Shopify plus development has established something impressive: it has provided enterprises with modest resources access to enterprise-level eCommerce capabilities. And it is now feasible to build and manage something that once needed extensive teams of people to do so.
One of the top e-commerce systems, Shopify, has effectively established a reputation for excellence. Shopify plus development has various shortcomings, just like other e-commerce development frameworks now on the market, and it's critical to be fully aware of these drawbacks in order to fulfil your expectations for an e-commerce business. Shopify plus development has many benefits that make it a popular e-commerce platform. However, this does not imply that you should completely ignore the drawbacks. In this blog, we list the features of Shopify Plus' online store that are not yet available, that is, a few of the typical issues in this piece, along with some crucial solutions.
With Shopify Plus, certain features are unavailable. Shopify Plus offers several functions that are not available, ranging from store management to payment processing that could have an impact on your online business. So, let's examine these negative aspects.
Shopify is primarily a solution for managing an online store. It can create detailed product descriptions, material relevant to those products, and a store blog, but it cannot compete with the top content management systems (CMSs), like WordPress.
You can integrate Shopify e-commerce into your website with Shopify's JavaScript Buy SDK if content is your main concern (perhaps you operate a thriving blog with several content streams). This combines the CMS of your choice of Shopify's robust cart and e-commerce engine.
If e-commerce is your primary goal, Shopify plus development must host your content. This may be done by creating a custom theme with sections and blocks and using Shopify's blogging platform, which has been utilized for recipes, press releases, and look books, among other types of content.
Solution: Choose your primary focus and customize the Shopify platform to suit it. If required, take guidance from your Shopify plus development company.
Large catalogue sites have a few restrictions on the collection page. (To be clear, however, most direct-to-consumer firms won't encounter these problems.) Broad navigation is built into Shopify and may be controlled by product tags.
Every product may have dozens of tags thanks to the widespread use of them. You can simultaneously query an equivalent number of tags if your category page contains a thousand products. This will be a problem because Shopify won't display all pertinent filters.
Solution: Navigation on Multiple Levels
Three tiers of subcategories are frequently used in mega menu designs to improve user experiences. Businesses with extensive catalogues may occasionally need a fourth level of navigation to add an additional depth of classification.
Multiple navigations with three levels each can be made to get around this problem. Think of these levels as departments for the purposes of this example. Now, there are three categories and subcategories in each department, for a total of four levels of navigation.
These navigations can be combined into the mega menu, which has a list of all departments, using custom coding (and can drive down into additional levels). Although it hasn't been asked for yet, this approach may be utilized to build a five-level navigation structure, albeit the organization might be difficult. Nevertheless, with the right Shopify plus development company, you will be able to achieve the goal.
It is commonly known that the URL structure of Shopify cannot be changed. The domain route will be domain.com/products/custom-handle for items and domain.com/collection/custom-handle for collections. Although there is some uncertainty as to whether changing the URL format may affect SEO, this hasn't shown out to be the case.
Solution: Reviewing the Site Structure
However, switching to Shopify from another platform should be the main issue because doing so necessitates a new URL and necessitates proper migration management. Here are some suggestions for doing:
The navigation should be made as simple as possible for users, especially those that arrive at the site via a search engine or an external link.
On Shopify, breadcrumbs are first established in a straightforward manner with the following hierarchy: Home > Collection > Product. As was already said, Shopify does not support multi-level categories, which is an issue that must be fixed.
Solution: Metafields
Through metafields, breadcrumbs may be added to the product page and collection page, and formatting and breadcrumb placement are completely up to you. Besides that, if you feel uncertain as to how you would implement it, feel free to work with a Shopify plus development company.
All Shopify Plus users have access to the Checkout. Liquid file upon request, which enables checkout customization (to a certain degree). The payment process itself cannot be changed, however, you are free to change how the page looks and feels.
Although it is possible to add extra fields and change the look, Shopify doesn't recommend that merchants do so because it regularly tests and rates every site to improve the checkout experience.
Solution: Scripts and customization
Additionally, Shopify Plus businesses have access to Scripts and Flow to further alter the checkout UX by establishing conditional logic for the shipping and payment options based on certain customer groups, behaviors, or cart contents.
Although there are a few uncommon circumstances that Shopify Checkout cannot handle, there is always the option to create a custom checkout (which is allowed for Shopify Plus development merchants).
Although CBD products can be sold on Shopify plus development, Shopify Payments doesn't support them. Shopify may not support certain supplement categories that it deems "pseudo medicines," which are prohibited by its rules of service, in addition to items that include CBD/THC (TOS).
The fact that practically all companies selling CBD/THC products use platforms like Recharge Payments to offer subscription capabilities presents an extra hurdle that should be considered, despite the fact that there are other payment gateway providers that may be employed.
Solution: Authorize.net
A significant obstacle is the small selection of Shopify Payment gateways that can support both CBD/THC items and the Subscription API. Authorize.net, one of the most prominent substitutes, may connect with many payments merchant partners (underlying banks) to process any form of transaction.
Shopify provides several discount options. Applications like Ultimate Special Offers offer a variety of pricing and promotion strategies that might improve sales results. Discounting is made difficult by stacking discounts and varying product prices, though.
The Shopify Draft Order API is used by almost all applications with discounted features. The same approach is utilized when putting in place apps that provide discounts and group pricing (tier pricing). When using the Draft Order API, there is an issue with the checkout page not having a discount box.
Coupon codes are ineffective in this situation, and discounts can only be applied to individual items (as opposed to the entire cart). These programmes add a "fake" discount code box to the shopping page to sidestep this difficulty.
Solution: An app, for the time being
Utilizing a mobile app that provides both group/tier discounts and advanced cart promotions is the short-term fix (i.e., Discount Box). With this software, you may adjust product prices depending on various groups or quantities, and you can also apply automated cart discounts based on subtotals or the contents of your cart.
This is only a short-term fix, as previously stated. The Shopify Plus development team recently revealed at their annual conference (Commerce+) that native B2B capabilities including pricing lists and more sophisticated checkout will be available starting in 2022.
We think that the Shopify Plus development team will make the launch of this a priority because it has been a long-standing request from merchants and partners.
The blog sums up some of the crucial drawbacks that Shopify possesses, however, with solutions for each of them, it proves itself one of the best ones. If you are keen to know more about Shopify plus development, feel free to drop a comment or connect with our professionals at FutureSoft India.
We would love to be a part of your journey to success. Let's team up today!
