Exploring eCommerce with hosted tools: Shopify (lecture 1 + activity 1)

Written by: Jonathan Briggs

October 1, 2009 [2368 views]

This session will set the scene for building an ecommerce store and a complete business using the Shopify hosted ecommerce application. During this session we will build a store together, explore some of the functionality of the trial version of the service and compare our experiments with a completed store that has been running successfully for over 18 months.

It is suggested that as part of this course every student sets up their own store and experiments with as many aspects of the service as possible. We are starting with this in the first session so that your store can run for at least 8 weeks during the course to allow you to make changes and explore some marketing.

Using Shopify you can

Set up an account and build a simple store free of charge in a few minutes
Change the look and feel for your store by selecting one of a number of supplied templates
Upload design images
Create stock, set descriptions, weights and product images
Add information pages and a blog if desired
Select a payment partner such as PayPal and integrate with their payment gateway
Select a fulfillment partner if you are going to use one
Set preferences for postage, taxes and other aspects of your store
Customise the layout of your store using CSS and the Liquid templating language
Consider how well your site has been optimised for search engines
Setup a domain and point it at the store
Install Google Analytics and other tracking software
Engage in marketing activities including Google Adwords
Launch your store
Explore the customer service involved in running a store
Find online resources to help customise and market the store
Find other services and software that can be mashed up within your store
Start to identify the limitations of hosted solutions such as Shopify

So plenty to do! But is there a shop you want to run? For a few of you, you will have already have identified an ecommerce client for your final year projects. Even if you are proposing to build something from scratch (and perhaps you should reconsider) it is a good idea to prototype your store in Shopify and then use this prototype to discuss your ideas with your client.

Please note that simply building a free Shopify store (or in my opinion the equivalent using any other tools) is not sufficient to meet the requirements for your final project. A Shopify store could however form the basis for either a computer science or information systems project if you extend it in some specific way: experiments with customer journeys, warehouse integration with “web hooks”, integration within a business environment, comparison with alternative implementation techniques, exploration of web services, etc.

To get the full benefit of working with all aspects of Shopify you will need to actually launch a store. If you don’t have a client in mind then either find one within your family, friends and colleagues or decide to experiment with setting up a shop selling something very cheap: postcards, packets of seeds, second hand CDs, sweets, old comics, photographs etc. Take a trip up to Camden Lock and spend £10-20 on some stuff you can sell.

Planning your store

Choose 10 things to sell that fall into 2-3 product categories
Write a short description and title for each item
Take a photograph of each item
Decide on pricing, weights and shipping costs for each item
Decide on a name for your store
Set up your Shopify account
Set up a Google account specifically for this project

Building your store

Shopify is very straightforward but deceptively powerful; don’t assume that something is impossible until you have explored the Wiki, the support forums and the documentation. Start by following the instructions and become familiar with each aspect of the admin panel. Set your store to “closed” while it is under development.

French Food Delivered from the Market Quarter

Here is one I developed earlier and this will help you appreciate that Shopify can be used to build real stores for real clients and that it provides the basis for the long term exploration of ecommerce ideas.

Developed in partnership with Stephen Harrison of Le Marché du Quartier in London’s Borough Market
Shopify chosen after initial experimentation; first prototype discarded
Fifty products (SKUs) to start with growing to one hundred after three months; requiring a paid version of Shopify (£30 per month)
Joint venture in which we each initially invested around £1000 in an experiment to see whether we could turn it into a successful business within twelve months.
Fulfillment from existing stores in Borough Market & Covent Garden.
Payment through PayPal and SagePay but originally Google Checkout (who would not let us sell wine!)
Orders very slow to get started but now running at about 10 per month and growing. Site took 100 orders over Christmas 2008.
Considerable marketing effort (promotions, PR, content, blogging, Adwords (£20 per month)) needed to start to create a viable business.
Current investment about 250 hours: setup, design, customisation, service mashups, marketing, analytics, order processing, photography, meetings
Design changed four times since launch to improve promotional aspects of the front page
Last design update involved a professional designer (£750) and some CSS consultancy (£1100)

Why use hosted ecommerce?

Shopify hints at a major trend in software evolution; hosted services. Similar services are being developed by Amazon and others. Shopify is written in Ruby on Rails and has been developed with an excellent separation between logic, data and presentation. It is this architecture that makes it straightforward to extend and change.

We could try to develop our store from scratch but we would spend so much time creating the platform that we would never get to think about the real ecommerce issues. Increasingly commercial projects will start with the identification of a similar software framework (commercial or open source) and develop only the bespoke components that are needed.

Increasingly we are seeing software frameworks, bespoke components and third party services that are ‘mashed up’ to create a system for a client or project. These systems then evolve as required as the system scales or client needs change.

How much time and money should you invest in exploring Shopify?

Shopify costs $24 pm if you launch a proper store. We have negotiated a free trial version for you - thanks Shopify!
A domain name will cost £2 - £5 and is worth having anyway; consider buying with a hosting package if you are going to explore other software approaches this year.
A Google Adwords account will cost a £5 - 10 minimum
A PayPal account will not cost anything but both Shopify and *PayPal will take part of your sales
10 items to sell could cost £10
For around £40, therefore, you will be able to launch a real store. This is better value than a textbook of the same cost. Of course if you get interested you could spend a bit more (£200 a year for the next level of store) and if you have a final year project in this area you should get your client to pay the full costs. Whatever your level of interest this exercise should give you something additional to discuss at a job interview.

This week’s activity

Design and build a store and launch it even if you don’t intend to run it properly. Spend at least 4-6 hours on this activity (this is instead of a workshop). You may work with someone else (no groups) but provide individual answers.

Here is the link to allow you to sign up for Shopify without a credit card: Shopify sign-up

Answer the following questions

Describe what your experimental store will sell and why you have chosen this?
Take a screenshot of your store's home page with at least 4 products and upload it
List at least 3 things that you like about Shopify
Describe any problems you had with using Shopify and explain how you overcame them.
Describe at least two limitations you can see with Shopify for a major commerce site (without extending it using the API). Make sure that they are genuine limitations.
Describe at least 2 possible reasons why large companies might not use this sort of service for their ecommerce activities
How does software such as Shopify affect your planning for your final year project? Should students be allowed/encouraged to use such systems for their projects? How would they prove that they have included sufficient computer science or information systems thinking?
What questions have been raised by this activity about Shopify or ecommerce in general?

Here is the link to a survey to feedback your answers http://www.surveygizmo.com/s/184120/ecommerce-activity-1

Deadline for this week's activity is Midnight, Wednesday, 7th October

In case you have missed it here is a link to the Module Guide