With many players in the market, no business can survive targeting a small locality. You need to have a global perspective and try to sell your products worldwide for maximum ROI. Shopify is the platform where you can seamlessly create an online store and start selling. It can also provide you with the necessary tools for your retail store. Let’s dive deep into the tools and benefits of Shopify. But first, check how it helps social media businesses and small businesses.
Challenges of Small or Social Media Businesses
If you run a small business or your business is based on social media, you must have encountered hundreds of challenges. With big and established players already secured a solid place in the market, reaching potential customers and making an impression on them is difficult. Small businesses have to provide facilities and features similar to renowned enterprises, if not better than them. People should be able to purchase the products without any hiccups from social media sellers and small businesses. But with limited investment, resources, and market cap, how would they do that?
How Shopify can Help Businesses
Enter Shopify — a commerce solution suitable for businesses of all sizes. Whether you want to launch your small business or create an online store for an existing business, Shopify should be your ultimate choice. You can easily set up a website for your small business using Shopify and build your brand image among your customers. It also helps you with inventory management and scalability. For social media sellers, Shopify offers services such as a single link to share all business, social media marketing campaigns, direct selling from accounts, and many more tools.
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a platform where you can set up an online store for selling products. You can leverage this platform using its Point of Sale feature if you want to sell your products in person. Retail stores, market sales, and pop-up shops can use the POS for effortless in-person selling. It is designed to address the commerce needs of all sizes of businesses. Even if you sell only on social media, you can opt for Shopify. This user-friendly platform, with 2,100,000+ active users and availability in 175 countries, is also ideal for selling through seller marketplaces.
Shopify Commerce Tools
Shopify hosts a diverse range of business tools. It offers these tools or platforms as products to its users. The followings are the major Shopify products that you should be using regularly:
#1. Start the Business
Shopify Start enables you to set up your business effortlessly on its platform. Start helps you to build the business brand, increase your brand’s online presence, and start selling on the first day. Some key tools and assets from Shopify Start are:
Logo makerBrand name generatorStock photosStore themeWholesaleDropshippingPrintify
#2. Market the Business
Shopify marketing solution helps you to market your business to a global audience. It offers all the marketing tools that you might need. Some notable tools are:
Audience targetingEmail marketingGoogle Performance MaxFacebook AdsMarketing dashboard reportsCustomer group buildingAutomated yet personalized customer messaging
#3. Manage the Business
You get all tools needed to manage the business under one umbrella when switching to Shopify. For example:
A simplified payment gateway is Shopify Payments. You can accept various payment methods at affordable transaction fees. Additionally, you can offer installment-based purchases too.You can use the Shopify Balance account for business banking if you do not possess a business banking account.Shopify also offers business setup and management loans through Shopify Capital.Shopify has a robust shipping system as well.The eCommerce automation from Shopify empowers you to convert manual business to autopilot business.
#4. Domain Names
Shopify also offers domain names at competitive costs should you prefer to move your brand to an independent domain. When you get a domain name that only reflects your business name, your brand becomes more valuable and impactful.
#5. Mobile Commerce Set Up
Shopify is a mobile-compatible platform. Its Android and iOS apps enable you to set up a full business, manage products, cater to customers, supervise staff, and more just from a mobile or tablet app. That is not all! You can also accept payments using the Shopify POS app available on Google Play and App Store.
How to Start Selling Products via Shopify
Register with Shopify to start with a 14-day free trial.Go through the quick-start wizard from Shopify for obligatory setups, like choosing the channels where you want to sell your products.Activate Shopify Payments and choose the payment methods for your online store.Add and organize your products under different collections. Include necessary info about products for SEO and user experience.Build your online store by selecting themes and customization.Place a successful test order and make the website live.
Benefits of Using Shopify Sell
There are great perks and advantages of using Shopify for your eCommerce business. Have a look at the most useful Shopify benefits:
Easy to Use Interface
Shopify is an intuitive platform that you can set up and use without any fuss. Even if you have no experience in web development and hosting, you will find Shopify super easy to use. It offers all things you need to launch your eCommerce website.
Security
Security is vital for any website, and Shopify offers you a secured framework. Since your website deals with personal and financial user data, which is strictly confidential, choosing Shopify means having all the security in place for the data.
App Integrations
Shopify supports easy integration with several popular and common apps. You can even connect Facebook Messenger, Instagram Messenger, Apple Business Chat, and online store chat to Shopify Inbox. Therefore, you can easily integrate added features and functionalities to your website for value addition.
Reliability
With Shopify, you can expect 99.9% uptime for your websites. So, your website is always online and working. Moreover, it offers features you need to upgrade and maintain your website.
Quick Loading Websites
In this fast-paced world, speed matters a lot for eCommerce websites. This globally-hosted solution comes with a set of reliable infrastructure, hardware, and software. Thus, your website will load in seconds, giving your customers a seamless shopping experience.
Awesome Visual Experience
Online store visitors should find the website appealing, as a shabby interface might make them question the credibility of the website. You can select any professional template from Shopify’s range of collections suitable for your website. Using a visually appealing theme template, you can ensure rich UX.
Powerful Marketing Options
Shopify also offers various marketing tools that you can use to increase your audience reach and revenue. You can use Shopify tools for targeted email marketing, store statistics, advanced e-commerce analytics, custom gift cards, and discount coupons.
Mobile-Friendly Websites
With a growing number of mobile phone users, mobile responsiveness is the key to e-commerce store success. Since Shopify themes are responsive, you can use them to create customized websites that look good on any device.
Secured Payment Facilities
While integrating a dependable payment gateway is daunting, Shopify lets you quickly set up the payment gateway. It supports Stripe for collecting payments from buyers.
SEO-Friendly
Shopify lets you create SEO-friendly websites. Hence, you can make your website organically visible to your target audience. You can design campaign-based landing pages, add titles and meta tags, and include a blog section on these websites.
Major Features of Shopify
When it comes to creating and managing an online store, Shopify is the most reliable platform. Highlighted Shopify features for sales include:
Custom Online Store
Shopify lets you create a sophisticated and beautiful online store for your products. From its collection of 70+ customizable and responsive themes, you can create your website as you have visualized it in your mind. The drag-and-drop store builder of this platform makes store creation easier for you without any need to know coding or designing. It also lets you have custom domains that you can buy through Shopify or bring by yourself.
Point of Sale
This feature is essential for those willing to scale up their in-person sales and offer standout retail experiences to their customers. With POS services, you can ensure personalized service, easy shopping, and effortless returns to your customers. By downloading the Shopify Retail POS app, you can turn your mobile device into a sales point and reach customers all over the world. Other POS features include Advanced inventory management, unified reporting, and custom staff permissions.
Flexible Buy Button
Shopify Buy Button is an efficient way to include an embedded product checkout option on any website or social media. Shopify lets you display products just as you want them to be using embedded code. You can also embed a shopping cart for a secure and mobile-friendly shopping experience. Moreover, you can customize the color according to your brand.
Sales Channels
Using Shopify Sales Channels, you can reach out to more people through promotion and sell your products on multiple channels. You can sell your products on Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok while showcasing your merchandise next to your YouTube videos. It also allows you to enlist your products on various online marketplaces like eBay, Google, and Walmart to reach new customers. Since Shopify takes care of order and inventory tracking, there won’t be any discrepancies.
Shopify Use Cases
Allbirds is a fashion and apparel product brand that has seen a surge in omnichannel conversions using Shopify POS systems.Beauty brand Only Curls experienced a 10% Increase in average order value and a 180% increase in sales after switching to Shopify Launchpad and Shopify Plus Certified Apps.Nathan James, that sells home furnishing products, came across 500+ new customers after using Shopify Audience.Food processing company Heinz was able to launch their new direct-to-consumer store in 7 days from the contract.Rumple is a brand promoting sustainable outdoor living. It doubled its revenue in 2 years using Shopify Scripts and Shopify Flow.
Shopify Pricing
Below is a concise and easy explanation of Shopify pricing plans:
#1. Basic
This plan lets you have all the features needed for store creation, product shipment, and payments process. It will cost you $29/ month and lets you enjoy 2 staff accounts, 4 inventory locations, and basic reporting.
#2. Shopify
Companies who want to scale up their businesses with professional reports can get this plan at the cost of $79/per month. It lets you have 5 staff accounts and 5 inventory locations.
#3. Advanced
To enjoy the lowest transaction fees, you need to pay $299/ month and get this plan. It offers features like 15 staff accounts, maximum of 8 inventory locations, and a custom report builder. With all these primary plans, you also get features like an online store, point of sale, sales channels, and 24/7 support. If you choose to pay annually, you can save 50% of your expense. There are two more Shopify plans available for users.
#4. Starter
People who want to run businesses through social and messaging apps can go for this plan which will cost them $5/ month.
#5. Shopify Plus
Enterprises with the requirement of high-volume business can opt for this plan starting from $2,000 per month. You can also try all these platforms for 14 days for free before making the final decision.
Shopify Alternatives
If you want to compare Shopify with other products, here are the alternatives:
AWS Marketplace
AWS Marketplace is a digital platform where people can buy, sell or deploy third-party applications and services to run businesses and build solutions. It contains products from various categories and industries such as security, data products, machine learning, healthcare, and telecommunication.
Nexcess
Nexcess is a platform that supports website building and fully managed hosting. It not only lets you create websites at a fast speed, but its strong security also allows you to safe against online predators. Its inherent automatic scalability feature is great for growing businesses. Using Nexcess, anyone can create content and commerce websites.
BigCommerce
BigCommerce is a reliable eCommerce solution provider. It offers a combination of integrations and tools for your enterprise for quick customization. Here, you get the flexibility and scalability you need for the changing global business scenario. The top features of this platform include frictionless checkout, actionable insights, abandoned cart recovery, open APIs, etc.
Wrapping Up
Shopify has grown into a global commerce platform since its inception 16 years ago in 2006. Now, businesses of any size and revenue model use this commercial platform to sell products to their target audience. Whether you are planning to sell consumer goods, online services, brand merchandise, or digital apps, Shopify must be your first choice. So far, you have gone through an in-depth review of the Shopify platform and its offerings. It should now be easy for you to decide if Shopify is the right platform for your business.
