There is no way to sell event-based services AND products on Shopify
without costly apps that require some hours to set up and some technical expertise.
A growing demand
As stated in this post, several types of business selling other things than products, or selling products combined with any other service, are moving online. As Shopify Experts at Tabarnapp, we get a lot of local merchants from Montreal and nearby who are moving to selling online. For them, Shopify seems like a good choice, at least until they start to build their store...
“ Building a Shopify store is harder than expected because of the merchant needs composed by a mix of products and time-based services like classes, trainings or any other event.”
An undeserved market
The market of selling time is huge and non-deserved. If we target narrower, the businesses selling products alongside courses, events, workshops and any other fixed-date productified service that is attached to a defined time slot, for example surf lessons for a surfboard store or show tickets for a guitar store, have a hard time setting up their Shopify store.
“ Selling fixed-date productified services that is attached to a defined time slot, for example surf lessons for a surfboard store have a hard time setting up their Shopify store. ”
The inefficience of the current solutions
Right now, Shopify merchants turn to third party apps like Appointment Booking, Product Booking, Booking App or BookThatApp, or a few other alternatives in the App store. We integrated these apps several times for clients who previously gave up trying them because it was long, hard to understand for non tech savvy people, expensive in the long run, overkill or simply not what they were looking for to sell event-based services. Other merchants embed some calendar tools like Google Calendar or Calendly in their store, but it usually can't be branded unless you subscribe to a monthly fee and doesn't feel native to your store.
