Combo ©

To position itself against the PayPals and Amazons of the world, Shopify wanted to create a consumer-facing, cohesive brand and design system that consolidated over 500,000 retailers, facilitated order tracking and helped fight climate change. Combo created an identity that was a fun and exciting way to shop paired with a humanistic approach to e-commerce that created a more thoughtful way to pay.

Designing a New Way to Pay

From B2B to B2C

For 10 years, Shopify had been operating as a B2B company. Shopify helped small businesses go digital through payment, shipping, tracking and shopping services. This bundle of services allowed Shopify to compete with the payment giants like PayPal ©. The tracking in particular became a valuable tool for consumers as well, which led the company to create Shop, a consumer-facing platform. Combo was contracted to develop strategy and design for the B2C brand, helping Shopify leverage its back-end e-commerce technology into a platform that offered consumers an easy and appealing way to shop the next generation of small and local businesses.

© In the world of mobile payments, PayPal is the Big Kahuna, with more than 377 million users generating nearly $1 trillion in payment volume over 15.4 billion transactions in 2020. The below graph reflects US market share amongst major brands in the payment space.

Strategic Direction

Combo developed an approach that took what was essentially a payment and tracking service and built out an identity that could feel larger than those basic functions. To do that, Combo focused on how Shop was competitive with and yet distinct from the major digital payment players, like Apple Pay, Visa and PayPal. If Amazon was the easiest way to purchase any item from a big warehouse of goods, Shop by Shopify offered consumers a chance to buy from a curated roster of specialty and small businesses on a single e-commerce platform that was just as easy.

The Activist Consumer is 105% more likely to purchase from brands that support Black Lives Matter and 164% more likely to stand with companies that reduce energy use.

Resonate’s Ignite Study

Logo as CTA

The design work was about creating a friendly and easy-to-understand suite of graphic and typographic executions that expressed the excitement of discovering new products and the simplicity of purchasing from them through Shop. Through color, type and logo, the design team focused on how the Shop brand could stand for fun as well as trust, using the gesture of the “o” in Shop to add movement and a playful point of interest. On the Shop button, it became the primary way for Shop to meet its goal of converting consumer interest into consumer action, thereby furthering Shopify’s goal of helping small businesses sell.

Cross-Team Design Collaborations

Direct collaboration between Combo and Shopify teams included a Shopify designer working in-house with Combo’s designers for two weeks. Collaborative design allowed Combo designers to work directly with the Shop team to apply the brand directly to the Shop platform.