Shopify is a thriving eCommerce platform that has a larger following every year. What’s behind the success of this SaaS solution and what opportunities does it offer to store owners, development teams and marketers alike? Read the opinions of users and experts.
Expert reviews of Shopify
Piotr Znamirowski, Head of Business Analysis | Brand Active
“Shopify is a great online store engine. I’ve been working on it for almost 3 years now and every day I’m impressed by the changes that are taking place in it. Day by day it is enriched with new functionalities and capabilities, making the store managers’ work easier and giving them new opportunities to automate eCommerce processes and develop their online sales channel. It is always adapted to changing legal conditions well in advance. Shopify meets the expectations of both store owners and development teams, optimizing and enriching the possibilities of customizing the appearance and functionality of the store, also opening up to headless and MACH solutions.”
Zofia Komada, Head of Sales | Brand Active
“I have been working with Shopify since 2018. I perfectly remember the beginnings of using this platform – a few years ago this Canadian SaaS was not widely known in Poland, but it gave me the feeling that by educating about the possibilities Shopify and Shopify Plus offer, we can show entrepreneurs that by choosing this purchasing engine they will take their e-business to the next level. For me, these three aspects are extremely important: “Less is more”: I have been working with many platforms (both in the SaaS and open source model) and what I missed was an intuitive panel and focus on the most important components of the store. Shopify and Shopify Plus have an extremely simplified dashboard that, on the one hand, does not overwhelm with the enormity of categories or functions, and on the other hand, in this simplicity, it contains everything that the store owner or management team needs in their daily work. Secondly, scalability: regardless of the country in which the business is conducted, Shopify gives the opportunity to enter new markets – it provides tools that support and simplify the migration process to subsequent language versions, while focusing on time to market. Another point is reliability: every store owner wants to be sure that on Black Friday, with a huge sales peak or on the occasion of a new product launch, the store will be efficiently taking orders and not losing speed. The sense of security that we are working with the most dynamically developing platform in the world, chosen by millions of entrepreneurs, means that you can focus on generating sales, not worrying about whether the server will last and the store will run smoothly.
The eCommerce industry is an environment that must react quickly to changing conditions and constantly develop. These are features that I also notice in Shopify and Shopify Plus – I appreciate that Tobi Lütke and his team not only follow industry trends, but create them, setting their platform as a model for other solutions around the world.”
Developer reviews of Shopify
Tarik Andrukhiv, Lead Senior R&D Full-Stack Developer | Brand Active
“As the lead developer of an eCommerce company, I recommend the solutions offered by Shopify. This platform is great for both simple and complex activities. As an administrator, you will find everything you need for your work. Shopify is open to modifications, so it doesn’t limit you. Functional solutions for developers go along with high standards for customers. From a developer’s perspective, I admit that I’m pleased with the platform’s capabilities and coding agility in Shopify. It’s a solution for getting to the next level of sales.”
Szczepan Machaj, Lead PHP Developer | Brand Active
“I have been working with Shopify for over a year now. At first, I was a bit skeptical about this system, knowing that it is a 100% closed backend environment and the client relies on functionality provided only by the developers. However, Shopify provides both a REST API and a GraphQL API, which gives a lot of possibilities – including creating applications that extend Shopify’s functionality or simply add new ones. Thanks to this, we have the possibility to customize the store at will. The developers are developing the entire Shopify ecosystem quite intensively, releasing regular updates and introducing new functionalities. The apps can be implemented in several formulas, including as a public app, which is available in the Shopify App Store – you’ll find both paid and free apps there, and in the private app model – in which case the app is implemented under the individual requirements of the client, where we, of course, have full freedom and can do practically everything on the client’s request. This model of selling Shopify gives the customer full comfort – he does not have to worry about the availability of the store, server, backups – all this is taken care of by Shopify, at the same time he has plenty of opportunities for individual development and customization, both of the backend and frontend of the store. Due to its flexible pricing packages, Shopify works well for both small, local stores and huge, international stores.
It’s worth mentioning that both the store’s functionalities and APIs are being developed all the time, and even if a solution is not possible to achieve at the moment – it’s not impossible that in the near future such an option will appear due to changes and improvements in the programming interface.
As a programmer developing applications for Shopify and integrating stores with many external systems (e.g. payment gateways, ERP, PIM, accounting systems, etc.), I can in good conscience recommend Shopify as a platform for building a business – an online store.”
Marketer reviews of Shopify
SEO Specialist opinion
Beata Niżnik, Lead SEO Specialist | Brand Active
“Shopify has all the basics we need to work on the SEO of an online store. The system is intuitive and easy to use. In the panel we can easily set meta data (meta title and meta description), change sub-page URLs, perform 301 redirects, set some Hx headers, add ALT descriptions of graphics. The themes provided by Shopify are responsive – so we don’t have to worry about adapting the site to mobile search results. Shopify automatically generates a site map. Sitemap.xml is available at domain.com/sitemap.xml. A robots.txt file is also provided on this basis. The platform has built-in canonical links. In addition to the basic functionalities relevant to SEO – the system also gives us extensive possibilities to make technical changes to the code of the site – both in the frontend and backend parts. More complex functions are also achievable through apps available in the Shopify App Store. Currently, you will find 287 of them in the SEO category alone. Another important fact for SEO is that Shopify provides the possibility to build stores with great page speed parameters. This is possible thanks to the use of headless ecommerce architecture, in which the store’s front-end and back-end are independent.”
PPC Specialist Opinion
Adrianna Ziobro-Jawniak, Lead PPC Specialist
“In the case of Shopify, the first thing I’ll point out is the so-called mobile ready, by which I mean that the templates are fully responsive to mobile devices. Mobile eCommerce has been on the rise in recent years. Add to this the increasingly popular UX – and we have a good foundation for conversion rate optimization (CRO) – which, as we know, is extremely important in scaling business growth. The platform also supports seamless integration with a myriad of applications – for example to generate a product feed. But the biggest plus, which we confirm by positive experience in projects, is the so-called abandoned checkout recovery. Friendly interface allows monitoring of abandoned shopping carts and sending automatic email reminders which – we can also customize! It depends only on our preferences what will be included in the email, to whom it will be sent (everyone who abandoned the shopping cart or only subscribers?) and at what temporal distance we will send the reminder (1 hour after abandoning the cart, 10 hours or maybe 24 hours?). We can easily measure all recovery status results in the dashboard of Shopify. We can also find this data in Google Analytics. This automation leads to great results. The Shopify Platform – in the context of eCommerce development – looks very promising.”
Shopify customer and user reviews
Olga Jędrzejewska-Chęć, CEO | Bebe Concept
Marta Urbanska, Board Member | Bebe Concept
“We chose Shopify after a very long research of available solutions. The solutions that Shopify guarantees simply suited us. Shopify is an international platform that allows us to expand to foreign markets. The advantage of Shopify is the really intuitive backend of the store. There are also many apps that can be connected to the system. We can see that Shopify is a platform that is developing extremely rapidly. It is constantly improving and looking for new solutions for its customers. We wanted a platform that would just allow us to grow. We also think that Shopify’s support is great. We use it once in a while. They are very responsive, write back efficiently, and are really helpful. As soon as we switched to Shopify – we saw how great this platform is. It provides a lot of functionality that we didn’t even know existed. In addition, here we have the possibility to implement dedicated, proprietary solutions. We didn’t expect that some of our ideas would be possible to implement. The modifications we can make on orders, the flexibility of the system and the openness to the customer are very important to us. Brand Active provided us with a one-stop shop, something our company badly needed. Before switching to Shopify, we had no infrastructure, we didn’t even have a warehouse and accounting system. Implementing Shopify was a huge change in the entire infrastructure of the company for us.”
Antoni Krokowicz, Marketing Director, Board Member | Genactiv
Michalina Hasiak, Content Designer | Genactiv
Dominik Operacz, Marketing and e-commerce specialist | Genactiv
“When we changed the platform, it was very important for us to build a very good shopping experience. When migrating, it was important to switch to a system that would be convenient for us and our customers, give us the ability to build content, edit sub-pages and manage the entire store in a really convenient way. After implementing Shopify, the difference is huge – starting with an easy-to-use CMS that doesn’t require programming skills, to very powerful and numerous applications that allow us to implement new sales solutions – and advanced analytics, which clearly shows that thanks to this change our eCommerce has entered a higher level, if only by increasing the conversion rate. We have worked very well with Brand Active. In working with any contractor, 3 things are important to us: planning, communication and transparency. This is the most difficult thing in working especially with software houses, because good graphic designers or developers are hired by many companies, but the project management and how we were taken care of was a pleasant surprise for us.”
Zbigniew Augustyniak, Head of IT & eCommerce | Bizuu
“When we decided to build a new online store, we started looking for a solution that would meet our business needs and thanks to which we would achieve our sales and marketing goals. We focused on several important points – requirements – that fit into our strategic assumptions. First of all, we wanted a tool that is well familiar to users and has a UX-proven path to purchase. We also focused on automation – a process that will speed up the execution of many tasks in the company. Additionally, it was important for us to have the freedom to create the appearance and functionality. All of this led us to meet with Brand Active and the choice of the Shopify platform, with which we will develop and improve in the future to improve Bizuu’s online store.”
Karolina Małolepsza, Head of Marketing | Bizuu
“Shopify gives us the ability to implement marketing campaigns and activities that promote a product or a sale in a specific period of time. Our goal is to first and foremost, to increase traffic to the website and ensure the conversion of visiting customers. It is extremely important to automate marketing, creating effective campaigns and managing them to promote products. Shopify is a platform that allows us to improve our marketing strategy.”
Shopify is a platform that offers a wealth of possibilities. If you want to expand your eCommerce and open up to foreign markets, this platform is the solution you need. Do you have any doubts? As an official Shopify Partner, we will answer all your questions.
