Shopify is one of the best designed and most feature-packed, yet easy to use ecommerce solutions available.
Shopify was founded in 2006 by Tobias Lütke, Scott Lake and Daniel Weinand. Their goal was simple: provide an easy way to sell products online.
You can create your online store, select your theme, customize it as per your requirement, add your products, adjust payment and shipping settings without any technical barriers. Almost everything you need to run your own online store is taken care of by Shopify.
FEATURES
Whether you are planning to run your store fully online or from a brick and mortar arrangement, there is something for everyone. Shopify accommodates all the features required by storeowners.
If you are looking for an ecommerce solution that allows you to create your own online store with a lot of great features then you should definitely go ahead with Shopify.
Quick setup & free 14 day trial
Add products manually, import bulk products or through another platform (WordPress, Magento, eBay)
A wide range of fully customizable, attractive and responsive templates
Choose a Shopify sub-domain or buy a new domain through admin panel
Create and modify web pages easily
Integrated with third party payment gateways including Paypal
Good search engine optimization features – it’s easy to add relevant keywords to your pages and products
Analytics to track your store’s performance
Content management system functionality with which you can easily create additional pages
Makes running your blog extremely easy. Blog posts are simple to set up, write, modify and publish
Ability to edit CSS and HTML
Easy drag and drop different links to create personalized menu
Integration with email marketing tool – Mailchimp
Automatically backs up store and customer data
Ability to send an email to people who abandoned their carts
Includes an app, which makes selling your products much easier
24/7 customer support
One great feature it includes is that you can test your online store before going live and making it available to the public
EASE OF USE
Shopify has one of the most inclusive dashboards, everything is taken care of from this central place – whether you want to add new products or manage new orders!
It is built to take the hassle out of running an online store, they do the “heavy lifting” for you, and you can simply focus on building and selling your products. Obviously you need to invest a few hours to know the basics and once you do that, it’s a pretty smooth process.
It’s got a clean, user-friendly and modern interface. It actually takes minutes create a basic online store, upload/import your products, market yourself and track your growth. From the dashboard to the store themes to the set up process, everything is tailored to suit both novice users and ecommerce veterans.
PRICING
Shopify have managed to keep their prices low with its Starter plan costing $14 per month, allowing you to sell upto 25 products. As you move up the plan, the basic plan is for $29 per month, the professional plan for $79 per month and the unlimited plan for $179 per month.
All of these plans allow you to sell an unlimited number of products, but depending on the plan you’re using, various restrictions apply regarding bandwidth, file storage, analytics tool, reporting etc.
You can upgrade and cancel anytime you want. For all plans available, there is a 14 day free trial that doesn’t require your credit card.
Shopify also offers plans for high volume businesses – Shopify Plus plan. It offers advanced features regarding security, APIs and fulfilment.
If you don’t want to pay for Shopify plans on a monthly basis, they offer a 10% discount on an annual plan and a 20% discount on a biennial plans, when they are paid upfront.
TEMPLATES & THEMES
Having an online store look professional and have an aesthetic appeal builds trust and credibility. Shopify offers really awesome themes and design, with an elegant look. These can be found in the theme store. You can browse all the free and paid templates by category. Paid themes ranges from $100 to $180 as a one-time payment. These are all good designs, and they are responsive too (important as shopping on smart-phones and tablets have become a norm).
Once you select a suitable theme for your store, you can easily customize the look and feel with the template editor. You can also make more comprehensive changes to the templates if you have a good understanding of CSS and HTML.
If you can’t code yourself, they give you an option to hire a Shopify expert to customize it for you.
PAYMENTS & PAYMENT GATEWAYS
When it comes to setting up your payment options, Shopify yet again does a great job. It integrates with a dozen of payment gateways. Payments can be taken through PayPal, as well as a wide range of credit and debit cards, with each one being extremely straightforward to set up.
Shopify has created their own payment processor called Shopify Payments. If you decide to sign up for this, then all transaction fees will be lifted regardless of your plan. However, it is available only for users based in US, Canada and UK.
If you use a third-party payment gateway, it will require a bit of configuration as you will be required to set up a merchant account with a payment gateway provider. You can expect to pay a percentage of a transaction fee and Shopify will also apply its transaction fees (0.5% to 2%, depending on your plan).
It is advisable to familiarize yourself with your payment options before signing up, as you might otherwise be surprised at just how much is charged as a fee.
Additionally, payment methods such as cash on delivery and bank transfer can also be configured.
MARKETING
What good is an online store if you can’t get anyone to show up? Shopify offers the marketing essentials.
Finding your site on search engines is taken care of, as Shopify is already SEO optimised and you can edit title, description, keywords, in addition to other essentials like Webmaster Tools, Sitemaps etc. Blogging is a great way of ranking in the search engines and attracting new customer. Shopify provides a blogging platform which is exceptionally easy to get started.
For marketing campaigns (such as email, AdWords, etc), Shopify allows you to quickly and easily create landing pages, Shopify has also partnered with Google in order to give you $100 when you spend $25 on advertising with a new AdWords account, and when you sign up, you also receive a $50 credit for new Facebook Ads accounts.
To help boost your sales, Shopify allows you to create coupon codes and gift vouchers. You also have the ability to promote your products on different social networks. Your customers can also sign up for your company newsletter in order to be posted about the latest updates and offers. Mailchimp seamlessly integrates with Shopify for your email marketing needs.
Using the app store you have access to different marketing apps that will further help you improve your online performance.
SUPPORT
Shopify offers a very comprehensive support – you can contact the company 24/7 by email, live chat as well as phone, regardless of which pricing plan you are on.
Another great form of help offered is the access to a sizeable knowledge base directly through their website, which includes user forums, tutorials and FAQ’s. Their objective is to provide their customers everything required to learn how to run an online store. You will access to their eBooks, videos and guides.
CONCLUSION
Shopify is a solid, robust, flexible online shop builder that can help you grow your sales and manage the administrative tasks for you. Once you fill in the required details for your store, Shopify will take no more than a few seconds to create your online store and present you with your brand new dashboard.
It is one of the most popular hosted shopping cart software. They put great efforts into customer relationship development to help you grow your business.
They understand their core strength is to allow you to build and manage a store with a secure shopping cart.
Shopify represents one of the cheapest ways to start selling online using a hosted solution, you can’t however avoid transaction fees and the paid themes.
The only way to find out if Shopify is the solution for you, give their 14-day free trial a try. Most of you will find Shopify does everything you need, but every case is different and it’s best to spend some time experimenting. Without a doubt, Shopify is a platform worth serious consideration for anybody looking to build an online store.
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