2 min read
New Shopify eCommerce website for Riley Studio
Did you know we can build Shopify websites? No, well you do now. We've recently launched a new Shopify eCommerce website for Riley Uggla (you might know her from the tv show, Made In Chelsea) and her sustainable clothing fashion brand Riley Studio.
The client didn't feel like the previous website was optimised for SEO, and were limited with functionality in the previous platform - which was Squarespace.
After a successful period of MadeByShape improving Organic SEO results on the old website and after a discussion, we decided Shopify was the best solution for the new website. MadeByShape and Riley Uggla previously worked together on a different project in the past and it's always good to know previous clients appreciate your work and want to collaborate again.
The turnaround time would be quicker. The project would be cheaper. The client didn't want a complicated website. In short, we explained all the benefits of using Shopify, and all the negatives. We explained that we'd prefer to build the site in Craft CMS but this particular project didn't have the requirements to start from scratch.
We were able to achieve a functional eCommerce website that met all the needs of the project including features like discounts, product categories, mega menu, live instagram feed, newsletter signup, blog.
As you may know, Shopify comes with limitations so it does make sense to weigh these up before choosing the third party eCommerce solution. On this particular project, the client wanted custom designed pages to display the brand in the right manner. Although the product pages were great as standard - the info based pages were lacking in creativity from the template the client decided to go with. This meant that we had to design and build into Shopify custom pages. The good thing about this is that the brand is reflected in the right way, it looks good to end users. The bad thing is that these pages are now not editable within Shopify for the client to amend as and when they wish. But as thye are text based pages, the client decided that this was fine as they will rarely be altered.
Although there are limitations, I think Shopify is a great solution for specific projects. If you're on the hunt for a simple eCommerce website that has no complications when it comes to product ordering, customisation etc then Shopify is a good solution. Templates are limiting, they are OK - but we would recommend using these as a base to add and evolve. Which is exactly what we have done for Riley Studio. We decided to go with a template and customised fonts, layout, features and functionality, design and built in custom pages, integrated third party plugins like instagram, discounts, stock etc to improve the performance of the website.
Co-Founder of MadeByShape. Most of my blogs are about business related aspects, not just web design.
