Article
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Read time : 8 min
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Published on 06-01-2023
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Article
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Read time : 8 min
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Published on 06-01-2023
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What is Shopify & How to Champion Ecommerce in 2024?

Aakanksha Sharma
Aakanksha Sharma
Content Marketer
What is Shopify & How to Champion Ecommerce in 2024?

Shopify helps all types of businesses sell online and in-person worldwide. It offers easy-to-use tools to build your online store, reach customers, and handle sales and payments. This guide will show you how Shopify works, its features, pricing, and more, helping you start your Shopify website confidently.

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is a cloud-based SaaS (Software as a Service) platform. It allows businesses to manage their store from anywhere with an internet connection. As a cloud solution, Shopify handles the hosting, software updates, and security, enabling users to focus on growing their business without worrying about technical backend issues.

Shopify is designed for users at all levels, from beginners to experts, offering a seamless way to sell products, manage inventory, and process payments from one platform. Shopify's strength lies in its user-friendly interface, scalability options, and robust features that support business growth, making it a go-to choice for entrepreneurs worldwide.

Shopify Pros and Cons

Let’s peel back the layers to reveal what truly makes Shopify tick for businesses worldwide and where it might hold you back.

Pros:

  • Shopify's dashboard is designed for non-technical users, making store setup straightforward.
  • Shopify integrates seamlessly with apps like Oberlo and Printful, streamlining product import and fulfillment.
  • Shopify allows businesses to sell in multiple currencies, enhancing global sales capabilities.
  • Shopify offers options for creating multilingual stores catering to a global audience.
  • Shopify POS integrates online and physical sales, providing a unified customer experience.
  • Shopify Email offers generous send limits, allowing extensive customer outreach.

Cons:

  • Shopify plans come with restricted staff accounts, necessitating upgrades for additional access.
  • Advanced functionalities often depend on premium apps, adding to monthly expenses.
  • Shopify provides a limited selection of free themes, pushing merchants towards paid options for uniqueness.
  • Merchants face additional fees for not using Shopify Payments.
  • Customizing product options requires more complex solutions or app integrations.
  • Shopify's editor can be less intuitive for detailed site customization compared to competitors.

Shopify Ease of Use

Shopify stands out for its intuitive design, making it straightforward for anyone to launch and manage an online store without deep technical knowledge.

To review Shopify’s ease of use, I approached it by focusing on how user-friendly the platform is for various users, from beginners to experienced merchants. We will then delve into its website builder and eCommerce features, which form the backbone of user experience.

Intuitive Website Builder

Shopify's drag-and-drop interface simplifies creating a visually appealing and functional online store, catering to users who prioritize ease and efficiency in website design. Beyond just ease of setup, Shopify provides a range of page builder apps in its app store. These apps enable users to customize landing pages with a simple drag-and-drop interface, allowing for personalized "About Us" pages, product pages, and more without needing coding skills. It makes launching an online store quick and hassle-free.

Packed with Built-in Features

Shopify is not just optimized for selling online with fast load times and mobile-friendly designs; it also offers built-in features that enhance the eCommerce experience. From offering discounts and recommending products to capturing emails, Shopify empowers store owners to do more for their buyers. All themes are covered by long-term support, ensuring they receive free updates for the latest features and security enhancements. This comprehensive approach ensures that Shopify stores provide an optimized shopping experience that drives sales and growth.

Comprehensive eCommerce Features

Shopify's built-in features, like product management, payment processing, and inventory tracking, streamline the operation of an e-commerce business, allowing owners to focus on growth and sales. Beyond these core functionalities, Shopify also facilitates advanced product options, real-time shipping rates, and extensive customer data analysis, enabling businesses to tailor their strategies based on actionable insights. This holistic suite of tools ensures that every aspect of the e-commerce process is efficient and user-friendly, from listing products to fulfilling orders.

Shopify's platform is designed to help increase your store's visibility and attract more customers. With features that support SEO best practices, such as customizable headlines, titles, and meta tags,

Shopify helps improve your store's ranking in search engine results. Additionally, Shopify offers integrated marketing tools, including email marketing campaigns and social media integration, allowing store owners to reach a wider audience effectively. The platform also provides detailed analytics to track the success of marketing efforts. It includes product analytics, live view, demography of visitors, and total purchases. It enables businesses to refine their strategies for better results.

Shopify Pricing

Starting with a free trial (and no credit card) is best if you are not using Shopify. During this trial period, you can prepare your store by adding products, organizing collections, and setting shipping rates. But remember that your store is not yet operational and cannot accept orders.

Now that you are ready to open your store, you can select a pricing plan, and we will help you identify the right one.

Note: If you decide to graduate to a paid plan during the free trial, Shopify won’t charge until your trial period expires.

An insight into how much Shopify Costs -

Shopify Plan Cost Best For
Shopify Starter $5 per month Side hustles looking to add a buy button to an existing site or sell in person with POS.
Shopify Basic $39 per month ($29 per month, paid annually) Small businesses building a comprehensive online store with omnichannel selling capabilities.
Shopify Standard $105 per month ($79 per month, paid annually) Businesses needing performance reports, gift card support, and international selling features.
Shopify Advanced $399 per month ($299 per month, paid annually) High-volume sellers needing advanced features, unlimited storage, and lower transaction fees.
Shopify Plus From $2,300 per month Industry leading businesses requiring top-tier features and scalability for large operations.
Enterprise Custom pricing Enterprises needing a fully customizable platform tailored to vast and unique business needs.

Shopify Tools & Features

Shopify's tools and features build a powerful, user-friendly platform for growing an online store. They offer customization options, built-in functionalities, and ongoing updates to stay ahead in the e-commerce game.

To explore Shopify's diverse range of tools and features that help build, manage, and grow an online store, I've categorized these into four main areas:

i. Store Building ii. Sales Channels iii. Built-in Marketing Tools and iv. Special Features

Let’s take a dip one by one -

i. Store Building

  • Online Store Builder: Shopify's foundation is its robust store builder, boasting a 99.99% uptime rate and a broad global reach through 300 points of presence. The platform's checkout is designed for high conversion, performing 15% better than average.
  • Shopify Magic: AI-driven tools in Shopify help generate compelling content across your store, from product descriptions to blog posts, making your products stand out.
  • Theme Store: It’s packed with more than 196 themes. These optimized themes are super fast, look great on phones, and make shopping easy for your customers. These themes have built-in features where you can set up discounts, make recommendations, and grab their emails. Plus, all themes get free updates to keep you on top of the latest e-commerce trends.
  • Shopify App Store: You can expand your store's functionality with access to over 8000 apps, covering everything from additional features to custom product options.

ii. Sales Channels

  • Marketplaces and Social Media: Shopify enables seamless integration with major marketplaces and social media platforms, allowing you to sell your products on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and more, as well as synchronize your offerings with Google.
  • Sell in Person: Shopify's POS system and compatible hardware ensure a smooth transition and management between online and in-store sales, offering a unified back office for all sales channels.
  • Global Selling: With Shopify Markets, sell internationally from a single store, managing localization, shipping, and compliance easily, alongside currency and translation support for a tailored customer experience.
  • Wholesale and B2B: Shopify Plus offers integrated solutions for selling to direct-to-consumer and business-to-business customers, streamlining operations on a single platform.

iii. Built-in Marketing Tools

  • Integrated Marketing: Shopify provides tools for identifying and reaching your ideal customers through SEO, targeted ads, and social media, supported by built-in blogging for content marketing.
  • Customer Engagement: Tools like Shopify Email, Shopify Inbox, and Shopify Forms facilitate direct customer communication through email campaigns and chat, enhancing engagement and conversion.
  • Customer Segmentation: Personalize your marketing efforts with automated flows and customer segments, targeting messages effectively to increase loyalty and sales.
  • Analytics and Marketing Reports: Monitor and analyze your marketing campaigns and overall store performance with detailed insights, helping you make informed decisions to drive growth.

iv. Special Features

-Shop: This feature enhances mobile shopping with an integrated experience and one-click checkout, aiming to reach new customers.

  • Linkpop: A tool designed for commerce that turns your social media bio links into a gateway for converting followers into customers.

Shopify Security

Right out of the box, every Shopify store meets PCI compliance standards. This means your store automatically follows the rules needed to protect payment information.

What's covered? Everything. Shopify checks off all six PCI standard categories for every store:

  • Keeping a secure network to make sure your store's data is locked down.
  • Protecting cardholder data so customer payment info stays safe.
  • Running a vulnerability management program to catch any security weak spots.
  • Setting up strong access control to limit who can see sensitive data.
  • Regularly checking and testing networks to find and fix security issues.
  • Keeping an information security policy to ensure everyone knows how to keep data secure.