Shopify Design & Customization Tom, 21 Apr 2008

Customization of Shopify has always been something I’ve wanted Talking Pixels to get it’s teeth into, and finally we have! Website to follow shortly, but here are some thoughts that the process has triggered…

Talking Pixels have always excelled at, and enjoyed, building custom e-commerce sites (particularly since Ruby on Rails came along). However, I’ve always been concerned about the large investment involved in building a really good e-commerce site from scratch, even with Rails. It’s fine for businesses who already have a reliable turnover, where the cost of building a solution from scratch is offset by the value of having features built around their (often rapidly changing) business needs. However, many e-commerce business ideas are more experimental, unpredictable, and started on a shoe-string. While in theory the web is ideal for this, the realisation of such ideas is often, let’s just say - ‘underwhelming’.

Trying out a business idea in the real world (well, real-virtual at least), while not having to invest large sums of time and money into software, is liberating, democratic and exciting. The idea that start-ups could be selling products to the world in a matter of days, even hours, through a professional looking and operating web shop,
is a revolution.

Services like Shopify allows business to try the market, selling real products, without busting the bank in the process. I’m sure market research still has it’s place, however, when the cost of deployment is so low, I have to wonder whether it still has such importance.

Of course, the idea behind Shopify isn’t new. In the dotcom days, I was involved in the development of a conceptually similar service for a UK-based payment processor. However, three things were wrong, in my opinion - firstly, the market wasn’t ready for it. Not enough people ‘got’ e-commerce. Secondly, web interfaces were rudimentary and painfully slow to use. The customisation options were either highly limited, badly designed or both. Thirdly, online marketing was a just a nipper. Tools such as Google Adwords and Campaign Monitor didn’t exist. And even if they had, few people would have grasped their potential.

I still believe customized solutions are the way forward, if you have capital to invest and a tried and tested business model. But services like Shopify are very usable for retailers who are just getting started.

So, I’ll end on a plug - if you’re looking for a customized Shopify site and you like the look of our work, we’d love to help. If you have grown out of your shopping cart, we’d also love
to help  : )

Btw. we’re based in Clerkenwell / Farringdon, London, UK.