Why choose Shopify for your e-Commerce website?

Why choose Shopify?

You may not know it yet, but at TPOP we are big fans of Shopify.

Since we discovered their solution several years ago, we have simply fallen in love with it!

SPOILER: In our opinion, this is the best e-Commerce platform on the market.

Try Shopify for free

In fact, the creators of Shopify (Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake) have been ingenious enough to do something that seemed impossible in the early 2000s: make it possible for anyone to create an online shop. What used to take hours or even days can now be done in minutes with their system.

Launched in 2006, Shopify is an e-commerce platform based on SaaS (Software as a Service) mode, which means that everything is installed on remote servers and not on your own server or machine: Shopify has its own servers and you benefit from them.

Many sites, and not the least (Tesla Motors, Redbull) use the Shopify solution to promote their brand or sell their products...

Today, Shopify claims no less than 800,000 customers and has a turnover of more than one and a half billion dollars in 2019. Doesn't that sound like a dream?

For us little Frenchies, know that since May 2018, Shopify is available in French version. Youhou!

This is a real plus for the Canadian platform, which has been interested in the French market since 2017 and is seriously competing with Prestashop, Magento and WooCommerce.

There are many advantages to choosing Shopify to develop your online store

We'll break down the benefits of Shopify one by one in this article, but to sum things up, Shopify is all about ease of use and speed.

No need to call on a development agency to create your shop, everything is accessible and easy to set up.

The many advantages

1- When you create your store, if you have not yet chosen your domain name, you can buy it directly through their platform. Everything is really simplified on Shopify to make the task less complex. If you already have your domain name, no worries, just add it when you create your shop.

2 - Second advantage (and not the least): no need to worry about the hosting part: it is included in your subscription and gives you unlimited storage capacity.

No maintenance required, no Apache / PHP configuration to manage, no server to monitor on a daily basis, no updates to correct flaws: in our opinion, this is a real strong point of the solution.

What can be a real source of stress with a conventionally managed site, namely updating plugins or risk having your site hacked, simply doesn't exist with Shopify.

3 - All your data is backed up daily on their servers. So no worries, you will never lose your work.

4 - On the SEO (search engine optimization) level, it's great: the platform is already quite optimized by default, the proposed themes are all in line with good practices - even if we can still optimize all that, that will be the subject of another article -.

Shopify follows the highest standards by default, from tags to metas, ensuring that your site complies with the practices required by search engines.

5 - Shopify also takes care of protecting your website by performing regular maintenance and updates to their servers. It also secures the banking transactions made on your site by offering you an SSL certificate using the HTTPS protocol.

This allows the encryption of bank data.

This is an important argument to reassure your customers.

6 - Shopify offers many free payment gateways, such as Stripe, or Paypal and has recently added mobile payment methods such as Apple Pay, Amazon Pay or Google Pay.

No need to sign an expensive distance selling contract with your bank...

In other words, they provide you with an array of solutions to help you as much as possible in your approach as a Web entrepreneur.

Unlike other platforms, there is no charge for purchasing a payment management plugin, it is built-in.

7 - To get a bit more to the point, once you have created your shop on Shopify, you will be able to add as many products as you like, while still having access to manage your stock and variants (such as product sizes or colors ).

8 - You can easily create a blog and write articles for better referencing without having to create another site.

This article is actually written from the Shopify blog section.

Blogging is of particular interest for your storytelling and for the SEO of your shop.

9 - Shopify handles an extremely important aspect of selling online: all of your transactions and billing are easily accessible and offer a whole host of tips to make your life as an e-tailer easier.

This means that every time you make a purchase, Shopify will automatically send out email notifications to your customers, without having to set up a complex system or subscribe to an email platform.

Similarly, you will be able to easily access a tool that will allow you to automatically resend your customers when they abandon their shopping cart.

10 - If you have any questions about how the platform works, you can visit the Shopify Help Centre which is a wealth of information.

You can either type your question directly into the search bar, or you can choose the subject you are interested in (products, payments or drop shipping for example) and you will have access to an incredible amount of information. There is also a support team (open 24/7) where you can speak directly to an advisor.

11 - Shopify also provides e-merchants with a host of interesting and free tools that make creating a shop much easier.

Here is a summary:

• Logo designer (more about this in this article)
• Business name generator
• Online payslip template
• QR code generator
• Business card template
• Sample gift voucher
• Online invoice template
• Sample order form
• Website Policy Generator
• Tool to resize your images

You can find all these tools by following this link.

So there's plenty of help, and many more tools to help you design your e-commerce business. You'll discover them as you discover the platform, by visiting the Shopify app store .

The different subscriptions

As you may already know, Shopify is not free and offers three main subscriptions (rates are in dollars and you pay by credit card):

• Basic Shopify: $29/month (€25)
• Shopify: $79/month (€69)
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month (€260)

Each of the packages is tailored to your needs.

Here is a summary table of the different features offered by each subscription:

As you can see, if you're new to Shopify, it's best to choose the Basic plan , which is the cheapest and will allow you to set up your shop at a lower cost. This does mean higher transaction fees (2%) when you sell a product, but as the saying goes, "you can't have your cake and eat it too".

All in all, this formula already offers everything you need to have a perfect shop, without restrictions.

The second option, simply called Shopify, is for businesses that have achieved a steady stream of sales and can now "live" from their e-commerce.

You will have access to professional reports that will provide you with important results on your sales and where your customers are coming from. You will also be able to set up gift cards, opening the door to a new business strategy. Another important point: your transaction fees will only be 1%.

Finally, the Advanced subscription is rather reserved for shops that do a lot of volume and are now well established on the online sales market. It is very interesting in view of the percentage of transaction fees (0.5%) but you still have to be able to pay 299$.

Beyond these three subscriptions, there is also a smaller package, called Lite, at only $9/month, which consists of selling exclusively on Facebook (without having to create an online shop on Shopify) or which allows you to add a buy button to your existing site/blog (whether hosted on Wordpress, squarespace, Wix or Weebly).

For example, it's a great way to sell for less if you're a blogger/influencer.

Try Shopify for free

So, are you convinced? Have you found your happiness?

If you are interested, you can now try Shopify free for 14 days.

As we are nice people at TPOP, here is a video tutorial to guide you through the registration process:

In the next article - no, this isn't the end of the story, we've got lots more to tell you about Shopify - we'll go over some of the other great features such as choosing your theme and the many applications / modules you can add to make your e-commerce site an incredibly beautiful shop window and above all a "cash machine"!