How to develop an industry-best eCommerce Application with 'Built for Shopify'?

Shopify has been established as the best eCommerce platform for some time now, especially when you are building an eCommerce store for a large business; you can choose it without thinking twice. It helps you grow your business by enabling you to shape up your own scalable online store with plenty of features. In a mid-2020 press release, Shopify announced that its platform "powers over one million businesses in more than 175 countries" globally. Limiting itself not to specific industries, Shopify is used widely in various domains like automotive, health, food products, sports, and apparel. Some of the trusted brands like Fitbit, Pepsi, RedBull, Gym shark, Penguin books, and Wholefoods market are a few of the names giving testimony to the success of Shopify as a commerce platform. Therefore, as a Shopify Development Company, we recommend Shopify as your eCommerce platform, which can help you scale up your business with minimal tech skills. 

Moreover, to make Shopify easy to understand, it has recently come up with a clear set of standards for developing a successful application that combines quality, design, and performance, which they call Built for Shopify. It is a program containing the list of tools and documentation needed for developing an application by Shopify Developers. The winning point is that if your application meets the Built for Shopify standards, it will be featured on Shopify App Store. So, let us discuss these standards, which can be a blueprint for your project. In addition, these updates are worth knowing if you are planning to hire a Shopify developer. 

App Design Guidelines for Shopify Developers:

These guidelines will help you show what a great Shopify app looks like and what it takes to build it. In addition, they will provide a comprehensive guide for how you should work on app structure, design, layout, content, and navigation to give an unforgetful user experience. 

Build Specialized apps: Craft your application whose layout, style, and features are optimized for the specific segment. Specially optimized applications rank higher than generic applications. The application should arm the merchants in fulfilling their needs. The app should match the nature of the business and should be based on what they sell to whom.

Follow accessibility practices: Decide your merchant and buyers segment and build the application which helps them make their decisions. It is also mandatory to follow Shopify's list of accessibility practices. 

Mobile-friendliness: Let us not forget that around 87% of shoppers worldwide search for products online before buying. So, when m-commerce is so much in vogue, it is very essential to design apps that give an uninterrupted user experience. 

Easy Administration: You may want to give a unique experience to the merchants by developing a particular application, but do not make the administration complicated. Merchants expect the admin to work like other Shopify admins for ease. 

Determiners: Follow these requirements closely to avoid your application rejection. Check out the conditions, mandatory parts, cautions, and unacceptable areas and work on them to successfully launch your app in Shopify App Store.

Some more areas of Shopify Development you need to work on to make your app selected to be featured on Shopify are as follows:

Consider app metrics: Check out if your app is helpful for merchants by considering your app metrics which will show you the number of installs and ratings for your application along with reviews. 

Easy to use: Time is money, and every merchant will look for high-quality and valuable apps which work well with Shopify admins saving their time. Achieve this using App Bridge 2.0 and session tokens.

Performance: Every merchant wishes for fast loading time and excellent performance during heavy traffic. Test your app's lighthouse score to gauge its performance on storefronts.

Test your app on App Bridge:

Faster loading time: The ultimate goal of Shopify is to make all the applications work faster. With its new App Bridge mobile optimization update, load times for mobile apps are 85% faster.

App Navigation: Shopify has improved the navigation options for embedded apps. App Bridge apps can integrate their navigation directly into the Shopify Admin with its new App Nav functionality. 

Full-Screen mode: Apps can now utilize the whole screen to highlight complex use cases or advanced functionalities. 

Let us not forget that Shopify will review the applications keeping these guidelines in mind. Whichever apps match them will be eligible for unique merchandising and privileged placement in the Shopify App Store. So if you are a Shopify developer, you need to follow the updates made by the giant keenly.