So what are Shopify’s advantages over other platforms? In this article, you can read about the benefits of building a website on the Shopify platform
In today’s dynamic, technology-driven world, where customers have grown accustomed to shopping online, most retail businesses understand that an online store is another important sales channel through which they can sell products to customers locally and around the world. If you’re a growing business looking for a convenient, cloud-based platform to help you grow, Shopify is what you’re looking for. Shopify was founded in 2006 by entrepreneurs who simply wanted to create a website to sell ski equipment but couldn’t find a platform that was good enough, so they built their own—and haven’t looked back since. Today, its approximately 10,000 employees continue to improve and optimize the platform, with the sole aim of boosting sales for the millions of stores running on Shopify.
In this article, we’ll outline the platform’s key advantages:
Cloud platform (SaaS) – no need to worry about security or servers
An online store has one primary goal—selling products and services. A sale can’t happen without customers paying for it, and online transactions make it even more important to have a robust security system that ensures secure transactions for everyone and prevents fraud and payment information theft. Shopify is designed for ecommerce and already includes everything you need to ensure payments to your store are secure and your customers’ information is protected. You also won’t need to worry about the servers hosting your store and all its data—Shopify takes care of that for you. When you set up a store, security, servers, and server updates are all handled to the highest standard. Your customers will also benefit from the same servers and infrastructure used by major brands on Shopify, including Kylie Cosmetics, Tesla, Alo Yoga, and more.
Faster and relatively less expensive website setup than on other platforms
Setting up a Shopify store is fairly quick—you choose the service package that suits you from one of the platform’s plans (Basic or Shopify Plus). Once you’ve selected a plan, you can start building your website: choose a theme for your site. We highly recommend choosing an official Shopify theme from the selection of approximately 150 official themes, since Shopify approves only themes that meet the highest standards for user experience, conversion rates, sales optimization, SEO, and more. After selecting a theme with many advanced features, decide whether you need any additional features that aren’t included and need to be developed or added through a third-party app. Upload your products and content to the store, and you’re ready to start selling.
Ready-to-use themes
Shopify offers official themes that have undergone rigorous testing. All you need to do is choose the theme you want for your website, without spending resources on design. Of course, you can customize the design of any theme you choose through development, so we recommend selecting the theme that best suits your needs and making only the changes you want, rather than designing a theme from scratch.
UX/UI that drives sales
The UX and UI built into Shopify themes are tailored to deliver an optimal customer experience and make it easy to navigate your online store. Shopify is committed to improving, optimizing, and refining features that reduce abandonment rates and increase sales. Your customers will easily find their way around the categories and know exactly which products they’re buying and in what quantities. And thanks to the beautifully designed themes, they’ll enjoy a shopping experience just like being in a physical store where they love to spend time.
Easy-to-use marketing interface
Want to manage audiences, control SEO, and send your customers newsletters and messages about sales and special offers? The system includes a variety of marketing tools that are easy to use, so your customers receive messages in real time. For example, a pop-up offering free shipping, an abandoned-cart email, an email with an offer for the next purchase, uploading audiences to social networks, and more!
User-friendly management system
Customers aren’t the only ones who deserve a convenient, user-friendly interface—you do too. The management system lets you pull up all the information you need in seconds (even on your phone!) and change your website’s appearance by adding banners and videos, changing fonts, and more. And you can learn to do it all without any prior experience.
Solutions for anything else you need, whether through the app store or custom development
Shopify lets you use apps (it has an official app store) and custom developments on the platform to add all kinds of features to your store—from a loyalty program and streamlined shipping processes to personalization, infinite scrolling, and more. You can choose from the wide range available today or even develop your own app to add the features you need.
BOA Ideas’ capabilities on the Shopify platform
Our goal is to help businesses—particularly large and growing businesses—realize their potential online and build a successful, profitable online store that helps them sell their services and products to customers locally and around the world. To do so, we offer our clients a range of essential services for setting up, maintaining, and improving their Shopify store and logistics operations:
* Consulting and guidance – As ecommerce experts, we’re here to make sure you understand everything. We’ll advise you and help you find the right solutions and create the smoothest possible sales and shipping process (making the most of the free tools Shopify offers). We’ll guide you through the systems every step of the way and work alongside you, so you feel you have a true partner throughout the process.
* Store setup – BOA Ideas will build your website and connect the supporting systems. We’ll make sure you get the store you’ve always dreamed of, both in appearance and functionality, while optimizing the logistics operation behind the scenes during setup.
* Custom feature and app development – Need a feature you couldn’t find on Shopify? First, we’ll assess what you need it for and determine whether it can actually support sales. If you decide to move forward, we can build the feature or app you need and integrate it so you can offer your customers an excellent shopping experience. We have years of experience across hundreds of projects, 23 official Shopify apps, and many more custom apps for businesses.
* Integrations – Already have external logistics systems? We’ll help you find out whether they can be integrated with Shopify and, of course, help you implement them to suit your business needs.
* Webmaster services – Not everyone is familiar with managing an online store, especially a Shopify store. We have a team of ecommerce experts specializing in Shopify who can handle everything that doesn’t involve development: making the most of the platform’s capabilities, creating logistics automations, choosing recommended apps for your website, and more.
Summary
Shopify isn’t just a platform for building and managing an ecommerce website. It sees itself as a platform for running a business with an ecommerce operation, serving businesses of every size that want to focus on sales and leave the technology in the platform’s safe hands. Shopify gives its customers the most advanced and convenient tools for this, including security, servers, updates, inventory management, checkout, logistics, and more.
We’d be happy to assist you with consulting, store setup, and ongoing support for your online store.
