Ease of Setting Up
Getting out the gate with Shopify is pretty straightforward, with very few technical skills required. Simply head over to their website, sign up, and you will be given detailed instructions on how to set up your online store. They are also great about making sure that you have the latest updates to guarantee that your store has the most up-to-date features.
Reliable Hosting
Since Shopify is a self-hosted platform, there is no need to invest in a separate web hosting service. Every Shopify plan includes secure hosting to ensure your store is always online and protected. Moreover, when you buy a domain name through Shopify, you will be given the option to create professional-looking emails like name@yourstore.com if you so desire.
Extensive Functionality
Shopify APIs (Application Programming Interface) are indispensable tools used to integrate any necessary features missing into the standard interface. As the needs of online stores differ, it’s a smart decision to let online store owners decide which functionality they need to integrate rather than overload every store with unwanted features.
For example, you can extend product variations and filters with Shopify APIs if you need to add more variants beyond what the standard functionality includes.
Personalization and Customization
To create a unique online store, you can take advantage of an assortment of themes available right on the Shopify website. The company is all in when it comes to modern website design and development, so it updates its collections regularly. In the summer of 2022, for instance, Shopify released 8 new free and 10 new premium themes. In addition, you can find themes all over the web created by outside developers that perfectly integrate with Shopify. Simply choose the one that best suits your needs, and you will be all set to go.
It’s also important to emphasize that Shopify allows you to create a unique store by adding your own custom code. This allows you to have more of an open road to create personalized solutions to meet your demands.
Professional Shopify development services are available to help you implement any ideas in case you lack coding experience. A great example is a Product Customizer developed by PSD2HTML for a handmade jewelry store called Young In the Mountains.
The Product Customizer is a unique solution developed from scratch and integrated into the Shopify store. It allows store visitors to create their own pieces of jewelry using predefined options. The process of ordering custom rings, earrings, necklaces, and bracelets is pretty straightforward because the Customizer guides you through each step.
Convenient Product Management
Adding and organizing products is crucial for any online store. Shopify has several instruments to facilitate store management.
- Multi-tag filtering allows you to add several tags to products so that customers can see them in a relevant collection.
- Collections organization makes product grouping easier. You can create and name collections in a way that best suits your potential buyers.
- Comfortable navigation: it’s also possible to create a mega menu to arrange categories effectively and save website space.
User-Friendly Admin Panel
The admin panel provided by Shopify is pretty intuitive. So even if you have never managed an online store, you’ll find it easy with Shopify. The admin panel includes such items as Orders, Products, Customers, Analytics, and Marketing that let you control your shop management.
Detailed Documentation
Shopify does everything to facilitate pushing its eCommerce platform to be the best. You’ll have access to a ton of resources such as guides, articles, videos, podcasts, business courses, blog posts, etc., to choose from to get the information you need to tackle your goals. You can also join the Shopify community to participate in various events as well as ask questions to other like-minded people.
Scalability
Shopify is suitable for any size selling platform. From launching a small online store to running a huge dropshipping website, you have the right tools and capabilities at your fingertips to make it happen.
Regular Feature Updates
Shopify handles all software updates and consistently introduces new functionality. Here are just a few new features introduced in the summer of 2022.
- Shopify Audiences is a handy app that assists in finding customers via digital ads
- Twitter Shopping lets you highlight and sell goods directly on your Twitter profile
- B2B eCommerce is a platform that provides features for wholesaling
- Additional purchase options (pre-orders, subscriptions, and “try before you buy” apps) ensure more flexibility for customers who want to buy products
- Tokengated Commerce allows buyers to connect their crypto wallets and get personalized benefits with their NFTs
- Shopify Flow lets you create custom workflows to automate commerce-specific tasks
As you can see, Shopify analyzes the demands of online stores and implements new features to keep up with the times.
Payment and Shipping Options
Additionally, you can select any necessary shipping options, and now Shopify is even set up to allow shipping to global destinations.
Automatic Sales Tax Calculation
It is often necessary to charge sales tax on certain products when selling online. These taxes depend on your country and region because tax laws and regulations vary. With automatic sales tax calculation by Shopify, you don’t have to worry about not charging sales tax in a situation where you should or vice versa. They even offer convenient tax override setups for specific situations.
Multilingual Support
Running an international online store also requires creating different language versions of the website. With Shopify, you can get up to 20 translated versions of your store, which allows you to grow your international audience easily.
Enhanced Security
Another great feature is that you get free SSL certificates for all domains added to Shopify. This way you can rest easy knowing that your customer’s sensitive data is encrypted and safe.
Responsive Design
If you choose a Shopify-designed theme, it is guaranteed to be a responsive website design that will ensure easy browsing on mobile devices. It’s crucial to make your online store responsive as more and more sales are made via smartphones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
SEO Tools
Analytics Tools
The Shopify dashboard shows total sales, the returning customer rate, the conversion rate, top products, and online store sessions by location, device type, traffic source, and social source. You can also connect to Google Analytics to gain a deeper insight into traffic flows and customers’ behavior.
Marketing and Promotion Capabilities
Using marketing automation by Shopify, you can create custom automation with a trigger-condition action that will match your business needs. Additionally, you can take advantage of email marketing tools to create strategic email campaigns, which include ready-made templates to speed up the process.
Furthermore, the popular eCommerce platform lets you create discount codes and gift vouchers to promote your products.
Another marketing feature available in Shopify is Google and Facebook advertising. You can set up Google Shopping ads with the help of Shopify integrations to promote your goods.
Abandoned Cart Recovery
One of the most difficult challenges in eCommerce is how to keep customers from abandoning their shopping carts. Shopify again comes to the rescue with a really helpful feature that provides automatic email notifications for registered online store users who haven’t completed their purchases.
Other Tools
- a slogan maker
- a QR code and barcode generators
- a business card maker
- an invoice generator
- a shipping label and purchase order templates
- an image resizer
- a business loan porta,
- a cost of advertising (CPM) calculator
It should be mentioned, however, that tools like the logo or business card makers have limited design options which can be a negative but the designs can be a nice starting point for finding inspiration for your brand creations.
Blog
A built-in blog is another excellent tool to promote your products and collections. Remember that the key to blogging is making sure that you post regularly. This makes your readers and search engines happy.
Point of Sale to Sell in Person
Besides running an online store, you can also sell your products offline. With Shopify POS (Point Of Sale), you can manage products, customers, and payments as long as you have a phone and a reliable Internet connection. This allows you to bring the power of Shopify to face-to-face transactions with customers and is incredibly convenient if customers want to put their hands on the products before they buy them.
Reliable Support
If you need any assistance with your Shopify store, you can reach out to their support service 24/7. Their fast response time ensures that your store will avoid any major hiccups and keep running smoothly.
Conclusion
Shopify is an eCommerce platform offering numerous online store creation, management, and marketing solutions. No matter the size of the store you need, the company has the right solution for you with an abundance of the right tools included to promote your business.