What is Shopify?
Shopify is a well-known and popular online e-commerce site where small companies can build online stores that sell their products through websites or social media. The company also sells point-of-sale software (POS), which small-sized businesses can utilize for their brick-and-mortar shops.
Shopify offers a variety of add-ons that can assist you in doing more. The most popular add-ons are Shopify Payments, which are utilized to accept credit card payments, and Shopify Shipping, which creates shipping labels and offers shipping discounts. Shopify Markets, which lets companies sell internationally. The add-ons could result in additional costs.
How does Shopify work?
Shopify will help small businesses get an online storefront set up and running fairly quickly. This is a quick outline of the ways Shopify functions:
Create your shop. Shopify has more than 70 store themes available to pick from. Additionally, there are drag-and-drop features to make the process simpler. You can customize the colors, images, and fonts. The website you create automatically functions on mobile devices. You can add any number of items.
Set up your payment options. You can accept credit cards from your customers through the Shopify payment system, an additional service that permits you to take payments.
Include a Buy button. You can embed an item card and a checkout form on any social media site or website.
Sell through multiple sales channels. You don’t have to sell your items only on your website. Shopify can be used Shopify to promote your items on Google, eBay, Walmart, TikTok, Pinterest, Facebook, Instagram, and other websites.
Install the POS side in case you run brick-and-mortar stores
Keep track of your business. Shopify has a dashboard that shows reports, analytics, and other data on mobile and desktop. You can manage everything through Shopify Mobile. Shopify Mobile app as well by uploading images of your product and pricing, handling refunds, tracking traffic and sales from visitors, receiving order notifications, and interacting with your staff. It is possible to access the Shopify dashboard is accessible to users in Chinese, Czech, Danish, Dutch, English, Finnish, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Spanish, Swedish, Thai, Turkish, and Vietnamese.
How much Shopify costs ?
Basic Shopify
Shopify does not limit the number of items or storage space for files, which means you can sell the products you want, digital or physical. The plan also comes with advanced features, such as abandoned cart recovery emails, gift cards, and the ability to have a multilingual store. Chat, email, and phone assistance is also offered.
However, the fees for credit cards (2.9 % + 30C+ 30C) and transaction charges (2 percent) are higher with this plan than those on the Shopify or Advanced plans. Additionally, features such as professional reports and third-party-calculated shipping costs aren’t included (although you might not require these).
Shopify
The plan called Shopify can be a big step up from the previous one; however, it comes with a lower rate for credit cards (2.6 % plus 30C(or) and transaction fees (1 percent). It also comes with more features, such as professionally-written reports, which give you more insights into your online store and make analysis easier.
It’s better suited to international sales since it comes with domains specific to a particular country (if you’re planning to have different domains for different regions) and the use of percentage-based pricing for international sales.
Advanced Shopify
Advanced Shopify is the most expensive pricing plan for regular stores. However, it is the credit card rate is among the most affordable (at 2.4 percent + 30C+ 30C) in addition to the transaction cost (0.5%)) and also provides the best shipping conditions in the US.
This plan is the sole choice if you’ve agreements with third-party shipping companies and would like to offer these prices to your clients (although there’s a trick to follow for accessing these rates on lower plans. More on the subject below).
Other Shopify Pricing Plans: Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus
Shopify Lite
Shopify Lite is specifically designed for people who already have a website and want a quick and easy method to begin selling on it.
You can embed the individual products, collections of products, and a shopping cart directly to your website through shopping carts that use Shopify’s Buy Buttons. But, you won’t have an entire storefront as you do with the basic, Shopify, and Advanced plans.
It is $9 per month.
Shopify Plus
Shopify Plus can be described as an enterprise solution designed for businesses that want to scale their e-commerce platform.
Short version: Shopify Plus pricing begins at around 2000 dollars per month, an enormous increase over Shopify Advanced. What will you receive on top? The dedicated team of support will assist you to launch your website and provide 24 hours of prioritized support.
Your developers will have greater access to the Shopify system to customize (cart scripting and a dedicated API.). You are covered with two additional clone storefronts for internationalization.
What is Shopify POS
The mobile POS in-person selling option is included in the majority of Shopify plans, including the $9-per-month Shopify Lite Plan. The Shopify POS Lite allows merchants to track sales in person using a mobile app and accept payments with a manually entered entry or an integrated card reader on the mobile phone. POS Lite requires using Shopify Payments as your payment processor. Mobile card readers come with the cost of a single purchase of $49 per reader.
Pros and Cons of Shopify
Pros
1. Customer Support
Shopify offers a 24-hour support team available for your needs anytime during the week. They can be reached via live chat, email, or by calling their hotline. They have four hotlines, each dedicated to distinct regions.
2. Super Scalable
You must ensure that the platform you choose to use will expand with your company so that you do not have to fret about changing providers. Shopify has flexible prices and features that can accommodate the growth of businesses of any size, from startups to large enterprises. It’s a comprehensive eCommerce solution that’s future-proofed by extensive development, support, and integration with third-party companies to increase the number of features available.
3. Variety of Themes
Themes influence the design of your online store. The more appealing your store’s design appears, the greater your chance of keeping more customers. The more people you can attract, the greater the conversion rate of leads increases.
Shopify is aware of the value of themes and provides users with abundance. Businesses of different types have themes specifically designed specifically for these categories.
4. Fast & Secure:
Since it is a hosted service, your server’s security is protected by Shopify. Your customer’s data and files are protected on servers built to handle massive amounts of customers. Therefore, your store will load quickly even when using mobile devices.
5. Apps and Plugins
Since Shopify cannot provide all the services your company requires, the creators behind Shopify created the in-built app store, which includes more than 1,200 applications and plugins. Each plugin and app has a particular purpose.
Cons
1. Limited Design Customization Options
While Shopify offers a broad range of themes, the design customization is not as extensive. You’ll need to engage an expert designer to customize the design and appearance of your shop.
A poorly-designed website can hinder prospective customers from interacting with your company. In this instance, the potential customers may go to a competitor’s website and not return. A poorly-designed Shopify website could also impact your search engine optimization. It is important to not be overlooked by your business. This is why, even if it’s only to aid you in your technical SEO and your initial content strategy, it is recommended to employ an SEO specialist to ensure success.
2. Shopify Processing Fees
Every sale you make through Shopify will result in a transaction cost. It is necessary to pay this fee to make use of third-party payment gateways in addition to Shopify payments. Fees differ based on a plan, but the Shopify fees could be a surprise when you aren’t aware of the amount you’re paying.
3. Key features are missing
While it does offer services for web hosting and domains and even marketing via email, Shopify does not have an email host service that is commonly utilized by the majority of companies. If you want to establish a hosting email service for your company, you’ll need to search for a different platform that offers the service.
4. Migration challenges
The transfer from Shopify customers to different platforms isn’t common. But, many users claim that making changes to their Shopify account could cause problems in a variety of ways. If you are migrating from Shopify, there is a chance that you could lose a portion of the data that you have saved. The only solution for users is to export their site in a CSV format. With a variety of eCommerce systems, like Shopify, the issue persists.
What Can You Sell on Shopify
- Clothing
- Jewelry
- Accessories for the home
- Travel products
- Baby or maternity items
- Bags and luggage
- Fitness equipment
- Beauty products
- Kitchenware
- Pet products
- Accessories for vehicles
What products you can’t sell on Shopify
- Certain firearms and parts of them
- Counterfeit or unauthorized goods
- Gambling-related products
- Regulated products and services
- Adult-oriented products
- Drug paraphernalia
- Event tickets
- High-risk businesses like bankruptcy lawyers, technical support, telecommunications equipment, etc.
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