Shopify has some big customers with online shops that need apps written for them. We’ve been getting a lot of custom work requests from customers who need applications for their shops for their fulfillment workflow – that is, making sure the right things get put into the right boxes, and sending them to the right people for the right price. We also get requests for other things that online shops need: analytics, promotions, CRM-integration-jazz, or some kind of automatic client-retention. But for now, I’d like to talk about fulfillment.
Fulfillment: it’s that part of the shopping transaction where the order has been placed and paid for, and now it’s time to send something to the customer. This sort of app is a web application that will typically talk to a couple of APIs:
- The Shopify API, which will have the relevant data from the shop, most notably information about the order that was placed,
- Webhooks (see Dave Underwood’s Syncing with a Store tutorial in the Shopify Wiki to find out what they are. Webhooks are used for about 90% of all Shopify apps),
- and some fulfillment API, which the app will use to get the order to the customer.
If you’re looking for some contract programming work writing software that does useful stuff for reliable customers and you’re a reliable, responsive type who can be counted on to write stuff that people need to make their businesses go, Shopify would like to pay you for your services. The application you’re writing will be interacting with APIs, which means that you’re free to use the programming languages, frameworks and technologies you prefer, as long as you can solve the problem. And because this project is about fulfilling ecommerce orders and not socially networked cat pictures, this contract will pay nicely.
Is this the sort of development you can do? If so, drop me a line at joey@shopify.com and let’s talk.