What is Shopify? Everything You Need to Know Before Start Using It
Today we’re sharing about Shopify! We'll be answering questions like what is Shopify, who is Shopify good for, and we’ll even give you a small tour of the platform.
Feel like everyone around you is talking and recommending Shopify? Or when searching online for e-commerce platforms the name pops immediately? There’s a very good reason for it and it’s not only because they invest a lot of money into marketing… Shopify can be an awesome tool for your business!
I think you can tell already that we are Shopify fans! As web designers, we’ve used and tried multiple platforms but we ultimately choose Shopify to design our clients’ websites when their main focus is to sell products online.
Before you accept the recommendation of your web designer on using Shopify as a platform for your e-commerce business you need to at least know what it is and how it works. Let’s get started!
What Is Shopify? Everything You Need to Know Before Start Using It
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is an e-commerce platform where you can build an online store for your business. If your business focus is on selling products and you want to expand online, Shopify is an excellent tool to get to the masses.
Shopify provides everything that you need to create a website that has all the functionalities that will need to make sales online. Everything can be managed under the same roof because Shopify offers services like marketing, payment methods, shipping, and customer engagement tools that will help you start and grow your business online.
You can sign up for a free trial of Shopify here.
Who Is Shopify Good For?
If you own a business where your priority is to sell products, Shopify is an excellent choice. Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce platform that provides you with all the tools to create a successful online store. You can even connect your online store to your physical store by creating Points of Sale on the platform (assuming you have a physical store as well).
“Shopify is an all-in-one e-commerce platform? What does that mean?“
It means that Shopify as a company takes care of all the updates on security, in assuring the back-end system works properly, and the platform is updated with the latest trends of web design, online paying methods, and shipping. All of this is covered by your monthly or yearly Shopify plan.
Shopify is an awesome platform for business owners that want a simple way to manage their store online. You can keep track of your inventory, which ones are your best-selling products and you can even configure settings like the abandoned cart recovery to engage with your customers.
There are many businesses that do well on Shopify, so to get into more detail here are some businesses where Shopify excels:
Beauty and health products
Women’s fashion
Jewelry products
Smart home products and accessories
Online grocery and foods
Subscription boxes
Kitchen supplies
Personal safety equipment
Music
Meal Delivery
Dropshipping
To summarize, if you’re a business owner that wants to sell anything online but doesn’t have a bunch of money to have an IT team to take care of the online part of your business, Shopify is the perfect choice for you!
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Shopify Tour
Now that you know what Shopify is and who is it good for, it’s time to show you around the back end of the platform. With this simplistic tour, you can see how using Shopify is like.
SHOPIFY BACK-END
After logging in to your Shopify account you’ll see the home page of the online store’s back-end and the main menu options on the left-hand side. Once in the back-end, you can already see that Shopify is extremely user-friendly, you don’t see a single piece of code displayed.
This is where you access all the functionalities you need to modify and manage your store. Pretty simple, right?
SHOPIFY ORDERS
Once you go to the ‘Orders’ tab, you can see that this is the spot to manage all the orders that come into your store. In here you will be able to change the status of the orders so your clients know exactly when to expect their products to be delivered.
You can also take advantage of the feature ‘Abandoned Checkouts‘ to remind users that added items to their cart that they can still make the purchase.
Very straightforward!
SHOPIFY PRODUCTS
The ‘Products’ tab takes care of everything that you are selling. From the 3 options that you see on the image above you can add your own products, you can sell products via dropshipping and wholesale or you can sell print-on-demand products.
To create a product of your own, you will need to add the information regarding that product, from the description, to the images that you want to use and you can even specify the amount of inventory that you have so you can track your stock as orders come in.
Another awesome feature about Shopify is that you can create ‘Collections’ that will help you organize the products within your store. The collection is basically groups of similar products that just have a shared characteristic and that you what to a group within the same collection. This is also great to create filters for your online store users so it makes it easier for them to find the products that they desire.
On the ‘Products’ tab, you have also the possibility of managing your inventory and even creating gift cards that you can sell in your store.
SHOPIFY CUSTOMERS
The ‘Customers’ tab is basically the place where you manage your customer’s information and see what they have purchased from your store.
A great feature that Shopify has is the fact that you can import customers from a previous store that you might have, isn’t that awesome? You just need to export the customer’s information from your previous online store and import it into the new one.
SHOPIFY ANALYTICS
In this part of the back-end, you have access to all the most important analytic metrics for your online store. You can see your total sales, online store sessions, returning customers, conversion rates, and much much more.
It is an amazing feature that complements platforms like Google Analytics to perfection.
SHOPIFY MARKETING
The Marketing tab gives you the flexibility to create marketing campaigns within Shopify. This will help you increase the engagement of your store users and if done correctly increase your sales tremendously.
Shopify Discounts
This is a perfect way to reward your customers. Within the ‘Discounts’ tab, has the name indicates, you can create and manage discounts that you can use to attract new clients or reward the ones that you already have. Sometimes the best way to increase your sales is to give a little bit back, don’t you think?
SHOPIFY APPS
In the ‘Apps’ tab, you can install directly onto your online shop, third-party apps that will enhance your store or add new features that are not provided by Shopify by default.
A great example is the Sales Countdown Timer. This app is useful to increase motivation for your clients to make a purchase, so it can help you increase your sales.
There are innumerous amount of different apps that you can take advantage of, from shipping price calculations to social media integrations, there is a tone to choose from and a lot of them can be really useful.
SHOPIFY CUSTOMIZATION & CONTENT MANAGEMENT
This last part is where you are able to create content for your online store and customize it to match your business needs.
Let’s start by talking about the content. Within your online store, you are able to create new pages for your online store website, navigation menus, and even create blog posts to interact with your audience. This is where you can increase the amount of content that you want to provide to your clients and website users.
In terms of customization, you not only can pick a template from Shopify’s library but you also can modify it so your store has the features that you need to run your business online.
Shopify provides an easy-to-use website editor where you can swap elements, add new ones, and, if you have code knowledge, you can even create new blocks within the template that you are using.
Final Thoughts
That’s it - All you need to know about Shopify!
Today we shared our thoughts on Shopify, and as you may have noticed already we love the platform! Shopify is a game-changer for entrepreneurs who want to sell products and manage their businesses online. Not only that but Shopify takes care of everything in the background (including security, optimizations, etc.) so you don’t need to worry about anything other than minor changes to your content
After launching your online store the only thing you need to worry about is running your business!
Now it's your turn to tell us, after reading this article are you thinking of using Shopify for your online store? What do you like most about Shopify? Have you missed any ideas on this article? Send us your answers, and any other questions you might have, and we’ll do our best to answer them.
If you want to start working on your online presence, and learn the 5 steps on how to do it, be sure to check out and sign-up for our free training!