If you are serious about creating a ‘mini Amazon.com’ for your brand online, it will be difficult to not at least consider Shopify for your e-tail store’s foundations.
Shopify is no less than one of the biggest names in ecommerce today, with recent statistics indicating that this web application powers about 3.6 million online stores. Together, businesses using the Shopify platform are said to have generated sales amounting to more than $356 billion since its launch in 2006.
So, with Shopify already enjoying such a well-established user base and market share, the risk of the service suddenly closing down – as has happened to other platforms in the past – is extremely low. But there are many more great reasons to consider Shopify as a platform for your e-tail site – as detailed below.
It is a ‘hosted’ solution
One of the most distinctive aspects of Shopify is that it runs on its own servers, without the need for the owner of the given online retailer to purchase their own web hosting or even install software.
In fact, if you base your e-tail presence on Shopify, you won’t own a ‘copy’ of the product, instead effectively paying a monthly fee to use it. But you’ll still benefit from impressive functionality, performance and customisation potential.
There are no fewer than five different Shopify plans
Whatever the nature and ambitions of your ecommerce brand, you can expect to find a Shopify pricing plan to suit. Not only can you take advantage of a 14-day free trial for Shopify, but there are also five formal pricing plans: namely Shopify Lite, Basic Shopify, Shopify, Advanced Shopify, and Shopify Plus.
As the name suggests, Shopify Lite is the most spartan of these plans, although it does enable you to add products to a website or blog and accept credit card payments, all for a monthly outlay about the same as watching a movie.
At the other end of the scale, meanwhile, is Shopify Plus, which is aimed at the highest-volume merchants and large businesses that are on the lookout for a truly enterprise-grade platform. Firms opting for this plan might expect to pay around $2,000 a month upwards.
If you are reading this, then, it’s likely that one of the remaining plans – ranging at the time of typing from $29 per month for Basic Shopify, to $299 per month for Advanced Shopify – will represent the best match to your store’s needs.
These mid-tier plans will all give you access to such perks as an ecommerce website and blog, unlimited products, multiple staff accounts, the ability to sell on online marketplaces and social media, and much more.
You don’t need to be a ‘tech head’ to use it
If you would like to make use of a leading and trusted ecommerce platform that doesn’t require you to be a web developer or have a team of developers constantly by your side while you manage your store, Shopify is likely to be a very attractive option indeed.
Shopify is the complete ‘plug and play’ solution, with an admin interface that is clean and intuitive for anyone to use, and even free themes that will help you get your store looking great immediately.
You’ll also have access to in-depth documentation on the Shopify site itself, just in case you get stuck with any aspect of managing your store. Really, the only thing you will need to add is your store’s product range, so that you can start selling.
There’s a lot of scope to customise your store as you need
Don’t allow the above, however, to give you the impression that Shopify only caters to ‘basic’ requirements.
If, for instance, none of the free ecommerce templates – or ‘themes’ – quite match what you’re seeking, you can use any of a variety of paid-for, or ‘premium’ themes, to help ensure your store looks and feels exactly as you wish. All of these themes are fully responsive, too, which means that they will automatically adjust to suit the size of the user’s screen.
Further customisability is made possible by Shopify’s own app store, so almost regardless of what you want to incorporate into your ecommerce outlet – think the likes of in-depth analytics, reviews, loyalty programmes, and a lot more – it will be possible on this platform.
Would you like to find out more about how much sense Shopify could make for your brand’s e-tail presence, or about our other solutions ranging from website design and marketing to programming services in Gibraltar, Edinburgh, London or Spain? If so, please do not hesitate to reach out to the Piranha Designs team today.
