Shopify The all-in-one commerce platform

    Most people tend to mistake Shopify for just a website builder, however in our experience we find Shopify to be a great source of many business solutions especially for e-commerce. With more than 4 million websites on the web today, we personally think that Shopify is the best platform for most e-commerce businesses especially if you’re just starting. In this article, we will show you all the options available on Shopify and how they can be useful for lots of different businesses. Make sure to read until the end so you can get all the details and find out if Shopify can be useful for your business. First let’s cover the 8 most important factors one should consider when building a website and how they relate to Shopify. 

Price/Subscription

In our experience, Shopify has always been direct with their prices. They have a 14 days free trial for everyone to test out the platform. Then there are 3 regular monthly plans:

• The Basic for $29
• The Shopify for $79
• The advanced for $299

Alternatively there are 2 additional monthly plans:

• For $5 you can sell on most social media platforms with just a picture and description of your product.
• For larger enterprises a $2000 plan is also available.

Shopify does offer additional discount if you choose to pay yearly for the subscription.

Support

In the 5+ years we have been using Shopify, our support experience has always been great. We don’t know of any number to speak directly with a person, but you can easily chat with their support team or simply email them. They are pretty quick to respond and very reliable. For simpler things such as instructions on building websites, we find it easier to read the Docs available on their platform or just to Google it.

Domain

A domain is a unique name or web address that identifies your project. To date, none of the regular Shopify plans comes with a free domain included. You’ll have to buy one yourself! We recommend buying the domain directly with Shopify to avoid headaches and verification issues, and don’t forget to renew it every year. Make sure to choose a short and easy to spell domain. Additionally, Shopify has a domain generator to help you choose a great domain, make sure to use it if you’re having trouble choosing a domain name for your project. 

Hosting

Hosting is simply the virtual space where your website is stored. All the regular plans on Shopify come with hosting included and free SSL Certificates at no additional cost to you. With Shopify, you’ll never have to worry about typical hosting problems such as file sizes, backups and the likes. Depending on how you look at it, this is another Pros of Shopify without any doubt.

Beginner Friendliness

Based on our experience the platform is easy to use and self explanatory. Most people should be able to build any simple e-commerce website using just the bare platform of Shopify without any additional software or apps. We think it is fully equipped for e-commerce businesses to just start and get going right away. The drag and drop builder can be somewhat complex for beginners, but the learning curve isn’t very high like WordPress.

Customization Flexibility & Limitations

In case you need more than the bare minimum, Shopify has lots of free themes and apps to help you build just about any other type of websites. The platform can do a whole lot of things but of course it does have its limitations. One issue is that you may be limited to the extent of the theme you choose. Unless you can edit the core code yourself, it can be hard to implement changes not included in the core theme. You may also have a hard time transferring information from one theme to the next. As a result, we recommend you fully investigate the theme before you start building on it, or you may end up wasting your time.

Advantages for E-commerce

Although Shopify may be used for other types of businesses, we find them to be perfect for e-commerce. Just about all the necessary tools are available from the bare platform, it’s very simple to start with and build your site right away. The greatest e-commerce features of Shopify are the product builder, and payment processor. For simple products, the builder is fully equipped to create products for your business without additional tools, additionally a built-in SEO tool is included in the product builder. Regarding purchases and payments, Shopify allow users to buy with just two clicks using Shop Pay. This is simply Amazing for boosting sales for e-commerce. 

Performance, Responsiveness and SEO 

Last, it’s somewhat unnecessary to state the obvious, but we will anyway. The 4 million plus website built on Shopify is more than enough evidence to prove the software reliable. Shopify is not only well known (the godfather of drop shipping in a sense), but also has the reputation to back it up. One thing we also notice is that Shopify websites also tend to load faster than some other platforms especially when there is a lot of products with lots of images on the website. 

Now that you know the 8 important factors of Shopify, should you start with Shopify? And how can you start building on Shopify?

In all honesty, we think for all e-commerce business Shopify is simply the best choice. It’s what we use for our company products website and for our clients. It works just perfectly! Starting with Shopify is very simple and direct, all you have to do is visit this link that’ll take you directly to the shopify website and start a free trial. We have an additional discount, which will give you the first 3 month at just One US Dollar (Shopify will give us a kickback). The process is a step by step format which will walk you through all the set up to get started on building your website if that’s what you need. As we stated above, the documentation section has all the guides and information you’ll need to do it yourself. Should you need additional help, make sure to reach out to us at AtomicWebApp.com or using most of the social media platforms @AtomicWebApp (Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, make sure to follow us and comment on what you think about the article. 

If you’re in e-commerce but do not need or not at the stage of building a website as of now, Shopify does have a solution for you. There are two alternative plans as mentioned above. The $5 social media selling plans seems to be perfect for those who are just starting. Shopify promises to let you sell your product on various social media platform with just a picture and description of your product. See too easy! We have yet to try this plan, but the information and reviews seem very promising. If you’ve tried it before, please send us a message with your thoughts. 

One additional recommendation we have for you is to always plan your project before launching it. We always build our websites on Shopify within the 14 days of free trial because we plan everything accordingly before even starting. And that’s why we always recommend you start your business with a business plan so you can be fully prepared for the unexpected. To some this may seem a bit much or unnecessary but we can convince you otherwise. We have a full article “How to effectively start your business” on the EduBlogs section on our website. Additionally we have the video version on our YouTube channel. You may find a ton of free value for you and your business, make sure to check them out.

In conclusion, we think Shopify is arguably the best software for e-commerce businesses right now in 2022. Whether you are a brick and mortar or just online, they may have a solution for you. Shopify can really take the weight off your shoulder with additional features such as: easy payment processor online and in person, staff account, different sales channel, various inventory locations, abandoned cart recovery, automation, shipping discounts, fraud Analysis and a lot more. If you find this article valuable, feel free to share it with others for our goal is to provide as much Value as we can with minimal Effort on your end. 

Should you need help with your Website, App or Marketing or similar business solutions, check out the Atomic Web App Website. We provide value driven business solutions, strategic support, and data-driven leadership to help you (our client) plan your company’s future and build its performance. Get ahead of the competition! As always thank you for taking the time to read another edublog from AWA and don’t forget to share it! 

Thank you

Jeff Daniel – Atomic Web App and Services Inc.