How Product Customization Boosts Sales with Shopify Plus

Are you using Shopify? If so, you’re one of 800,000 online stores powered by this platform.

As the third-largest platform (holding 20 percent of the market), Shopify Plus has everything you need to create a viable ecommerce store in a single afternoon, whether you’re hosting on their servers or your own webhost. 

Yet, there’s still room to take things to the next level.

Shopify Plus supports integrations and plugins with third-party services to boost your customer experience. One of those integrations includes product customization software, which can dramatically transform how your customers interact with your brand.

Here’s everything you need to know about how to use product customization with Shopify Plus.

How to Use Product Customization with Shopify Plus

Product Customization is also known as one of the most in-demand services that you can offer your customers. 

Shoppers love customized products because they speak to their sense of individuality while increasing the perceived value of what they are getting. Brands love them because they boost the average order value and increase customer loyalty.

Shopify has two main options for introducing product customization onto your site: use their product customizer or use third-party software that integrates with the platform. 

Here’s a close look at both options to help you decide which is better.

1. Use Shopify’s Native Options & Templates

Shopify comes with some basic customization options already hard-baked into its platform. If all you plan to provide are some simple options for your customers, you may be fine using product variants.

Product variants and options let your customers pick out basic options such as size and color, but you can take it a step further. You can create a new product theme to build out basic customizations that include:

• Colors of various parts of your product
• Initials or custom text
• Sizing information
• Measurement inputs

There are plenty of tutorials online on how to do this. However, it’s not exactly beginner-friendly.

When to go with Shopify's built-in product customization tools

Using Shopify’s native options and templates is only a good option if:

• You are comfortable handling code. You’ll need to alter the code on several pages to implement these customizations. While you’re mostly going to paste snippets of code at certain lines, this also has the potential to mess things up if you’re not careful.
• You already know Shopify very well. Building a template requires you to understand Shopify’s inner workings. If you already do, then this process becomes much easier.
• You have a game plan for product visualization. This approach doesn’t take into consideration the visualization options that you’ll need to have in place so that your customers know what they’re getting when they customize their product.
• You have basic customization options. This approach works best for simpler configurations that don’t need rules-based logic to make sure customers only configure valid combinations.

If you’ve got all four of those down, this option can work for you. Otherwise, you might find yourself in over your head if you take this approach.

Good thing there are other options!

2. Use Third-Party Product Customization Software

Messing with the guts of an ecommerce platform is usually something best left for developers and the intrepid. That’s why Shopify Plus supports a huge range of integrations with other services to help you do even more with your ecommerce site.

With third-party customization software, you’ll sign up for the service and then “plug in” the integration into your site. In your Shopify dashboard, simply look for the “Plugins” tab and follow the instructions there.

You can even work with platforms and services that aren’t found in the Shopify App Store. Many services are “headless.” This means there’s no frontend service or site that you log into to manage your customization options. Instead, once it’s been installed in your site’s admin panel, you’ll have a dashboard that handles everything there.

When to opt for a more advanced product customization platform

Headless product customization software has a lot of advantages over options like the above tutorials or services that require you to operate on their platform. It:

• Keeps everything in one place. Nothing is more annoying than having to log into three different sites to manage your ecommerce business. With everything in one place, it’s simpler, safer, and faster.
• Works seamlessly with the rest of Shopify. An integration will pull information directly from Shopify, keeping everything consistent and smooth. You’ll enjoy accurate information and better visibility across your entire system.
• Is built for non-developers. Forget messing with the code. You’ll work on an interface that guides you through the process. The best software comes with powerful self-serve admin tools that help you get more done.
• Provides visualization options and an embedded configurator. One of the biggest advantages of product customization software is your ability to create an immersive experience for your customers with a public-facing configurator on your site.
• Delivers sophisticated logic and rules. Whether you’re making sure that customization combinations stay on-brand or within your power to deliver, you need rules-based product logic. Solid software will help you create these without letting you get lost in technical weeds.
• Stays up to date. When powered by a third-party service, updates will be handled for you. That means no spending time manually installing updates and debugging things when they go wrong.

Third-party customization software is usually more appropriate for business-owners, non-developers, and web admins who want to get started quickly and don’t want to wade through reams of code to create functionality.

Get Product Customization for Any Ecommerce Platform with ConfigureID

Shopify Plus is just one of the many options out there for businesses creating an ecommerce store. If you’ve built your store on this platform like so many others, then you’re well-equipped with all of the tools you need to succeed.

We’ve covered how to use product customization within the Shopify ecosystem. From configuring things within Shopify Plus itself to using integrations and third-party services, you’ve now got all of the knowledge you need to get started.

We can empower you with reliable configuration tools, self-serve admin tools, and cutting-edge product visualization to drive more sales. 

Go ahead, check it out. Shopify Plus and ConfigureID put together will take your business to the next level.

Request a demo right here and discover what ConfigureID can do for you.