Shopify: The Best eCommerce Platform to build your Online Store

The world is making a shift to the online marketplace. The move is happening at a pace that whoever misses out is leaving behind an opportunity to thrive. However, it’s not easy to get started without knowing the nuts and bolts of the web. You need to get ample resources, investment, and whatnot to finally launch your business and start selling.

But, there is a smart solution to all of it. It’s SHOPIFY.

Shopify is a one-stop platform that sorts your every need to land your business online. You don’t need to look beyond Shopify as it is a den of resources that are designed to help you at every step of the process. 

This detailed article will give you a comprehensive view of Shopify and everything around it. 

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a cloud-based commerce platform that helps you host your business on the web. It empowers you with powerful features, an easy-to-use interface, and round-the-clock assistance to run an unceasing online store. It enables eCommerce businesses to establish, grow, and manage their online business altogether from scratch to the sky with nominal expenses.

Shopify beholds the trust of hundreds of thousands of entrepreneurs spread across 175 countries. As an all-in-one e-commerce platform, its user-friendly nature allows all professionals with versatile backgrounds and experiences to work on it with no sweat. 

Shopify’s award-winning customer support, expansive themes, and diverse functionalities impart all the power to your business to flourish till the end of time.

Some of the best examples of the famous Shopify stores on the web are Kylie cosmetics, Gym Shark, Fashion nova, and Sephora.

How does Shopify work?

Shopify is the superhero for all aspiring e-commerce businesses. It helps you kick off by offering you a pool of resources. It provides all the tools to streamline the everyday operations of your online shop. Moreover, it brings your brand to the limelight and attracts all the attention you wish to seek.

It helps you create a storefront, showcase your products, and more in the online selling space. Numerous subscription plans are available to match the choice of all scales of businesses. You can explore the inclusions in each subscription package to know what does Shopify cost and settle upon the one that suits your needs the best. 

What is Shopify used for?

Shopify offers you all the space, resources, and support to set up your online store to sell your product/services on it. If you are wondering what you can sell on Shopify, you are permitted to sell anything and everything on your online store apart from a shortlist of exceptions. 

From fashion to home decor, lifestyle to personal care, gardening to automotive accessories, and even beyond; the boundaries are endless for you to dive into and kickstart your business. 

Here are the popular categories in the list that answer your query of what people sell on Shopify.

• Fitness equipment and accessories
• Pet supply
• Kitchenware
• Furniture
• Travel accessories
• Maternity products
• Apparels
• Beauty products and much more.

How do businesses earn revenue using Shopify?

Businesses are making millions and billions using Shopify. Ranging from the world’s successful brands to startups, this e-commerce platform has come as a boon to all kinds of businesses. 

Its powerful set of features is designed to empower your online store and drive your business forward. You can sell all kinds of goods and services like art, grocery, consulting, clothing, footwear, etc. 

Often, Shopify doesn’t require you to SELL anything to earn from its platform. There are numerous other methods about how you can make money with Shopify without spending a dime. Find everything described in brief in this guide.

How is Shopify different from Amazon and WordPress?

Even though Shopify may seem similar to Amazon and WordPress, all of them are quite different from each other. 

Here’s a detailed version of how is Shopify different from Amazon and WordPress.

Shopify	Amazon	WordPress
Shopify is a complete e-commerce platform.	Amazon is an online marketplace.	WordPress is a web development tool for technically sound professionals.
It lets you build your online store for selling products or services without coding.	It offers you an online space to sell your products as a merchant.	It lets you build a desired online business using a sound knowledge of coding.
It requires no experience to get started.	It requires minimal to no assistance to get started.	It requires a lot of web development experience.
It is easy to work on for professionals of all backgrounds.	Users can set up their accounts and can start selling with ease.	It works well for users with web development skills or with a budget to hire a developer.

How many types of Shopify stores are there?

Shopify has made it possible and easy for different businesses to get started online. However, you do have to unlock opportunities and be open to optimization to succeed. 

Based on the target market and your product/services, you may require different functionalities in your online store. To get all things right, you would have to get answers to a few questions like: 

• What’s your target market?
• Are you going to run one product store or a multi-product store?
• Which age group are you taking into focus?
• Do you have regional products?
• What is your product roadmap? Will you be adding more products to your offerings?

and more, which can help you define your business development strategies. 

You can choose from the different types of Shopify stores for building your business; thus streamlining the entire process. 

These are well-curated with themes and functionalities that will be a bonus for you. Here’s a glimpse of what’s in store for you.

General Shopify store

A general Shopify store is one that sells everything and anything possible in the world. 

Imagine an online supermarket. From automotive supplies, fitness accessories, and gardening tools to stationery, toys, home decor, furnishings, and more, you can find everything here. 

It’s easy to run and adapt and caters to a large audience. Walmart, Wish.com, and Inspire Uplift are some of the top general stores on Shopify.

A niche Shopify store

A niche Shopify store is one that sells products of a particular genre. They are committed to a category and possess a highly segregated audience. 

This approach harvests higher brand value and attracts a loyal following as all your efforts go into promoting the same products. 

Some of the best examples of this category are Boom by Cindy Joseph and Bee’s Wrap.

Single product Shopify store

A single product Shopify store is one that sells a particular type of product. It’s a big niche that has significant room to scale and potential for a successful business. 

It’s a rising part of the industry that goes as one store, one website, and one product. 

Getsnooz is one of the finest examples of a single product store that has also leveraged the single product Shopify theme impeccably.

Selling your products

This store category sells products/services that are a result of your existing hobby or business. 

It offers you high brand value as you are well-acquainted with the audience on your radar. 

With your existing pool of loyal customers, it further becomes easy to start with. 

Jaswant’s Kitchen is an excellent example under this category.

Hybrid Shopify store

The hybrid Shopify store combines both the general and niche stores under it. It blends the demographics of two categories which is why their audience is highly segmented. 

It usually has a major overlap within your user base which offers many opportunities to target.

Dick’s Sporting Goods and couples choices are great examples of a hybrid store on Shopify.

Advantages of using Shopify

Mobile-ready

The mobile-friendly Shopify stores let your customers browse and shop conveniently from their smartphones. It offers mobile responsive themes, a built-in shopping cart, marketing modules, and more – all together in a mobile-optimized site. 

Content on the site or the store can be managed with ease directly from the free apps for both iPhone and Android.

Shopify Themes

Shopify themes are one of the most dynamic and flexible features of the platform. 

The themes have not only allowed businesses to highlight their products better but also engage more with store visitors and appeal to them to purchase products. 

Moreover, Shopify keeps these themes up-to-date, adds new themes from time to time, and allows customizing these themes as per business requirements. 

SEO & marketing tools

The primary goal of the Shopify online store is to attract traffic and convert a majority of it into customers. This is where its biggest selling point comes in the picture, SEO and marketing tools. 

The powerful features of this module help you rank your online store in the top positions of search engine results. As a result, it becomes easy to grab the eye of your potential customers. 

Advanced analytics on the other hand offers you insights into visitor behavior, engagement patterns, and more. This information can be further utilized to update your marketing strategies for better results.

Own payment gateway

Shopify has integrated with ample third-party payment gateways; whereas its in-house gateway is powered by Stripe. 

The businesses going for Stripe do not face any transaction fees and incur a low credit card fee. No merchant account is needed to get started with the same.

Abandoned cart recovery

Shopify abandoned cart recovery feature lets you reconnect and re-engage with your potential customers who abandoned your website after adding products to their carts. 

The feature tracks and reminds them via emails, or other mediums to complete their purchase. This eventually helps you improve your revenue.

Shopify’s app store

Shopify app store adds more power to your online shop. 

There are various integrations available with which you can showcase reviews, print labels, customer wishlists, run loyalty programs, gain in-depth analytics along with an array of marketing apps. 

Choose from over 1500 options available including free and paid for your online store to your query for what are Shopify apps.

24*7 Customer support

Shopify gives utmost attention to customer support. They are available 24×7 throughout the year with a fairly instant response time. 

You can contact them via phone, web chat, or email, or can even reach out on their community forums. 

Their extensive documentation in the Shopify help center comes as a great help to all kinds of businesses.

Seamless app integrations

The app’s seamless integration with third-party platforms makes it a comprehensive shop for running your e-commerce store. You can sell more without any hassle by managing all tasks from one dashboard. 

This robust ability of Shopify sets it apart from others by streamlining your shop operations and eliminating any extra effort on the table.

Accept global and cryptocurrency payments 

Shopify helps you take your business to a global level by letting you accept global payments. It allows you to offer your customers various modes of payment, which in turn improves your customer experience. 

It includes credit card, Apple pay, Paypal, Facebook Pay, Amazon Pay, and others.

In addition to these, Shopify lets you accept payments in the form of cryptocurrencies like Bitcoins and NFTs, thus helping you stay up to date with the trends. 

Shopify Community

When Shopify came into the picture, the entire eCommerce and retail industry welcomed the change. However, not everyone was a Shopify expert. 

Individuals had to learn, train, and guide businesses to use Shopify efficiently. Thus, formed a community of Shopify users and experts. 

The Shopify community is open to all, where anyone can ask their questions and even help fellow individuals who are seeking answers. 

Fraud Prevention

The Shopify platform provides the unique benefit of preventing fraud through solid security patches and compliance checks. 

From implementing store-level captchas to authenticating payments and email addresses, Shopify ensures that all your purchases are genuine and no personal information is compromised. 

How can you grow your business on Shopify?

With Shopify’s online sales revenue growth each year, it is evident that it is a fine platform for business growth and expansion. However, the important step is to choose the right approach to accomplish it. 

So to help you continue to grow your Shopify store, here are some effective ways that will help you grow your business ceaselessly in the world.

Add multiple accounts

If you are experiencing major sales in one niche product in your store, why not open a separate store for it? 

Shopify allows you to open multiple accounts so that you can operate multiple stores with it. It will help you expand your business endlessly.

Build robust relations with suppliers 

Finding and maintaining the right vendors is a must to excel in the retail industry. 

A healthy relationship with them will help you keep your shelves stocked to full. In turn, no customer will leave your website empty-handed. 

Extend your product collection 

Ensure that your business is providing the audience with what they want. Even if this means that you have to extend your product collection. 

A happy customer definitely returns and brings in new customers, with word-of-mouth marketing.

Upscale your marketing efforts

Go the extra mile while marketing your online store and experiment with all the known ways one by one. 

Leverage the SEO & Shopify marketing tools offered by the Shopify platform to recognize your strong points and build strategies to work in the right direction.

What tools does Shopify offer to power up your global growth?

Add fuel to your global growth with Shopify’s tools that provide you with everything to recognize, create, and manage your international markets with ease. 

Here’s what you can leverage for your business.

Custom markets

Describe which marketplaces are the most relevant to your online store. 

Start by either targeting a single-country market or group multiple countries and target them together.

Market optimization 

Optimize your online store for international markets by default or custom settings and personalized recommendations for each one of them.

Pricing by market

Set prices for your products/services as per the international purchasing standards. 

It will help you target specific markets precisely and attain more conversions.

Storefront content by market

Target your customers in different countries by customizing your storefront content to match their preferences. 

Take advantage of an analytics tool that will offer you a brief on the same.

Market-specific product catalogs 

Keep an eye on what’s working for your global audiences and customize product catalogs for each one of them. 

It will help you deliver exactly what your customers expect from you.

Global inventory locations

Display accurate and real-time inventory to your international customers depending upon the stock at preferred fulfillment locations. 

It will help inculcate transparency in your business.

What products can be sold on a Shopify store?

You can sell anything on Shopify. From reusable water bottles, dog jackets, and yoga accessories to whatnot, you name it and there’s a Shopify store selling it on the web. 

To categorize broadly: one can sell services, memberships, consultations, digital products, classes, lessons and so much more.

How can the Shopify community help you in your business?

The Shopify community is a platform where you can seek help, support, and knowledge for your online business. It offers ample resources to help you grow your business. 

With various events, it lets you network with entrepreneurs, experts, merchants, and others to build your skills.

What app integrations are available in the Shopify app store?

Shopify app store is a treasure with excellent integrations to help your business endlessly. Here is a list of the [must-have Shopify apps] to increase sales that gives an overview of all the categories for which you can find integrations.

• Sourcing and selling products
• Store design
• Marketing
• Merchandising
• Conversion
• Fulfilment
• Shipping and delivery
• Customer service
• Store management

What does a Shopify theme store have for you in its closet?

The Shopify theme store will surely get you excited. It offers over 100 free and premium professionally designed templates for your e-commerce websites. 

You can find Shopify fashion themes, clothing store themes, and more all together in one place. You can browse and choose as per your choice for your online store. 

These help you get started in no time with categories and collections sorted for you to choose from.

What insights does Shopify offer you in your business?

Shopify insights come in handy when you wish to seek results for the performance of your online store. 

There are various types of analytics and reports that you can access based on the subscription plan you have bought. 

It will help you unlock your online store’s maximum potential and grow endlessly. Here’s what is waiting for you in the closet.

Live analytics

Utilize a detailed overview of your store’s performance in real-time at any moment. 

Keep an eye on your shop’s reach, traffic, orders, and revenue right from the all-inclusive e-commerce solution.

Contextual insights

Check out your business operational health from the same dashboard from where you execute all other tasks of your online shop. 

Explore the trends, performance records, page speed insights of the Shopify site, and more on the same screen altogether.

Mission control

Get a look at the big picture with all the key metrics listed for your business. Check what’s working for your business and pivot your efforts in the right direction.

Learn and grow

With all the records on your table, test with new strategies and grow. Learn what’s driving you more sales and repeat it for your store. 

Experiment, measure, repeat, and grow ceaselessly.

How to launch your Shopify store?

Launching a Shopify store is a cakewalk. This easy-to-use application will sort your business and will get you live in the shortest time possible. 

This is how you can get started on it step by step.

Finalize a name for your business

Choose a name for your business that goes well with its niche in the Shopify pre-launch phase. 

Make sure it fits your business personality and conveys your message precisely to your audience in one go.

Connect your domain

Once you have finalized the name for your business, get the same domain name to connect to your website. 

It will help you grab all the brand recognition by making it easy for people to remember your brand.

Create your Shopify account

Set up your Shopify account on Shopify in a few clicks. You don’t have to hustle for any server or setup or maintenance as it is all taken care of in it. 

Start with the free trial, enter your shop name, and create your online store.

Choose and customize a theme

Choose a theme for your online store that goes well with your target audience, displays your content well, and has an SEO-oriented foundation. 

It will help you do things right from the start.

Add products

Add your products and their categories and enrich them with descriptions, images, and other things that deliver everything to the viewer.

Add payment method

Include all the widely used payment methods to your online store before driving any traffic. 

Do check it once yourself by placing a test order to get the last check that everything is working in order.

Start selling

Launch Shopify website after all the setup is done. It’s time you get started with the marketing of your online store with all the offered resources on the Shopify platform.

What is Shopify POS and what are its features?

Shopify POS or Shopify point of sale system offers you all the resources to help you establish and sell your products/services online. 

It will power up your business by offering you a complete set of everything you would need. Catch a glance at the major inclusions in the same.

• Omnichannel selling
• Smart inventory management
• Staff management
• Reporting and analytics
• Checkout

Check out the nominal Shopify POS pricing.

How much does it cost to start a Shopify store?

The cost to start a Shopify store depends entirely on its scale and niche. According to thorough research done by Shopify, new businesses end up spending almost $40,000 annually. 

Also, businesses with no employees incurred an expense of $18000/year and those with 1-4 employees ended up spending $60000/year.

What plans does Shopify offer to all levels of businesses?

Shopify offers different pricing plans that suit well the business requirements of each level of organization. 

For early start-ups, Shopify ensures that the user has all the vital resources in hand to launch their business. It offers a Shopify basic plan that comes at a nominal subscription fee. 

Another plan that fits best for businesses that are in a growing phase is the Shopify plan. There are several additional features that come in this plan that the business can leverage to accelerate its growth.  

Standard reports, low transaction fees, and others are some of the best highlights of this plan for a cost-saving plan.

The third and the last, Shopify’s advanced plan is curated for well-established businesses. 

Keeping their huge sales volume in mind, this plan checks all the boxes on the wishlist of every e-commerce business. It even takes care of the duties and import taxes, third-party shipping rates calculation and so much more on its own.

What’s new in Shopify in 2022?

Shopify came up with a variety of new things as we entered 2022. From product updates, Shopify Unite, online store 2.0, and more to upscale the experience of its users. Stay up to date with Shopify news!

Who all can use Shopify?

Anyone with a product/service to sell to the world can use Shopify. Some of the big names operating on Shopify in the market are Kylie cosmetics (beauty), Heads up for tails (pet supply), House of Holland (apparel & accessories), and others.

What’s Shopify lite and what unique does it have to offer?

Shopify lite is a blessing in disguise for people who are short on funds. It is a plan who are looking to make a sale in person (via POS lite) or with just a buy button on their website. 

Shopify lite plan covers most of the needs like reports, issuing gift cards, and split bills, among others. 

What’s Shopify plus and what value can it bring to your business?

Shopify plus is a plan that suits well for merchants that are selling high volumes and are looking to expand their business. 

You can gain access to advanced Shopify apps, merchant success programs, and much more with it beside you.

How can you market your business with Shopify?

Shopify offers simple ways to help you with advertising for Shopify stores. Here are some of the well-known ways that you can utilize to go viral among your ideal audience.

Blog

Shopify’s built-in blogs offer you a way to deliver rich content that your ideal audience can leverage in one or the other way. It is an ideal way to market your business on Shopify by wrapping your offerings in a bundle of information that’s relevant to the user. 

Moreover, the user-friendly blog interface helps you in blogging with numerous things like:

• Creating and managing posts
• Editing, tagging, and managing comments
• Scheduling blog posts date and time
• Optimizing content as per SEO fields, and more.

SEO tools

The built-in SEO features fuel your content for a greater impact on your audience.

It takes care of some things automatically like adding canonical tags to pages, generation of the website’s sitemap.xml and robots.txt, and much more. 

Email Marketing 

Email marketing is another way to deliver tailored content to people who are interested in your online business. Start by acquiring a good number of subscribers from all your viable platforms. 

It can be from your social media handles, a pop-up on your website, or any other viable place that is good enough to grab the attention of your potential leads.

Once you achieve a list of quality leads, share information that’s relevant to them. It can include your newsletter, blog posts, videos, special offers, sales and promotions, new product announcements, or others. 

Do personalize your emails and match your audience’s expectations, make sure that the content you share interests them, and helps you build a direct connection with your audience.

Facebook ads

Facebook ads are an excellent advertising tool to reach your ideal customers based on their behaviors, interest, and their likes and dislikes. 

It will save you a lot of time and money by improving your ad delivery to put the message in front of your audience and put the best message in front of your audience.

Google smart shopping

Google Smart Shopping campaigns are a form of paid promotions that you can do for advertising a Shopify store. 

This helps in promoting your products, re-marketing them, and increasing traffic to your online store. It helps you accomplish consistent sales by utilizing machine learning based on sales in your store.

Social media marketing 

In today’s world, social media is a valuable component. From a paid to an organic approach to targeting people interested in your business, these platforms are an excellent way to connect to people where they are most active. 

Some of the numerous platforms that you can add to your list for marketing the Shopify store are listed below.

• LinkedIn
• Pinterest
• Instagram
• Twitter
• Facebook 
• TikTok
• Snapchat

If you are planning to go with the unpaid ways of marketing on these platforms, start by making a social media calendar for each one of them. Ensure that you post regularly, put up stories, and reels, or go live from time to time as needed.

If you wish to try your hand at paid marketing, try different ad formats in the initial phase. Different social media platforms offer different ad formats that you can experiment with to learn what is best for your business. 

Monitor their performance and refine them with time and results. It will help you invest your funds in your business wisely.

FAQs

1. How much do successful Shopify stores make?

There are tons of successful Shopify stores that are earning millions and billions online. Here’s a list of the top Shopify store earners in the market.

2. Is Shopify safe to use?

Absolutely! Shopify is safe to use. It is one of the top legitimate companies that is backed by huge investment funds in software and security engineering. This is the reason that it has earned a trusted customer base of 2.1 million daily active users.

3. Are Shopify and Amazon competitors?

Shopify and Amazon can be defined as more adjacent competitors. However, there are many other big brands on the list that are more significant for Shopify than Amazon given the difference between both of them.

4. How much does an average Shopify store make?

The average revenue generated per customer on a Shopify store is predicted to be almost $72. As of a month, $63,000 is the monthly revenue recorded for a newly set up eCommerce store. In cases where an online Shopify business is able to generate a store revenue greater than $149, they mark their place in the top 20% of the successful stores running on Shopify.

5. What businesses can use Shopify for their business?

Shopify is open to a pool of businesses from lending services, consultations, appointments, and courses to any business selling products of any category.

6. Is Etsy cheaper than Shopify?

Etsy is cheaper than Shopify. However, the boons and banes included with each are the reason for the popularity of each platform. Given the business requirements, businesses go for Etsy and Shopify as per their necessity.

7. Is Shopify free for small businesses?

Shopify offers a free 14-day trial of its platform to everyone. However, you can create your online store for free but to sell a product on the same, you can proceed with a free 14-day trial followed by a subscription of your choice.

8. How much does Shopify make per sale?

Shopify takes a cut from your earnings depending upon the plan you are running your business. It ranges from 2.6% at minimum to a maximum of 20%. However, at the end of the day, you give away only a small cut to Shopify and keep the biggest cut in your wallet.

Where to find the best Shopify experts? 

Aureate Labs is one of the best places to hire Shopify experts. Since our establishment, we have helped thousands of businesses boost their growth and brand awareness. 

From Shopify design and development to optimization and marketing of the store, you can get everything done by the Shopify professionals at our place. Get in touch now!

What can Shopify experts do for you? 

Shopify professionals have the utmost knowledge of the diverse e-commerce platform. They know the whys and wherefores for every process and can help you streamline everything for your business. 

You can hand over your business requirements to our certified Shopify experts as their experience and commitment speak through their work.