Shopify is a company that continues to inspire – they are doing so much right in the eCommerce world – and showing such good management focus. Like what, one might ask…
Well how about their blogs for starters – where they continually publish great advice and information that focuses not so much on selling the Shopify solution, but rather on delivering outcomes for its customers. I occasionally post links on social media to great articles on the web that can deliver value to me and my costumers, colleagues and associates – over 60% of them link to Shopify articles. They are showing the world what it is to engage with an audience, and the success that effective engagement (combined with a world class product) can bring.
The irony is, for the last few vendor selection projects that I have managed the Shopify platform was not the one selected in the end – and in fact in the last one I undertook it did not make the shortlist. No fault of Shopify’s – just not their type of customer. This brings me round to the second area that they do so well Customer Focus. They have identified what a Shopify customer looks like, and do not attempt to shoehorn their solution onto an ill fitting business – as a SAAS platform that would be a recipe for a disastrously dissatisfied customer. In stead they have built a suite of features and products around the requirements of their specific customer segments (such as Point of Sale, marketing integration etc) which ensures that their customer’s businesses can operate in a seamless and efficient manner, and are always evolving.
That is not to say that Shopify are perfect, there are certainly areas that they can improve. Their Shopify plus proposition is in its infancy but should deal with some of the issues they have in providing a proper agency infrastructure – as most retailers do not have the skill set or the will to fully manage the whole of a best practice eCommerce operation, and for larger retailers this means that they need agencies that can handle the complexities of fulfilment, and subtleties of data and the rigours of digital marketing as well as the intricacies of good design.