This best practice guide covers 3 topics to help optimise your store's operations to ensure the best possible syncing performance during times when you are expecting lots of orders to come in.
The strategy is to divert the most of Shopify's resources to syncing orders.
Shopify API limits Considerations
Best Practices - Before the Sale
Best Practices - During the Sale
Syncio is built to start a sync whenever a change is detected for any synced product.
These product updates include:
When an order comes in.
When the master product is updated.
See this: Sync trigger guide to learn what starts the syncing process.
1. Shopify API limits Considerations
The speed and volume of the sync adjustments in which Syncio can sync an update is governed by what is allowed by the maximum Shopify API Call Limit allowance per Shopify store.
Think of the Shopify API as the bridges that connects your store with other stores. It is along these bridges that information such as stock updates move back and forth. This connection is shared amongst all apps.
The more traffic moving along these bridges from app to product updates (including Syncio adjustments) the slower the updates become.
For example updating a product with 100 variants takes longer than a product with 10 variants. In rare cases exceeding this Shopify limit can temporarily pause the connection.
Uploading a CSV file to mass update the master source products also typically stresses the Shopify connection as potentially thousands of product updates needs to be processed all at once.
In general Shopify Plus stores have twice the API allowance of a Basic or an Advanced Store.
2. Best Practices - Before the Sale
Preparing a product for a sale typically involves multiple updates such as changing the images, descriptions, tags and prices. Each one of these updates adds to the API usage cost.
In short the more that needs to be updated in a shorter period of time, the harder the Shopify connection gets taxed.
We recommend the following when preparing your products before a sale.
Do any bulk/ big updates (CSV uploads) well before the start of a sale.
When updating products using a CSV file, we recommend removing any columns in the CSV file that won't be updated in the upload. For example if product titles are expected to remain the same after the update, delete the product title column before uploading it. This saves on API resources and allows Shopify to skip any unchanged attributes.
Consider using a bulk edit app on each destination store to change prices instantly, as opposed to relying on the price sync function. Making product updates locally on the destination store product does not consume any Shopify API resources.
We recommend scheduling updates during times when you know customers are unlikely to shop.
3. Best Practices - During the Sale
Your sale is live and lots of orders are coming in. Now what?
Generally it's best to let the your stores take and syncing orders during this time. This allows the Shopify API to work as a pure 'order processing' machine.
Try to fulfil and process orders during periods where there is low order activity.
Be mindful of any necessary product updates during the sale. We recommend only making critical updates such as correcting a mistake in pricing. (individually where possible).
We recommend scheduling updates during times when you know customers are unlikely to shop.
How the Shopify API limit affects your store's syncing capabilities varies greatly to your unique circumstances. If you are unsure and have questions feel free to send them to: [email protected]
Someone from our friendly customer experience team will be happy to go through your unique needs.