Shopify Review (2024): eCommerce Solutions Review
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a high profile software platform that forms the underpinnings of many ecommerce sites, combining impressive tools and an intuitive interface to enable businesses and individuals to create unique digital storefronts. It offers a holistic approach to site building, enabling users to add products, handle transactions and host their site on a reliable infrastructure. With comprehensive security features, user data and sales can be carried out safely every time.
Getting Started
One of the best things about Shopify is that it does not leave users in the dark about how to get ahead in the world of ecommerce. Instead, sites created using this platform get their own official ‘coach’ – an expert in the field that will be able to provide guidance during the early stages of your journey towards sales success. Furthermore, it enables you to run your first promotional efforts thanks to the inclusion of $100 in credit for use with Google’s Adwords platform, letting you pay for high profile appearance on SERPs without relying solely on organic SEO to win over your first customers.
Hosting Options
Shopify partners with hosting firm, ServerCentral in order to offer customers a great place to base the site they create. This also means that businesses can cater to a global audience if required without having to compromise on site performance in certain regions. Other benefits of this partnership include the availability of unlimited bandwidth to help cope with traffic spikes, in addition to a back-up solution that will automatically preserve site data so that it can be restored in the event of a disaster.
Security
Regulatory compliance is important for ecommerce sites, and Shopify certainly lives up to expectations thanks to its rigorous security features. As well as being compatible with level 1 of the Payment Card Industry’s Data Security Standard (PCI DSS), sites based on this platform will have 128bit secure socket layer (SSL) encryption that prevents third parties from being able to decode data even if security is compromised. This will give visitors the confidence to complete a transaction when they visit your site.
Support
As well as offering users the opportunity to get in touch with questions and concerns via email, with comprehensive responses provided in a short amount of time, Shopify endeavors to address the needs of its customers with a range of other solutions. This includes a community dedicated to providing support, complete with forums populated by helpful experts that will be a good place to start any search for an answer to a common issue.
Furthermore, there is a frequently asked questions section of its official site which is a good starting point for those looking for assistance. However, if you would prefer to talk to a real person, Shopify has a helpline staffed by an approachable team whose members will take your call when advice is required.
Site Design Capabilities
Getting started with a Shopify site is simple because it has hundreds of pre-made templates from which users can pick if they want to avoid starting from scratch. Of course, because most users will not want to end up with a cookie cutter site that does not stand out from the crowd, Shopify then allows an in-depth degree of customization which covers everything from the layout and typography to the underlying HTML. Advanced users can even avoid templates altogether and build a site from the ground up if they wish.
Product Options
While some ecommerce platforms are only designed around the distribution of products which are purchased online and then physically delivered to customers, Shopify does not limit its users in this way. It also supports the sale of digital content, which means it is suitable for those who want to generate revenue from items that are intangible. Whether this is a ticket to a conference or a copy of an audio track, Shopify will help you to get it out there and find an audience.
Payment Variety
Shopify is a platform that is designed to be as flexible as possible, which is why it allows users to select from more than 50 of the most popular payment solutions to handle transactions. This includes major names like PayPal as well as its biggest rivals, giving users a lot of autonomy in terms of how they choose to accept payments from customers.
Mobile Support
The mobile market is vital to ecommerce now that most people own and use smartphones to shop online. So Shopify is capable of enabling users to create mobile-friendly, responsive sites and even building their own transactional apps which can be installed directly onto devices. This will allow customers to be engaged across as many platforms as possible.
Costs
Shopify takes a tiered approach to pricing its ecommerce packages, with the Starter option costing only $5 a month and featuring no transaction fees and no long-term contract to tie you down. Upgrading to the most popular package will cost $79 a month and adds benefits including support for gift cards, abandoned cart recovery and professional analytical tools.
All packages come with unlimited storage and bandwidth, meaning that there is no need to worry about extra fees being charged unexpectedly during an especially busy month. In addition, set-up is free, and you can cancel your account at any time.
Social Media Support
Every Shopify user can benefit from the fact that their package includes a fully integrated Facebook store as part of the monthly costs. This is another key way to target mobile users and improve visibility and traffic because, of course, Facebook is now an innately mobile-oriented social media solution.
It is also a very user-friendly way to showcase products, providing images and information on new lines without any trouble at all. Because you can set this to automatically sync with your site, the administration involved in keeping this up to date is minimal. This is all part of Shopify’s integrated, cross-platform approach to ecommerce that users are already harnessing and benefiting from.
