10-second breakdown:
Shopify has quickly become the most popular way to start a stand alone online store in the world. Within minutes you can have a beautiful site (with your first few products) that is fully-functional and ready to take payments. Add-ons galore and loads of happy shop owners make them our number one ecommerce software overall.
The good:
Simplicity is the name of the game and there isn’t another software that allows you to create the same quality level of store with the same amount of ease. Choose from templates (both free and paid) ranging for a number of different industries and product types (e.g. apparel, jewelry).
The add-ons are nearly endless and new ones are being added all the time. From programs that can help you keep track of physical inventory compared to sales, to cart abandonment apps and everything in between is available in either free or paid form.
It’s a one stop shop (pun intended). You get your hosted site, beautiful software, and an easy way to take payments all for one monthly fee (plus transaction fees).
The bad:
The checkout is a problem because it redirects people to Shopify’s main site and pulls them away from the experience of your store.
If you buy all kinds of paid add-ons it will get costly and eat up operating budgets before you have a chance to make money (if you’re not careful).
How it works:
If we were going to size Shopify up in one phrase, it would have to be “simple and powerful”. There really isn’t another platform on the market that has quite the appeal of this one. It’s for these reasons it came out on top of our list for best ecommerce solutions. Getting started is, like many other hosted web-based shop builders, a matter of picking out the plan you want. Here’s a breakdown:
Lite Plan: All plans come with unlimited bandwidth (for site traffic) and the ability to list unlimited products. You’ll also get a Facebook integration and customer support options. If you choose Shopify’s payment gateway, there is no fee. If you use a third party gateway, Shopify will take another 2% per transaction at this level.
Basic Plan: At this level, you’ll get the ability to integrate Pinterest sales, mobile shopping, ability to offer discounts, and have your own domain and blog with the store. The transaction fee is still 2%.
Shopify Plan: Their more popular plan allows all of the abilities of lesser plans and comes with gift card functionality, advanced reporting options, abandoned cart recovery, and lower fees- 1% if you don’t use their gateway.
Advanced Plan: This plan gives a significant jump up in the transaction fee (5%) to make it way more beneficial to use the in-house gateway. This level comes with even better reports and the ability to see real-time carrier shipping.
There is an enterprise option, but it’s for high-dollar shops ($1 million +) and you have to talk with a rep to find out details and pricing information.
Once you choose a plan, you can either choose to use the platform’s payment gateway (which they push heavily), or integrate with a third party option (they allow for 70, click here to see our favorites). If you do choose another processor, you’ll have to pay a transaction fee to Shopify of anywhere from 1% to 5% per transaction.
After the initial setup, you’ll be whisked into the dashboard to see what Shopify does best. It’s a web-based software that hosts your site for you, so there’s no-hassle. Just keep paying your fee to them and they’ll keep your products online. If you like the play-by-play sort of training, the checklist format will suit you nicely.
Prompts will help you pick a theme and take you through until you have loaded your first product. All of which is super easy. Picking a theme that suits your business needs may cost a fee. There are over 100 options and 26 of them are free, but can be considered “basic”. The premium themes range in price but hover around the $150 mark. There are themed themes, too. If you sell fashion accessories or clothing, there are themes that have been thoughtfully designed for that purpose.
Editing your theme is done in real-time. Meaning that if you make a change, you can see how it looks right on the screen. If you publish it, those changes go right into effect. Changing colors, photos, headers and several other minor things is easy and doesn’t require coding at all. Changing the code can also be done (for more advanced improvements) through the HTML/CSS editor.
Features vary based on the plan you get and don’t all come stock and that could be a problem if you don’t want to pay a hefty fee just to get something that less expensive shop builders give standard. While that may be a bummer, one of the coolest things about Shopify is their app store. Add-on features to your shop can be downloaded from there. With over 1200 to choose from, you should be able to get by. Many of them are free, but most require a one-time or even monthly fee. You can expect to see advanced analytic help, SEO tools, and email.
It’s worth saying that this style of adding features can become costly and many of these tools do come standard with some of the other ecommerce tools on the market. There is a 14-day free trial that doesn’t require a credit card, so it’s less risky to try out than any other site-builder. If you decide that it’s for you, just pony up your first month’s payment and your store never skips a beat. If not, just part ways and look elsewhere.
Shopify can make anyone the proud owner of an online shop within minutes. It’s ease-of-use and overall power make it our number one choice for anyone wanting to build their first ecommerce store.
For complete rankings of all ecommerce software, go here.
http://authority.org/ecommerce-software/shopify/ http://authorityorg.tumblr.com/post/150393820562
No comments:
Post a Comment