When first launching an eCommerce website, it can be difficult to decide what platform to help design and build your website. Shopify is a popular and effective program to consider when reaching this step in your online business. It is a complete commerce program that is entirely cloud based. It will allow you to easily set up a website and get your ecommerce business running.
What is Shopify?
As mentioned above Shopify is a complete program to help you create and manage an eCommerce website. It allows you to use its themes and customization to easily set up the website and create multiple different pages. The program is entirely cloud based so you don’t have to worry about downloading software and continuously updating it. Shopify allows for easy uploading of products to its marketplace, you can easily adjust and update each product as needed. It also allows you to receive payments for the products that are on your website. It does this by using a third-party payment processor. This means that Shopify uses a payment gateway and you can choose from over 100 payment providers to choose from.
Shopify has multiple different additional features that you can use to help enhance your website and the experience that your consumers have. These extra features include analytics, enabling coupon codes, sending abandoned cart emails, and much more. These features are very helpful and can help to increase website traffic and sales.
Why should you use it?
Built-In Marketing Tools – Shopify offers a bunch of built in marketing tools to help you get traffic to your new website. These tools include, SEO implementation, discount codes, abandoned cart emails, and many more.
Simple Set Up – It doesn’t matter if you have any prior experience with web development. Shopify makes it easy by providing themes that you can use for your website. These themes are customizable and they allow for your site to have its own personal feel to it.
Professional Support – Shopify has a dedicated support team that is there to help you out when you need it. You can contact them 24/7, so if an issue ever arises it can be dealt with quickly and efficiently.
Easy Backend Administration – With Shopify’s simple construction, it allows for easy backend administration. Adding products, setting new pages up, and serving customers becomes much easier.
Affordable Prices – Shopify allows for a free trial for the first fourteen days of use. After this you must pay, but there are three levels that you can choose from. The levels cost $29, $79, and $299 per month respectively. When you increase the monthly payments it lowers transaction fees and offers you more options with your site. This stage pricing allows for businesses of all sizes to take advantage of Shopify’s features.
How Shopify Can Be Used
Two friends located in the Burlington, VT area have recently started their own Maple business together. Local sales have been so good that they’ve decided to offer their consumers a website so they can ship products easier and sell to a wider market. They decide to build their domain through Shopify. This allowed the two friends to pick a theme and customize it to best fit the company. From this they are able to create product pages, and start selling their product. Shopify helps with the checkout process and also lets the two friends have a payment process that will take a plethora of currencies and payment sources. From there on out they will be able to process orders, accept payments, and start shipping their products to consumers.
Conclusion
If you are looking to launch your first eCommerce website, Shopify should be on your radar. You will quickly be able to set up a website that looks and feels personalized to your brand. It will allow you to kick off your eCommerce career and provide your products to a much larger audience.
