Table of Contents
Did you know that 1.75 million merchants sell using the Shopify platform? While the number of shoppers placing an order with Shopify merchants has increased by 52.33% over the past year making it the most popular e-commerce platform.
Well, these figures answer a lot about – why you should choose Shopify for your eCommerce business.
Your website is the backbone of your eCommerce business, and choosing the right platform is paramount. As the eCommerce presence of businesses has soared in popularity, a number of big players have come to the forefront of hosted platforms, namely – WooCommerce, Magneto, BigCommerce, and Shopify. While your business might have its own unique considerations, one web store consistently comes out as a top all-around choice, Shopify.
If you are planning to start an eCommerce business or give an online presence to your old store, Shopify might be your best shot. The e-commerce platform is growing rapidly with each passing day. Merchants, buyers, and gross merchandise volume have all increased year over year.
Well, the question is – what is Shopify and what are its benefits over the other eCommerce platforms? Let’s dig in to dispel all your doubts!
What is Shopify and how much can it cost you?
Shopify is more than an ideal eCommerce platform that allows businesses to sell online with outstanding management processes and features to keep your customers coming back. The platform assures quality and efficiency along with simplicity and rich features. As a Shopify merchant, you get access to thousands of trusted third-party apps in the Shopify app store that allows you to easily create different pages, sell in multiple places, and customize your online stores.
“Shopify has about 4200 apps available for download in the Shopify App Store, spanning 12 different categories.”
Shopify is a one-stop-shop for all eCommerce merchants who are willing to leverage their online store to offer more with minimal configuration. And, if you choose Shopify to power your business, you’ll be in great company along with the leading brands such as Tesla, Gymshark, and Kylie Cosmetics.
Switching to Shopify – plans & prices
Signing up on Shopify enables you to set up an online store, manage your inventory, fulfill orders, process payments, and much more. You can choose the themes (look and feel) of your online store, use various apps to add functionality or build your Shopify site from scratch.
Shopify isn’t free like some of its competitors. However, we recommend you delve into what all it offers before you give a thought to any other platform. Shopify provides you (as a merchant) with a reliable, scalable, and secure platform that actively improves online sales and performance. Reporting, analytics, and automation are second to none with the platform – features you didn’t realize you required till you have them.
Well, you don’t have to take our word for it – you can try Shopify free for your business for the first 14 days!
The prices start from $29 per month considering the ‘Basic Shopify’ plan, going up to $299 per month for the ‘Advanced Shopify’ plan. The accounts are extremely flexible – you can upgrade, downgrade, or cancel your plan anytime (providing you pay per month and not on an annual basis).
- Basic Shopify Plan
At $29 per month, the Basic Shopify plan is the lowest-priced solution if you have a large array of products. However, advanced features like abandoned cart recovery emails, reports, and third-party shipping calculations aren’t included. This plan is perfect if you want to sell unlimited products conveniently while saving money.
- The Shopify Plan
Although this plan comes at a higher price of $79, it does include a range of additional features. The rate charged for credit card users on this plan is lower. Additionally, you get access to professional reports that provide insight into your online store, making analysis and business planning easier.
- Advanced Shopify
This is the most expensive plan, available at $299. However, it comes with a number of incredible benefits including the lowest credit card payment rate, the ability for shipping to be handled by a third party, and even an advanced report builder which allows you to customize your own professional reports. Also, you can have up to 15 staff accounts!
- Shopify Plus
This is a solution for all the companies that need an eCommerce platform that delivers high performance while growing with them. With the pricing starting at $2000 per month, you get access to a lot of features. You get dedicated priority with 24-hour support to help you with your store. Your developers will get increased access to the Shopify system for customization, and you have the option of additional clone storefronts to deliver unique store services based on location. Shopify Plus offers cutting-edge technology with the most powerful features to help your store grow faster and better!
With Shopify Plus, you can have your point-of-sale and eCommerce system under one umbrella. This serves the ultimate purpose of an omnichannel retailer and helps you view the customers as one, no matter where they shop with us.
Setting up an omnichannel requires both attention and expertise. Hence, we offer hands-on POS setup packages to guarantee a smooth transition and effective integration of omnichannel sales.
Features of a Shopify store!
Shopify is equipped with all the features you’ll need to nurture your business – to design, build, and optimize your eCommerce store. Following are a few topmost features of Shopify for online stores:
- Large app store with endless features
As a merchant on the Shopify platform, you get access to an app store with over 4,200 apps from trusted technology partners enclosing all the features designed to improve the experience of your store. Shopify continually becomes more and more powerful with the world’s best developers delivering new apps almost every day so that you are never really left behind.
- Always in control with Shopify admin
Hugely favored for its easy-to-use back-end with a dashboard, Shopify allows you to have all the information you need instantly. From detailed sales reports to easily manageable orders, customers, and products, Shopify, in our opinion, is made easy for everyone.
The eCommerce platform includes an incredibly powerful content management system (CMS), which allows you to easily change sections, images, and text without relying on your development team.
- Multi-channel selling
What’s better than being able to sell your products across multiple channels? Shopify is built with your business in mind. It allows you to sell in multiple places at once whilst still maintaining all orders, inventory, and customer management in one place – the Shopify admin dashboard.
The multi-channel integrations of the eCommerce platform allow you to sell through various mediums like Facebook, eBay, Amazon, Instagram, and even through a blog. You get to expand your reach, increase audience sizes, and maximize sales, all together on one platform.
Benefits of using Shopify over other eCommerce platforms
There’s a lot to consider while choosing the right website to amplify your business – from the ease of use and the marketing tools to design and customization options, multimedia capabilities, and tech support. And, that’s in addition to the basic features we associate with all the other online shopping websites like the shopping cart, payment options, and shipping options.
Shopify covers all the aspects while offering maximum revenue and retention for your online stores. Here are the top 7 benefits a Shopify store can give you over other platforms:
- Quick to set up & easy to use
Shopify provides an easy way to quickly launch your online store without any fuss of servers and development costs. Even if you are not tech-savvy or don’t have a team of developers, Shopify’s ‘plug-and play’ solution allows you to easily set up your eCommerce business on your own.
The professional ready-to-use templates help you build a great site, boosting trust and credibility with visitors to your store. The interface is also clean, user-friendly, and pretty intuitive because all the features are logically structured.
Well, you can always read extensive documentation and watch tutorial video guides on the Shopify site!
- Secure, fast & reliable
Having an eCommerce store comes with a number of responsibilities like – dealing with sensitive customer information including credit card details, their contact details, and also the impatient customers. This means your site needs to be both fast and secure. Shopify offers the best service in terms of security as well as integration among the payment providers.
The platform takes care of all upgrades and server maintenance issues to keep your store available at all times and ensure that pages load quickly. Besides this, the SSL certificates and PCI compliance ensure the security of all user details.
- Mobile-friendly & customizable websites
With the increasing mobile visits to websites, it’s essential to have a mobile-optimized site. Luckily Shopify even supports this! All themes on Shopify are mobile-friendly and the platform includes a free built-in mobile commerce shopping cart. Thus, your store can look great on all devices and users can shop freely wherever they are.
Additionally, there are 160 themes to choose from, all of which are mobile responsive. Each theme is fully customizable, giving your store a face that fits with your brand identity.
- Marketing & SEO tools
Having a beautiful online shop is good but if no one visits your store, you’ll be pulling down the virtual shutters in no time. Here’s where Shopify’s powerful Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) feature comes into play!
Shopify helps your website rank higher in search results so the customers can find you. It also gives you access to advanced analytics by telling where your customers are coming from so you can tailor your marketing strategy accordingly. Besides this, the platform offers a huge range of marketing tools including social media integration, product reviews, and email marketing.
Shopify Kit acts like a virtual employee, recommending and executing marketing tasks based on your products, audience, and store performance.
- Abandoned cart recovery
“eCommerce brands lose $18 billion in sales revenue each year because of cart abandonment.”
Shopify offers an abandoned checkout cart recovery feature that automatically tracks and emails the potential customers, reminding them to complete their purchase.
- Commendable 24/7 technical support
In line with its global hosting capacity, Shopify also offers 24/7 support service. Hence, you can reach customer care whenever any glitch arises. You can even access discussion forums in the Shopify Community, to learn directly from a Shopify SEO expert on how to improve SEO on Shopify and boost your sales.
As a merchant, you can avail of reliable, round-the-clock customer support via email, live chat, or phone to resolve any queries and keep your store running flawlessly at all times.
- Own payment gateway
Shopify has over 100 payment gateways integrated into the platform granting payment flexibility. Using its built-in gateway – ‘Shopify Payments’, powered by Stripe – removes transaction fees charged on top of standard credit card fees and also lowers the credit card fees.
Also, you need not have a merchant account to use Shopify Payments.
Shopify store to lead your eCommerce business on the path of success
Thriving in the world of online sales and marketing can be quite overwhelming. However, getting your hands on the right platform to integrate your business processes while easily selling out your products isn’t a tough task.
Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms to set up your business. With the flexibility, efficiency, support, and return on investment that Shopify offers, it ticks all the boxes for an easy yet profitable platform. It provides you with a solid and flexible store builder to increase conversions and sales, reduce administrative tasks, and provide valuable management information.
Three Acres has a team of experienced technicians who can easily assist you through your business journey. Get in touch with us and we will help you with an effective Shopify store setup!
