Also, Shopify's free themes are all terribly slow. Kinda ironic considering how hard they're pushing us recently with new storefront app performance requirements.
For now my apps are growing each month, but the culture and practices have left a bad taste in my mouth such that I also know that this is not for me in the long-term, and hope to someday exit their ecosystem.
To be fair this is pretty reasonable. Lets say 5 stars is highly recommend, 4 is recommend, 3 is neutral. If you’re building a new feature and it wouldn’t change anyone from being neutral about the product to recommending it, or from recommending the product to highly recommending it, maybe rethink building that feature.
Let’s say I buy a camera. It takes photos well enough, but I soon learn that it can only transfer the photos to my computer over WiFi or the cloud. This is terribly slow and not in-line with what I’d expect from a camera, so I leave a 3 star review saying that while it works fine, not being able to transfer photos quickly means I cannot recommend it, and that if this feature were added in a software update I’d rate it 5 stars.
Imo this is totally reasonable and a review whose contribution to the average rating I would value much more than “5 stars, the photos are good. I’m upset however that I can’t transfer them quickly, but oh well that’s a missing feature and I’m not allowed to complain about missing features in a way that affects the star rating because that would make the people who didn’t implant them upset”
On the other hand if I leave a review for the camera saying “3 stars, this did not come with a exposure and zoom configuration that let me capture the andromeda galaxy, please add and I’ll make 5 stars”, that’s a whole different story.
Examples:
- Their default theme (provided by Shopify) has problems. Blame it on the app developer. "It's the app's fault." Yes, there are some poorly developed apps, but this lumps together the good with the bad.
- Customers use the app review system to hold developer hostage for feature requests. "Create this feature for us and I'll edit my review."
- Shopify's customer service reps says, "It must be the app that's causing this." Reading the CSR's emails, it is clear that this person does not understand the (technical) issues and is only trying to close the ticket. Customer takes what the CSR says as gospel and you, as the developer, spends a lot of time trying to fight that mindset.
I can't help but feel a big part of Shopify's early strategy was that the demographic of customers they were trying to attract just weren't a great type of customer, and that the partner program allowed them to enlist a lot of hungry developers willing to work for free (or next to nothing).
There is definitely room for improvement. I have mixed feelings about it, as their ecosystem provided me with a way to make a living many years ago. I don't depend on them anymore, but I wouldn't argue against trying your luck out there if you're starting out. Just recognize that there is a certain culture and way of practice there.