Do you want to run a successful eCommerce store and turn it into a massive business? Is Shopify the right tool for your online store development? Read this blog post to know more about Shopify to ease your choice.
With an ever-increasing number of eCommerce website development platforms, choosing the right one for your business can be difficult. Shopify seems to have become the de facto choice for many companies looking forward to setting up an online store.
Powering over 1,000,000 businesses worldwide, Shopify is a popular all-in-one eCommerce platform designed to help enterprises build a scalable online store with hundreds of built-in features. So, there is no doubt why businesses are gravitating towards Shopify development services for building their online store. For sure, Shopify excels in most areas, but is it the right solution for your eCommerce store? Is Shopify worth it? This blog post will tell you the reasons to choose Shopify for developing your eCommerce store. Before diving deeper, let’s first get through the basics of Shopify. Stay with us and read on!
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a recognized eCommerce website builder designed to help you build your very own online store without any need for tech skills to use it. It has all the tools to support you as you create, publish, run, and grow your eCommerce business.
Today, businesses of all sizes use Shopify, whether they’re selling online, in retail stores, or on the go.
How Does Shopify Work?
Shopify lets merchants build and customize their online stores. It is entirely cloud-based and hosted. It gives businesses the flexibility to access and run from anywhere via an internet connection.
An eCommerce business requires a set of tools to manage products, inventory, payments, and shipping. Shopify ensures you can easily access and integrate any business tools you require. Therefore, business owners opt for Shopify website development due to its ease of use and robust features.
Reasons to Choose Shopify for eCommerce Store Development
Shopify comes with tools that can ease your eCommerce efforts. Read on to find out why Shopify is the right choice for your eCommerce store.
Ease of Set Up and Use
You do not have to worry about technical stuff when it comes to choosing Shopify, as it is easy to set up and use with just a few clicks. It makes Shopify website development well-suited for developing eCommerce websites.
Shopify itself offers the software and hosting needed for launching the website. It is robust yet user-friendly and can easily be scaled for small and big eCommerce stores.
App Integrations
The Shopify app store is packed with some useful add-ons for your online store. It is well-known for its impressive customization abilities, as it can be easily integrated with apps. Also, Shopify allows setting up a referral program with Omnistar Affiliate Software that helps your eCommerce business prosper.
The Shopify app store allows sellers to easily add some extra features and functionalities to the store and maximize ROI.
Secure and Reliable
The security and reliability of your eCommerce store are a pledge of stable sales and relations of trust between the company and the customer. As an eCommerce store owner, you will have to deal with a lot of sensitive customer information.
Shopify is a secure and reliable eCommerce website development platform. It keeps the customers’ personal data confidential and prevents businesses’ data from hackers.
It is always advisable to choose the Shopify platform if you want your online store data to be safe. You can leverage Shopify website development services for a secure eCommerce store development.
Mobile Responsiveness
In this digitization world, the majority of people prefer mobile phones to search online. What if a user opens up your site and gets a disturbing user interface? It will leave a bad website impression on your site visitors.
Mobile responsiveness is the key to the success of an eCommerce store, as the number of mobile shoppers is increasing day by day. In today’s time, where every business is seeking a mobile-responsive platform, eCommerce cannot be left behind.
Shopify comes with mobile responsive themes that help you build a platform-independent online store for your business. It can easily be accessed on iPhone and Android devices, providing a seamless shopping experience to your customers.
Easy Payment Gateways
The major challenge every eCommerce business owner faces is the integration of a secure and reliable payment gateway. However, Shopify makes it simple for all online store owners as it offers its own payment gateway,’ Shopify Payments.’ It does not require any transaction fees or lower credit card fees.
Apart from that, Shopify also supports the stripe payment option, giving shoppers the liberty to make transactions with no extra fees.
24/7 Customer Support
Unlike open-source solutions like WooCommerce, OpenCart, or Magento, Shopify has a 24-hour support team that provides 24/7 customer service via email, live chat, or phone. Choosing Shopify development services enables online sellers to avail reliable, round-the-clock customer support to resolve queries.
Downsides of Shopify
Shopify offers plenty of advantages, yet it is vital to consider its limitations to clarify whether it is perfect for online store development or not.
Let’s move towards another side of the coin: the downsides of considering Shopify development for your online store.
High Cost
Shopify charges a higher price if your eCommerce business wants to leverage additional features. Shopify costs you $29 per month with basic features and $299 with advanced features.
Also, if you are using a third-party payment gateway, Shopify charges you an extra transaction fee, which makes it the only platform to enforce transaction fees if you are not using ‘Shopify Payments.’
No Email Hosting
Shopify doesn’t provide email hosting; you need to use an external email host for Shopify email hosting if you do not buy a domain through Shopify. Due to this, sooner or later, every Shopify customer faces the email hosting issue on their online store, which makes eCommerce business owners hesitate and skeptical about choosing Shopify as an online store builder.
Not Future Ready
Shopify is considered to be perfect for small businesses regarding the expectations related to sales and profits. Still, when it comes to thinking through, Shopify is not future-ready as it will witness scalability issues in the long run. When the number of customers and transactions increases in your eCommerce store, you need to switch to a better solution than Shopify.
Search and Filtering
Many Shopify users often say that the product search mechanism on Shopify is not efficient compared to others. Due to the dissatisfaction with Shopify’s search version, users consider this one of the biggest hindrances of this platform. Online stores need to avail search features in an organized manner for SEO purposes as well.
You must consider these downsides before availing of the Shopify website development services for your eCommerce store.
Use Cases of Shopify
Let’s put the spotlight on the use cases of Shopify development. Read on to find out when you can use this eCommerce platform.
Create Appealing Custom Storefronts
Custom eCommerce website development includes designing, deploying, and maintaining an eCommerce store for particular business requirements. Store owners can work with Shopify developers to create custom storefronts for their online store.
Shopify lets you create a customized storefront with Shopify’s storefront API. It gives business owners complete control over their eCommerce websites. You can meet the custom website development requirements with a custom Shopify development company. It enables you to place UI elements, product listings, create top-notch custom websites, etc.
Create Shopify Applications for Sellers
Shopify offers easy-to-implement tools and extensible APIs that help you create Shopify applications to improve the customer experience. With Shopify eCommerce website development company, you can cater to the needs of merchants by creating custom applications for them.
Customize Shopify Themes
Shopify lets developers create customized and interactive themes. You can use Shopify CLI (Command Line Interface), which helps you build Shopify themes. It lets you test, preview, and share changes to the theme. It will fasten your development and customization process.
With custom eCommerce development services, you can customize your online store and provide a unique website experience to your customers.
Cost to Build an eCommerce Store With Shopify
The cost to build an online store with Shopify mainly depends on the number of features you want to offer to your site visitors. There is not a straightforward answer to depict the exact cost of eCommerce website development with Shopify.
Rates of building an eCommerce store depend on various aspects. Here, we will discuss some aspects that give you an idea about the cost of developing a Shopify eCommerce website.
Choose a Shopify Pricing Plan
Shopify is a fully hosted eCommerce platform. It comes with three pricing plans: Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advance Shopify. You will have to pay a subscription fee to keep your store operating.
Every plan comes with Shopify payments that help you start selling immediately. Let’s discuss the subscription fee of each Shopify plan.
- Basic Shopify – This plan is perfect for novice online merchants. It includes all the basics you require to start a new online store. It costs you $29 per month and is the cheapest option available.
- Shopify – It is the standard pricing plan that is slightly more expensive than the basic plan. It is available for $79 per month.
- Advance Shopify – It is the most expensive Shopify plan. It provides you with everything you get from the Shopify package. It costs you $299 per month.
Shopify Website Development Services You Choose
To develop an online store for your business, requesting professional assistance is a wiser move. With a competent Shopify service provider, you won’t have to worry more about the technicalities. It enables you to focus on other business activities. The prices of hiring a Shopify developer vary from company to company.
Depending on the scope of the work, some Shopify agencies can charge you between $5,000 to $20,000. You could also be charged upward of $1,00,000 as per your project complexities.
Developer’s Experience
The cost of hiring a Shopify development company also depends on the developer’s experience. The more experienced developer you hire, the more price you will have to pay for their services.
The Size and Complexity of Your Project
As we mentioned, the more features and functionalities you require in your project, the more complex it will be. It will directly influence the cost of your online store development.
A large Shopify store with immense features and pages is more expensive than a small website.
So, to get a budget-friendly online store with Shopify, you must be aware of your project requirements. It will be helpful to you as well as the Shopify development partner you hire to set an estimate of the budget based on the needs.
Also Read: How to Choose the Best Shopify Development Company for Your Business?
Wrapping Up
Shopify might be one of the biggest and most successful eCommerce platforms out there. However, if you can compromise with things like email hosting, higher price, content posting (blogs), and more, and your primary focus is marketing and growth, then Shopify is the all-in-one eCommerce solution for your online store.
