A decade ago, there weren’t any eCommerce websites who could take the top spot, and then Shopify arrived with a new concept. Shopify is a web application through which you will be able to have your very own online store, regardless of whether or not your business has a physical address.
The application gives you various types of templates that can be easily customized according to your preference and necessities. Shopify enables you to sell both physical and digital products. You can be selling either a bracelet or an eBook, the possibilities are endless. The application consists of incredible features. Currently, Shopify is among one of the top leaders in the eCommerce industry.
Shopify Feature List
Shopify is considered to have the most contrived features. Nearly all that you need to do in order to manage your own online store is completely taken care of by Shopify.
Admin management
Admin management is the complete rundown of your online content. Here you will be able to see the customers, orders, and products of your store. You will be able also to administer the sales channels such as POS or Point of Sale Purchase, the store and other Shopify products if you want to utilize them.
Dashboard Overview
The dashboard demonstrates important sales of your store along with the orders, and customer data. You can also see how your store is performing — over the majority of your business channels.
Catalogs
All the stores of Shopify consist of a catalog page where you will be able to create a collection to manage the order on how you want your products to be displayed on your page.
Products
Shopify consists of a product section where you will be able to edit the details of the products by color, size and other features.
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Shopify Pros and Cons
Shopify Pros
- Shopify is fast and reliable. It can handle any kind of sensitive information and processing payments of the orders.
- Shopify consists of a wide range of templates, and add-ons both free and paid that enables you to build both professional and yet, a creative site at the same time. It also allows you to expand the features in your site.
- 24/7 Support. Shopify team is always available, and you can reach them through phone support, online live chat or email.
- Shopify products. It has own POS system to go omnichannel, Shopify payments as a substitution to the PayPal or other payment methods.
Shopify Cons
- Additional fees. Before you sign up on Shopify, you need to make sure that you will be able to pay the necessary fees. You need to pay the monthly fees and transaction processing fees to Shopify.
- Functionality limits. On Shopify, you cannot work with the products as you wish. There are various limits by the categories.
- Shopify is made up of unique coding language. Hence, if you need to work on the back-end of your website design, you will need expert programmers for that. This will lead to an increase in your maintenance costs which will in turn delay in running your online store.
Ease of Use
Nowadays, most online stores promote easy and simple features, but only very few of them actually are. Anyone can open an account on Shopify and launch their online store within a few minutes.
Shopify Server Requirements
Shopify is completely Cloud-based and hosted application. This means that you do not need to stress about updating or maintaining the application and web servers. This provides you with enough flexibility to manage your online store from any corner of the world using the mobile app that you can download from the app store. All you need is a smart device with good internet speed.
Shopify Pricing
There are five Shopify pricing plans which include:
- Shopify Lite: At $9 per month, you can sell as many products as you want but you will not have a functional online store.
- Basic Shopify: This plan gives you a serviceable online store with two staff accounts – all for just $29 per month.
- Shopify: This option costs a monthly charge of $79, but it allows you a reporting feature and gives gift cards too.
- Advanced Shopify: With 15 staff accounts and a great progressive reporting feature, this plan costs $299.
- Shopify Plus: This premium plan costs a whopping $2000 monthly, but there’s some room for discussions. With heavy security, API and more, the Shopify Plus is for large businesses that require advanced features and functionalities where some customization is possible.
Shopify Templates
Shopify provides more than a hundred aesthetic and amazing template designs. Hence, you can be certain that you will be able to find a template that suits your style and the brand identity of your online store.
The basic $9 per month plan offers you with 10 free template designs. The template designs can be embedded to your Youtube page, if you have any, to display your story.
Along with that, the Shopify template designs also consists of a header slideshow in order to feature various products of your online store. Shopify website templates have an incredible product framework system that can be changed according to the number of products that are being displayed.
Also, they are fully customizable which means that you can get a unique theme for your store and attract customers with modern design and easy-to-browse sections.
Shopify Plugins and Extensions
Shopify provides you with a wide range of plugins and extensions in order to expand your online business. These plugins help you to receive more visitors and help you stand out among the crowd.
Shopify Marketing and SEO
In this era of the Internet and Technology, one of the best ways to increase traffic to your website is blogging. Luckily, Shopify consists of a built-in blogging feature that enables you to create different types of content to increase traffic. The blogging feature of Shopify is quite different from WordPress, but it enables you to use tags.
The SEO tool for Shopify is very easy to use. You can change the tiles of the page, add headings and provide meta descriptions.
Shopify Payment Processing
Shopify has its own payment system which is completely incorporated with your online store and you do not need to rely on any third-party account.
Shopify Payments enables you to manage your online store and the payments in one place.
Shopify has more than 100 payment gateways available. Along with that, Shopify enables you to accept credit cards and you can also set up a Bitcoin payment system. Besides, there are additional payment processing methods which include cash on delivery and bank transfer among others.
Shopify also integrates with PayPal, hence once you open an online store, you can easily sign up for a Paypal Express Checkout account at the click of a button.
Shopify Security
Shopify is devoted to providing a secure shopping experience for both you and your clients. It has been certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant. Subsequently, all the online stores of Shopify are consequently PCI compliant, which guarantees that your clients have a sense of security when shopping from your website and ensures that your online business is authentic and safe.
You will need to follow certain regulations while running your online store on Shopify, which includes:
- Site and server vulnerability checks by Approved Scanning Vendors (ASVs)
- Security audits of the company
- Self-assessment questionnaires (SAQs)
Shopify Customer Service
Shopify provides excellent customer service to its users. The web application is accessible through the majority of channels. Shopify customer service is available 24/7 by email, mobile, phone and, live chat. There are also separate contact numbers for customers who reside in North America, Australia, UK, and New Zealand.
