How to6 min read
How to check an unfamiliar online shop before you buy from it
Six checks that take ten minutes and tell you whether a shop you have never heard of is a real business — using the same public information competitor research uses.
getting started
Posts about getting started from the StoreLenz blog: what changes in a Shopify store are worth watching, and how to read them.
Explainer6 min read
What a .myshopify.com address is, and why every store has two
Every Shopify store has a permanent .myshopify.com address behind the one customers see. What it is, how to find it, and the one thing it is genuinely useful for.
Explainer6 min read
Is it legal to monitor competitor Shopify stores? Public data explained
Reading a shop's public pages is ordinary business research. Here is where that stops being true, and the five rules worth holding yourself to.
How to6 min read
Which platform is this online store built on?
How to tell Shopify, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, Squarespace and a custom build apart from the outside, using checks that take under a minute each.
How to6 min read
How to find every Shopify competitor in your niche (free methods)
Six free ways to discover the shops competing with you, including the ones you have never heard of, and how to tell a real competitor from a lookalike.
How to6 min read
A competitor research checklist you can run in 30 minutes
A timed, step-by-step checklist for researching one competitor properly in half an hour, with what to record at each stage and what to skip.
How to8 min read
Shopify competitor analysis: a practical guide for store owners
Which competitors to watch, the six things worth recording about each, a schedule you can actually keep, and an honest list of what you cannot learn from outside a shop.
Explainer7 min read
Why some stores are hard to identify, and what to do about it
Your checks came back blank on a shop that obviously sells things. The five reasons that happens, how to tell them apart, and when to stop trying.
How to6 min read
Shopify competitor monitoring: the 6 changes worth watching every week
A fifteen-minute weekly routine covering the six competitor changes that actually matter, what each one means, and the ones safe to ignore.
How to8 min read
How to tell if a website is built on Shopify: four quick checks
Four free ways to check whether a shop runs on Shopify, each taking under a minute, plus the cases where none of them give you a clear answer.
How to6 min read
How to choose which competitors are worth watching
Why five to ten is the right number, the three tests a shop has to pass to earn a place, and the four kinds of shop people waste months watching.