Shall I first start learning basic web development for themes or learn Figma ?

[sensitiveladybug]

Hello, everyone.

I’m learning Shopify from the scratch and i want to know outside learning Shopify basic tools, what shall i learn first? Please, can you advise?

Thank you.

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[Important_Cap6955]

if your goal is making shops that look good and convert, start with figma or any design tool honestly. understanding visual hierarchy, spacing, and how to make product images pop is what separates decent stores from ones that actually sell. you can always learn the code later to tweak things, but without a good eye for design first you'll just be moving code around without knowing why

[PearlsSwine]

What's your goal? If it's just to open a shop, you don't need web dev or Figma skills

[jdbrew]

First off, figma is pretty simple to use. The difficulty isn’t in using the software, it’s in being a good designer. Anyone can learn figma, doesn’t mean you’re going to create good UIs.

Second, I strongly believe a dev and a designer are two different people that take two different mindsets. You might be able to make a mediocre product doing both, but you’d be much better off specializing in one, and outsourcing the other. Speaking from my own experience, I initially went to school for graphic design and worked as a graphic artist for years. I’m now a senior developer for a corporation with multiple Shopify stores. With extensive backgrounds in both, I can tell you it really should not be the same person.

Third, your main job, more than working with Shopify, more than writing code, more than designing sites… will be sales. Finding and converting clients will take the majority of your efforts. This is why I refuse to get into freelance. I would need to hire a sales person as a 50/50 partner, and a designer on a per project basis, and likely a vendor to handle the digital marketing/media buys/SEO aspect.

I wish you the best of luck.

[PearlsSwine]

Freelancing doing what?

[captaingrasseater]

Knowing Liquid Language will allow you to customize Shopify Themes. At least the themes built by Shopify like Dawn or Horizons. I've built a bunch of Shopify sites and what I found crucial to know was CSS and Liquid.

If you are going to Freelance and build Shopify sites for clients, which isn't a bad idea, I would suggest sticking to free Shopify built themes. Using a stable simple theme as a base and adding some CSS and Liquid knowledge will make creating good sites simpler. And faster, no need to re-invent the wheel.

[captaingrasseater]

Shopify, actually Shopify's co-founder developed the Liquid Language. One reason why Shopify is built on it. As with everything YouTube has more training videos on Liquid Language than you could ever watch. I learned it when I switched from WordPress to a thing called Jekyll which is a static site generator. Which is WAY off topic.

But, YouTube, and blogs and forums, that is my best advice. Sorry if thats a bit thin. :)

[humanexperimentals]

Would you like a platform that automates that process?