5 things we learned from our first Shopify Meetup.

If you kindly follow me or my company, Blend Commerce (*tips cap*) you'll have seen that we ran our first ever Shopify Meetup in November. For those not familiar with Shopify Meetups, the idea is simple. A local Shopify Expert (i.e. us) holds an event aimed providing information, support and networking to the local Shopify Community. In this setup, a range of engaging and relevant speakers are booked and the night goes without a hitch. Well, almost...

No doubt you'll be wondering how it went? Well. Really Well! In fact, take a look at the highlights below:

Today, i've been reflecting on the feedback from the 55 attendees, the comments from team and the many conversations I had at the event with Shopify merchants, partners and agencies. Here are my 5 key learnings:

Shopify merchants love the specific, and hate the general.

Following our Shopify meetup, we sent out feedback requests to all of our attendees. Whilst we had a lot of comments about the 'refreshing ability to network without feeling under pressure', one of the key parts of the feedback was on the specificity of the presentations delivered. Many of the attendees remarked on how useful it was to have specific apps, tools and tactics referred to in the presentations, but didn't find longer explanations of general ideas as useful. This will certainly be something we'll be focusing on in our next meetup in February.

There's a huge appetite for Shopify in the UK.

In order to promote the event, we posted details on our Facebook page, as well as the Shopify Entrepreneurs and Shopify Entrepreneurs UK groups. As a result of this, we had over 180 members join our meetup group and over 80 RSVP for the event. On top of this, a Shopify mail-out generated a further 110 sign ups.

In terms of the attendees, we had a range of members from the Shopify community, including:

• Development leads from some of the UK's fastest growing Shopify stores.
• Store owners with over 3 years experience.
• Developers, Designers and marketers from some of the UK's biggest Shopify agencies.
• Businesses using Magento and Wordpress who were looking to migrate to Shopify.

Whilst the list above doesn't reflect the diverse group that attended, it does give some indication of the appetite for Shopify in the UK. We expect to see big growth in 2019, not only for Shopify, but also Shopify Plus.

Drop shipping is become far more difficult.

Some of our attendees were Shopify merchants opting to drop ship products via their Shopify stores. Both more established and newer drop ship based stores discussed that the past six months had been more challenging. Specifically, drop-shippers mentioned:

• The rising cost of Facebook ads and competition for ad-space had taken a big toll on margins.
• Conversion rates had become flat over the past six months, with little growth.
• There was a huge desire to find European based drop shipping suppliers, given the poorer appetite of customers to wait 2 to 3 weeks for a product.

There's a lot of love for Out of the Sandbox in the UK.

As we expected, the subject of Shopify themes was a hot topic at the event. As official partners, we often find it difficult to not mention Turbo. With that being said, our panel member, Tom W Brown also talked about his use of Turbo, along with many of the attendees remarking on:

• Speed of the theme versus a free theme.
• Ability to use mega-menus
• Predictive Search

Klaviyo, ReCharge, Shoelace and Gorgias we're all selected as favourite Shopify apps by our panel

Along with Shopify themes, apps also featured as core discussion point at the event. During our Q&A, each panel member was asked to recommend their favourite apps. If you'd like more information on each of the apps above, take a look below:

• Klaviyo
• Recharge
• Shoelace
• Gorgias

If you'd like to attend, or present at our next Shopify meetup, please send us a mail at [email protected]