The e-commerce trend has been expanding rapidly, especially after the Covid-19 pandemic when direct connection among humans was restricted. According to the latest report from Digital Commerce 360, the pre-pandemic 28% has risen to 36% is the percentage of customers choosing to shop online weekly.
As a profitable means of sales, e-commerce is now expected to have more than just normal click-and-buy features. People want a fast, responsive website where they can search for, compare products, and make payments through their favorite gateway. Fortunately, we now have a super simple e-commerce platform that is both easy to use and cost-saving, Shopify.
The reasons to use Shopify include, but are not limited to these 10 points:
- Simple and easy to use
Shopify provides a complete e-commerce solution, including hosting, shopping cart, inventory management, etc., all in a user-friendly backend. The simple dashboard allows shop owners to navigate among multiple settings smoothly without getting stuck in a labyrinth of menus and formatting rules.
Also, Shopify takes less time to set up, compared to other e-commerce platforms like Magento or PrestaShop. Users do not need technical knowledge to manage the entire store as all they ever need is a product to sell.
- Cost-saving & 14-day free trial
To help users get to know about the platform, Shopify offers a free trial in 14 days. It hardly takes up to several days to set up the website, so users can sit back and watch how it attracts customers and pushes sales.
The pricing plan also varies, ranging from $29 to $299 per month, equivalent to basic to advanced plan. The differences among them lie just in a set of reports and shipping discounts. POS Pro (Point of Sale) stays at only $89/mo for all levels.
- 24/7 Support
For an online store, just a minute of malfunctioning costs them not only timely orders but customer satisfaction as well. Thereupon, Shopify offers an extremely dedicated support service that works 24/7 through email, phone, or live chat.
The abundance of resources and guides available also allows users to find and fix their problems at hand. Community forums provide another free yet effective support channel. Multiple languages are integrated into Shopify, which means auto-translation can no longer bother customer experience.
- Mobile-responsive
Although online sales come mainly (about 80%) from desktop, it is undeniable that customers nowadays do shopping a lot on mobile devices, especially individual ones. Therefore, catering to a mobile-friendly site is a must.
Shopify has a clean user interface, which makes it easy to navigate on both mobile and desktop devices. The default themes are already mobile-responsive with the key shopping-cart feature, yet store owners can also opt for other custom themes on the market.
- Social media integrated
People, especially young ones, now use social media almost as much as an hour a day, so keeping them updated about your store through this channel is not only convenient but cost-efficient as well.
Luckily, Shopify themes all integrate this feature, so social media site icons can be displayed anywhere as customized. Selling through these websites can also be set up so your products will reach more potential customers.
- A bunch of themes and payment gateways
Hundreds of Shopify themes come in both free and paid versions. You can freely choose one to match the look and feel of your store. Advanced themes also offer various additional features for a responsive and functional website.
Do not turn your customers off at the last step with payment issues. Shopify supports almost any payment gateway available like bank transfer, COD, Paypal, etc. Besides, it offers one of its own called Stripe, which frees you from any transaction fees, and even lowers your credit card fees.
- Customizable with various apps
The built-in functions already offer a smooth e-commerce website that allows customers to navigate through pages, make payments, and place orders. However, there are tons of additional features that you can add to your store.
Functions like login required to access pages, product labels, b2b integration, or product reviews meet some particular needs of the website and satisfy its customers. The Shopify apps market grows day by day, with more and more providers and new functionalities.
- Secure and reliable
People shopping online are careful with their information, so an e-commerce website should ensure its security level with SSL certificates. Moreover, Shopify strives to get Level 1 PCI compliance to cover customer data.
Also, people expect no queue when shopping online, so your site should be fast and always online. Shopify hosted solution guarantees a reliable website, which means the server maintenance and upgrades are in good care for decent shopping cart functions and page load speed.
- SEO-friendly
A beautiful website with no customers means no sales and eventually will have to shut down. Therefore, Shopify provides a clear website structure with a full set of SEO features that boost the rank of your website on SERPs.
Advanced analytics is also available on your store backend so you can find out the key points in your traffic to draw out better targets for your marketing campaigns. Shopify assists you in building SEO-friendly URLs and top keywords to match your products.
- Dropshipping supported
You are a retailer with no real stock inventory but wishing to sell through a website? No problem, as Shopify allows you to integrate this feature. So it works like this, you get the order details and send it to your wholesale supplier, he/she in turn will ship the goods directly to your customers.
This dropshipping function allows the store owner to get away with stock management, so you can spend more time on improving the marketing points and attract more customers.
So Shopify is pretty amazing as an e-commerce platform, however, its simplicity means it is hard to upgrade to an advanced all-function-covered store. The various pricing plans of both the hosting and additional apps and themes give store owners quite a great deal of choices, which is hard to decide at times.
To provide the best experience for your customers and get a decent profit margin, it is certainly important that you give them a specific place to look at your products and make orders instead of getting lost in a marketplace platform. Shopify is a pretty good choice for starters, isn’t it?