Shopify is mostly crappy drop shippers buying of Alibaba and selling for x more. If you add a search bar the problem will just come to the surface. Just say you don't like amazon.
Amazon's total dominance of online shopping is because of their logistics network and having more than one company providing fast inexpensive shipping is good, it means people have somewhere else to go if Amazon gives them a raw deal.
My experience is that all the shops are non-Shopify 'branded'. Some are on shopify.com subdomains if they haven't set up a custom domain.
I do not think this is true. I don't know the % of shops that are drop shippers, but I do not think it's the majority. Most Shopify merchants are selling things. A lot of stores are Shopify stores that are on custom domains and unless you look at the source, nothing tells you that they are a Shopify merchant. I know of RPG and Board Game publishers and designers with Shopify stores, a local coffee shop and coffee roaster is a Shopify merchant, food companies, etc. There are companies that that have IPOd that started as Shopify stores selling their own things; Which is really cool.
Unless they are doing a headless integration, the Shopify UI is very easy to spot. For me this has started to become a signal of shops to take great caution and best to avoid.
If not during shopping, then once you add the product to the cart, it is very obvious.
Interesting, I've generally felt the opposite. Do you feel it is as bad as Amazon? Do you have some examples of Shopify shops that are particularly bad?
Pretty sure as I understand it that a lot of that dropshipping crap from alibaba kinda petered out with those massive shipping container delays
The best way to respond is to build tools that allow the market to bring high quality shops to the top, and lower quality shops that provide poor customer service or fraudulent products to be suppressed. In this way, the consumer benefits through the consumer experience of others.
Shopify is a little too close to their shops to be able to provide this type of tool, because they have the obligation to support each and every one of their shops.
Third party search engines, built to support the Shopify platform are able to implement these types of tools and bring a user curated shopping experience to shoppers.
So, you're right in that a search bar can shine a spotlight on the dark corners of e-commerce, but that doesn't mean that there aren't ways to create a better experience.