Shopify Website Development

Usually you'll need a minimum of 5; including Homepage, Collection page (list of products), Product page, Contact page (which usually includes a contact form or map) and Standard pages (such as About Us).

If your site needs a Blog then you'll need 2 extra templates (one for a list of posts, and for an individual post). Blogs are typically used for things like news articles, but they can also a good way to organise other content. For example your "blog" could be an Our Team page where each person's picture and bio is a blog post, and the Blog page is a summary of the team members.

More complex sites often need multiple product or collection templates, especially if products need different sets of content or purchase options are different. For example you might have some products where you want people to submit an enquiry rather than add-to-cart. Or some products might need lots of supporting content (like size charts, warranty details, "how to choose") that isn't relevant to others. The same goes for collections. In this case it's best to have different templates and choose which template you want each product or collection to use.

Fee free to contact me so I can give you some guidance on this.

Shopify themes come with a range of different "Sections" for displaying different types of content (such as a row of products, an image slideshow, a row of blog posts, or a section of text). Blocks are the elements inside these Sections.

Often the standard sections and blocks included in your theme will meet most needs, but sometimes they won't work exactly how you'd like then to. A common example is a "complementary" or "add-on" product displayed on product pages. Suppose you want customers to be able to click one button and add both products to the cart together? Or let's say you have a row of blog posts on a page but instead of the three most recent you only want to show posts that have a certain tag? Customisation of the theme code is usually needed to achieve these type of features.

Each business has unique needs and pre-built themes (either free or paid) don't accommodate every situation. Customisation can be used to achieve the perfect user-experience for your type of business and products, leading to higher conversion rates or average order values.

Normally clients are responsible for adding products (and product variants) to Shopify; and the project includes training for you or your team on how to do it. Therefore the number of products doesn't affect the cost of the website development.

If you have an existing Shopify site (of any age) then there's no need to re-add the products. If don't have an existing site or your site is built in a different platform (e.g. Wordpress, Wix, Squarespace) then products need to be added to Shopify.

If you have hundreds or thousands of products there are tools that can be used to import them to speed up the process, but getting an import to work successfully can be tricky and it usually isn't worth it for smaller numbers of products - it's often quicker to manually add each one.

If products need to be added and you don't have time to do it then I can do it for you at additional cost (which would depend on the number of products and product variants).

I try not to add third-party Apps to a store unless it's really necessary. Apps add extra code to your site that can slow it down (and a fast-loading site is always better for good Google ranking). For simple features like displaying upgrade or add-on products customising the theme code can be a better approach.

However some App functionality would be hard to recreate quickly through customisation. If you need customers to book a service or reserve a rental product you'll need an App added for that. Or if customers need to schedule the delivery/pickup date and time and block-off certain days adding an App is best. Apps are also good for including Google/FB reviews in pages or an Instagram feed.

There is no limit on the number of Apps. Generally simple sites need fewer Apps and more complex sites need more.

Most Apps have free versions and paid versions. If your site needs an App I always try to use free versions where possible. If you need the features of the paid version there are monthly subscriptions for these which you would pay directly.

There are two parts to SEO: "On-Page", which is about optimising your website, and "Off-Page", which is about building the reputation of your domain name elsewhere.

On-Page SEO is included in website packages but Off-Page SEO is not.

On-Page SEO involves crafting the right page titles, descriptions, headings and body content to focus on your target keywords, as well as making sure there is enough content on key pages (because search engines give preference to longer content).

Off-Page SEO involves listing your business in online directories, optimising Google and Bing profiles, posting blog articles that link back to your website pages, sharing videos that link back to your site, and posting updates to your social media channels. Off-Page SEO is available as an add-on service to your website package.

Starter packages focus on achieving good ranking for your business category keywords (e.g. "florist") in your target geographic area. The Hero packages additionally focuses on keywords for your main product categories (e.g. "valentine's day flowers"). The Superhero package goes deeper, and focuses on keywords for popular products too (e.g. "dozen red roses"). The more keywords you rank well for in search then the more traffic this will drive to your site.

I used to include an online training session with website projects to show clients how to add/edit products and properly manage their sites. However I found that by the time they needed to change something people had usually forgotten the training sessions.

Instead of training I provide all website clients with a detailed and user-friendly instruction manual that covers the aspects of product and website management they are likely to need. Everyone seems to prefer this because they have a document they can refer to when it's time to update something. The instruction manual is a 20-30 page document that's personalised for each client, complete with screenshots and examples from their own site.