Good post, I agree. I would be much happier if Shopify stuck to it’s original statement of simplicity and usability and dismissed many of the feature requests submitted here. A Shopify API would take care of the majority of current show-stoppers, allowing all sorts of other options outside of the application, such as drop-shipper notifications, product import/export, etc.

There are plenty of complicated and expensive ecommerce products and methods out there. I work with what I consider to be the best. Shopify isn’t that different than many, but in its differences are serious strengths.

I don’t envy the position the JadedPixel guys are in. But I would encourage them to say no to a ‘feature’ unless it is absolutely necessary. They know what they’re doing, and I don’t think they’ll allow Shopify to become bloated like the rest. :)

Excellent post. The problem you are talking about is not at all theoretical. Its real and scary.

I have seen this happen all around me in the past. More features can often actually make a product worse as opposed to better. In fact i personally made this experience with my biggest open source project. The weblog typo. I started this project, time constrained, as a minimal weblog engine with just the features i needed. Unfortunately at the time I didn’t yet learn how to say no properly. If someone asked me for a feature I didn’t believe in I implemented it just to please. 2 years later typo ships with more features then probably any other weblog engine. I personally consider it a failed project. Its worn down by its bulk.

However i think this is a crucial lesson to learn. Without typo shopify would have never been what it is now.

Taking a tremendously complex topic such as e-commerce and making a simple shell for it is very very difficult. Some of the screens you find in shopify have been rewritten and redone over 5 times from scratch because they didn’t “feel” right.

Ultimately Shopify is the application which we were looking for when we started Snowdevil, our own retail store. All ideas are always measured against our own demands for Snowdevil. If a feature would make Snowdevil better in a meaningful way and can be implemented with zero or close to zero impact on the usability of shopify then chances are pretty good that we will implement it.

I agree in part with all of you. I think that in todays world as the web moves more to an application web frontier – applications such as this will pop up everywhere. What sets it apart is not neccesarily it’s ease of use (I have friends using all types of e-commerce because they think it’s easy.) But because we buy into the vision that these guys have. I buy Scott, Tobi and the gangs vision. I have never seen a shopping cart like this before (the whole ruby ajax thing) Hell, it’s neat if anything at all.

As for adding things. I have mixed feelings. You have to know when to say yes and when to say no and when to listen with your ear to the ground. Things constantly change – singer sewing machine company started out selling typewriters. They saw the market shift and adapted.

I’m not sure that there is a valid reason for shopify to stay simple or small. If it is this perfect of a match for all of us then something is working!

I wouldn’t be surprised to see it grow to the fame of other apps such as facebook or google for that matter.

Knowing how to read your customer’s needs and prioritize them is what makes some people better businesspeople than others.

What a great success the shopify team has so far! Keep up the good work, and keep listening – even if you don’t implement things!

Kudos!

One thing which sets us apart from many of our collegues in the industry is that scott and I actually ran a e-commerce store. We have first hand knowledge and more importantly first hand opinion on what a e-commerce system should look like.

This helps a tremendous deal in day to day operation. I honestly don’t think we could have gotten anywhere without the experience we collected from running snowdevil.

So many people “design” software that have NO idea what they are doing—Its “shows” that you DO know what you are doing in design and concept and its great – Things sometimes get way out of hand and people forget the goal what they are doing – you guys are doing a good job (and the reviews show it)

An interesting story is Ashton-Tate’s switch from dBase III to dBase IV how a product can be destroyed – of course its your thing not mine – I just like what I see.

Mel has a real good set of comments (and may I add a fantastic website design) and I agree that things need to be adapted and altered to fit, Just that really the main idea is to sell things online with the least amount of time and hassle .All those features without sales will not help you or me.

Funny thing everyone wants all the stuff that comes with OS such as Windows XP —but how many really use it and how much is really needed. I see people with GPS’s in vehicles that have NEVER used it and I dont use use all dem buttons on my TV remote

Keep up the good work—I can’t wait to see where you end up in a year

One of the really nice things about the way shopify is laid out is that we can expose a lot of advanced features only using certain markup in liquid pages. If those are present then we alter the admin interface to reflect such options.

This is a kind of pull model for complexity. A simple store using a standard theme will not need the complexity of a store which uses all the bells and whistles shopify might have to offer.

I have no concrete examples of this yet but this is the strategy which we will most likely pick in the future. Liquid in a year will look as different as shopify will look in a year itself.