Do you shop online??
Do you know how many people out there does that too?
Well, when we say that by the end of 2020, over 2.05 billion people have bought goods and services online, that might not come as a surprise to you. Do you know that this year the number of digital shoppers worldwide is expected to cross 2.14 billion? Well, the recent statistics of digital shoppers say so. The number of digital buyers is growing at a rocket speed. Over the years, e-commerce sites have become the go-to destinations for shopping and the number of buyers is growing year by year.
What is a better time than this to start your own e-commerce store? But where do you start? How do you build your own online store? Let us have a look at our Shopify review and decide if it’s the right platform for you or for anyone.
For starters, let’s begin with the things we need to consider before building an e-commerce store. Don’t worry, Shopify has all the features you need to build your online store. But Is Shopify really worthy? Is it the best e-commerce platform for you to build your store?
Let’s dive in and get ourselves familiar with the features we need to look for in a website builder that will help you decide if it’s worthy.
A good website builder will have a user-friendly interface, we also need to consider the number of themes, SEO features, resources and support, also the company’s reputation and its customer service.
We find plenty of Shopify reviews on the internet. What makes our Shopify review stand out?? Let us find out
Page Contents
Shopify Review
You already know what Shopify is, Right? If you don’t already know that, Shopify is an e-commerce website builder that helps you build your own website. Shopify has powered over 1,000,000 businesses worldwide. Did you know that companies like Budweiser, the Economist, Red Bull, Tesla Motors, GymShark, Penguin Books, Sunday Somewhere, and many more businesses were powered by Shopify?? Yeah, Shopify is there behind all these and many other successful companies have built their website on Shopify.
It has all the tools you need to build a shop online and offline too. It also got an in-site app store that allows you to add apps to your website to add more features. It has varied themes, 24/7 customer support and many more. The platform doesn’t let you own the store that you created but you can have access to your store as long as you pay a monthly subscription. Let us review each of these features one by one.
Ease of Use
The first thing we look for in any platform is how easy or user-friendly the platform is. Shopify has a neat, clear and user-friendly interface. Even if you are a beginner or an expert in the field, you will not need any expert technical skills and knowledge to navigate through the page or to create your online store. The platform is simple and easy to use and anyone can create their own online store from here. You just need to sign up for the app and have to answer a few simple questions the platform asks and there you go, your first step in building your store is on and going.
How much ever detailed description we give you about the platform, looking at the features on your own and having a live experience of it always tops the description. To have that experience of the features, try Shopify Free trial. One main benefit of using the Shopify free trial is that it doesn’t ask you for your card or account details before the trial, so there is no risk of losing your money whilst enjoying your trial. All it asks you is your email address and you are set to go.
Themes
Shopify allows you to customise your website to your liking. It offers a lot of different themes for you to choose from. The themes offered by Shopify are mobile-friendly and can fit the dimensions of mobile phone and tablet screens. That adds to benefit the user experience as according to the digital shopper statistics the users are more likely to not visit your site again if they have a bad mobile experience.
Shopify’s theme store has a collection of more than 70 different templates for e-commerce websites adding up both free and premium templates. The platform offers you 9 free templates with three variations in each, which lets you have different variants of themes to choose from. If they don’t appeal to you you can always buy a paid or premium theme to match your liking.
The theme store has templates with a professional look for clothing and fashion, Jewellery, art and photography, electronics and e-commerce sites. Shopify allows you to customise your themes, each template comes with the theme settings option, which lets you customize your website’s theme without any knowledge of CSS or HTML. The settings also let you upload a logo, adjust or change the font and colour, customize the layout of your homepage and add slideshows, banners and much more to your website.
All you have to do to set up the look of your website is Pick a template from the wide range of choices you have, go to the theme settings and customise the look of your website, add or change the fonts colours and any other customizations you want to make to your website, and when you feel that the website matches your business and feel, go ahead and launch your website. It’s that simple or did Shopify make it simple for you? We think the latter suits it better.
Shopify allows you to write your website in any language you want. You can control your template and can change the content of the website to any language you want. Currently, Shopify is available in more than 60 languages and also supports local tax rates, currencies, etc.
Do you have zero knowledge of HTML/CSS? Worry not, Shopify got it too. You can just talk to Shopify Experts, a group of expert web developers, designers and marketers, that can help you make your website a huge success.
Features
Shopify has all the features you need to build and manage your own online store. It is offering all the essential tools you will ever need to successfully manage your online store. It provides you with varied features each of which helps you add different elements to your website. Let us have a rough look at a few features that the platform is offering its customers.
App store
Shopify has an in-site app store that lets you add apps to your website. The app store has both free and paid apps. The apps let you add more features to your websites if you are not satisfied with the features that the theme offers. You also need to be careful while choosing the apps as their costs might add up in your store pretty fast.
Adding these apps to your website might actually be a benefit to your business as they offer you the features and services that are otherwise not available on your website. Just one thing you need to do before installing the app is reading the reviews left by the previous users and deciding if the app is the right match for your website.
Shipping
Shipping is one of the most important parts of your trade online, as that is a key factor in satisfying your customers. Did you know that more than half of the online shoppers have stopped engaging with few shopping retailers because of the poor shipping experience? Yeah, that’s true and that’s how important shipping is, in managing your business. And what does Shopify has to offer in that regard? With Shopify, you don’t need to worry about shipping problems as it lets you manage your shipping options and allows you to edit and control the related settings.
For example, it lets you manage the shipping rates based on the weight, delivery location, or order value. And it also provides you with flexible options for a better shipping experience. It also has a partnership with courier services like DHL, UPS and a few more, which lessens the burden on your part in choosing a courier service or sourcing your own courier.
Dropshipping
Have plans for dropshipping? Shopify has it covered for you. Shopify supports dropshipping, but it doesn’t have it in-built on its platform but you can add that feature to your website by installing a dropshipping app from the Shopify app store. Oberlo is the most popular and recommended app for dropshipping that is available on the app as it also helps you find products that you can sell on Shopify.
Recovery of Abandoned Carts
This in-built feature lets you notify your customers who abandoned the products in their carts and remind them to complete their order. This comes as a great benefit to you as most customers leave or abandon the products they added to their carts and forget about them. Notifying them about these products helps you boost your sales. You can manage this feature from the settings of your website.
Product Management
What do you expect when you think of Product management? Everything starting from the product variants to the bulk uploads, management of your product inventory, tracking and monitoring your order and your stock levels, and updating your listings, every tool you need to manage your products, Shopify has them ready for you.
Shopify lets you organise and sort your products based on colour, pattern, size, price and any other category you wish to group the products into. This feature is important for those selling many products on their site as that helps the customer look for and find the product they are looking for without having to go through all the product listings.
Taxes
While managing an online store you will also get customers from places afar, which means you will have to ship to different locations which also means that you will have to do the taxing for all those orders. Who likes to do taxes? Mostly no one. There comes Shopify’s automatic taxing tool, which does all the taxes automatically and you don’t even have to install any app for that as this is an in-built feature.
Along with the features mentioned above, there are several other features and tools like POS, Multi-channel integration, Payment options, Digital selling and many more that Shopify offers to its customers that add up to the building and management of a successful online business.
SEO
Let’s start with a question. Is Shopify’s SEO compatible? Can you trust its worthiness in making your product reach the audience? YES! You can.
Like what you read in a few Shopify reviews, Shopify offers a Fine range of SEO tools, that can help your product getting found in search results but it lacks the keyword support tool. Apart from that, Shopify has covered the essential areas for the Search Engine Optimisation of your products.
Pricing
Shopify has five different plans that start at as low as $9 per month to $2000 per month or more, priced according to the services offered through the plan.
You can go through the pricing model of Shopify below:
Shopify Lite costs you $9 per month. This plan doesn’t let you have a full standalone store, instead, it lets you add products to any blog, website or Facebook page and accept credit card payments. You will be charged a transaction fee of 2% unless you use the Shopify Payments option.
A Basic Shopify plan costs you $29 per month which lets you build your own store and provides you with all the essentials you need to create your online store. If you are not using Shopify Payments it will cost you a transaction fee of 2%.
Shopify plan costs you $79 per month, with this plan you can enjoy all the features you get with the Basic Shopify plan with additional benefits of the professional reports. This plan will charge you a 1% transaction fee if you are not using Shopify Payments. This plan is well suited for growing businesses.
Advanced Shopify Plan costs you $299 per month, which provides you with access to all the features the platform is offering to scale up your business. With this plan, you will only be charged a transaction fee of 0.5% that too if you are using other payment methods and not Shopify payments.
Shopify Plus starts at $2000 per month and for high volume businesses, the price can be customized. The transaction fee for this plan is 0.15% if you use third-party payment methods. It also offers an 18% higher conversion if you use Shop pay and 60% faster checkouts.
To get a discount on the price you can use Shopify Coupon Codes and Shopify Promo codes while checking out.
Support and Security
A lot of similar platforms hold the customer responsible for the security of their site. But with Shopify, you don’t have to worry about the security of your website as Shopify’s stores are secured automatically. Shopify handles the issue like Cybersecurity, issues with online transactions and protection of user data for all its stores. This is important because it relieves you of the extra stress you need to put on the security risks, especially on the protection of customer data and their payment credentials.
Shopify provides support to its customers through various channels and you can choose the kind of support you need from them. It offers 24/7 support through the phone for all the plans. Along with that, Shopify also provides Social Media Support, Community Forum, 24/7 live chat support, email support, video tutorials, help centre and advance specialist support. Some kinds of support they provide are specific to the plan, like the Advance Special Support which is specific to the Shopify Plus Plan.
Pros & Cons
Pros
- Has a user-friendly interface.
- Great features and higher customer satisfaction.
- Multi-channel Integration.
- Customer support.
- Wide range of apps and themes available on the platform.
Cons
- SEO tools aren’t so impressive
- Doesn’t offer a free plan.
- Transaction fees on the payments made through other payment methods than Shopify payments.
Wrapping Up
Shopify is one of the best platforms out there that lets you build your own store to match your liking and needs. The platform offers you varied themes and a wide range of features to successfully create and run your business online. It also has a 14-day free trial for you to experience and explore the features that the platform is offering and to create your store. Shopify is currently offering 5 plans for you to choose from. You can get an up-front discount of 10% on the price if you pay for 1 year, and if you pay for two years you will get a discount of 20%. You can also find plenty of Shopify coupon codes and Shopify promo codes on search engines and on many coupon code websites that you find on the web that lets you get a special discount on the price.
Hope this review of Shopify answered your questions about the e-commerce platform. If you want to read more such articles visit the Zeen website.
