Making your online shop a success comes down to the tools you have for the job and not just your ongoing marketing strategy.
Ensuring your eCommerce store is built well and functional for your needs is very important. ExtraDigital has built a large number of eCommerce stores on a variety of different eCommerce platforms, including Magento, WooCommerce, and of course Shopify.
Since 2022 Shopify has been gaining market share very rapidly - it is the fastest-growing e-commerce platform, for good reason. Multilingual is one of them. It is also easy to expand and integrates well with many 3rd party systems for payment, delivery or invoicing.
We've been designing, building and marketing Shopify Stores for many years - and the number of requests continues to grow as the platform has become more established.
Shopify
Shopify is a leading eCommerce platform or SaaS provider. There are currently over 5.6 million online Shopify stores which take in around $200 billion worth of sales. It has over 2 million active daily users.
Standard tools include…
- Over 100 paid and free themes that can be customised
- Multichannel selling and drop shipping
- Ability to insert product images and product descriptions easily
- Manage your inventory online
- Organise products into categories for ease of use
- Offer discounts on products easily
- Create landing pages and blogs for marketing purposes
- Accept payments from over 70 different countries
- Allow customers to have their own login areas
- Reporting structure allows you to filter your sales data by various factors to help you better understand your customer's behaviour
- Can create multiple logins for various members of staff with various permission levels for security
What Shopify Offers
Shopify can offer a great deal more than people are led to believe. Features include…
Website Designs
Access to over 100 professional looking and responsive website designs. All of these designs are built with eCommerce in mind unlike other platforms offering themes such as GoDaddy.
You also have access to further premium themes which can cost up to around $150 – an achievable cost for many businesses.
Library of Functionality
Whilst Shopify comes with the basic and must have eCommerce functionalities, you also have access to a library of over 1,100 additional functionality which can be simply integrated.
The option to plug in and play with additional Shopify specific functions allows you to take better control over your business processes for better management and no fuss.
24/7 Support
A key feature for many Shopify users is their 24/7 support via phone, live chat and email.
This support option allows for quick troubleshooting and assistance on demand.
Point of Sale (POS) System
Back in 2013 Shopify launched their POS system which allows its users to integrate their sales system with their Shopify store.
This means that you do not need an offline stock management system or POS system, it can all be done via Shopify.
Abandoned Carts
With Shopify you have the option to add an abandoned cart recovery service to automatically take care of any abandoned baskets that your website may experience.
This is a great way of automating that part of online marketing to help encourage shoppers to buy from your online store.
Mobile Access
Shopify really understands the more practical side of running a business, one key element that most business owners lack is time.
Due to this back end function of the website can be viewed and used not just on a laptop but also on mobiles.
Shopify Hosting
A great benefit for many companies with an eCommerce store is for your eCommerce hosting to be taken care of for you.
As part of your monthly service plan, Shopify will host your online shop for you and gives you unlimited bandwidth. The entire hosting process is managed by Shopify which takes the pressure off you, especially if it’s a technical element that you don’t understand.
Security is included in the hosting package (Level 1 PCA compliant and a SSL certificate for your shopping cart) and Shopify will automatically back up your data each day, leaving you to take care of other things.
The Downsides of Shopify
Like every eCommerce platform in the marketplace at the moment, even Shopify has its downsides. These are:
Transactional Fee Charged for Every Sale
One of the largest negatives to Shopify is the fact that on top of a monthly service fee the platform charges its customer a 0.5% to 2% transaction fee depending on the plan you have chosen to use - the higher the plan the lower the transaction fee you are charged.
However when this is put into perspective if you make £1,000 worth of sales then you could be paying just £20 to Shopify, not a great deal in practice.
There is a way out of paying a service fee and that is to use Shopify payments to power your payment transactions instead of a payment service provider (PSP) like PayPal or WorldPay.
Library of Functionality is not Always Free
There are a great number of plugins in the Shopify library but it is worth remembering that not all of these are free, some incur a monthly fee and not just a one-off fee.
Liquid
No you don’t have to buy Shopify a drink. Liquid is the name of the Shopify coding language.
If you wish to customise the Shopify website beyond the themes on offer then you cannot edit the website through the use of just HTML and CSS (basic and most commonly used codes for websites). You must also edit the Liquid code of the website which means hiring a Liquid developer if you do not know how to code in Liquid yourself.
As Liquid is specific to Shopify there are not many developers who know this language and therefore you are tied to expert Shopify programmers and developers. This can be costly if you decide to customise your Shopify store further.
Is Shopify for Me?
If you are looking for a robust and flexible online eCommerce store that not just helps you manage your sales but also helps you manage your business then Shopify is for you.
It is SaaS - so you pay more as you use more - but is quick to get started. An experienced Shopify agency can help you customise templates and add in extra features - and do this in a way that helps with ongoing marketing.
A pretty-looking store is one thing - but does not make money. An effective sales channel is another thing - a source of sales revenue and profit. Setting up your Shopify store for effective marketing is arguably more important than agonising over the design specifics. Ensuring your Shopify partner agency has marketing experience is important.
At ExtraDigital we have helped Shopify owners grow their business through effective paid search advertising and ensure products are visible under Google Shopping or Products. More detail on this is on our Shopify PPC page.
Shopify with ExtraDigital
If you are looking for assistance in setting up your Shopify store the team here at ExtraDigital can help. We have the knowledge and experience of Shopify to get your custom eCommerce store set up without any fuss.
We also have lots of experience in marketing Shopify stores and lots of other eCommerce stores via the use of SEO, PPC, and even Social Media.
Contact us today on 01227 68 68 98 to learn more or tell us about your project below.
