Shopify Website Design - Complete Guidance by EcomHeroes

Shopify is the third top e-commerce platform used to build online retail stores, and 20 percent of e-commerce businesses are on Shopify.Online stores powered by Shopify have generated over 496 billion dollars by selling products, goods, and services.These stats attract the hackers the most.

Yes, Shopify is secure. Shopify has developed an automatic system that protects and monitors every money transaction and data. Shopify websites come with a 256-bit SSL certificate to protect customers' business data and information.
Shopify has spent over 850,000 on more than 300 ethical hackers to resolve security issues.

Shopify is compliant with level 1 Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI CSS). So the data of buyers using credit cards and debit cards is secured. E-commerce websites with PCI compliant are more secure, so buyers prefer to buy from the website. With these built-in security features, the Shopify apps store has several third-party apps that enhance your store security.

The security of e-commerce business websites and their buyers is a significant concern for retailers and business owners because cyber attacks can result in the loss of customer data, business revenue, and the overall feasibility of the business.

Yes, Shopify is SEO friendly. Websites powered by Shopify are search engine friendly and have strong built-in on-page and technical SEO features. You don't need to worry about the on-page and technical SEO when your e-commerce website is built with Shopify.

You will get the options to customize and add meta title, description, tag, URL structure, alt tag, heading tags, redirections, body content, hyperlinks, images, etc.

Shopify automatically generates and manages Robots.txt and Sitemap XML files of your website. With the help of third-party apps, you can customize advanced SEO settings. You can easily integrate Search engine verification tags, analytic tags, Google tag manager tags, and other social media app codes.

To know how important website loading speed checks out these stats:
According to data published at HubSpot, 70% of customers state that website speed influences the decision to buy products from online retail stores.

According to HubSpot, conversion rates decrease by an average of 4.42% for websites that take an extra second to load.

So website loading speed is one of the essential factors for generating sales for every store.

Shopify servers have a fast response time and assure you of 99.99 percent uptime. So, your customers never suffer while purchasing or browsing the website.
The main key factors that affect website loading speed are images, scripts, redirections, and website content. Now, the question is:

Compress images -

Images take more time to load than other content on the website page, so you need to compress images without losing quality. However, images are the most valuable thing on the e-commerce website especially. In e-commerce stores, images make buyers know what products they are purchasing.
On the Shopify store, you can upload images of up to 4472 x 4472 pixels with a maximum of 20MB in size. But Shopify recommends 2048 x 2048 pixels square product images.

Optimize install Shopify apps -

Check that all installed third-party apps are in use because third-party apps run scripts on your store page that cause high loading speed. So, uninstall all the apps that are not in use. It will allow web pages to load faster.

Optimize redirection and content -

Redirections increase page loading time because every time page redirects somewhere else, it extends the HTTP request and response process. No need to worry if your website has 3-5 redirection links. But redirection more than this will impact loading speed. Don't use redirections unnecessarily, and remove all unuseful redirections.
The other thing to optimize is website content. For this, you can use the Content Delivery Network (CDN),where you can host your website content. These are auxiliary servers that reduce server load and make your content easy to render.

Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML -

Minify JavaScript, CSS, and HTML codes. Optimizing JavaScript, CSS, and HTML files will help to improve website loading speed. For this, you can remove unnecessary spaces, code lines, characters, comments, and unuseful elements from the code files to optimize.

Use third-party apps -

The final method to optimize your website page speed is you can use third-party apps. These apps optimize images, redirection, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, etc. You can find hundreds of apps to automate the optimization process at the Shopify app store, both paid and free.

The genuine answer is that it depends on the needs of the business. We have been creating Shopify stores since 2015. We have delivered more than 500 Shopify websites, and every website took a different time to be completed.
In general, a simple Shopify website takes 3-5 days minimum, and a custom website can take almost a month to launch. The main bottlenecks to time are custom theme development and content. These two work takes more time.
The other aspect that matter is the number of resources and expertise of developers. When you hire a company for your Shopify store development, they often deliver the project in a shorter time compared to freelance individuals because the company has dedicated teams to manage the projects. So your project never suffers whatever the conditions. Whereas individual freelancers take more time to complete a website.
In short, Shopify website development with pre build theme can take one week, a semi-custom website can take 2-3 weeks, and a complete custom website can take 2-3 months.

Platforms that require third-party hosting are sometimes quite complicated and demand a degree of technical and coding skills to set up. Many business owners don't want to face this. Shopify the savior, it is as simple as you only choose the plan, sign up and follow the simple instructions.

Some other 'self-hosted' platforms charge you separately for hosting. In starting, they may charge a minimal amount, but soon they rack up thousands of dollars per month. Whereas Shopify never charges any brand a single penny for hosting.

Many brands offer limitless bandwidth and space under the * mark. So when your store gets a good amount of traffic your site goes down due to the limited bandwidth. Sometimes the same happens when you start uploading products after a specific limit. To up your limit they exceedingly charge you.
Shopify gives you unlimited bandwidth and welcomes you to high traffic, rather than punishing you for high this. Every Shopify plan included unlimited bandwidth.

Shopify hosting is PCI DSS level-1 compliant and guarantees the data security of your business and customers. All Shopify stores come with an SSL certificate, so your website is safe from online cyber attacks and phishing.

Seguno - Email Marketing

Seguno is one of the best email marketing apps specially made for Shopify stores. You can easily manage your email marketing campaigns with the automation feature. It helps to turn customers into regular buyers.
Therefore, if you are looking for an app that manages email marketing effectively for your newly launched Shopify store, generate sales and increase revenue. Seguno should be your go-to first app.

Plug-in SEO

Plug-in SEO manages all SEO. This app automatically scans and fixes all critical SEO issues of your store, boosts website ranking, and optimizes metadata, image alt tag, schema, broken links check, and more.
It is the highest-rated SEO app on the Shopify app store, used by thousands of Shopify and Shopify PLUS merchants globally. So, it's the best Shopify app to install for your Shopify store before launch.

Smile: Loyalty and Rewards

Best Shopify app to retain your customers. Smile app easy to run program to offer loyalty points, rewards, and referral perks. This app helps you to retain your existing customer base and increase sales, repeat purchase rates, and brand loyalty.
To run an e-commerce business effectively for a long time. It's better to build brand loyalty for the existing customer base by giving them exciting offers, rewards, and discounts. If you think today, you will win tomorrow.

PushOwl: Web Push Notifications

The abandoned cart can be an obstacle to the success of your e-commerce business. Shopify focus and resolves this issue by providing you with a third-party app named PushOwl. This app sends web push notifications that recover abandoned carts by encouraging buyers with attractive offers and rewards.
PushOwl is the highest-rated web push notification app, trusted by 25K+ merchants on Shopify and Shopify PLUS. You can personalize your marketing with several features or automate it easily

Form Builder:

Plug-in SEO
Form Builder has advanced features such as accepting online payment, automatically creating a customer account, advanced CSS & JS, and form response notification.
These apps make your path to becoming a successful e-commerce entrepreneur easy and effective and help to grow your business simultaneously.