- Ease of Use
- Features
- Customization
- Integrations
- Help & Support
Hundreds of solutions exist on the internet for sales of product. Ecommerce is a bustling hive of activity with people constantly developing and trying to offer new methods of doing business. Many tout that they are simple and easy to use. Some succeed at this while others fall quite short. This Shopify review will address some of the major merits and flaws of this particular program.
Shopify offers an easy to use system of managing basic sales. It lacks advanced features that have been shown to improve sales such as wish lists and recommended products to increase suggestive sales. For basic ecommerce needs it shines. It lacks a difficult interface which lets beginners navigate with ease. An intuitive drag and drop system makes organization of up to 2,500 products a breeze. However, it does not support downloadable goods.
This is an excellent system for beginners as it is incredibly simple to set up and use with the basic features you’ll need. Setup for more advanced features that it does have will make for a more challenging interaction. More experienced users will find it to be a robust work-horse that supplies the basic needs of an e-business solution.
It offers fraud protection in the form of being PCI certified through ScanAlert. Utilization of a SSL and PCI DSS compliance will help ensure that your customers’ information is not met with any eyes it should not be.
A variety of templates allows one to get their Shopify store up and running in a matter of minutes by using a default. Customization is a bit more work as it requires knowledge of their open source template language known as Liquid.
The marketing features that Shopify offers are fairly encompassing. Built-in analytics help the business owner track a variety of statistics. These include the way your customers found you and their location, what URLs are linking to your store, search terms that were used to find your store, and number of visits by page hits and unique visitors.
You will enjoy a shopping cart that has been coded with Search Engine Optimization in mind to help generate valuable PageRank with search engines. Shopify generates clean mark up on its templates as well as a constantly updated sitemap.xml for indexing.
The software allows for discount codes to be created and applied to transactions with a myriad of ways to run them like a physical retailer. One can easily specify start and end dates for promotions, a minimum order amount, or quantity of uses before expiring.
Shopify is set up to accommodate many third party services that one will find useful in running and promoting their business. These include such services as Google Analytics and Crazy Egg. In a promotional sense one enjoys integration from Google Adwords, Yahoo Sponsored Search, Microsoft Advertising, and Chictini.
This Shopify review has touched on most of the major functional aspects of this solution. Any major consideration in business will be cost of utilization. Shopify is a hosted solution, meaning one does not need to shell out for a domain and SSL certificates as these are provided. This also makes upgrades a snap because they are applied server-side which leaves you free to focus on more important details as opposed to upgrading your software.
Average costs for Shopify run between $20-$30 a month with a 1%-2% transaction fee. Considering the cost of having to pay for a domain and certification anyways, this really does not come out to be very much. The small percentage transaction fee can easily be off-set with a slight increase in Shipping and Handling. Other programs can run as much as $500 just for the software or thousands in setup. Shopify allows you to neatly side-step this initial investment.
Support exists for about any venue of activity you will undertake with Shopify. They offer an extensive wiki and interactive community to assist in setting up your template should you wish to customize past their stock offering. Though it should be noted that their templates were largely designed by skilled professionals, so this may not even be necessary.
To summarize this Shopify review, it should be noted that this is an ideal solution for new businesses. It offers everything you need to get moving forward and get your product to your target demographic. More advanced sellers will likely find a better solution with a more advanced package. That does not mean that Shopify is worth writing off. If you need a basic, low maintenance ecommerce solution then Shopify may be for you.
Shopify is a good deal and easy to set up, I highly recommend it.