Shopify Review: A One-Stop Shop For Ecommerce Merchants

Impress your customers with a beautiful online store you can set up in mere minutes.

• Drag-and-drop store builder. Choose from over 100 professional and free store themes with the ability to customize colors, imagery and fonts quickly and easily.
• Quick and secure payments. Shopify accepts credit cards instantly, without any third-party accounts.
• Mobile-friendly. All Shopify themes are fully responsive, so your customer gets a consistent shopping experience regardless of how they browse your online store.
• Comprehensive dashboard. Get a complete and detailed view of your business so you can gain insight on how to better tailor your products and marketing.
• Store management. View and group customer data by different factors, send invoices via email, connect to a fulfillment service, enable dropshipping, and more.
• Marketing features. Shopify has built-in SEO tools, automated marketing and free educational materials you can utilize to stay one step ahead of your competition.
• Shopify mobile app. Get live access to orders, fulfillment, analytics and more wherever you are. It’s all accessible via your smartphone.
• Shipping benefits. Calculate shipping rates, print discounted USPS labels and save up to 40% on postage. You can also keep your customers at ease by sending them automatic tracking updates.
• Inventory. With Shopify, you can sync your inventory across all your sales channels at all times.

You can integrate Shopify with over 100 gateways, including 2Checkout, Amazon Pay, Authorize.net and PayPal. Make sure to check if shoppers will remain on your site to complete checkout, or if they’ll be diverted to the gateway’s site. The former is called “direct” gateway; the latter is referred to as “external” gateway.

You can also opt to go with Shopify Payments, the in-house payment method powered by Stripe and available in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Germany, Australia, New Zealand, Singapore, Japan, and Hong Kong.

Check out some key Shopify Payments features below:

• Waived Shopify transaction fees. The 0.5% to 2.0% transaction fee you’ll see below in the Pricing section is waived. You will still need to pay regular credit card processing fees.
• Reduced processing fees. Stripe and other payment processors usually charge 2.9% + $0.30 for each online transaction. With Shopify Payments, you can take advantage of a reduced rate as you move up pricing tiers. In-person processing rates will also decrease.
• Fraud protection. Shopify Payments offers its own suite of advanced fraud and chargeback prevention features.
• Shopify Pay. This is an expedited checkout option that lets customers save their checkout information across Shopify stores, so they don’t have to input their information every time they want to make a purchase.

You’ll find that shopping for a Shopify App is much like shopping for a Shopify theme. It’s an organized and informative experience with a bunch of reviews and ratings for each app. There are over 2,000 add-ons to choose from, so you’ll probably be able to find whatever it is you’re looking for. Some are free, while others require a monthly subscription. Make sure you know which features you’ll need to add on before you sign with Shopify. Although it’s one of the cheapest shopping carts on the market, it can become very expensive if you need a lot of advanced features.

Check out a snapshot of some of the more popular apps below:

Alternatively, if you want an easy-to-use cart with loads of advanced features out-of-the-box, then I suggest you look into Zoey. Its plans are much more expensive than Shopify, but you won’t have to purchase as many add-ons later.

Shopify offers everything you need to sell across multiple locations via various channels and accept payments while delivering great customer experiences.

• Multi-channels. Sell wherever your customers are, whether its a branded online store, online marketplaces or social media.
• Advanced checkout. Create discount and promo codes and encourage customers to complete their purchase if they abandoned their shopping cart. Shopify will also calculate tax rates for you based on your location and your customer’s location.
• Plug-and-play hardware. Ready-to-go hardware with a simple design and advanced security.

With Shopify, there are two types of POS systems to choose from. One that provides an on-the-go POS to the occasional in-person seller, while the other caters to retail stores that support multiple staff members with a more robust solution.

• Facebook shop. Add your products to the Shop section of your Facebook page with just one click. Product details, images, and inventory automatically sync as soon as you make an update in Shopify.
• Facebook Messenger. Your customers can even browse and purchase your products directly through Messenger, as well as ask you questions and get automatic order tracking and shipping updates.
• Amazon. Get your products in front of millions on Amazon. You can sync your products in Shopify to Amazon listings in a matter of minutes and manage your inventory and orders from multiple sales channels in one place.
• eBay. List your product on eBay and manage orders without ever having to leave Shopify. You can seamlessly connect to eBay, updating product inventory, descriptions, images and pricing in real time.