A members-only e-commerce platform focused on luxury beauty and wellness products

Selecting Architectures to Meet Business Needs

The initial draft of Daily Polished was built upon a custom Next.js implementation leveraging a custom Content Management System as its database. Given the platform expectations, we recognized early that it was not in the business' best interest to build a proprietary solution to their needs. Based on our experience with Shopify and the business requirements for the e-commerce platform, this was an opportunity to streamline development by leveraging the Shopify Platform. Specifically, we used the Shopify Storefront API to deliver a first-class e-commerce solution to Daily Polished. This allowed their non-technical team to leverage the Shopify administrative backend dashboard to modify store details in a well-documented and supported way. Overall, this reduced overall development costs in half. While Shopify does have a cost associated with it, the ROI to build the same solutions in-house did not outweigh the long-term benefits or cost of leveraging the platform. This decision has directly led to Daily Polished seeing returns on their initial investment sooner. The custom frontend implementation was ideal given their design requirements and led to reduced overall cost in development with better user experiences.

Effective Shopify Guidance

Our team was also able to leverage Shopify's default feature set to provide key features such as flash sales, time-bound sales opportunities, and item purchase limits. We were able to leverage features like Shopify's Price Rules to set sales windows on items that site administrators could adjust in real time. For the purchase limits, we were able to leverage custom metadata objects which are exposed on the administrative control dashboards. There are several existing Shopify App Store solutions for this feature, but they can become expensive over time especially if only part of the functionality is used. After discussing with the client, we built the in-house version to increase their ROI.

However, features like memberships are not supported by Shopify out of the box and Daily Polished leverages a “members only” model for purchasing. This Dot Labs investigated the apps available on the Shopify App Store to discover the product that best suited our client's needs from a feature, cost, and support perspective. We needed to find the right solution that met all the feature needs but wanted to be cognizant of price considerations for sales margins. Another key factor was having first-class technical support. With membership being the key driver to sales, we needed to find an integration partner that the client and we could trust. We were able to find said integration partner and were able to integrate their product into our custom Next.js application which has provided a seamless experience for consumers.

Optimizing Design and User Experience to Reduce Drop Rates

For e-commerce stores, drop rate is a key metric when measuring success. Drop rate is the number of consumers who do not complete a purchase after initializing a cart. During our development process, this metric was reiterated and a key focal point in the final deliverables. Our project manager worked closely with Daily Polished's CEO and designer to identify problematic user experiences and flows and collaborated to reduce drop rates. We collaborated with beta testers during the development of the product to identify additional challenges and other shopping experience challenges leading to the successful launch of the Daily Polished members-only store.

Conclusion

The collaboration between Daily Polished and This Dot Labs highlights the power of Shopify APIs for crafting customized e-commerce solutions. By transitioning to the Shopify Platform and adeptly utilizing its APIs, This Dot Labs delivered a scalable, cost-effective, and high-performing e-commerce platform for Daily Polished. This strategic shift not only reduced development costs but also accelerated ROI. Leveraging Shopify's default features and addressing challenges related to memberships, the partnership resulted in a successful launch. The case study underscores the value of expert guidance and Shopify's ecosystem in building tailored e-commerce solutions.