Shopify is a fantastic solution for your e-commerce business, as well as those who plan to build an online store. Shopify is an outstanding platform but you must still weigh their pros and con to decide if they are the right choice for the online shop that you wish to create.
This review will cover Shopify from many perspectives in order to give you information about its main advantages and weaknesses.
- Simplicity and ease of use
Pros – The primary goal of business owners is to increase their sales without becoming bogged down by technology or other tedious administrative tasks. Shopify’s significant advantages are that Shopify is more flexible than other e-commerce platforms. Shopify can help manage the store’s technological needs and provides a clear interface as well as access to many useful resources. Shopify, a powerfully-hosted platform, will manage the transaction processing.
Shopify has some cons. Shopify’s competitors Magento and WordPress might be a better option if you are looking for more functionality to your store. These platforms are self-hosted and can be difficult to use but more flexible in theme customization and managing larger stores.
- You have a wide selection of storefront themes
Pros. UK Shopify‘s best advantage is their beautiful storefront themes. They help make your website professional and look great, which can help you retain customers. Shopify offers many themes for merchants. You can select from Art & Photography or Jewelry & Accessories. You can filter them and choose whether or not they are mobile-only or responsive.
Cons: Only 10 templates are provided for free. The only thing you can do is to purchase the additional themes for a one-time fee. Shopify’s Liquid code will allow you to customize the template in a complex way. If you don’t have this knowledge, you can hire an expert.
- Shopify app store
Pros: Shopify’s plugins are a strength. Shopify boasts over 1,200 applications that allow you to automate tasks. This allows your focus to be on other areas such as marketing and growing your sales. There are many apps that can help with everything from accounting to customer service to inventory reporting to shipping. These apps will simplify your daily life by giving you the technology necessary to scale your store.
Let’s have a look at Shopify’s apps. Shopify apps will make your accounting easier. It is a tedious but essential part of running a growing company. Without an accounting plugin integrated into your website, you will first need to export your sales figures as well as transaction details. Then manually import them into accounting software or hand it to your accountant.
Shopify lets you invite other tool providers (e.g., accounting software developers) and integrates their software in Shopify. All sales and figures will automatically transfer to the accounting system, which can help you save money on paying an accountant.
Shopify also makes apps that help e-commerce site owners with specific needs. Cash on Delivery is a good example. This app was designed specifically for Indian shops.
Cons: You’ll need to pay fees for these apps. Without these apps, you will need to insert your data manually into your software. This takes time. You have the option to either hire someone (which will run you between $50 and $300 per month) or to subscribe to an app for a monthly fee.
- 24/7 support
Pros: Shopify offers a dedicated support team. They are available via chat and email. You can also call them at any time via four numbers, depending upon your region.
Cons: It is possible that you will not receive the same level of support if you have technical problems. In order to get help from a developer, it may be better to post your question to a forum. There are no support phone numbers listed for Australia, the UK, New Zealand and New Zealand.
- Marketing and discounts
Pros – Shopify has a variety of marketing tools that can increase your SEO ranking, social media sharing and automate your tasks.
Shopify lets you do the following.
Generate discount codes.
Shopify, Pinterest, or other social media outlets allow you sell your products.
You can improve SEO by adding relevant keywords and descriptions to product pages.
You can create blogs. Blogging is an important feature that can affect your SEO rankings.
Accelerated Mobility Pages (AMP), which speeds up content delivery to mobile customers, improves the customer experience and helps Google prioritize SEO.
Google generates an automatically generated sitemap that is used to analyze all pages on your website.
Cons:
Only paid apps are allowed to use the AMP function. The paid app will allow you to access additional SEO features like adding customer reviews or ratings, but these are usually only available when you pay for them.
It’s not simple to export blog post.
Customers cannot apply multiple discounts. There is only one discount per purchase by default. You can only use some extensions like the Script Editor for multiple discounts.
Benefits and disadvantages for Shopify: Pricing
We will not be looking at pricing in Shopify. Shopify customers frequently complain about their transaction and subscription fees. Shopify plans start starting at $29 for basic plans. Some advanced plans can cost up to $299. Other costs include transaction fees, as well as subscription fees for the apps you use.
Shopify Payments has no transaction fees. However this option is restricted to certain countries. Other countries may use a third-party gateway such as PayPal, Amazon Pay or 2Checkout. The transaction fees are 0.5%-2%. For merchants earning over $10,000 per month, the $200 bandwidth/infrastructure transaction fee is acceptable as it generates more profit at a reasonable price.
Shopify provides ShopifyPOS for merchants that sell products in a brick and mortar store. Shopify offers a retail package that can help improve the physical store management. The additional $49.9 price includes both a staff management tool and all necessary hardware.
Shopify gives you an easy way to know how much you are being charged and does not have hidden fees such as bandwidth charges. Based on the volume of sales that you make, Shopify will allow you to calculate your monthly costs.
Shopify benefits and disadvantages: the final words
Shopify provides flexibility for your business to grow, in addition to the many pros and cons that we have already highlighted. Shopify is a great platform for small and big e-commerce business owners. Shopify gives merchants the tools to build stunning e-commerce websites.
Shopify is not the cheapest e-commerce system, but they do offer cost transparency, 100 responsive templates, several extensions in app market, 24/7 support, and the ability to sell offline using Shopify POS.