A subscriber Jeremy showed me that I missed an opportunity recently:
Perhaps you missed the opportunity to do a bit of downsizing during your move! ?
Just as a re-theme is an opportunity to toss a bunch of outdated and no-longer-needed template code, moving is/was your opportunity to ask yourself, "do I really need THAT?"
He makes a great point. Both about moving and about site redesigns.
It's easy to keep adding to your store.
New app.
New service that needs a snippet of JavaScript.
New feature from Shopify themselves that you just now enabled.
New stuff is good at times.
But you need to be critical about it too.
Ask yourself what Jeremy said, "do you really need THAT?"
I don't know if Kurt Elster does them anymore, but he used to tell Shopify stores to not redesign their store and instead, rescue it.
Many of the problems they were having were from all the clutter and cruft they've built up in their store. A redesign would fix them, but so would focusing on cleaning up the store's code. And cleaning would cost less and have less risk too.
We're past the new year now so I can't lump this into those 37,728 other New Year's posts anymore, but I'm going to pretend that it is. Pretend with me...
At the start of this new year, take a couple of hours next week and cleanup your store a bit.
- Remove apps you don't use at all anymore (except for mine... keep mine).
- Take a backup of your theme because, well... you can never have enough backups.
- Check your snippets directory in your theme and see if there is any cruft lying around from a past redesign or apps you no longer use. The snippets directory is like that junk drawer everyone has...
- Look at your product page and see if you can remove just one widget or gadget you have there. Go for two if you feel ambitious.
All the while ask yourself: do you really need THAT?
(And I did donate a lot of stuff to various charities around here. Including an old World War 2 chest from my grandpa that I know someone will appreciate more than us...)
Once you've cleaned things up, you should have space for a new app.
Like my JSON-LD for SEO, right?
Though I can't promise any results with it, after seeing the additional traffic and sales some customers are getting, installing JSON-LD for SEO might be one of the highest ROI decisions you make today. Probably second to your cleanup, but at least installing the app is easier.
Eric Davis