Unlocking E-commerce Growth: The Case for Switching to Shopify

My Dearest Woe,

First, thank you for your feedback on The Golden Pillars of Luxury Website Design workbook I created to support my last column.   Those 98 pages took over 100 hours to complete, made long when parts of it disappeared around the 77-hour mark. I’m convinced I harbor gremlins in my condo! Gizmo and Gremlins aside, I’m utterly grateful to know you found value in my labor of love. It remains available for anyone who hasn’t yet downloaded it as I work on my next labor of love for you lovely PR Advisor loyalists. 

If you recall, I began considering my legacy shortly after my mother passed away last year. I’m too much of a capitalist to dedicate my life to social work as my mother did, but helping emerging and small companies thrive – well, that’s something I can get behind.  I’ve since started volunteering with the nonprofit organization, the Venture Mentoring Team, working alongside some of the world’s most accomplished executives to help set entrepreneurs, startups and small business owners on the road to success.

My work with VMT has taken me beyond my jewelry and watch industry comfort zone to help me understand business challenges don’t discriminate across industries. You’d be surprised at what many of you have in common with a fitness company I recently mentored. While some in the program have seen me as a sorceress when my recommendations magically make their customer acquisition obstacles disappear, I myself only see the obvious.  Although Nigerian juju does run through my Yoruba veins as the great granddaughter of an Alaafin of Oyo, I don’t need to call upon my ancestors to see why your web designer is poo-pooing Shopify.

Your designer makes more money recommending a custom-built site because it ties your company to him now and forevermore. If you moved to the Shopify platform, anyone could do what he’s doing for a lot less. Shopify sites take significantly less time to build than a custom site and thus, less billable hours. Your designer isn’t too keen on giving up that money, honey!

Now, a better businessperson would learn Shopify and focus on service to keep customers loyal. Alas, laziness can be more attractive than change, particularly when there’s no pressure to change. If your boss refuses to question why you need a custom site, your designer has absolutely no motivation to do what’s in your best interest.

Let’s set the record straight: very few ecommerce sites need to be custom-built.  By custom built, I mean the designer is personally writing every line of code that creates the website.

For the uninitiated, websites are created through code —  a series of letters which are mumbo jumbo to us but Shakespeare to your computer. Multiple lines of code tell your laptop to show that picture of me on top and to make the title in big bold letters. Dozens of lines are required just for you to see the Editor’s Pick box to the right. For a custom-built website, the designer writes every line of this code. Every. Single. Line.

Now, factor in Google frequently likes to shake things up, demanding your site make new changes if you want to remain in Google’s good graces. When this happens, a custom site designer must rewrite existing code to meet Google’s latest requirements.

Shopify is designed to adapt to Google’s fickleness. You begin building your Shopify site with a theme — a customizable site design layout developed by a random designer and available to anyone who wants it. When the weather changes along with Google’s demands, your theme designer will update their master theme, allowing you to easily make the same update without touching a line of code.

I first started recommending Shopify years ago to small businesses who couldn’t afford an entire team to create stunning sites like Cartier’s. I just popped over to Cartier.com because, well, do I really need a reason to visit my beloved Cartier? Today, however, in the interest of research, I decided to review Cartier’s website code instead of the collections.

Well, cover me in rose gold, set me with emeralds, onyx, rubellites and diamonds and call me a Panthère! Wouldn’t you know, Cartier.com is now built on the Shopify platform!

And so is Tiffany’s. And Todd Reed. And even Rolex, although you can’t buy from Rolex.com.

As we continue our Customer Journey series, I’m going to talk to you about newsletters, and behavior tracking and affiliate programs. I’ll throw out names like Klaviyo and Rakuten and Semrush. You’ll learn about SEO and SMS and CRMs – all things to help guide customers into doing exactly what you want on your site. Shopify makes it easy to integrate these services. So easy, in fact, your 8-year-old nephew could manage those integrations instead of your designer.

Catch my drift?

Now, before custom site designers start writing code to send me hate email every 15 minutes, may I recommend you learn Shopify? There is still vast opportunity to custom edit themes to meet your customers’ needs. 

Look at the money of it, honey: keeping your customers on an antiquated model will limit their ecommerce business’s potential and eventually cost you a job anyway. Learn how to customize Shopify themes now and be a rockstar when, guided by my workbook, you walk them through the golden pillars of ecommerce success.

Back to you, Woe, my Joe!

I had a client whose designer filled my client’s head with nonsensical reasons for why they needed a custom-built website, despite my insistence a Shopify site would improve sales.  Month after month, I’d sit in meetings with a pen firmly jabbed into my thigh to keep me from entering yet another losing argument, as the client kept questioning why sales weren’t happening even though my efforts were clearly and successfully driving website traffic. I eventually stopped working with the client before gangrene could set in, only to now see years later the former client has finally moved to Shopify. I can only shake my head at how much money they lost in sales before making the switch.

So, my Wise Woe, print this column and mail it anonymously to your boss. Or when you’re next dining together, maybe have the chef place his food on top of a laminated copy. Perhaps for a future office birthday party, have the bakery turn this column into a birthday cake and make sure the slice your boss receives contains the preceding paragraph – anything to help your boss pick up what I’m putting down.

If you want your ecommerce business to be consistently successful, your site must be agile and adapt quickly to new trends in both consumer and search engine behavior. Shopify makes this incredibly easy. With Cartier, Rolex and Tiffany’s now using Shopify, there’s no reason you shouldn’t either — particularly since Shopify began as a platform for small businesses.

Alright, my ravishing readers! I’ve got to go lock up my cabinets before midnight lest my upcoming labor of love goes missing. In the meantime, don’t forget to download my current labor of love. And send me your most pressing PR questions!