What are the pros and cons of Shopify?
Shopify is a complete eCommerce platform that helps everyday people set up their own online store and sell products on multiple channels. From marketing and payments to inventory management and shipping – the platform handles everything you need to manage and grow an online store.
Who uses Shopify?
Shopify is used by all types of people – from local mom-and-pop shops to tech start-ups and global multi-million dollar businesses. Some of the biggest brands on Shopify.
Shopify Advantages Include:
Selling products on multiple channels
Shopify encourages you to make use of other potential sales channels to increase sales. Here are some of the supported channels with easy integration of products
Shopify “Buy Button”
With this feature, you can embed any product and add a checkout on your site. It’s a great tool to create a custom shopping experience for your visitors. Using the “Buy Button”, you can easily monetize your website or blog with just a single click.
Supports over 100 payment processors worldwide
Shopify comes with inbuilt payment services like PayPal, Amazon Pay, or Apple Pay. Your store will also be able to accept direct payments via credit cards using Shopify Payment, which makes the shopping process smoother for your customers.
Excellent site performance
The TTFB (Time-to-first-byte) loading test is less than 300ms. That basically means that the store loads up really fast.
Sell both digital and physical products
Shopify allows you to handle both digital and physical products. They offer a free app that you can use to specify the types of your products.
Integrate your store with Shopify POS
You can integrate Shopify POS into your physical shop and the data will then be shared between the POS and your online store. With the Shopify POS system, you can manage your sales, inventory, customer data, etc, online and offline, on a single platform.
Extensive self-help documentation
Shopify offers comprehensive self-help documentation that you can use to get started. It’s useful for beginners and experts alike with helpful information such as definitions for technical terms as well as setup guides.
Useful add-ons
The wide range of apps that Shopify has to offer makes them one of the more versatile eCommerce platforms in the market. The Importify importing app is one of the best Shopify apps you can use for your online store.
Shopify abandoned cart recovery
Shopify abandoned cart recovery is designed to help you follow up with visitors who didn’t complete the checkout process. This feature used to be only available on the higher Shopify plans but they’ve recently decided to make it available on all plans – absolutely a great benefit to users.
Shopify Disadvantages Include:
Customize theme using own programing language
Shopify platform uses their self-developed programing language called “Liquid”. All themes are coded in this format. It makes the theme customization harder unless you know how to code in Liquid or are willing to hire a developer who knows how to code Shopify themes.
Advanced features at a higher price
Shopify Basic plan only comes with the barest of features that you’ll need to run an online store. Advanced features like reports, fraud analysis, gift cards, and real-time shipping rates are only available on higher-tier plans.
Apps come at a price
Although you can get a lot of useful adds-on from the Shopify app market, many of them are not free but if a particular paid app can help you save time or reduce the amount of hassle in your workflow, it might be a worthy investment.
No email hosting
Shopify doesn’t provide you with email hosting even though the web hosting is included in all Shopify plans. This means you can’t host a domain-based email address like [email protected].
