deal with what it means to develop a Shopify app. We also want to make a concise effort to include the costs and how the process will look when you start an app development journey in an effort to help you understand how to build Shopify apps.

App vs. Plugin

For other shop systems, the term “plugin” is more common than the term “app”. Shopify's apps don't just differ from plugins in their names. Unlike plugins, Shopify apps are not permanently installed in a single web shop. Instead, the app serves as an external cloud service that communicates with Shopify via an application programming interface (API).

This sounds very similar to a plugin at first, but has a significant impact on the basic functionality of an app in practice. In contrast to a plugin, an app is hosted by the app provider and the same (cloud) server usually serves all users of the app. One benefit of this approach is that troubles because of CMS updates usually can't come up.

Shopify Apps can only be offered through the Shopify App Store, there are no alternative distribution options. A review by Shopify is required for admission to the App Store. During the review, the app is tested from the user's point of view. The only exception to this rule are custom apps, which only get access to a single Shopify store. But wait, we are getting ahead of ourselves, there will be more on that below.

Responsibility as an app provider

An app must be constantly maintained by the app provider. This means that they will need to react to the regular updates of the Shopify platform with their own app updates. In addition, the app provider must ensure that its app can cope with very high peak loading periods in its users' shops.

If an app provider shuts down operations or fails to implement changes, the app suddenly becomes unavailable to all customers. There is no alternatives for this scenario, such as continuing to use an old version, as it is often the case with plugins.

App providers process their customers' data and also have very security-critical information, such as tokens, with which a shop can be remotely controlled to a certain extent. Since app providers usually store the tokens of all their customers centrally, appropriate security measures and ongoing updates are essential in this regard.

The fact that the development of a Shopify app is never really finished and that constant work and maintenance is required forces app providers to choose monthly subscriptions instead of individual purchases as a form of distribution. This is the only way they can – going on the premise that there is a correspondingly large customer base – finance the ongoing expenses of the app

Custom App vs. Public App

Shopify provides two modes of operation for creating an app: Custom Apps and Public Apps. Only public apps can be offered in the Shopify App Store.

Custon Apps


Custom apps are designed to work with a single Shopify online store. Typically, these are custom features created by an agency or a Shopify freelancer. Often there are individual interfaces to ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) systems or other data points that do not provide a Shopify app for the app store. Individual development projects such as a complex bundle builder or a detailed dashboard for customers are also common examples of a custom app.

Technically, custom apps work in a similar way to public apps. They can optionally authenticate to the web shop and the Shopify platform using a fairly complex oAuth process and save and process a lot of complex data.

But Custom Apps can also bypass the oAuth process by working with a one-time generated token. This allows to reduce the work for implementing an authentication process by a lot.

Since custom apps only work for one shop, they can not be offered in the Shopify App Store .

Note: Until January 2022, in addition to “Custom Apps”, there were also a third app type: “Private Apps”. Private Apps were able to implement authentication without oAuth. Shopify no longer allows the development of new private apps since February 2022, but custom apps can now also operate without oAuth.

Public Apps

Public apps work in the same way as custom apps, but may have access to any number of Shopify online shops. This leads to development efforts that are significantly higher for public apps than for custom apps.

Public apps may have to provide technical support to thousands of Shopify merchants around the clock, which places much higher demands on scalability, accuracy and security. In comparison, custom apps with just one retailer only have to meet a fraction of these requirements.

However, public apps are the only app type that can be offered in the Shopify App Store. Before submission, they must go through a Shopify review process and are tested by Shopify from a user perspective.

Shopify Apps Development Process

In most cases, developing an app for Shopify is much more complex than developing a plugin for other shop systems.

That's because Shopify Apps are cloud-based SaaS applications that require regular maintenance and are available 24/7 to thousands of merchants.

The authentication process for Shopify and the integration of databases for various purposes, such as storing security-critical data, are also extremely rare in this form for plugins for other shop systems.

The development processes also differ significantly for a custom app and for a private app.

Let's delve into what we do here at Especial when it comes to developing apps, shall we? Of course, we will also put highlight the additional costs for public apps.

Step 1: Planning & UX Design

From experience we have learnt that both custom apps and public apps require a corresponding planning phase. This is the part where requirements are recorded and converted into a corresponding solution. This is also the part where the UX design usually takes place. During this phase, our designers use wireframes to outline the future user interface and the processes within the app.

Additional effort for public apps:

Public apps generate significantly more effort during planning. In addition to the functional requirements, public apps also have to consider issues related to the multi-user system. This includes, for example, login (start screen), registration and payment processing.

The support of different themes and the interactions with other apps must also be taken into account, since public apps can be installed by any Shopify merchant.

Therefore, in contrast to the custom app, the future application environment is not clearly defined.

Step 2: Visual Design

In the visual design process step, the wireframes from the planning are translated into complete design files and prototypes for desktop, tablet and smartphone.

If you want to keep your app in line with the Shopify admin design, you can easily do so, by using Shopify Polaris during the visual design and coding phase.

Additional effort for public apps: Since public apps are listed in the App Store, additional assets such as an app icon and advertising graphics are required. Also, an app needs stronger branding if it is going to stand out in the App Store. In the design process, more emphasis must be placed on a uniform and aesthetic design. This is the opposite of custom apps, as these usually get by with a very functional design without any branding.

Step 3: Coding

After the planning and design phases have been completed, the coding of the Shopify app can begin. The amount of effort pumped in here depends very much on the individual app and its range of functions. However, certain functionalities such as registration and authentication, which are always necessary for Shopify apps, always arise and depend on the degree of complexity and the catalog of requirements of the app.

As a result, the portion of the effort for very simple apps is often mainly in the mandatory technology for Shopify apps. For complex apps, on the other hand, the core functionality represents the largest part of the work.

Additional effort for public apps: There is a lot of additional effort in programming for public apps. For example, core functions must be structured in such a way that they work with as many Shopify shops as possible. These include the various themes and compatibility with other apps.

The software architecture also has to be thought of differently for public apps: data storage and complex, automated registration, payment and authentication procedures must also be implemented for a larger user base. In the case of a custom app, these can be very simple in comparison, since they only have to work for one user/store. Additionally, custom apps can opt in for a token based authentication which is much simpler to implement.

The embedding of different payment models is also reserved for public apps and can require a relatively large amount of work.

Step 4: Testing & QA (Quality Assurance)

Testing & QA mostly takes place during coding. What is really important to us is to shine a spotlight on the differences between a custom and a public app in a separate section for testing & QA.

In Testing & QA, automated and manual tests of the app are carried out to uncover any problems before they occur in live operation. Usually, test scenarios are created for the most important functions of an app and then the functionality is checked by QA engineers and automated tests for different application scenarios.

Testing & QA are a very broad field within software development. It is possible to invest huge amounts of resources into testing even the smallest apps. It is therefore important to find the right balance in the project – this is often referred to as "test coverage", which is given as a percentage.

Additional effort for public apps: Apps for the Shopify App Store have to be tested much more than custom apps. Not do significantly more test scenarios due to different configurations of the different Shopify stores exist. There are also significantly more interactions with different themes and apps that need to be considered.

In addition, with an app published in the Shopify App Store, you can simply afford fewer mistakes because there is no direct, two-way communication channel with users. Looking across all shops, an app may have to handle very high peak loads of tens of thousands to millions of simultaneous shop visitors. This requires a correspondingly sophisticated infrastructure.

All this leads to significantly longer and more intensive tests & QA processes.

Step 5: Shopify Listing & Review Process (Public Apps Only)

After work is completed on the first version of the app, in the case of a custom app, it can be installed directly in a single Shopify store.

In the case of Public Apps to be offered on the Shopify App Marketplace, the process is different:


Listing: First, a listing with images, screenshots and advertising texts must be created for the App Store – maybe even in different languages. It is also wise to create a manual and a support center for future users. App providers also often offer promotional videos of their Shopify app.

Review: If the listing is ready for use, the public app must be sent over to Shopify for a review. A Shopify employee tests the app from the perspective of a user. This means that the reviewer at Shopify will not check the code and security systems, but will only evaluate the app like a regular app user would do.

Feature requests: This means that app reviewers often have suggestions for improvements to the app and insist on implementing these suggestions before the app is released on the App Store.

This leads to a change requests and new designs that have to be created. The coding and testing process has to be run again, to account for the new features.

In our experience, the app reviewers' feature requests can often be quite extensive. For example, we have already been asked to integrate a complete analytics & reporting component including CSV export of data into the app, although we never planned this feature.

Step 6: Support & Maintenance

Once the app is in operation, the permanent maintenance and support phase begins. In the case of custom apps, it's mostly just code changes as Shopify makes changes to their platform and APIs. This happens very often, and Shopify typically gives developers 12 months to implement new requirements.


Depending on the technical structure of the app, these technical changes to the Shopify app can be completed within a few hours. It may also take several days or even weeks of development effort, it really just depends.

Additional effort for public apps: In the case of public apps, technical updates have to be made, which are often much more complex to implement in the case of public apps. Public apps require constant support from the app provider because despite intensive testing, it is very common for an app to have problems or functional limitations in certain Shopify shops.

This is mostly due to the individual setup of a Shopify merchant. For example, they may have countless other apps installed that have a negative impact, for example by overwriting certain app functions. Or they use a very exotic theme for which the app has to be adapted accordingly.

However, there are also regular support requests from users who only suspect a malfunction of the app, but in practice other factors such as incorrect operation or incorrect shop settings cause the problem. In this case, there is still support effort to clarify the problem.

Costs

As you can see, in addition to the core functionality, the cost of an app depends primarily on whether it is a custom app for a Shopify user or a public app for the App Store.

To give you a rough idea of the cost difference between public and custom app, we have prepared an example here.

The app in this example has a relatively simple core function. For example, displaying a dynamic pop-up in the app user's shop.

In total, our example takes about 10 days of work for a custom app, while the public app means about 6 weeks of work for the same core functionality. At an hourly rate of €100, this results in costs of about €8,000 for the custom app and about €24,000 for the public app .

In addition, the support and maintenance for the custom app on an annual basis is 12 days, significantly less than 60 days for the public app. The support & maintenance values are based on our own experience of apps with several hundred users in the Shopify App Store. Many hours are spent on support work, which is usually not taken on by developers but by support staff at a significantly lower hourly rate.

Conclusion

Developing a Shopify app is not a simple undertaking. You should always be aware that you are developing SaaS software which, in the case of Shopify, must also be able to scale very well. This means that the development process should be done very professionally to get meaningful results.

The decision as to whether you need a custom app or a public app is based on the question of whether the app should be available to all Shopify users or just a single one. The costs also result from this decision.

Tips:

  • Plan with a beta period to test and improve the app in live conditions. In the case of Shopify Apps, you can make your listing “invisible”. This means that the app can only be installed by people who receive the link from you.

  • It is often a good approach to first test a new concept as a custom app and then convert it to a public app if successful. All in all, this results in a slightly higher effort than if you develop a public app directly, but you can validate your app idea first

  • Don't rush the planning and design phase. Omitting or greatly shortening certain process steps may initially create a subjectively good feeling, since subjectively progress is made quickly. In fact, you're building up technical debt that will cost you significantly more time and money to resolve later.

  • The competition on the Shopify App Store is now very tough. Also think about any marketing opportunities and engage in App Store SEO to increase their visibility. Your app should also have clear USPs if you want to compete with big apps.

Daniel Kolb
Product Manager
September 27, 2024
13
MIN READ
May 5, 2024
7
MIN READ

5 Fresh Examples of Augmented Reality in Ecommerce

Table of contents

  1. Amazon AR
  2. Ikea Place
  3. Saatchi Art
  4. Warby Parker
  5. Sephora
  6. Benefits of AR websites
  7. Conclusion
This is cool factor 100. Augmented reality and virtual reality are what brands (with the necessary budget) are using to broadcast and show off their online stores and products.

One of the latest digital trends for digital sales is the use of augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR). Augmented reality involves projecting virtual objects over an image of the real environment. Virtual reality, on the other hand, simulates a completely digital environment for the viewer, completely displacing reality.

Today, Virtual Reality (VR) is mainly used in the field of video games and (learning) simulations thanks to data glasses like the Oculus Rift. When it comes to E-Commerce, what interests us most, is the more practical application scenarios for modern E-Commerce which mostly come up in applications in the field of augmented reality (AR).

But what do AR applications look like in practice? Which companies have already dared the experiment and can demonstrate success? Here are five examples of sophisticated applications of augmented reality (AR) in the E-Commerce environment.

Amazon AR

The fact that an industry giant like Amazon is firmly implementing extensive AR functionality into its mission-critical shopping app shows how far augmented reality (AR) has already come into practice. With Amazon AR View, many items from Amazon's vast catalog can already be projected live into the home or anywhere else. This is especially handy for larger appliances and design objects such as furniture.

So basically, how it works is that you can choose an item, let’s say a white marble dining room table, you then click on the camera button on the top right-hand corner of your Amazon app and then the piece will essentially be made visible in the room so that you can see if it fits in as well as you hoped it might.

It makes online shopping much easier and gives consumers a great sense of relief. They can shop with confidence and assurance that whatever they’ve picked will look great in their home.

For more information on Amazon AR View, click here.

Ikea Place

Furniture is also what the next industry giant is all about: IKEA. The "Ikea Place" app allows users to try out and move the catalog of the Swedish cult furniture store directly within their own four walls.

It’s a useful tool for anyone trying to imagine how the piece of furniture they are interested in would look in real life. It saves you the hassle of ordering the item, then seeing that it doesn't fit in, and then needing to send it back. Of course, it isn’t a foolproof system. In the end, the piece can still leave you disappointed after arrival. It is not the purpose of AR applications to mitigate all kinds of returns. Yet, they certainly help those who benefit from visual aids. It’s easier to imagine how a cupboard or a table would look if you’ve seen an almost perfect example through AR. And this should give clients more confidence to order something online, as well as reduce the risk of returns.

Download the app on the Apple Store here and see for yourself how it works.

Saatchi Art

The notorious Saatchi Art empire has launched their own AR feature allowing online visitors to take a look at the artwork that Saatchi has to offer.

Across paintings, photography, prints and drawings, Saatchi offers artwork across many mediums. Saatchi has invested in AR technology that gives their online visitors the possibility to see how the piece they are interested in, would actually look when hung up in their own home.

This has made the elite world of art more accessible than ever before. No longer needing to imagine how a piece might look hung above your fireplace, you can now make use of the app and see exactly how it will look.

Download the app on the Apple Store here.

Warby Parker

Virtual try-ons with Warby Parker. Try on a variety of different glasses to find your perfect fit.

The cutting-edge genius that is Warby Parker is beyond us. They already came up with such a clever marketing ploy, allowing their customers the 5 by 5 rule. Order 5 different spectacles, keep them for 5 days, and if you don’t like them, simply send them back. Now, we both know that the chances of you not liking 1 of the 5 options you chose is pretty slim. So, that’s already so clever, they almost guarantee a sale through this process.

And now they have managed to make this even more secure. Warby Parker has introduced an AR feature that allows consumers to virtually try on their spectacles. This means that the 5 you intend to have shipped to you, you can actually try on before, which means that chances are you’re going to be able to pick the top 5 that suit you and then most likely keep at least 3 of those 5.

Yes, some have said that this app reminds them of a Snapchat filter, but what is wrong with that? It’s a great way for consumers to be able to envision how they will look with their new glasses, take screenshots and send to friends for their approval before making the purchase. Not bad at all.

Download the app on the Apple Store here and start trying out glasses for yourself.

Sephora

Taking confidence and beauty products by storm! Sephora represents many beauty brands that offer a large spectrum of shades and options for all their different clientele. For a beauty retail store that makes sales of about 5 billion dollars a year, you can understand why the brand is trying to capitalize on their offering, which is so in demand.

With the Sephora Virtual Artist, you can essentially become your very own make-up artist. Your face can be scanned, and then you can choose which shade of lipstick, base, foundation, eyeshadow, eyebrow pencil etc. you’d like to try. Pop a deep red on your lips and see if you think it suits you. If it does, pop the item in your basket and either have it delivered or take advantage of their ‘click & collect’ options.

Download the app on the Apple Store here.

Download the app on the Google Play Store here.

Benefits of AR websites

All these companies have invested a lot of time and money into making their websites and apps as useful for their online customers as possible. Some might say that this comes from the desire to make more sales, which would be a fair point. However, we are leaning toward the fact that it is a development that we are only just truly starting to understand, and it simply being a pure sale tactic is not something we can believe. Of course, we cannot go into the minds of these companies. However, we do think introducing augmented reality into their offerings has created a few benefits all round:

  • The possibility of fewer returns, thus reducing the negative environmental footprint that returns have on the earth.
  • Fewer customer service issues, as online visitors can pre-view the products they want easily and will have fewer negative remarks than purchasing something using only an image to go off.
  • Higher customer satisfaction – using an AR-powered tool means that the consumer will experience a more enjoyable online user experience and feel more confidence in their purchasing decision as it is as informed as it possibly can be.
  • Positive PR and image, as your company is seen as being on the forefront of innovation and you will certainly pick up media mentions (like the one you are reading right now), when offering forward-thinking features like AR.

Conclusion

We’re Shopify Partners, so we might be a bit biased here, but one closing opportunity that we’d like to point out is that Shopify also supports AR development. Shopify AR is, in our opinion, an incredibly important component of the future system landscape. With Shopify AR, the Canadian-based E-Commerce company is making it very easy for its 500,000+ merchants in 175 countries to make their catalog available in augmented reality.

Should you wish to get in touch with us about going into the AR sphere, please pop us an email on hello@especial.digital or contact us through our contact form here on our website.

Daniel Kolb
Product Manager
September 26, 2024
7
MIN READ

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