Shopify Insights
10 Reasons Shopify Is The Best Solution For Your E-commerce Site
Shopify is one of the most popular e-commerce platforms. It allows entrepreneurs all over the world to sell their products online. Recently, it’s become an industry leader with roughly 29% of the market share. Let’s see why businesses increasingly prefer Shopify to other e-commerce solutions.
1. Shopify’s first priority is e-commerce
Shopify focuses on e-commerce first and foremost. A brand new website is ready for selling as soon as your bank account and a first listing have been added. The checkout process is good to go right away since there’s no need to add any code or download any plugins that facilitate payments.
Shopify takes pride in making it extremely easy to open and run a storefront online. The platform even provides free themes, standard policy templates, and marketing solutions such as abandoned cart recovery to every store with an active subscription plan.
And while most of Shopify’s functionality is geared towards sales, it also offers some other features such as blogging (a blog is so very important for your site) and easy social media integrations. And if you still need more, many functionalities can be added through third-party apps or custom code - but more on that later.
2. Intuitive interface
The platform is incredibly intuitive and easy to use. And since no coding experience is required, you can set up a basic e-commerce website within mere minutes.
Choosing and installing a pre-built theme is a breeze and will take you close to no time. And while having a customized design gives you way more flexibility and allows you to communicate your message with much more finesse, a standard pre-built theme will get the job done. The look and feel of your website can always be changed later, be it with the help of developers who write custom code or our pre-built Shopify sections.
And when it comes to managing your store, the Shopify system is very easy to learn. The Dashboard and Analytics pages provide you with the necessary information about your business. Here you can see your conversion rates, how your store compares against other similar businesses and even some helpful suggestions from the Shopify team. Additionally, there’s a large knowledge database available, as well as 24/7 live chat customer support.
3. Reasonable fees
Shopify has a competitive pricing policy. Their e-commerce plans start at $29 per month, and that plan will give you access to everything that you need to run an e-commerce store. Hosting, fraud analysis, customer support, and many other features are included in that price.
Additionally, there are credit card processing fees upon each sale, the highest of which is 2.9% plus 30¢ per transaction, which is pretty standard for the industry.
4. Plenty of checkout payment options
Shopify checkout is extremely flexible when it comes to payment methods. PayPal, Google Pay, Apple Pay, and Amazon Pay are easily connected on top of the regular debit and credit card checkout options. There’s also an option of processing transactions in-person with the help of the Shopify POS system.
Receiving your funds from Shopify is very easy. Once the sales are processed, money appears in your Shopify merchant account and gets deposited into your bank account within 2 or 3 business days. Shopify acts as a broker for all financial transactions, which makes it easy to get your money right on time.
5. Security
Shopify is aware of the dangers that both merchants and visitors face online when it comes to cyber security. Every Shopify storefront is PCI-compliant, which is a requirement to be able to take payments from debit and credit cards.
The platform itself is responsible for keeping information safe. Merchants don’t get access to credit card information to avoid fraud. The built-in fraud analysis system scans each transaction to ensure that the customers are using legal payment methods.
6. Built-in marketing integrations
Connecting with various sales channels is a breeze, be it Facebook business page, Instagram, Pinterest, Amazon, Etsy, or Google Shopping. You can advertise and promote your products across all platforms with ease.
Additionally, built-in abandoned cart recovery and blog features help merchants retain customers and increase sales. More sophisticated marketing options are available through the app store.
7. A large number of useful apps
Shopify has an app store with plenty of apps developed by third parties. They help merchants fill in the missing functionalities such as upselling and cross-selling, e-mail marketing, and many other important functions. You can even organize an entire dropshipping process with the help of a few apps.
Using third-party apps often comes at a pretty hefty price, and sometimes they can be replaced with custom code for better results. Nevertheless, having access to apps gives merchants with no coding experience and little time on their hands a chance to customize their storefronts to their liking.
8. Fully customizable code
Shopify offers hundreds of free and paid themes, and many of them can be customized. And if changing brand colors and fonts isn’t enough, you can utilize custom code to change how your storefront looks. You can hire a web developer to make a unique online shop. But if you’re looking to change some layouts and display specific content differently while on a tight budget, you could customizable Shopify sections to add the content blocks that are missing from the original theme.
9. Built-in SEO capabilities
Shopify has everything to make your store easily discovered via search engines. You can add a page title, meta description, alt text for images, and custom URL for any of your products. Tag and category systems help both visitors and search engine crawlers navigate the shop with ease, and keywords and descriptions also help with discoverability.
10. Large user base
Shopify is a popular platform that is well-known worldwide. Take advantage of the collective experience of fellow users by visiting their forums and blogs. And of course, Shopify offers 24/7 customer support and an extensive knowledge base including tutorials and how-to articles.
Shopify or Woocommerce?
All platforms have pros & cons. There are differences on the technical level, the functionality and also the admin area where you, the merchant would be spending most of your time. Read more about the comparison between Shopify and Woocommerce.
Shopify is a wonderful platform for any merchant who’s looking to sell products online. So if you’re considering opening one up, there’s a free trial. And if you need help customizing your storefront, check out our pre-built content blocks. It is a fast, inexpensive solution that will take your store to a new level!
Want to migrate to Shopify 2.0?
We can help you migrate over - whether from an existing Shopify 1.0 theme or from a different platform. Reach out today and we'll be glad to help you take advantages of this great platform!