Shopify: The Missing Ingredient for Your Online Shop

woman sitting on the sofa at home with her laptop on her lap paying online with a credit card

You’re likely no stranger to the necessity of selling on the internet – in fact, after running your small business for a few years now (maybe even just a few months), you can’t see how you could possibly survive without an online shop.

The issue? Despite understanding the importance of hosting and running an online shop, you could be stunting your e-commerce growth without ever really knowing it!

Shopify is an incredible tool because it’s so scalable (something we’ll dive more into later), but it also allows you, as a small to medium-sized business (and even larger businesses) the opportunity to find target solutions to problems that seemed impossible to solve.

Shopify eliminates all of the unnecessary hours it takes to manage the technology you need to sell your product. Instead, it allows you to do what’s actually important– focus on selling your product.

Investing in the right solution makes all the difference for your e-commerce endeavors, and although you’ve already established an online market for yourself, the Shopify solution could be the key to better grow your business.

Enough with the ambiguity — let’s get down to the nitty-gritty. Here’s how can Shopify help grow your business. We’ve laid it all out for you below!

Provides You with Speed to Draw in the Clients You Need

If you’re a small business, you’re trying to draw in customers and clients at every opportunity – that means you can’t afford to lose them over silly things like loading speed.

In fact, even a one-second delay in load time can mean conversion decrease by up to 7 percent. With the confirmation that Google now uses page speed as a vital factor for first index ranking (specifically for mobile), load speeds are going to matter now more than ever.

Shopify is fast.

Although that might seem like a trivial thing to mention, it’s vital for your e-commerce clients who are ready to buy, and even more vital for those who aren’t one-click away from a purchase.

You want your customers to peruse your Shopify site, so they can see more products or services.

If their loading times are slow, lagging, or not completing, you can bet you’re going to lose those potential customers (something that start-ups don’t want to risk).

 

 

Affordable Plans + Positive Customer Experience + Reliability = Scalability

Odds are, if you’re a small business, your expenses are one of your primary concerns.

You know what? There’s nothing wrong with that, and e-commerce platforms worth partnering with will understand that.

Shopify is one of those platforms that understand that budgets matter. No matter how ambitious or already successful a company is, the way they spend their hard-earned dollars matters.

The most basic Shopify plan starts at $29 monthly (and includes features like an unlimited number of products, 24/7 support, unlimited file storage, and fraud analysis). This is affordable compared to a similar plan from BigCommerce and Amazon Webstore which can ultimately end up costing about $79 monthly for similar features.

Services like Magento, which start out seemingly free, grow based off the server, traffic and SSL certificate that you plan to use. Costs like this really add up. Likely you’d need to hire a team to operate as your server administrator. These are the growing, hidden costs that are associated with Shopify competitors.

Shopify plans can shoot up to $79 and $299 monthly for additional features. As well as some optional add-ons with a-la-carte pricing, but if you’re a small business with minimal needs, the basic plan should be enough to get you going. But that’s not the limit with Shopify — in fact, it’s so scalable, you can work your way up to using Shopify Plus, their enterprise for $1 million sales clients. You can use Shopify from the very beginning of your business all the way until you’re a multi-million dollar company.

Scalability Matters

Shopify offers a scalability SaaS platform beyond your wildest dreams. Your site won’t crash, your customers can rely on a fast and convenient experience at all times, and work in a flexible way to accomplish your goals.

Need to host a giant flash sale? Shopify can do that. Need to sell a ton of product fast? Shopify can help do that, too.

Even if you’re just planning to use a reliable online platform to help run your steady, modest online store, the scalability of Shopify makes it easy to grow your online store conveniently, steadily, and beautifully.

Easy-to-Use

An e-commerce platform (like Shopify) is one of the most important aspects of your business.  Especially if you’re hoping to grow your online shopping space. Shopify has mobile and cross-channel capabilities that make it easy to set up shop and user-friendly features that allow companies to focus on the customer experience. This way, you won’t have to focus on building up a complicated e-commerce site.

Have issues despite the ease of use? Any plan you purchase from Shopify comes with 24/7 support.

Your e-commerce store is open at all times, right?

That means that your support team should be ready to help at all times, too! With Shopify plans, you’ll have access to free guides, online forums, and marketing advice to help you grow. That’s less time spent trying to figure out how to build a successful online shop and managing your platform. This means more time spent focusing on your business!

 

 

Social Media Integration

Small Businesses aren’t throwing money at traditional, commercial advertising methods. In fact, it’s rare that you see a small, local business spending all their dollars on commercials, billboards, and ads in print. Instead, they’re using smart tools. This includes things like social media and automation to catalyze their marketing and provide insights to further create their marketing plans.

Shopify understands that and offers marketing capabilities that go the distance for small businesses. With Shopify, you can easily integrate other apps and services (like MailChimp or Klaviyo). You can send newsletters, emails, recommendations, and price drop triggers. You can even target the right customers and audience with automated email capabilities based off of buying history, website engagement, and several other factors.

Additionally, Shopify provides small businesses with social network integration. Does your company have a Facebook? With Shopify, you can integrate your business page into an extension of your store.

The way Shopify works with Instagram is remarkable, too. This tool allows a user to see something they like, click on it within the app, and make a purchase from your e-commerce shop. This happens without ever leaving their social media platform or social media app. In other words, you can tag products in your Instagram posts to create a seamless shopping experience for your customers — from discovery to checkout.

Are You Ready to Take the Step Toward Shopify?

Is it time for you to make a move in the right direction? Are you ready to launch your online shop into a scalable, easy-to-use, flexible platform? If you’re ready to take the next step toward advancing your online shopspending less time tied up trying to manage your e-commerce platform, and shifting your focus back on your business, we can help!