Why use Shopify for your eCommerce website: the pros and cons of Shopify

Why use Shopify?

Choosing the right eCommerce solution can be tedious and time-consuming. We have been there before. We have been comparing shipping options, payment processors, SEO performance, costs, to make sure we are using the right eCommerce platform. Shopify does excel in some areas but is it the right one for you?

With this review on Shopify find out if this is the right platform for you. Make sure it is suitable for what you want to do or look at alternatives such as WooCommerce or Magento.

What should you expect?

Shopify allows people with no eCommerce experience and people with experience to create online stores without the need for code. There is no need for software installations or hosting services are required. Shopify features plans range from £29-£299/month, and there are no other transactions that it might give you after your monthly payment.

What is Shopify?

In 2006 someone decided to sell snowboards online in Canada. He created his own eCommerce solution and soon realized others could also use the same platform to sell their own products. 

Over the past seven years, Shopify has become the best platform for eCommerce sites and has more than 800,000 online stores. It has currently made £63 billion of sales and 3,000 employees.

How does Shopify work?

Shopify is not only just an easy way to launch and manage your eCommerce store. It is also tooled for supporting online store owners in crucial areas like opening additional channels, such as Amazon, eBay or Facebook. It can also offer customer support tools, such as live chat, or by taking care of the technical hassles.

Pricing for Shopify

  • Basic Shopify: For £26, you can sell unlimited products while Shopify will charge a 2% transaction fee unless you use Shopify Payments.
  • Shopify £71: With more eCommerce features like gift cards and abandoned cart recovery. Transaction fees are 1% unless you use Shopify Payments.
  • Advanced Shopify £266: Get advanced reports and automatically calculated shipping rates. Transaction fees are 0.5% unless you use Shopify Payments.

Other plans are the lite plan. This is so you can sell on social media which cost about £10 a month. Shopify also offers an enterprise plan which is for a huge online store which starts at £2000 a month.

Having a domain name does cost you an extra £14 per year for a .com, but can be added through Shopify or any external registrar. It is recommended that you use Shopify’s own payment gateway as this will save you additional charges. 

Shopify Pros and Cons

Pros

  • It is easy to use. You dont have to worry about any technical stuff, and nearly everything can be done with a few clicks. Shopify provides great beginner guides and detailed documentation.
  • Design is the main feature. No matter what design you choose, your eCommerce site will look great on the desktop and on mobile.
  • It is flexible. The main system and templates are great, but if you want to add your own code, you can.
  • Scaling, it is great for big and small companies.

Cons

  • The URL structure. Blog post and other regular pages have URL structure that is not ideal for SEO.
  • Multi-language store. This is not a standard feature, there are templates available, but they are expensive and are very limited.
  • Transaction fees. Unless you use Shopify’s Payment method, you will be charged a fee for every sale that you make.