The fierce competition between different eCommerce platforms is no longer a secret. In fact, that’s the core reason for the entire eCommerce industry to ride the wave and keep tabs on the ever-changing marketing trends. Right from Shopify to Magento, WooCommerce, BigCommerce, OpenCart, Prestashop, SquareSpace, Wix, Volusion, 3DCart, and CoreCommerce, options are many but making the right choice is something that matters here the most. And that’s what we will discuss further in the following post. Yes, the following post focuses on why one must opt for custom Shopify development and what are the benefits of Shopify for their eCommerce project.
1. Introducing Shopify
Now we all know that Shopify is one of the leading eCommerce development platforms available across the globe. However, have you wondered what exactly is Shopify? Shopify is a user-friendly, scalable, eCommerce development platform that assists several businesses irrespective of their size and industry vertical in selling a wide range of products and services online. Technically speaking, Shopify is more like a subscription-based software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform that offers an amazing bunch of services at quite a reasonable price. All you have to do is get in touch with a reputable web development or Shopify development company that carries an immense amount of knowledge and experience in offering the best possible solutions from their doorsteps.
It may quite interest you to know that Shopify was established back in 2006 and since then it has been ranked as one of the leading one-stop solution b2b eCommerce platforms and offering great assistance to businesses to strengthen their online presence by running their eCommerce store seamlessly. Tobias Lütke and Scott Lake were the masterminds behind Shopify. They came up with the idea of selling snowboards online however, things did not work according to their plan and as a result, they initiated an activity for those businesses who are facing similar issues and that’s how Shopify technology came into existence. Started off as a failed snowboard selling venture, today is considered among the best eCommerce companies across the globe.
What can be sold on Shopify? Well, be it anything right from handicraft products to beauty supplies, goods, outdoor gear, clothing, apparel, accessories, digital products, online classes, events, gift cards, eBooks and a lot more! To be precise, there is no cookie-cutter rule here, just make sure that you aren’t selling anything illegal or something that’s quite prohibited such as Alcohol, drugs, cigarettes, fireworks and so on!
Further below I would like to mention some of the most noteworthy stats to consider:
- More than 5 million businesses are found using the eCommerce platform
- In the USA, UK, Canada, Brazil, Germany, France, India, Italy, and New Zealand, Shopify is well-known everywhere.
- Around $543 billion in sales has been generated in its overall tenure and the number is more likely to increase day by day.
- In the first half of 2022, Shopify’s total revenue was $2.5 billion. Just imagine!
- More than 10000 employees are working at Shopify. So in any case, even if you get stuck a large community is present right here to assist.
In addition to all this, there are around 6000 Shopify apps available on the app store and all of them are bifurcated and separated into 12 categories. Plus, you will find 5,300 Shopify Plus stores in 2021 and 2,297 Million live websites. It has been estimated that by choosing Shopify to develop ecommerce website, businesses can make from $1,000 to $100,000 within a span of just 30 days. And you see, Fitbit, Budweiser, Pepsi, The New York Times, and Kylie Cosmetics, are some of the top companies using Shopify for ages.
I am definitely not saying that if these people or big names are using Shopify then you should follow the herd too. Though, I can provide you with certain crucial reasons to choose custom Shopify development for your upcoming eCommerce development project.
2. Reasons to Choose Customer Shopify Development for your eCommerce Project
As mentioned earlier, Shopify as a platform tends to power over 300000 online stores and this can surely be one of the reasons. The platform is thoroughly tried and tested! However, further below I would like to emphasise on several other reasons worth considering.
2.1 Easy to use
One of the obvious reasons for choosing Shopify is that it is quite easy to use. Yes, even if you are a non-techie, you can work seamlessly with the Shopify website. It’s more like a plug-and-play solution unlike other eCommerce platforms such as Magento where you do require having some technical knowledge, especially if you are willing to expand your store. In fact, here you are bound to receive more than 100 professional, desktop, and mobile-ready storefront templates to pick from! So overall, you get all the ingredients that can surely make the site look great within a very short span of time. At the same time, choosing a reliable eCommerce platform means you care about your end users. You are not ready to compromise on their data or information or even in terms of user experience. So this surely assists well in building trust and credibility with visitors to your store.
Here you will find free as well as paid themes, so you can choose according to your needs. Remember this, Shopify is one hell of a hosted platform, so launching your very own eCommerce store won’t be that of an issue.
2.2 SEO-friendly
Another crucial benefit of Shopify is that it is SEO-friendly. Developing an ecommerce store is common these days. The only thing that makes a difference is whether your developed ecommerce store gets ranked on the Google Search Page seamlessly and in a short time or not. It may quite interest you to know that there are a plethora of SEO-friendly features and functionalities offered by Shopify such as editing meta tags whenever in need, adding important tags, placing collections, products and changing descriptions at regular intervals. In fact, Shopify is one such platform that provides you with the liberty to optimise the site’s content. However, it is better if you have someone who has a basic understanding of SEO in regard to structure, on-page optimization and other ranking factors or else you can consider hiring SEO experts or a digital agency that can take care of all your SEO needs.
2.3 Different Payment Options
Another interesting reason for choosing Shopify instead of other eCommerce platforms is that it offers different payment options. If you compare Shopify with Wix then you will see that Wix works well with Paypal and Stripe and the remaining ecommerce platforms, unfortunately, do not have any default integration with payment gateways. So for seamless transactions, one must install different add-ons especially to perform financial transactions.
Shopify on that not offers different payment options by default and it offers region-wise payment gateway which turns out to be a pure bliss for the end users. Some of the best options offered by Shopify include Amazon pay, Paypal, Apple Pay and so forth. In fact, website owners can seamlessly integrate with other after pay applications such as Affirm, Afterpay, and Klarna. So there is no way that your shopping experience won’t be so enhanced. This surely leads to less cart abandonment for a long period of time.
2.4 Security
Security is one of the most crucial factors that must be taken into consideration these days. After all, with cyber breaches happening every now and then, website owners have started looking for different ways to make their site safe and secure. Fortunately, Shopify comes with such security features that there are pretty less chances of anything being compromised. To be precise, Shopify offers SSL certificates, and it is PCI-DSS compliant. Here you may also find in-built fraud analysis which is quite compliant to GDPR.
2.5 Mobile Responsiveness
Today being mobile responsive has become the need of the hour. You see today most of the people tend to conduct different activities by using their mobile applications. So yes, your ecommerce website has to be mobile responsive or else you may have a lot to lose. In fact, not just humans but search engines like Google also tend to prefer websites that are mobile responsive then the ones which are not!
3. Conclusion
Shopify is one such eCommerce platform that offers a myriad of benefits such as efficient integration with third parties, blog support, customizable keywords, adding coupons, discount and promotional codes, integration with POSs like Vend, Clover, Square, theme options like none other. No wonder it is well-suited for every business.
So that’s all for now! I hope you find the following post on Shopify interesting. Also, by now you must be convinced why one must consider custom Shopify development for their upcoming eCommerce project. In case, if there is still something that’s bothering you or any queries, feel free to mention them in the comment section below.