Telephone: 01257 410282
Telephone: 01257 410282
There’s no denying that online stores are the future of doing business for most companies that sell a product. However, in an increasingly crowded marketplace, it can be difficult to choose the best e-commerce framework. Making the wrong choice could lead to lost sales or even security breaches that directly impact your customers.
Here at Highpoint Media our platform of choice for e-commerce website development is Shopify. We love Shopify because it allows our clients the ability to run their online stores easily and without the hassle of old fashioned e-commerce platforms. Let’s take a moment to look into just why Shopify is so great.
Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce platform, which means is that you can run your entire e-commerce operation from one simple to use control panel. Everything you could possibly need to manage your store is fully integrated into Shopify.
Unlike other e-commerce software, Shopify actually runs in the cloud. By using their own cloud servers Shopify are able to control every element of the process. In practical terms, this means that Shopify stores are very fast, have excellent customer support and rarely go down.
Thanks to the way Shopify works there’s almost no maintenance required in day to day operation. Essential stability and security updates are applied automatically to your store without any intervention on your part.
Shopify has a number of excellent integrations that allow you to add functionality to your store without spending huge sums of money. This platform has been created with absolute utility in mind and there’s even the ability to integrate your in person retail sales directly into the Shopify system.
One of the best things about Shopify compared to traditional self hosted e-commerce solutions is that it’s very simple to run and the amount of upkeep required is low.
You don’t need to be a master coder or a financial genius to run a Shopify store. It’s possible to learn most of the basic elements of operation in just one afternoon.
Shopify focusses on being simple to use so that store owners can stop wasting time messing around with websites and focus their energy on producing results. This is one of the biggest reasons we think that Shopify is the best e-commerce platform.
While many e-commerce platforms will charge you based on the number of products you have in your store, Shopify allows unlimited products for all users.
Sales channels allow you to open up your products to a whole new world of customers. By taking advantage of this innovative third party integration technology you can even connect your Shopify store with Amazon and reach buyers directly on their site.
If you spend any time searching for products online you’ll know that Google Shopping has become a big player in the e-commerce marketplace over the last few years. With Shopify, it’s actually possible to get your products listed on Google Shopping and enjoy all the benefits that can bring.
Shopify is very fast. If you’ve ever run an online business before you’ll know that there’s a lot that goes into e-commerce website development to keep things from running slowly.
A huge portion of people searching the internet are now doing so on their phones and tablets. Shopify stores are responsive and dynamically adjust to deliver the best layout possible regardless of what device the customer is using.
SEO is incredibly important for every website these days. Search engines like Google can deliver almost all of your customers, so it’s important to use an e-commerce platform that takes optimisation seriously. Shopify has been built from the ground up to be super SEO friendly.
Customer support is incredibly important whenever you rely on another company to provide essential services like this. We’re pleased to say that Shopify offer 24/7 customer support, meaning that no matter when you have a problem there’s someone to fix it for you.
In fact, Shopify has so many benefits over old fashioned e-commerce solutions it’s even used by huge brands like Gymshark and Allbirds.
When it comes to running an online store there are going to be some costs involved; managing these expenses and ensuring a positive ROI is essential for any healthy e-commerce business. Traditional e-commerce website development often requires expensive maintenance contracts that drag up monthly costs by a huge margin. Luckily for us, Shopify has a very reasonable pricing structure.
Shopify is an American company and as such, they bill in US dollars. A basic Shopify store plan will run you $29 a month, which is around £23.* Upgraded plans come in at $79 and $299 respectively.
Processing cards is an essential part of doing business online and Shopify have got their own integrated payment system. Basic Shopify store owners pay 2.2% +20p on all card transactions through Shopify payments.
High turnover businesses may want to consider upgrading their store plan as you’ll pay 1.9% +20p per transaction for the $79 store and 1.6% +20p for the $299 plan.
There’s also the option to use external payment processors and you’ll pay a Shopify fee of 2% on those transactions as a basic store owner. This fee drops down to 1% and 0.5% for the respective higher tier plans. Don’t forget that you’ll still have to pay whatever fees your payment processor charges on top of this.
Whenever a customer places an order online they want to know that their financial information is protected. Shopify is a certified Level 1 PCI compliant e-commerce provider, which means that every transaction that goes through your store is 100% safe and secure.
Every Shopify store enjoys this high level of online security. You don’t have to do anything special to take advantage of it. That’s great news for both you and your customers.