Shopify aims to help new businesses find their place in the market and become successful online stores. Leveraging on timely technologies through careful methodologies on what online merchants need, Shopify offers online retailers a lift from traditional online marketing strategies. With innovative people at its back, Shopify has grown popularity as an e-commerce platform with comprehensive features. Content Management, Mobile Commerce, Ecommerce Analytics, SEO integration, On-Board Coaching and Order Management are Shopify features that can help online retailers reach their goals of success in the competitive market.
Overview of Shopify
Since 2006, Shopify has maneuvered different innovative features and has grown from one site to thousands including Tesla Motors, Amnesty International, Foo Fighters, General Electric, GitHub, Encyclopedia Britannica, and many more. For novice retailers, with this e-commerce platform, you can easily build online stores in few minutes without the technical difficulty of doing so. Shopify builds online stores that are easy to manage and control to give more time to online retailers in expanding their market. Aside from its friendliness, Shopify is scalable making it a great tool for emerging online stores to become successful ventures.
Large enterprises are using Shopify to expand their market share, but fresh stores can take advantage of Shopify's pricing options. There are four packages available and pricing starts at $29 per month. Whatever the package of the subscription, online merchants get a full customer support at premium satisfaction.
Website Design
Shopify boasts its more than 100 professional website templates available for your store. If you want to customize these templates, you can do so even if you don't have knowledge on HTML and CSS. Slideshows, fonts, layouts, store banners, and many more can be easily edited. Adding personal touch and design preference on the theme is easy with HTML and CSS editors. Themes can either free or paid; free templates are premium designs. However, there are setbacks you need to counter in Shopify. It takes time to navigate through the panel before you can find the right section to customize under the Liquid templating language.
Back Office
Using the advanced back office, Shopify offers easy customization of SEO integrations. The uncluttered panel simplifies the adding, editing and organizing of products. Real-time customization and management gives merchants better control of the store without requirement of time. Notifications can be customized to receive them through emails, SMS, and other App-based alerts. Available sections like the product menu can help you to control or manage the store effectively. It provides you an overview on your inventory and warehouse status.
Shopping Features
Varied categories are available to give your store a better look and management. Customers can use advanced filtering on searches using different categories like prices, weights, or colors. On the other hand, if you want to keep a detailed report of orders, you can export the CSV of orders to the spreadsheet. The setback with the inventory and order management of Shopify is its architecture. It is built to handle small and medium businesses, and you may have some technical difficulties as the business grows.
Payment Options
Google Checkout, PayPal, Authorize.net, Moneris, Moneybrookers, Beanstream, Stripe, and 50 more payment gateways are supported on Shopify stores. Credit-card payment processing is also available to cater for major credit card holders. As much, customization of payment methods can be done to accept bank transfers, cash on delivery and money orders. Third-party payment gateways provide a wide range of option for customers and to serve the market better.
Tax Customization
Along with shipping options, online retailers can also customize the tax rates applicable to customers. There are available regional taxes you can automatically setup using the Back Office. For instance, you may choose taxes in the United States and choose the right state as a sub-region. If you want eliminate taxes, you may also do so. Tax rates can also be applied manually according to your preference.
Along with shipping options, online retailers can also customize the tax rates applicable to customers. There are available regional taxes you can automatically setup using the Back Office. For instance, you may choose taxes in the United States and choose the right state as a sub-region. If you want eliminate taxes, you may also do so. Tax rates can also be applied manually according to your preference.
Marketing Features
Traffic conversion is the goal of Shopify marketing features. SEO integration allows online merchants to add necessary search engine optimization techniques. With the aid of its powerful analytics reporting, online retailers get real-time overview on what is happening to their store. Crazy Egg and Google Analytics support the analytics reporting of Shopify to increase information load.
Discounts and bargains features are available to add marketability of your store's products. Apps from Shopify can boost the capability of the store to convert traffic into measurable financial gains. For novice retailers who intend to experiment on different market strategies, Google Website Optimizer offers a trial-and-error approach to see what works best. However, Shopify can be considered late in SEO, though they are making innovations to catch up with the trend. Plus, there are not much marketing guides and videos to aid retailers.
Security Features
For the peace of mind of clients, Shopify uses the SSL 128-bit encryption to keep the confidence of personal information and avoid identity theft. Add to that, Shopify stores are hosted on Level 1 PCI Compliant Debian Linux host servers. On the other hand, even though security is very serious to Shopify, the e-commerce platform uses the Content Delivery Network (CDN) system to allow faster loading of sites. Online merchants get a notification on their administration panel when system intrusion or breach of security is detected.
Customer Support
Customer support is very essential to the success of the store; you need to have necessary support when technical problems arise. Shopify has a valuable and unparalleled customer support. Email support can be reached anytime and they will respond to you fast. But you may also call the support team for the speedy resolution of store issues. The customer support system of Shopify utilizes a 'Guru', who is trained and experienced on the e-commerce platform to help the online merchant setup and work on the store. The 'Guru' is an additional support aside from normal customer support team.
Documentations and guides are available if you wanted to do it on your own. For additional resources, you can scan the FAQ and forums of Shopify. The community of Shopify clients can light other issues that you may also face.
Cost
There are four available packages of Shopify. Pricing starts at $29 per month for the Basic package and can reach $179 per month for the Unlimited package. Unlike other e-commerce platforms, Shopify packages don't require setup fee. Plus, you can enjoy a 30-day trial without a credit card requirement. Online merchants can also enjoy the unlimited bandwidth of Shopify. For a small cost, you can also enjoy ad credit worth $100 Google Adwords and $100 Amazon Ad.
The pricing structure of Shopify is designed specifically to avoid hidden fees that irate customers. Fraud Score fees, termination fees, monthly statement fees, and many other fees are surely not present in Shopify.
