What Is Shopify? Know All About It

What is Shopify? You must have heard the term “Shopify” and must wonder what it actually is. Or your ecommerce vendor has suggested this platform for your ecommerce store?  This article will know all the different aspects of Shopify, its versions, what it offers, and much more. So let’s dive in.

What Is Shopify?

In simple words, Shopify is an ecommerce development platform used by the best ecommerce development company like us for developing ecommerce stores both online and offline. Shopify allows you to sell online or in-person with Shopify POS. This ecommerce platform has features for everyone, from novices to experts.

You can utilize the 14-day trial of Shopify to try it. Within this trial, you can develop your ecommerce store and try out Shopify apps, and if you make a sale within such a short span, you can go with the Shopify Lite plan, which starts at $9 per month. However, we always recommend our clients begin with the Shopify Basic plan ($29 per month). If it has been a considerable time in the ecommerce industry, we recommend using Advanced Shopify or Shopify Plus as per your business requirements.

What Does Shopify Do?

Shopify gives you a foundation to take a step in the ecommerce industry. As you take steps in the ecommerce ecosystem, you are expected to open a storefront, showcase products, take orders, accept payments, and much more. 

You will get all the tools that you require to manage these activities. You should consider the Shopify platform as a facilitator working to ease selling products online.

How Is Shopify A Unique eCommerce Development Platform?

As mentioned above, Shopify has all the features you require to run a successful ecommerce business. You just need to create a seller account on Shopify, and you would be able to:

• Start an online store
• Choose a design template among hundreds for your Shopify store
• Domain choice as per your brand or industry
• Start adding products, images, videos, and descriptions
• Processing orders from customers
• Receiving payment from customers
• Discounts and attractive offers feature

Popular Brands Using Shopify For eCommerce Store Development

How Many Versions Of Shopify Are There?

There are four different versions of Shopify

1. Basic Shopify is priced at $29 per month + 2.9% and 30¢ per transaction.
2. Shopify is priced at $79 per month + 2.6% and 30¢ per transaction.
3. Advanced Shopify: This advanced plan of Shopify comes at $299 per month + 2.4% and 30¢ per transaction.
4. Shopify Plus: You need to contact the sales team for pricing.

Advantages & Disadvantages Of Choosing Shopify As Your eCommerce Development Platform

Shopify is amongst the most preferred choices of ecommerce development companies like us, and there are many reasons for that. Let’s know a few of them.

Advantages Of Shopify For eCommerce Store Development

• Usability

A store owner need not be technical to use Shopify. You can easily set it and start using it. Suppose you are looking for an ecommerce development platform that is a complete solution and has no high-level technicalities regarding development or hosting. In that case, you must consider this platform. Its backend admin panel is very user-friendly.

• Attractive Interface

You will get choices among hundreds of themes to develop a unique ecommerce store in the Shopify store. It initially comes with a bare minimum theme, but you can hire expert-level designers to make it more attractive.

• Shopify Apps Integration

There are hundreds of apps available on the Shopify marketplace, among which many are free as well. You can use these apps to extend the functionalities or capabilities of your Shopify store.

• Secure & Reliable

Shopify gives you a high level of security and reliability. Security is highly crucial in the ecommerce industry as ecommerce involves dealing with customers’ confidential information along with their payment details and addresses. The ecommerce store should also work 24 x 7. Shopify takes care of all these things.

• Speed

Speed is another crucial factor in the ecommerce industry. A delay of 1-second can make you lose sales of $2.5 million every year if you are making revenue of $100,000 per day. Also, if it takes more than 3-seconds to load the site, you may lose more than 50% of your customers. Since Shopify is a hosted solution, there is a super-fast loading speed, and the site gets a load in a few seconds.

• Mobile Responsive

As per a recent report of Shopify, mobile phones and tablets for 69% of total sales. A mobile application for your business surely helps you increase the revenue and sales of your business and build a trusty brand reputation.

• Easy Payment

A payment gateway matters a lot for the conversion in your ecommerce store. A payment gateway with a smooth interface allows the customers to checkout without hassle. Shopify gives you multiple options for choosing a payment gateway. The platform supports the Stripe payment option, giving buyers the liberty to make transactions without paying extra fees.

• SEO Friendly

SEO helps your website to get discovered by users on the SERPs. That’s why it should be SEO-friendly. Shopify supports custom title tags and meta tags which are highly helpful in SEO.

Disadvantages Of Shopify For eCommerce Store Development

• Learning Curve

While building a Shopify store, you are actually developing a business and not a passive income stream. And starting a business is not a cakewalk for everyone. It can sometimes take months to figure out how to use Shopify and build a profitable store. It can take a while to know about every different section of the admin panel. Still, you don’t need to worry a lot. It just takes some practice.

• Shopify Alone Is Not Enough For Success

There are many great features and apps in Shopify which make it easy to launch an online store. But it is up to you to make your store a success. You must have the right mindset pushing you to learn. You have to invest in marketing as well to promote your business. Success doesn’t come with Shopify, it is in your hands.

Shopify Overview: How Does Shopify Work?

Shopify, an ecommerce platform hosts your online store. It can organize the layout of your store by using a huge range of themes which you can modify as per your requirements. It also offers payment processing by which you can accept and receive payments for the products you sell. There is a popular dropshipping app of Shopify called Oberlo, by which you can choose from millions of products without having to pay for inventory upfront.

So How Does Shopify Work?

After designing the Shopify store, you have to add products to it and then test the site to make sure that both desktop and mobile are ready to launch for an audience. Now, you have to promote the heck out of your products. When a customer will visit your store, you can check in real-time from your Shopify admin whether that customer is adding a product to the cart or completing a purchase. In a purchase, Shopify will process the payment in a purchase, and you will get paid. After the successful payment, the order will be processed so that the customer receives the product.

What Can You Sell On Shopify?

There is a huge variety of trending products that you can sell on the Shopify platform. There is anything that you can sell from fashion to beauty to home and garden. A few popular products that you can sell on the Shopify platform are:

How To Increase Business On Your Shopify Store?

There are many ways to grow your online business on your Shopify store. Let’s start with a few basic ideas:

1. Create Ads

You can run ads of your business on popular platforms like Facebook, Google, YouTube, Instagram, etc. Ideally, pick a platform on which your audience spends most of its time. It is also important to choose a platform where the targeting options are expansive, allowing you to exactly pinpoint the ideal customer. To date, Facebook and Google are the most popular ad platforms.

2. SEO

SEO is like a powerhouse to bring traffic to your online store. There are many ecommerce store owners who neglect SEO to grow traffic and, in turn, sales. Generally, new entrepreneurs want a quick business that’s why they go for ads but using ads as an only option will increase the acquisition costs to a huge extent. SEO is a gradual process that gives you traffic in the long run. It also reduces the acquisition costs for new customers.

3. Social Media Platforms

Before launching your store, you must already have an audience. For e.g., running a campaign on Instagram a few weeks before launching your store can promote it at launch. With an audience in place, you will potentially be able to generate some sales with the link in your bio or Story.

Wrapping Up

We covered all of the different aspects of Shopify and how it can be a perfect platform for running an online ecommerce store or moving your business online. If you want to develop your own ecommerce store based on Shopify, then you should hire the best ecommerce development company that specializes in building Shopify ecommerce stores from the scratch.