Since we first launched our blog, we have talked about the what, who, where & when, but we haven’t yet discussed what might very well be the most important: the “why”.

Before ShopPad, Ryan and I were both freelance web developers – building other people’s dreams for a living. One day, over coffee, we discussed what it would be like if we turned our skills inward and built a product that was our dream. Excitement brewed and led to the obvious: what was our dream?

Hello iPad

As long-time online-shop-aholics and day-one iPad evangelists, we knew that far too often the two mixed like whiskey and guns (which is to say: not well).

Since they say the best products come from scratching your own itch, we took out the back-scratchers and got to work.

Tablet Site ≠ Web Site

Steve Jobs was absolutely right when he said the iPad is a magical device. A magical device that commands an equally magical experience from the software it runs. However, we found that the Tablet shopping experience nearly always fell flat. Unoptimized tablet commerce sites are clunky and frustrating. Worse yet, the experience is often further degraded by technical glitches, unavailable content and sssssslllllloooooowwwwwwww loading times.

As it turns out, making rich HTML5 app experiences in the browser be both enjoyable AND stable is a real software problem – one that happens to be just the sort of challenge we’d spent much of our professional lives preparing for.

K.I.S.S.

We’re firm believers that software was put on this earth to serve humans, not the other way around. That’s why we take care of all the complicated parts of making a compelling tablet experience (retina images, 3G networks, clicks, taps, touches, swipes, GPU buffering, memory management and more). That way you can focus on your customers, and building your way to success.

Tablet Commerce for All!

We already know that tablet users are off the charts in terms of conversion, AOV and engagement but empowering merchants with the tools to meet the needs of tablet shoppers has historically been difficult and expensive.

At ShopPad we’re changing all of this. We want to bring the power of tablet commerce to all merchants, not just the largest ones. Best part? With our Shopify App your store can be up and running on the tablet in one click and less than five minutes. Bestest part? It’s totally free.