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The Shopify company has been around since 2006, and is one of the leading ecommerce platforms. Shopify offers a variety of payment options including PayPal, Visa, MasterCard and American Express. It also allows you to use Apple Pay as well so your customers can make payments using their phones which saves time for both parties involved in the transaction. This platform includes tools such as analytics dashboard that allow merchants to easily track metrics like sales conversions tot upsells on top of high-quality marketing features like email campaign templates.,
Shopify is a powerful ecommerce platform that you can use to sell your products. The “shopify reviews & complaints” will help you decide if the platform is right for your business.
Shopify is a comprehensive ecommerce platform that allows you to create an online shop and sell across many channels. Thousands of positive Shopify reviews attest to its popularity as one of the most popular ecommerce site builders on the market. It is one of the top ecommerce solutions for small companies because of its user-friendly interface and scalable features. Shopify also offers a popular point-of-sale (POS) software system, which makes it ideal for multichannel retailers.
Go to Shopify to learn more.
When Should You Use Shopify?
Our top option for the finest ecommerce systems is Shopify, which received a 4.68 out of 5 rating in our review. We’ve found Shopify to be one of the most user-friendly alternatives, enabling you to construct an online shop with a full-fledged website and sell across many platforms. As retail professionals, we would also suggest Shopify as one of the best software options.
According to our research, Shopify is great for:
- Businesses that benefit from internet sales include: Shopify’s Builder of Websites, sales tools, and Management of Inventory capabilities are robust, allowing you to efficiently expand your company. Shopify is a solution that can scale with your company, and it enters our list of the top POS inventory systems because it can manage vast, complicated product assortments across numerous channels.
- Online shops who want to sell on social media may use Shopify to do so. Shopify allows you to sell on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Amazon, Pinterest, and Instagram, among other platforms. While other ecommerce systems have social media interfaces, Shopify stands out because it has unique relationships with firms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok to enable in-app transactions.
- Entrepreneurs interested in experimenting with the dropshipping model should know that Shopify works with hundreds of dropshippers, including Oberlo, its own dropshipping service. Dropshipping vendors may be used on any ecommerce platform, but Shopify’s Oberlo solution simplifies the process with plug-and-play automation and product listing syncs.
- Shopify, a world-class POS and ecommerce solution that connects smoothly for omnichannel sales like purchase online, pickup in-store, and explore in-store, buy online, is our preferred multichannel POS system for multichannel merchants.
When Shopify Isn’t the Right Fit
- Stores that require an online ordering option but don’t have one: Square Online is the greatest solution if you have a brick-and-mortar business and want to add an online component for pickup or local delivery sales. It allows you to create a complete website or a small one-page site at no cost.
- Eateries and online food ordering: If your restaurant requires an online ordering system, Tock to Go is a user-friendly and cost-effective solution created exclusively for restaurants. Toast is also an all-in-one POS system with integrated pickup and delivery internet ordering.
- Enterprise ecommerce companies trying to save transaction costs: If you have a significant number of sales, Shopify’s Processing of Payments costs might be costing you a lot of money. BigCommerce, which allows you to pick your own payment processor and search around for inexpensive rates, could be a better option. BigCommerce, unlike Shopify, provides extremely cheap rates for PayPal Processing of Payments and does not charge a fee or markup for connecting an external payment processor.
- If your small company website’s primary emphasis isn’t on selling: Squarespace is our preferred Builder of Websites for a user-friendly, all-in-one solution if you need a small company website.
- WooCommerce and PrestaShop are excellent solutions if you require a completely customized website and online shop hosted on your own servers. These are open-source platforms aimed largely at programmers.
- If you currently have a WordPress website and want to create or expand an online shop, a WordPress ecommerce plugin like WooCommerce is a better choice. It offers many of the same capabilities as Shopify with the added benefit of being as configurable as WordPress.
- If you need both an ecommerce and a content website, Squarespace is the way to go. Shopify is wonderful for ecommerce, but the WYSIWYG editor isn’t as user-friendly or powerful as Squarespace’s drag-and-drop page builder when it comes to content management.
Are you looking for something unique? To choose a service or software that’s perfect for your company, see our guide to the top ecommerce platforms for small companies.
Overview of Shopify
Go to Shopify to learn more.
Examples of Shopify Stores
To give you a sense of how you may use Shopify as your whole site, a shop extension, or as part of your social media channel, we searched for retail businesses that use the platform.
Free of charge packaging
Free of charge packaging’s homepage design
An example of Free of charge packaging’s checkout page. Notice that it uses Shop Pay, an app that lets customers pay in installments.
Free of charge packaging sells beauty and household items that come package-free, drawing inspiration from its founder Lauren Singer’s mission to create less wasteful consumer behaviors. Its product pages utilize product reviews, social media share buttons, and product variants.
Allbirds
Allbirds is an online retailer.
Allbirds created a Facebook Shop by integrating their Shopify business.
Allbirds is a footwear firm that uses wool and eucalyptus threads, as well as simplistic designs and packaging made of 90% post-consumer recycled cardboard. It utilizes Shopify to sell on its Facebook page in addition to its web shop.
Quinoa in its purest form
One of Quinoa in its purest form’s product pages
Quinoa in its purest form’s website uses Squarespace, as it has more content, but it uses Shopify for its shop. The design transition and integration are seamless. Its product page features related products, an image gallery, product reviews, and social media share buttons.
Pricing on Shopify
Pricing on Shopify plans come in four tiers, with all plans providing unlimited and free website bandwidth and a “Buy Button” that you can add to your social media channels. All subscriptions also come with the following features:
- Products are limitless.
- Sell in 133 different currencies.
- Shopify POS (Point of Sale)
- Gift certificates
- Channels of online sales
- Fraud investigation (when using Shopify Payments)
- Making an order by hand
- Coupon codes (i.e., welcome codes for new customers or exclusive discounts to your social media followers)
- Customer service (online chat and phone help available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in English; email support available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week in many languages)
Pricing on Shopify Plans
*In places where it is required by law, Shopify collects sales taxes. Such taxes are not included in the pricing shown here. In addition, the supplier provides a 10% discount on annual contracts and a 20% discount on biannual plans (lump-sum payment).
Shopify Lite is a beginner-friendly platform that allows sellers to: 1) add items to an existing blog or regular website; and 2) sell on Facebook or in person using a mobile device. It also lets you to send invoices and take payments online, but it does not allow you to create an online shop. Basic Shopify, on the other hand, allows you to create your own online shop, advertise it via blogging, and sell through various channels (e.g., Amazon, Facebook, and Pinterest).
The Shopify plan includes all of the features in Basic, plus advanced capabilities—like cart recovery, Gift certificates, and expanded reporting capabilities. With this plan, sellers who use Shopify Payments to process credit cards pay a lower processing fee; if you sell more than $25,000 per month, this package may be for you.
Advanced Shopify, on the other hand, is aimed for high-volume merchants that require extra services such as real-time shipping rates and customisable reports in addition to the Shopify plan’s capabilities. This package is excellent if you sell more than $110,000 every month.
You may contact the supplier for a bespoke ecommerce package via Shopify Plus, the company’s corporate solution, when your business expands and your demands go beyond what Advanced Shopify has to offer. This begins at $2,000 per month and includes bespoke processing expenses at a reduced rate.
Features of Shopify
With a 14-day free trial, Shopify makes it simple to get started developing your online business. Shopify merely requires an email address and the name of your business to sign up. After that, you’ll be directed to a step-by-step instruction for setting up your shop.
To learn more about Shopify’s features, go through the sections below.
Builder of Websites
What’s New
In July 2021, Shopify launched Online Store 2.0 (OS 2.0), along with new themes, which offer more customization options than the previous version of the Builder of Websites. OS 2.0 introduces sections and blocks which offer modularity, flexibility, and, to some extent, drag-and-drop capabilities. The new free theme for OS 2.0, Dawn, is mobile-first and 35% faster than Shopify’s themes for the previous version of the store builder (now referred to as “Vintage”).
Only Dawn is created using OS 2.0; the other nine are antique. Shopify provides ten free themes. There are a few dozen premium themes for OS 2.0 that range in price from $150 to $350 and contain several designs and are mobile-commerce compatible (if not mobile-first).
Your shop includes a comprehensive blogging platform and content management system (CMS), which allows you to set up your store and add website pages like about, contact, and blog pages.
Shopify’s themes are clean and elegant, and they include most of the tools you’ll need to operate a successful business. It’s ideal for folks who aren’t comfortable with coding since it’s simple to build up global designs for your shop, such as font and color selections. You may also add, modify, and rearrange content blocks on the front end with OS 2.0—no coding required.
Even while Shopify’s content editor is simple to use, it lacks the flexibility of Wix’s drag-and-drop builder, for example.
If you pick a Vintage theme from an older version of Online Store, any change will need code, which most users are unfamiliar with. A third-party program called DragDropr, an integration that enables a drag-and-drop builder to your website theme, is a popular solution.
Dawn (Free) is a Shopify OS 2.0 theme (Source: Shopify)
You may anticipate a more user-friendly setup with drag-and-drop construction components with the OS 2.0 upgrade in Shopify themes. (Image courtesy of Shopify)
Processing of Payments
Shopify has built-in Processing of Payments, which allows you to start taking payments immediately without the hassle of setting up a third-party solution. However, you are not locked into using Shopify’s payment system and can choose to integrate with your preferred third-party provider.
The only caveat is that Shopify will charge an extra fee ranging from 0.5 percent to 2 percent every transaction if you use a third-party processor. As a result, most small companies, particularly those that are just getting started, will benefit from Shopify’s built-in solution.
When you set up your preferred payment providers, here is a sample of what you’ll see. The merchant is utilizing Shopify payments in this situation, which means there are no transaction costs. (Image courtesy of Shopify)
It’s worth mentioning that utilizing Shopify Payments allows you to use the Shop Pay functionality and set up a local currency on your checkout page. Customers may keep their payment information across Shopify shops for speedier checkout with Shop Pay. Customers may complete purchases with one click, comparable to Apple Pay or Google Pay.
Shopify now supports PayPal Express Checkout and Amazon Pay, which you can simply activate in your settings. There are a few dozen different payment methods you may allow under Alternative Payment Methods, including numerous buy now, pay later (BNPL) choices like Klarna, cryptocurrency purchases via Coinbase, and many overseas payments.
Management of Products
The “Goods” page shows you how many products you have on hand and how many are on the way, as well as allowing you to manually configure actions to do when inventory runs low. In addition, each item you sell has an editable product page where you can add and change details like descriptions, pricing, and delivery options.
Inside a Shopify dashboard, an example of a product view. You may immediately obtain a summary of all your active and inactive goods, as well as their associated inventory, kind, and vendor.
It’s simple to add goods to your Shopify shop. You have the option of setting them up one at a time through the interface or importing them from a CSV file. On the product page, you can quickly fill in information like the title, description, photographs or videos, pricing, and SEO settings.
How do I add a product to my Shopify store?
The ability to instantly make your product live in additional channels after you link it to your selected platforms is one of the benefits of putting up products in Shopify. You may sell your items in quantity (or wholesale) via the Handshake wholesale marketplace, and set up dropshipping through Oberlo, in addition to social networking outlets. Oberlo’s free basic edition includes an extension that allows you to import straight from AliExpress and a variety of other vendors.
You may sell an infinite number of physical and digital items on Shopify. Take heed of the following, though:
- Lackluster functionality for digital products: Unless you wish to manually deliver consumers digital files, you’ll need to install a different app (either Shopify’s own or a third-party app) if you want to sell digital items.
- Product versions are restricted to three per product on Shopify. If you’re selling shirts, for example, you may provide size, color, and material choices. There may be many variations of these possibilities (e.g., Size: S, M, L; Color: Black, White, etc.). Shopify will then produce all potential combinations for each product, which may be up to 100. If you want more functionality, you may utilize one of the App Store’s third-party applications. Other ecommerce systems, such as BigCommerce, don’t have similar restrictions and can handle up to 600 different combinations.
- No tools for customizing products or work orders: Adding custom fields to a product, such as order customization (e.g., engraving), necessitates the usage of extra applications. This may soon pile up in terms of expenses, making it difficult for businesses with sophisticated items to compete. This is another another function that BigCommerce makes accessible.
In Shopify, how do you build up product variants?
Shopify will automatically mix various variation combinations of your goods if you put up versions of a product. Pricing and inventory levels may be established from there.
Management of Inventory
Shopify has one of the best Management of Inventory systems, although the most advanced features require a paid upgrade. All account levels can import items, manage returns, and view basic inventory reports.
Stocky, the company’s free app, is accessible on all plans and allows you to manage your entire inventory, including stock transfers, label printing, and purchase orders. Real-time monitoring across various locations is conceivable, as are low-stock order alerts—though you’ll have to set this up manually rather than relying on EOQ reports. Advanced inventory data, such as forecasting and COGS (cost of goods sold), are only accessible on the more expensive subscriptions.
Management and Fulfillment of Orders
The order dashboard of a shop, for example (Source: Shopify)
In your dashboard, you can handle orders across numerous sales channels and link with third-party fulfillment centers and dropshipping carriers. When a consumer puts an order (via any of your active sales channels), it shows up in Shopify’s Orders section. You may manually generate orders in the backend to record orders made outside of Shopify or issue invoices to your clients.
You may tag open orders, add comments to them, examine the order’s timetable, and follow up with the client in addition to completing orders and receiving payments. Some procedures, such as money collection, digital download delivery, and order archiving, may also be automated.
Shipping Instruments
You may set up three different delivery options for your products on Shopify: shipping, local delivery, and local pickup. Individual goods, collections, or your whole shop may have shipping rules set up simply (e.g., flat rate, free delivery, nation or region-based prices). You may configure shipping prices by location inside each shipping profile for more cost control for organizations with many locations.
Only higher tiers, such as Advanced Shopify and Shopify Plus, include live shipping costs for carriers including USPS, FedEx, and UPS. If you’re on a cheaper plan, though, you may add live shipping costs for roughly $20 per month. If you pay for your membership yearly, you may receive it for free. To do so, you’ll need to contact Shopify support.
Shopify features advanced shipping options, including the ability to define rules depending on location or product. For your real-time shipping calculators, toggle on and off local pickup and delivery choices, as well as enable backup shipment rates.
Shopify provides shipping reductions and makes it simple to specify standard package sizes, print shipping labels, and create packing slips.
Shopify Shipping delivers real-time shipping costs from local postal agencies if your online business is headquartered in the United States, Canada, Australia, or the United Kingdom. You can print shipping labels right from your dashboard with Shopify Shipping and take advantage of shipping reductions, particularly if you’re on a premium plan.
Order fulfillment may also be handled through the Shopify Fulfillment Network or by third-party providers such as Amazon. You may join the Shopify Fulfillment Network (restricted to shops in the United States and Canada), which allows your items to be stored, selected, packaged, and delivered from Shopify’s fulfillment facilities around the United States. Fast (and even same-day) delivery is available, as well as free packing, branded packaging, and reduced shipping prices.
Selling across several channels
You may sell things outside of your Shopify shop using Shopify. It allows you to do business on Facebook, Facebook Messenger, Amazon, Pinterest, and Instagram, among other channels. While other ecommerce systems include features for selling on social media, Shopify offers the most direct integrations with platforms like as Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, allowing for more seamless in-app buying, catalog management, and order synchronization.
You may add some of the various sales channels to your Shopify site.
Shopify also enables you to embed purchase buttons for your items on any website you own. However, it is incompatible with BigCommerce’s sales channels, such as Walmart Marketplace and PriceGrabber.
What’s New
Shopify Inbox, a new software from Shopify, allows you to communicate with your customers and sell to them through chat, social media, and email. From your dashboard, you may configure your online shop chat, stored answers, and more. Right now, you may connect with your Facebook Page and Shop using Messenger. Instagram is also expected to debut shortly.
App for mobile devices
An example of your Shopify App for mobile devices dashboard (Source: Shopify)
Shopify has a App for mobile devices that allows you to capture payments, fulfill orders, manage inventory, and email or call customers. All your data (products, inventory, orders, and customers) is synced with the platform. This App for mobile devices is completely different from the POS app. Businesses use this app to monitor sales and view reports. Every time you make a sale, the Shopify app notifies you with a signature “cha-ching” cash register sound.
Tools for Sales and Marketing
Shopify includes marketing tools that can help boost sales, including discount codes, Gift certificates, and product reviews. It doesn’t have a built-in loyalty or rewards program, but this can be added through the app marketplace.
How to make discount codes on Shopify’s dashboard
Having an abandoned cart recovery function accessible even on the basic plan, as opposed to competing ecommerce systems that only provide it in higher-priced tiers, is one of Shopify’s main benefits.
An example of a Shopify abandoned cart recovery email. This is a basic email, but you may personalize it as much as you like. (Image courtesy of Shopify)
Setting up abandoned cart recovery emails allows you to communicate with consumers who do not complete or submit purchases in an attempt to entice them back. To entice consumers return to your business, you may tailor your emails, include scheduling triggers, and include discount vouchers. You may also personalize the confirmation emails that clients get after placing a purchase.
Shopify Email, Shopify’s native email marketing solution, was just introduced as of this writing. Every premium Shopify account has the ability to send 2,500 free emails each month. Advanced email marketing features such as automation and customer behavior segmentation are not available. You can customize the look of your emails with templates and schedule their delivery, but advanced email marketing features such as automation and customer behavior segmentation are not available.
From your Shopify Email dashboard, you can build an email campaign. As demonstrated above, you have a number of email templates to pick from.
SEO
All of Shopify’s websites are mobile-friendly, giving you a leg up on the competition when it comes to Google crawling. Headings, meta tags, and descriptions for your shop and product pages are simple to put up. When you upload items to Shopify, you’ll be reminded of SEO best practices. It also has an automated redirect mechanism that prevents 404 problems when you update a URL.
An editable preview of an SEO listing on a product page. (Image courtesy of Shopify)
The most important feature missing from Shopify’s SEO suite is keyword support, which BigCommerce offers. You also don’t have access to the robots.txt file, making it impossible to alter URL structures and sitemaps.
Despite Shopify’s SEO drawbacks, most SEO professionals agree that it still provides a benefit to your store’s SEO. On-page SEO is simple to set up, automated redirects and site map creation are available, and the site’s speed and uptime are excellent.
Integrations with third-parties
The Shopify app store enables you to personalize your business’s purchasing experience. This enables you to go beyond Facebook and Instagram and include features like your own chat service, targeted adverts, affiliate networks, profit calculators, and shipping services.
While most ecommerce platforms offer their own version of Shopify’s app store, the primary distinction is that Shopify has a massive number of applications to choose from, ranging from dropshipping to email marketing and customer segmentation. If your shop requires anything, you’ll almost certainly find it in Shopify’s app store.
While apps might be costly (for example, QuickBooks integration begins at $19 per month), they can save you time and money when compared to bespoke solutions.
Shopify’s User-Friendly Interface
- The user interface is simple and easy to use.
- Discussion board for the community
- Knowledgebase and help center
- Shopify Compass provides webinars, e-books, short courses, and how-to videos.
- For an additional price, Shopify specialists (certified ecommerce designers, developers, and marketers) are available.
- Free stock pictures and business tools including a logo and slogan generator, a company name and domain name generator, a gift certificate template, and more are available for download.
- Developers’ API docs
- Support is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week by phone, live chat, and email.
One of the most user-friendly ecommerce systems is Shopify. Every function is simply accessible from each interface panel, and all of the tools are simple to understand and use. OS 2.0 makes it simpler to design and arrange shop items. If you need assistance using Shopify’s capabilities, there are a variety of resources available, including video lessons, articles, a forum, and 24/7 support.
Shopify has substantial documentation and helpful starter tips. Its support website aims to fix your issue with how-to articles and advice before referring you to customer service. One of Shopify’s main benefits is that it has a support staff available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week to help you with your issues. The majority of customer evaluations point to Shopify’s support personnel as being professional and knowledgeable.
Alternatives to Shopify
What Customers Have to Say About Shopify
Shopify has a large amount of positive internet evaluations, with the majority of users believing that it is one of the top ecommerce platforms. Shopify reviews received the following ratings on prominent user review sites at the time of publication:
I found the following patterns when reading customer reviews:
Conclusion
Getting your online business up and running with Shopify is as easy as it gets. When you’re just getting started, it’s the ideal solution since all you need is your inventory and a smartphone. You may smoothly graduate into Shopify’s higher-tiered plans as your business grows.
Product reviews, customer live chat, geolocation to alter your language or currency depending on the visitor’s location, and a customer return portal are just a few of the features Shopify offers to help you compete with ecommerce behemoths. You may start a tiny online business and turn it into an ecommerce company on the same platform, thanks to different price levels.
Go to Shopify to learn more.
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Shopify is a platform that allows users to create their own online store. Shopify has been around for quite some time, so it’s not surprising that there are questions about the service. The “is shopify good for beginners” is one of those questions. Is Shopify really the best ecommerce solution for you?
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Shopify still the best eCommerce platform?
A: Yes, Shopify is still the best eCommerce platform out there. It has an extensive amount of features and integrations with other platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and Google Analytics to name a few.
Is it worth it to do Shopify?
A: It really depends on how much money you want to make and what your goals are. If you just want a few hundred dollars, its not worth doing Shopify if the cost is more than that because then there isnt enough volume for the commission from shop owners. However, it might be worth trying out as a side job in between other things so keep this in mind when choosing what kind of platform to use!
What is so great about Shopify?
A: It is an amazing e-commerce platform which allows anyone to create a store and sell their products.
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