E-commerce platform is a powerful field of the internet world. At these platforms, you can purchase and sell everything of life. These are also known as online shopping stores. First time in 2006, Tobias Lutke, Scott Laks, and Daniel Weinand have founded an e-commerce platform, named Shopify. Nowadays, Shopify is listed in top e-commerce platforms. In 2015, Shopify was a #1 online shopping store till it has that award. It has more than 200,000 retailers now.
Today, Shopify has tens of millions of important customer including most great clients’ General Electric, Amnesty International, and Tesla Motors, Encyclopedia Britannica, Foo Fighters, GitHub and many others. If you have no idea about the online store building and have the wish to build it, then I recommend you must use Shopify for this purpose because it makes easy to create and manage your online store.
Shopify Features
Shopify has very easy and complete control panel (“dashboard”). No need coding to work on its dashboard. It is too simple, and you can handle everything from here. You can easily add new projects, products, images, and orders by Shopify control panel. The discount sheet you can also upload through the dashboard.
Shopify POS (“Point of Sale”) system is the best system for a retail store. If you can sell your products at retail price, then you can use this system. You will find it helping for offline products selling on both software and hardware side. Shopify POS software makes it easy to administer orders from your computer, iPhone, iPad and all other mobile devices.
Shopify is a big app online store. It has an enormous amount of free and paid apps as compared to other e-commerce platforms. With the help of apps, you can enhance your online shopping store more as you like.
These are separated into different types such as social media, marketing, shipping, sales, customer service, and customer account and content management system (“CMS”). By this, you can build new management page, and also, your clients can content you through this page. Everything you can handle from a single side.
Currently, Shopify made their checkout area, and now all themes have sufficiently sensitive checkout area. Due to sensitive check out your site automatically settles into the size of your Screen. Other than that, the company has changed the way of checkout works. Now you can customize this area to look just like the rest of your online store.
Shopify Ease of Use
The use of all features of Shopify is very easy, and it is free to that fear your site will be overwhelmed. Its strict sense takes minutes to create and open a first e-commerce store. One useful feature of Shopify is that you can test your store before releasing. Also, you can edit it online or done it online.
If you have not owned domain and wanted to buy it, then you can buy it through the Shopify control panel because it is much easier as compared to other third-party hosting sites.
A lot of importance include in the Shopify dashboard that makes your store as ease to use as possible, and also offering you advanced options that are necessary for the additional features making. I enjoy that fact of Shopify where you can quickly drag and drop different links to create your limited navigation menu.
Pricing Plans of Shopify
Shopify has five different pricing schemes. The Lite or starter plan price is $9/ month. While their basic plan price starts from $29/month, pro plan price is $79/month, and the biggest plan price is $179/month. They also offer you a reduction if you pay a full year price in advanced then you’ll get 10% discount, and if they pay two years price in advance, you’ll get 20% discount.
Other than those plans, if you want to sell your products both online and offline sources, then Shopify offers different programs ranging start at $78 and end at $228 per month.
If you want to sell your products just offline then, Shopify offers a program that is quite handy. The cheapest price rates of the offline plan start at $49 per month, and most high plan price is $199 per month. Other platforms unlike is not providing you these facilities which give you Shopify by natural ways and in reasonable price.
Shopify Design and Themes
Everything you want to run your high amount online store you can find on it. Shopify has more than 100 professional templates store including free and paid. You can easily find them with price and reviews about different themes by visiting the Shopify themes store.
You can read your favorite theme reviews after the click on the theme. Paid themes pricing range started at $80 and ended at $180. The customization of Shopify themes is very easing. You will love by heart. You can open them quickly and edit them at that time when you get it as you want.
When you select your favorite theme, which can be free or paid. After that, the next step is the installation of the theme in your theme. Its installation is very simple you just go to the theme page and scroll down until you find the update button then just add your site theme.
Shopify Inventory Management
Inventory management is an essential feature of Shopify, and it is necessary part if you want to run your online shopping store. Shopify is also giving you that inventory management area.
Once you’re ready to add inventory management to your e-commerce platform, then all you need to do is force down the product tab in the sidebar on the control panel. When you add it then automatically you will be taken the below page.
On the product page, everything like title, description, and prices of products are customizable, the significant fact of this page is that you can give each product SKU (stock keeping unit) and as well as a Barcode too.
Shopify Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
If you have a very stable online shopping store, but people can’t find it quickly. As its result, you have a chance to get the lost with the sale figures. For this purpose, Shopify offers great features which help you in both SEO and Marketing field. Search engine optimization is a great feature of Shopify with the assistance of this your site will easily be found on all the main search engines such as Bing, DuckDuckGo, Yahoo, Munax, and Google, etc.
If you want to modify your platform more then the company suggests SEO best practices like customizable H1, title, and meta tags. The company will also have partnered with Google to give you $100 when you spend $25 on advertising with new AdWords account, and when you sign up for your Shopify account, you take delivery of a $50 credit for new Facebook Ads accounts.
Shopify has created a discount code coupon generator to help promote your products through different social media networks like MailChimp, Pinterest, Instagram, and Tumbl, etc. Shopify sends newsletters of various customers, and if they sign up on your site, then your store will get fame.
Shopify Payment Processors
Most people who buy things online they are paying their payment by using third-party payment processors. For example, PayPal, Payoneer, Authorize.net, Strips, and Google Checkout, etc. These all payment processors charge their fee per transaction.
But Shopify is one of the best e-commerce platforms that provides their payment processor called Shopify Payments, if you decide to get Shopify payment processor then, all transaction fees will be raised according to your plan.
The company charges 2.9% + 30c per transaction on a basic payment plan while the company charges 2.5% +30c on professional plan and 2.25% + 30c on unlimited plan per transaction. Currently, this payment processor is only available for US and Canada people.
Other than that, a company offers the integrations with over 70 various payment gateways, including credit card, Google Checkout, PayPal and many other companies payments.
Shopify Web Hosting
Web hosting or security is necessary for e-commerce. Therefore, Shopify has created their shopping cart platform plus their hosting to be level 1 PCI DSS compliant, so you don’t worry about the security of your Data. All pricing plans offer 128-bit-Free SSL certificate to keep your customers’ information.
All update of Shopify features are automatic, so you’ll receive the latest features immediately without any hassle. The company provides their clients 99.94% uptime guarantee because they work around the clock.
Shopify 24/7 Support
The Shopify’s support team available 24/7 (24/7 mean, 24 hours days and seven days a week) through email, live chat, and phone. Another help great service they introduce on the website directly, and this includes user forums, tutorials as well as FAQs. Shopify is an e-commerce University, where you can get everything you need to know about selling online. You’ll find eBooks, video series, webinars, articles and much more that make sure your online business succeed.
Conclusion
After reading the above features of Shopify, I can say that, if you want to sell your products online then you must give Shopify a try. Shopify is an imperative e-commerce platform. That’s way I would recommend you Shopify for an online store. If you don’t buy their any paid plan directly, then you must try their 14-days-free-trial. I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.