Q&A
What does your store sell and why?
This store sells leash training for cats and cat walking services. There's more and more effort and communication towards cat-owners (especially those living in cities) to have them keep their pet cats as fully indoors cats.
Having said that, the ability for a curious cat to safely go outside can still be a wonderful source of enrichment, although there are a few challenges:
- At their first go, cats are generally not doing so great on a harness (they just collapse on the floor and stop moving XD) , but with time, patience and effort, they could be trained.
- Once outside, cats rarely behave like dogs, they just go and explore random places and sometimes just stay at the same spot forever because they saw something they liked. As a result, going for a walk with your cat can be time-consuming and a bit frustrating.
Who's your target audience?
- Adults with one or several indoors cats who would like to give their cats the opportunities to go outside, but don't have time (because family or work) to do so.
- People with mobility and/or health impairments who would like to give their cats the opportunity to visit the outside world.
What was the biggest challenge you faced in creating your store?
It's not a physical product, so the "core Shopify" product didn't seem to fit perfectly my needs (I needed a calendar and a way to book the services).
I found an app that seemed fitting, but then I needed to figure out how to make it work with the products I already had and that was less intuitive.
What worked really well when using our platform?
It looks really nice really fast, it's easy to find a theme, and even the app I needed was easy to find.
What could be improved when using our platform?
- To me it was not obvious that (for example) the variant labels could be customized.
- Maybe some type of general guide depending of what a merchant is selling? (a digital product that often won't need inventory? a physical product? a service?...)
How did this experience help you build empathy for our merchants?
This experience puts me literally in the shoes of a merchants and makes me do some of the steps a merchant would do, which definitely helps me build empathy and gives me more context around the things I could help improve in my job at Shopify
What is your biggest takeaway from this experience?
It takes a lot of effort, thinking and "self" to build a shop, and it's not a lightweight move