Your ecommerce website helps you attract and retain your target audience and convert them into loyal customers. Therefore, choosing the right ecommerce platform is essential for your business. With 2.1 million daily users, Shopify is one of the top ecommerce platforms for digitizing business (source). Therefore, Shopify store development has become essential for companies to grow globally.
We are here to help you understand Shopify store design and development to start or migrate your existing store to Shopify. In this blog, we will discuss what store development on Shopify is and the best practices for creating a functional and high-converting store. Let’s get started.
What is Shopify store development?
Shopify store development enables Shopify experts and business owners to create a personalized store on Shopify. The Shopify store development services focus on creating conversion-focused product pages and user-engaging designs for an ecommerce website. You can experiment with theme designs or custom apps using the development store on Shopify.
Shopify eCommerce developers use the Liquid template language, Shopify CLI, app integrations, and APIs to streamline operations and enhance user experience. A skilled Shopify store development company helps you create a robust, fast-loading e-commerce site to attract your target audience and boost your conversion rate.
Importance of Shopify store development
A successful Shopify store needs to be visually appealing and flawless. Therefore, working with a Shopify store development agency ensures that your ecommerce store is aesthetic and generates revenue!
The following are a few reasons your business needs ecommerce store development services:
- Reduce bounce rate: Improve your website’s bounce rate with strategic navigation. It enhances user experience and improves lead generation.
- Make mobile responsive design: Create a responsive Shopify store design to boost user engagement on all devices and boost conversions.
- Brand building: Customize or personalize the Shopify store theme and layout to build your brand image.
- Easy performance analysis: Set up a data analytics system to understand user behaviour and make data-backed decisions to expand and improve the store’s performance.
- Retain users: Improve the website loading speed to retain the users because, as per a survey, 36.8% of users are less likely to return to the website with slow speed (source).
Best practices for Shopify store development
The Shopify store development process can be intimidating. However, if you stick to the basics and follow a development structure, you can easily create robust Shopify stores. Following is the list of best Shopify development practices we follow to create high-conversion stores for our clients.
Choose a Shopify account based on your business’s purpose
Each ecommerce business is unique, as is their need for digital stores. Therefore, the first step to creating a profitable digital store using Shopify is to choose the correct account! Shopify offers three basic plans for MSMEs and large corporations.
If you want to expand your business and access advanced tools, you can opt for Shopify Plus. A Shopify store development company can help you pick the right plan based on your design requirements and budget.
Opt for a user-engaging, high-conversion theme
Your Shopify theme is essential to create engaging website layout. Although many free and premium themes are available in Shopify, a custom theme enables you to differentiate yourself from the competition.
The Shopify theme must have a responsive design, load more quickly, engage users, and offer SEO capabilities. With the Shopify Theme Development agency, you can design a unique theme that complements your brand image and values.
Optimize the content and media layout
The website layout is essential to retain the user’s attention. Especially when 38% of users look at the layout and navigational link when visiting the website (source). Therefore, you must strategically place the content and other elements to create a seamless design.
Furthermore, your images and videos should load faster and have the best image quality. Compress the file size and set up a lazy loading system to speed up the loading time and win over the user’s trust.
Set up the APIs and relevant apps
Shopify is best known for its complete e-commerce solution, including many apps that streamline your operations and offer diverse customer services. You can use diverse apps for marketing your products, managing your orders & delivery, offering customer support, creating a customer funnel, and more.
Therefore, you should work with an expert who offers end-to-end Shopify website development services. They will integrate the relevant apps and set up the APIs for seamless user experience and operation management.
Set up the checkout and payment system
A whopping 87% of customers will not buy from ecommerce brands with complex or lengthy checkouts (source). Therefore, you must create simple checkouts with minimal steps to boost your sales. Opt for single-page checkouts to reduce customers’ friction while placing the order. A Shopify expert helps you simplify the checkout process and integrate the most relevant payment gateways to boost sales.
Create a mobile responsive design
Creating a mobile responsive design might seem a tedious task. However, this tedious task can help you reach the 36.37% of users using Shopify on mobile(source). Therefore, you must ensure your Shopify e-commerce store has a seamless layout for all devices, especially mobile phones. Shopify offers inbuilt tools to create responsive Shopify store designs.
Incorporate SEO strategies
SEO isn’t just about placing keywords to bring traffic; it’s also about improving user experience with speed optimization and crawlability. The top companies offering Shopify store development services in India help you set up the meta tags and robots.txt file to enhance website crawlability to make it rank higher on the search engine. Furthermore, site speed optimization improves user experience and retention.
Conduct rigorous QA testing
QA testing is essential to remove the bugs affecting the website’s performance. You must test the final website on diverse devices and browsers to check its performance and layout. AB testing can help you finalize the most efficient design for your ecommerce store. Following is the checklist for thorough QA testing in Shopify store development:
- Check the loading speed of each website page
- Ensure that each button and link is working
- Remove or replace all the broken links
- Check if the integrated apps are working well
- Do a transaction to check the checkout and payment system
- Cross-check if the content and media are optimized
Smooth deployment
Once you have tested the design, you can make your Shopify store live. Choose relevant domains and set up the analytical tools to track user behaviour and other performance metrics to improve your ecommerce site’s performance.
Why work with Hopiant for your Shopify store development?
Hopiant is a trusted Shopify Development Company with 9+ years of experience creating high-converting Shopify stores. We have worked with 250+ companies in diverse niches to build robust Shopify stores. We follow a strategic Shopify store development process for a flawless store that attracts and retains customers. From developing custom themes to Shopify store migration, we offer diverse ecommerce store development services as a reliable Shopify partner.
We can offer a free consultation or a technical audit to help you boost your Shopify revenue. Contact us for more information.
Conclusion
When developing your Shopify store, focus on choosing a high-converting theme, optimizing the content and media, simplifying checkouts, integrating relevant APIs, and rigorous testing. The Shopify store development is crucial to attracting and retaining users in the long term. We discussed the professional Shopify store development process to help you create a robust ecommerce site for your business. We can help you create a unique digital store for your brand. Contact us now for a free consultation regarding Shopify store migration or development.
FAQ
What are the best Shopify development practices?
A few Shopify development best practices are creating simplistic layouts and checkouts to enhance user experience and boost sales. Optimizing the content and media by optimizing loading speed helps retain the users and reduce the bounce rate. After development, conduct a thorough QA to ensure that each element of the website is working efficiently to create the best first impression.
How does Shopify store development work?
Shopify development induces 6 simple steps as follows:
- Choosing a Shopify plan based on your business needs
- Choosing an efficient Shopify theme for your business
- Optimizing the layout, content, and media
- Integrating relevant APIs for apps and payment gateways
- Creating a mobile-responsive design
- Testing and deploying the Shopify store
Why should I hire a Shopify store development company?
A Shopify store development like Hopiant can help you create a Shopify store using best development practices. They use industry-standard practices to develop your ecommerce site and customize the layout to boost user engagement and revenue. The Shopify store development agency helps you stand out from the competition with responsive design and efficient user interface.
How to choose the right Shopify store development agency?
When choosing a Shopify development agency, check their portfolio and customer reviews to see if they can create your designer Shopify store design. Ensure that they have a transparent policy and post-deployment services.
