What is Shopify? Shopify is a commerce platform that lets you start, grow and manage the selling of your goods or services. This is what you or a developer will use to design your online store. It has selling opportunities to access the web, social media, mobile and marketplaces.
You can monitor and control the products, prices, payments and how you want the layout to be. You can also pay different plan subscriptions depending on what you want or need access to. Shopify software is used by over 600,000 businesses in 175 countries.
Pricing So you’re probably most interested to know how much it costs, this also refers to Shopify plus which is an extended version that has access to even more features. Depending on how much you are looking to send and how good/effective you want your website to be will reflect on what deal you go for.
At first, you are offered a free trial, if you aren’t familiar with Shopify it would be suggested to give it a go before spending. This is so you can get to know how it works before paying for some time, it just means you will then get the most out of the paid time afterwards.
- Basic Shopify monthly plan price - $29
- Shopify monthly plan price - $79
- Advanced Shopify monthly plan price - $299
- Shopify plus minimum - $2000 per month depending on your business circumstance.
- There are also no set-up fees on top of these price plans
Other Benefits - If you feel like upgrading to a higher plan, you can do so as it works month to month, if Shopify doesn’t work for you can cancel at any given time!
Some will see these as expensive, but It is very flexible to allow businesses of all sizes to use to build your online presence and monitor it. Besides, you will generate more sales by having a good website in the end!
Easy to use - For any start-up business, an easy platform is essential, especially if you are using it yourself (unlike a developer who is very familiarised). This is where Shopify is beneficial!
Its simple layout and good interface are why most start-ups use it, as a complex set-up can feel a bit intimidating cant it?
If your website platform is difficult to understand then that will negatively impact the results of your website; don’t forget that problems are easily noticed by users.
Some of the features Shopify offers (depending on the plan you invest in):
- Different number of staff accounts
- 24/7 support
- Discount codes
- Gift cards
- SSL certificate
- Fraud analysis
- Report builder
- Sales channels
It is an extremely powerful platform that can seem overwhelming yet allows you to even start up and launch your website over a weekend! That’s impressive. If you are new to coding, there is a web builder tool that offers templates that you customise and that are easy for you to understand. If you still found yourself struggling, be aware that Shopify provides great customer service, offering helpful articles and employee chat rooms to ensure any risen problems can be solved.
Secure and Reliable - Shopify is a global hosted service, meaning they have people monitoring the network at all times. This is to prevent any attacks that could put itself and other businesses at risk.
Shopify has paid over $850,000 to more than 300 ethical hackers for help in resolving security issues. It is one of the safest eCommerce platforms to use, you would rather invest in Shopify over some small company that could give your start-up process a lot more problems!
Why is it so important that it is kept secure? Well, an unprotected site is a huge security risk for data stealing and hacking. This can lead to customers (you) being redirected to websites that scam and infect visitors with malicious software. The reality is, you want to be able to trust a site that holds a valuable part of your business therefore it is a crucial benefit of Shopify.
Having a reliable server is important in eCommerce, one of our sites has had over 170,000 visitors in about 9 months. Shopify doesn’t crash often so we don’t miss out on sales as you might on another platform.
Great Intergrations - As more apps are becoming available this is where integration becomes useful. App integration is simply the process of bringing data from one app to the other. In short, you want all of them together and able to work/understand each other. The main positive of app integration is the amount of time it saves with everything linked in the same place through Shopify.
Let’s say you have a CRM tool or even email marketing and you have integrated them within Shopify. If you make a sale, a new opportunity is created in those tools, allowing you to automate and control the whole process with ease! Sounds handy? Well, it also reduces any duplicates, avoiding any errors that can annoy customers and take a while to fix.
You also have more customisation and insights without it being complicated. You can almost create a routine or a path of how you want the process to go. If you wanted the Shopify revenue data to transfer into Salesforce, then you can instead of trying to hold the information in different places. All of the apps can work together for better data insights which can help adapt any strategies or see what’s successful.
It’s a big benefit to Shopify that some people don’t know that much about, you can approach customers with wider knowledge and more versatility all in one solution.
The big brands using Shopify, with amazing growth rates 1 billion people have bought from Shopify stores in the last 12 months, selling over $14 billion worth of products in 2018. As of now, there are more than 1.2 million people actively using the Shopify backend platform. From 2013-2016, revenue from merchant services increased from 20% up to 50%!
Top Shopify stores in 2019:
- Budweiser - $11 billion annual revenue
- Tesla - $11 billion annual revenue
- Red Bull - $7 billion
- Gymshark - $128 million
- Rebecca Minkoff - $91 million
Knowing that companies like the above are still using Shopify is a big motivator for most Shopify users and also goes to show that even easy software is used by extremely successful brands. It is also good to see the potential growth that could happen for your business, making the start–up experience more exciting.
Conclusion - Without a doubt, Shopify is such a great platform and if you are a start-up business you shouldn’t feel worried that it’s too complex or not going to be beneficial for what you’re paying. If you need any help with website development come to our office for a cuppa and chat. Here at PrimtiveSense we also use Shopify for our clients, and we know what can work best!
