I've been up and running with one Shopify store for about a month and a half. Not that long really...but I've been working on it's development for much, much longer. It's evolved into a very custom template. At first I loved Shopify. The UI, templates and app store are really where it shines. It's back-end is really intuitive. Rich templates are plentiful and the app stores has just about anything you could ask for. Integrations with other platforms really help to expand insights and capabilities (I'm a data mining geek and I'm ok with that).
But now as I start dealing with more orders, it's flaws really come to light. Printing invoices, pack lists, ...and in my case product labels... are done through a clunky HTML-based app. The app is really impacted by browser dependencies and in-line with my experience for all things Shopify so far, it too lacks the sustaining engineering support to adequately address any customer issues let alone establishing product roadmap that makes sense to customers. The app store seems pretty light in this area and short of building my own app that uses the API to pull order data, it falls short of my needs and causes me to burn a lot of time doing 'stupid shit' I shouldn't have to.
Some other simple features are completely missing. Order modification doesn't exist. Once an order is taken, that's it. It's either cancelled, fulfilled or partially fulfilled. No ability to do quantity adjustments or item modifications. So if a customer decides they want a different size, or if your fulfillment group needs to make a product substitution, forget it. Either you put the change in the Order Notes or cancel the order, create a new one and get payment details resubmitted by the customer. If you go the former route, tracking these changes difficult. It complicates fulfillment and you have to direct your customer to the notes field to see it rather than the invoices and emails with line item order details. Elect to go the latter route and you're likely to loose customers since it makes the customer service side feel clunky and disjointed.
Yes, someone created a $20/mo app that claims to be able to do modifications, but the reviews are really hit and miss. It's a caveat emptor situation for this in my view.
These are of course on top of the payment processing and SSL issues already pointed out by @biophase.
I started to build a second store for another business coming in 2017. But after putting so much effort into the first store front and experiencing these issues, I'm starting to look at other solutions for both of them. I'm always open to suggestions and feedback based on other experiences.
Has anyone tried Clover noted in the last post?
But now as I start dealing with more orders, it's flaws really come to light. Printing invoices, pack lists, ...and in my case product labels... are done through a clunky HTML-based app. The app is really impacted by browser dependencies and in-line with my experience for all things Shopify so far, it too lacks the sustaining engineering support to adequately address any customer issues let alone establishing product roadmap that makes sense to customers. The app store seems pretty light in this area and short of building my own app that uses the API to pull order data, it falls short of my needs and causes me to burn a lot of time doing 'stupid shit' I shouldn't have to.
Some other simple features are completely missing. Order modification doesn't exist. Once an order is taken, that's it. It's either cancelled, fulfilled or partially fulfilled. No ability to do quantity adjustments or item modifications. So if a customer decides they want a different size, or if your fulfillment group needs to make a product substitution, forget it. Either you put the change in the Order Notes or cancel the order, create a new one and get payment details resubmitted by the customer. If you go the former route, tracking these changes difficult. It complicates fulfillment and you have to direct your customer to the notes field to see it rather than the invoices and emails with line item order details. Elect to go the latter route and you're likely to loose customers since it makes the customer service side feel clunky and disjointed.
Yes, someone created a $20/mo app that claims to be able to do modifications, but the reviews are really hit and miss. It's a caveat emptor situation for this in my view.
These are of course on top of the payment processing and SSL issues already pointed out by @biophase.
I started to build a second store for another business coming in 2017. But after putting so much effort into the first store front and experiencing these issues, I'm starting to look at other solutions for both of them. I'm always open to suggestions and feedback based on other experiences.
Has anyone tried Clover noted in the last post?
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