Reasons to choose Shopify as your ecommerce platform
Shopify is one of the most impressive internet success stories. According to BuiltWith, the Canadian ecommerce giant now powers almost five million stores worldwide. Merchants choose Shopify for its ease of use, robust features, scalability, and cost-effectiveness. Let’s go over the main reasons for choosing Shopify.
What is Shopify and what does it do?
Shopify is an ecommerce platform that has everything under one roof. It’s a cloud-based solution that lets merchants create, customize, and manage online stores without issues. Shopify focuses heavily on ease of use and functionality, and with the thought of having businesses run an online business without technical expertise.
Shopify has quickly become one of the most popular ecommerce platforms. For instance, Shopify dominates the US market, with a market share of around 30%. It helps by easily serving businesses of all shapes and sizes, from small startups to large enterprises.
Choosing the right ecommerce platform is critical to your online success. There are many good reasons to choose Shopify, as it’s versatile, user-friendly, and scalable. It’s a good solution for most businesses and even comes with tools like Yoast SEO for Shopify that help you with your content marketing and SEO efforts.
Primary features and services of Shopify
One of Shopify’s main features is hosting and scalability. As a managed hosting solution, Shopify offers fast and reliable performance for your pages. Its infrastructure can handle traffic spikes and high-demand sales peaks like those during Black Friday sales.
Next, Shopify is well-known for its template and customization options. The theme store has over 240 themes, all of which are mobile-friendly. You even get a selection of industry-specific themes to help businesses get online quickly.
Another strong aspect of Shopify is its tools section and the way it integrates with nearly everything. The app store has almost any app you need, from Shopify SEO tools like Yoast SEO to inventory management options. This breadth of options is very impressive.
Last but not least, Shopify makes it easy to manage payments and financial transactions. It runs its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, but it also supports various third-party payment processors.
These options together form a fully formed product that helps merchants with everything from server management to brand building and marketing. No wonder so many merchants choose Shopify as their ecommerce platform.
How does Shopify work?
Shopify’s intuitive platform makes starting and running an ecommerce store very easy. It doesn’t matter if you sell just one product or thousands — the software makes it accessible for every type of merchant.
Simple setup process
One of Shopify’s most impressive aspects is the setup. Entrepreneurs can literally launch an online store within a few hours — without prior technical know-how. The platform offers easy-to-use tools that work by simply dragging and dropping elements. In addition, it offers user-friendly walkthroughs to guide merchants through the process. There are pre-built themes to get started with quickly, and buying premium themes from the Shopify Theme Store is also possible.
Effortless management
Shopify has a clearly organized admin dashboard. Store owners can track orders, manage inventory, and check customer data in a single place. Merchants also enjoy the automation features. For instance, it automatically calculates taxes, handles shipping integrations, and manages checkout processes — a huge time saver!
Of course, as we live in the mobile age, Shopify offers mobile app access. Merchants can manage their stores on the go, so they don’t have to miss anything when they are out and about. We’ve already mentioned that Shopify store themes all scale with and perform properly on mobile devices.
All of these possibilities make Shopify a very good solution for most stores. Even a solo entrepreneur can build and manage a professional store without issues. This makes it a far more accessible option than platforms like WooCommerce or Adobe Commerce.
7 Key benefits of choosing Shopify
Shopify’s impressive features, scalability, and customer-centric design stand out. Here are some key reasons merchants choose Shopify as their preferred ecommerce platform.
1. The user-friendly interface
Time and time again, Shopify merchants mention that the clean, intuitive interface is the most important reason for choosing this ecommerce platform. Shopify is one of the most user-friendly e-commerce builders out there, and it’s intuitive for beginners and powerful for experienced users.
Shopify has an innovative drag-and-drop builder that lets merchants customize the store layout and product pages without coding. The admin interface is clearly organized and simple, even for non-developers. Thanks to Shopify’s guided setup and well-designed templates, business owners can quickly move from concept to live store. In addition, the admin panel gives an easy-to-understand overview of the store’s performance so merchants can manage orders and inventory without issues.
2. Shopify AI Magic
One of the newest benefits is Shopify Magic, an AI-powered solution that makes work easier and more fun. For instance, it has an image editor that automatically cleans up and optimizes product images, and a content generation tool that uses generative AI to write FAQs, product descriptions, and blogs. Email improvements also help dynamically tailor email campaigns for higher engagement rates.
Shopify also has Sidekick, an AI assistant that can help you get more done in your store. This chatbot answers all your questions and advises you on your specific situation, as it knows everything about your store. As a result, you have more time to focus on important things like strategy.
3. Flexible and scalable
Another big benefit of choosing Shopify as an ecommerce platform is its flexibility and scalability. Shopify can grow with a merchant and offers options for large and small businesses.
It has an affordable pricing structure. The $29/month plan helps small businesses get online quickly without investing too much. For large businesses, there’s Shopify Plus, which supports global enterprise brands like Heinz and Gymshark. This plan offers advanced features like a multi-store setup, custom checkout-out options, and very high API limits. Shopify is also very proud of its 99.98% uptime guarantee, which keeps stores online even in the busiest seasons.
4. Integrated payment solutions
Another big benefit of Shopify is its ability to simplify payment processes for clients worldwide. It hosts its own payment system, Shopify Payments, a hassle-free payment gateway. Shopify includes this in the subscription costs, and there are no set-up fees, just the going credit card and transaction fees. Shopify also supports over a hundred payment integrations, from Stripe to PayPal.
5. Robust app ecosystem
Shopify is a very extendable ecommerce platform. It has an excellent app store, where developers offer a wide range of good apps that improve and expand what Shopify can do. Currently, over 10,000 apps are available in the app store, and new ones are arriving daily.
Many of these apps integrate deeply with Shopify, allowing marketing automation and personalization that can increase sales. Merchants can install apps to recover abandoned carts, upsell related products, or integrate with CRM and advertising platforms.
Merchants can find apps for nearly everything. Some of the most popular ones are Oberlo for dropshipping, Klaviya and Mailchimp for email marketing, Judge.me and Loox for product and store reviews, and PageFly for building custom landing pages.
This extendability helps merchants scale their work whenever they need it most.
6. Comprehensive support
Running an online store is difficult enough without having to worry about technical issues. Luckily, Shopify helps remove that worry with 24/7 technical and customer support. Merchants can access professional assistance via live chat, email, or phone. In addition, it offers loads of learning material in the form of Shopify Academy, community forums, and tutorials. Business owners can quickly learn to make the most of their online stores.
7. Yoast SEO for Shopify
Shopify comes with all merchants need to run their stores, including tools to improve search engine visibility. While SEO is always in Shopify’s mind, it is good to think beyond the basics that the e-commerce platform offers. Getting traffic is too important to leave it to chance.
Yoast SEO for Shopify is the perfect tool for merchants looking to get that traffic. This Shopify app is built by a team of SEO experts with decades of experience. Yoast SEO has innovative features like real-time SEO suggestions, helping you optimize your pages and products with actionable insights. Or enhanced structured data for your products to make these stand out in Google.
Yoast SEO for Shopify also helps you write better product content. Enter your focus keyword and use the feedback to make your product descriptions stand out. A readability analysis also helps you make the content as readable for your customers as possible. There’s a Semrush integration to get keyword data from the editor and AI-powered features to automate some parts of the optimization process.
Combining Shopify’s framework with Yoast SEO makes your store accessible to search engines and customers.
Unique selling points of Shopify
Shopify has a lot going for it as an ecommerce platform, and there are more things it does to stay ahead of the competition.
Multi-channel selling
One reason Shopify could be chosen over the competition is its ability to sell across multiple channels. Multi-channel options allow merchants to sell their products on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok, with all the management and insights happening on the main dashboard. Shopify also has point-of-sale options that help merchants offer in-store sales and integrate online and offline.
Shopify can sync listings to third-party platforms like Amazon, eBay, or Google Shopping, increasing merchants’ visibility. The platform also has many more options for going omnichannel with your store, which makes it a great fit for managing everything all at once.
Strong security and reliability
Trust is an important aspect of ecommerce. Merchants need to trust ecommerce platforms with their data and trust that they keep it safe and sound. Luckily, Shopify is working hard to provide store owners with a secure shopping environment. Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI-DSS compliant, the highest level of payment security standard, which helps protect customer data. It also has built-in fraud detection features that minimize the risk of chargeback.
Compared to hosted platforms like WooCommerce, Shopify automatically handles almost every security aspect. This gives merchants peace of mind that their customer’s data is safe.
Considerations before choosing Shopify
Shopify is an all-around great ecommerce platform, but there are some things to remember when merchants choose between the many other options. For one, Shopify’s pricing is decent, with basic monthly plans starting at $29. Still, the cost can add up when you want to add apps, third-party integrations, or want to have a custom theme developed. However, Shopify is often easier to set up and cheaper to run compared to platforms like Adobe Commerce.
Another consideration is the platform’s limitations. Shopify is closed software, so store owners have limited code access. WordPress solutions like WooCommerce might be better if openness is an issue.
These are the main reasons to choose Shopify
Shopify provides a great combination of ease of use, scalability, and features that help merchants thrive. It doesn’t matter if you run a simple store with a small budget or juggle millions of dollars; Shopify has the necessary solutions. It grows with your needs and offers you many options and possibilities to make the most of your business. Moreover, if you add Yoast SEO for Shopify to your store, you can boost visibility on Google, hopefully translating to more traffic and business growth.
So, why wait? Sign up for a free trial with Shopify, add Yoast SEO to your store, and get your business on the road!
