Making sure your Shopify landing page works with your Shopify pre order app for an improved user experience, higher sales and lower returns

It’s no secret that iterating on your Shopify landing page or pages with user feedback and tests is the key to e-commerce success over the long run. Weather you are preparing alternative landing pages for Black Firday Cyber Monday or the Christmas shopping season it is critically important that you tailor everything from messaging to page format to the specific audience segment you are targeting. Many times your sales strategy will incorporate the use of a Shopify pre order app in case you are preselling a product or placing it on backorder to improve cashflows and forecast demand. But how will your page builder app and pre order app integrate? And how can you make sure you have maximum freedom to experiment while keeping everything working smoothly?

1. The Downsides of having NO Integration

As you can imagine when there is no direct integration between a page builder and the pre order app you are using it is very easy for chaos to ensue. 

The main issue will be that because the page builder app and the pre order app will not communicate information to each other like how different visual elements on the page need to display for the customer (the most critical of all being the visual elements that inform the customer that their order is a pre order and thus they should expect longer shipping times), they might make an uninformed purchase from you. This will undoubtedly lead to:

• Lower conversion rates
• Increased returns and refund requests
• More time spent offering customer support
• A generally poor customer experience

2. Common Causes of Issues

a. Switching Themes

Many times merchants are trying out new themes to see the impact on store speed and also conversions. When you switch one theme for another often the coding for the different elements that appear on the pages also change.

Pre order apps identify elements on the page such as “add to cart” buttons or “sold out” buttons, product images or variant switchers and modify the logic of these elements to support the pre order functionality. For example changing the text of the “add to cart” button to say “pre order”. The way pre order apps identify these elements is by using what are called “jquery selectors”. Because there are no strict rules when developing these themes most often when a theme is changed for another one the selectors change as well. This makes the pre order app not know how to locate the needed elements on the page and this can lead to confusion for your customers. Then the pre order app support staff needs to step in and manually adapt the app to the new selectors. This can be time consuming for merchants even with very quick response times from support.

One way in which you can mitigate the problems that can arise with a theme change is by informing the app developers and giving them a 24 hour heads up to work on your new theme so as to make the transition easier. A bit of coordination can go a long way here.

b. Updating Themes

With every Shopify theme you have versioning. Themes are constantly being developed further and every once in a while you will get a prompt to update your theme to the latest available version. 

When an update is performed it opens us up to some of the same issues described in the previous section. Elements can change and so can the selectors for those elements. 

Furthermore in case developers had created some special javascript scripts, to for example extend your app functionality or perhaps just load resources faster by using Shopify’s CDN instead of the one they use with their cloud provider, these will be lost during the update and will need to be readded and perhaps adapted. If you have someone on your team dedicated to such actions you might be fine but as it happens in many businesses teams are small and overworked.

It is ideal to save a copy of the theme with the current version before updating so as to be able to revert easily and ask for assistance from the app developer. Again whenever possible it is ideal to give a 24 hour notice in such cases just like you should aim for with theme switches.

c. Adding more Page Sections with Buttons

In trying to optimize for a great customer experience you will no doubt experiment with sections such as “featured products” on the homepage and “you might also like” or “others also bought this” sections. And to make a new section convert even better you will be adding buttons so that customers can take action directly. 

Some of these sections will require some enhanced or custom functionality from the pre order app and you will need to reach out to support to have such a solution implemented. This of course even with stellar service will reduce your ability to iterate quickly.

3. Solution and Benefits

Now that we have gone through some of the downsides and explained some potential root causes it’s high time for some good news. There is a way to bypass all of these issues. The solution is to pick a pre order app that already integrates with your page builder.

This information can usually be found on the Shopify app store on the specific app page in the section About this app -> Works with.

Because the developers of the two apps have integrated their systems this means that the pre order app you are using will know how to identify any element required to create the preorder experience no matter where you place it on your pages and no matter what sections you create. This also goes for removing sections and adding new ones. No more need to contact support or keep track of these changes. You are free to just build the website how you like it and focus on your business while having the complete functionality you need to ensure success. 

As for any theme related issues these are solved simply by your choice to use a landing page builder app instead of just using a more traditional theme. The reason for this is because page builders come with their own theme that replaces the traditional themes you would normally be using. This theme is perfectly synchronized with your app and updated automatically meaning you will always have the latest version by default and any custom files a developer has created for you will be kept even during live updates. 

Here is a roundup of the main benefits of selecting a page builder app that integrates with your pre order app:

• Higher conversion rates
• Reduced returns and refund requests
• Less time spent offering customer support
• Improved customer experience 
• Less time spent asking for support from app developers
• Theme updates no longer break apps
• More freedom to move fast and iterate quickly on your website

4. Our Recommended Shopify Landing Page App

Timesact has strived to integrate with top landing page builders to improve the merchant experience. Based on our findings we recommend EComposer Landing Page Builder as our top choice for creating your landing pages. Their builder is easy and fast and allows you to create any page type or section that is stunning and high converting.

Here are just some of the things you can do with the app:

1. Build any page & section: landing to home page, collection page, product, etc.

2. Live drag-drop page builder that is easy to use, no coding, Shopify-standard UI.

3. Design library: various page layouts, section templates, countless elements.

4. Built-in add-ons: Ajax Cart, Color Swatch, Image Optimizer, Cross-selling, etc.

5. Advanced: Page Analytics, Global Blocks, AI Content Generator, Lazy load, etc.

Importantly the app also offers a generous free plan that will allow you to create 3 free live pages of any type. You can save up to 10 templates and choose from 70+ page layouts and 200+ section layouts. It also offers 20+ integrations (Timesact included) and 24/7 live chat support. 

5. Alternatives

The Shopify App Store offers a variety of page builder apps to choose from. You also need to bear in mind that not all apps are created equal so be sure to analyze based on reviews, Shopify trust badges and, if you can afford the time investment and the service is being offered by the vendor, book an onboarding session to learn more about the service before making a commitment.

Timesact also integrates with:

Shogun – Landing Page Builder

Pagefly Landing Page Builder

6. Other Useful Tools to ease this Process

When selecting a page builder app or a Shopify theme sometimes the easiest way to start is by getting inspiration from other stores who have a setup you also wish to implement or emulate on your own store. Of course it can be daunting to look at a very mature e-commerce business when you are just starting out and do not even know where to begin putting the proper tools together to build something similar. When you are just browsing a website it is hard to know how much is a template being used and how much there is heavy customization involved.

If you’ve decided on Shopify a great place to start if you have a couple of similar websites in mind is with Shop Theme Detector. It allows you to discover the Shopify theme a website is using just by imputing the site URL.

And if you are using another platform like WordPress or Squarespace you can use Gochyu to achieve the same results. The process is the same, input the site address and it will tell you the theme being used.