The Canadian company Shopify
launched its online store platform in 2006. The goal was simple: provide an
easy way to sell products online that frees sellers from all technical hurdles.
Shopify states that there are
already 150,000 businesses that rely on their platform to sell products. Given
the fact that there is only a free trial bu tno free plan, this is an impressive number indeed
and makes them one of the leading store builders worldwide.
In our test, we will find out how
easy it really is to setup and maintain a shopify online store. How much
knowledge do you need beforehand and where are the limits? Is shopify a
reasonable alternative to other big players like eBay or Amazon Market Places?
We’ll also take a look at the differences of their paid plans to give a better
picture of which plan makes the most sense.
Let’s find out the secret behind shopify
(or rather, if there is any secret to it)!
See
the Online Shop in action
Shopify’s Online Store can be tested for 14 days for free here.
(Link will open in a new window.)
The
Shopify Online Store in Detail
Feature
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Rating
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Comment
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Total
Score
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4.9 / 5
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Excellent
online store both for beginners and professionals. It doesn’t matter how big
or small your online store is. Shopify offers you a perfect platform that
makes selling not only easy, but also gives the tools to improve your sales.
It’s worth mentioning that their website builder and blog are also pretty
decent. Try it for free.
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Basic functions
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Product presentation
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Zoom function, picture gallery,
video - it’s all possible.
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Product variants
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First you define up to three
options (e.g. size, color, material), then you add the variants (e.g.
S,M,L,XL). From that Shopify will then generate all possible combinations,
which can be up to 100. If you need more you can use one of their apps.
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Cart function
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Yes
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In the “Professional” plan there
is also an “Abandoned cart recovery” feature integrated. Among other things,
it allows you to remind your visitors with an automatic email to complete
their purchase.
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Article numbers
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Yes
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Add your own SKU (Stock Keeping
Unit) numbers to each product.
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Mobile view
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Yes
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Optimized for smartphones and
tablets with fully responsive layouts. For store owners, there are
mobile iPhone and Android apps that let you manage your store on the go.
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Checkout, payment and shipping
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Payment options
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Credit card (via more than 70
processors including Stripe and Authorize.net), PayPal, manual payment
options and even BitPay for Bit Coins. They even introduced their own Shopify
Payments gateway, which will waive the Shopify transaction fee for all plans
(Currently available in the U.S., UK and Canada only). More details.
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Sale of digital goods
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Yes
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It is possible to limit the number
of downloads or the time of availability. Delivery is handled via email.
Supports the new rules on charging VAT for digital goods in the European
Union.
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SSL encryption
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Yes
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Customer data and payment
transactions are encrypted via SSL (https). Included at no additional cost.
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Customer log-in area
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Yes
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Visitors can check out with a
guest account or create their own personalized login. It’s even possible to
let your customers decide whether or not they want to create an account.
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Coupon codes
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Yes
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Fixed price, percentage, free
shipping. You can set a maximum amount of usage and expiry date.
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Shipping cost settings
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Shipping rates can be set for each
country individually or by shipping carrier (e.g. UPS, FedEx, etc.). You can
also choose fulfillment/dropshipping with services like Amazon.
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Tax settings
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Is able to pull US tax rates
automatically. Individual tax rates for other countries can be set
individually. Allows you to display VAT prices on your product pages.
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Backend
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Article management
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Shopify tracks all items you have
in stock. There are also settings to receive notifications automatically.
There is even a new POS system to manage both your online and offline
inventory. This also allows you to take offline payments via an iPad.
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Customizable e-mails for order
confirmation
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Yes. You can edit every
notification email as you wish.
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Importing/exporting product data
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Yes / Yes
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Product data can be imported from
Magento, eBay, WordPress and CSV. This saves a lot of time and makes moving
previous web stores to Shopify easy. Exporting a CSV-file is also possible.
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E-Commerce analysis
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Yes
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Shopify offers reports in its
“Professional” plan and higher; product reports, order reports, and more are
available (you can see how orders vary from month-to-month, for example).
Moreover, it’s always possible to integrate Google Analytics.
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Exporting order data
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Yes
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Export your orders in a CSV-file.
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Conclusion
After having tested Shopify for a
whole week, we have to admit that we are quite impressed. To compare it with
small-scale online stores like Weebly or Squarespace almost seems unfair as
they easily beat them in every single category – except price.
Adding products as well as setting
up the payment and shipping options works absolutely painless: no important
service is missing. That makes both ordering and paying easy for your clients.
Their layouts can be modified to a large degree without any programming
knowledge.
But Shopify is not only an online
store. You can also use it to do content marketing via a blog and also add
content pages. And that’s what we find so fascinating: Shopify can be handled
by an absolute beginner while at the same time providing a great looking,
cutting-edge online store.
Just in case you’re missing a
function or want to change the layout, most of the time you are only one click
away. New templates and apps can be installed with one simple click via their
app store. If you should miss a function that doesn’t exist, it’s possible to
create it since Shopify has a powerful template language called “Liquid.”
No matter how fast your business and
requirements grow, with Shopify you don’t have to be afraid of moving to
another platform and restarting everything from scratch (unless you become
another Amazon, that is).
Of course, quality has its price.
Shopify is not the cheapest solution, and even in their “professional” plan ($79/month), they charge you a
1% transaction fee. But you can bypass this fee by signing up for Shopify
payments, which is their own payment gateway.
Still looking for flaws in Shopify?
We’ll give you one: you won’t be able to set up a multilingual store out of the
gate. However, we found a bilingual
template and there is also an app priced at $17.50 per month that can
help you create a multilingual store.
If that’s not an issue for you,
Shopify might be THE answer to all your ecommerce questions!
FAQ
(1) Can I sell digital goods like MP3s, videos or eBooks with Shopify?
Answer: Yes. You can sell files with Shopify.
(2) Can I upgrade or downgrade my plan easily?
Answer: Yes, you can always change your plan type. An upgrade or downgrade will
initiate a new billing cycle and close the current one. Existing funds
will be credited to your new plan.
(3) How do I cancel my Shopify subscription?
To cancel your online store, go to Settings > Account page. Select the “Close my Store” option.
10 Reasons People Love Shopify
1. Shopify Is Easy to Use
2. Shopify Is Hosted
3. Reliability
4. Customizable Design
5. The Shopify App Store
6. Simple to use
7.Unlimited, 24/7 toll free Shopify support
8.Conveniently run your store on the go
9.1-click integrations
10.Start selling in no time at all
Shopify Payments
Traditionally if you wanted to accept payment you would have to use a
third-party payments processor like Stripe, PayPal, or others that
would charge a certain fee per transaction. The company has created
their own payment processor called Shopify Payments, if you decide to
sign up for this program then all transaction fees will be lifted
regardless of your plan.
With the basic payment plan Shopify charges 2.9% + 30c per
transaction, while the company charges 2.5% + 30c and 2.25% + 30c per
transaction, for the Professional and Unlimited plans per transaction.
At the moment this plan is currently only available in the U.S. and
Canada. Other than Shopify Payments the company also offers integration
with more than 70 different payment gateways, these include accepting
payments from credit cards, Google Checkout, PayPal and many more.
These gateways all come with their own transaction fees, as these can
get a little confusing, I strongly advice that you familiarize yourself
with these before signing up, as you might otherwise be surprised at
just how much is charged as a fee.
Shopify Security
Security is taken very seriously in ecommerce and therefore they have
created their shopping cart platform as well as their hosting to be
Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, in other words your data is secured. All
pricing plans offer 128-bit Free SSL certificate at no added cost.
While data security is very important to etailers, many also worry
about their store always being available, and Shopify provides their
customers with a 99.94% uptime guarantee. Furthermore the company
creates secure backups of all your data, so even if your store should
for some reason disappear, it will be backed up and ready to be restored
within minutes.
Shopify Support
If you find yourself in the need of support, then
Shopify
has one of the best offers in the industry. Regardless of which pricing
plan you decide on the company has 24/7 customer support, this includes
phone support as well as chat and email support. Another great form of
help offered by Shopify is the access to a sizeable support system
directly through their website, this includes user forums, tutorials as
well as FAQ’s.
If you are just beginning your journey as an e-tailer then Shopify
has created the Ecommerce University. Here users gain access to eBooks,
videos and guides, with the purpose of helping customers learn the ins
and outs of running their own web store.
Conclusion
After having taken advantage of the features offered by Shopify for
quite a while I can say if you are looking to sell commodities online,
or looking to sell your products in general then you ought to give
Shopify a try. I would gladly recommend Shopify to everyone, if nothing
else then at least give their
14-day free trial a try, I am certain you will not be disappointed.
UPDATED CONCLUSION (March 2015)
Since the initial review of Shopify, they have continued to make
improvements to their platform. The fact that customers are no longer
redirected to a checkout.shopify site when completing their purchase is
a very big plus.
It helps to make the shopping experience more fluid. One thing I would
like to see in the future would be a few more free themes, however this
is still a minor complaint, and I would still gladly recommend Shopify
to anyone who is looking to start their own online store.
What do you think of Shopify? Let me know what’s your opinion in the comments.
Originally Composed By Armin Pinggera
