Item: Shopify
Rating: 8
Author: Joseph Castonguay

Use Cases and Deployment Scope

Autoslide USA uses Shopify for its eCommerce platform for North America. We use it for direct to consumer sales and marketing as well as electronic invoicing for our wholesale customers. It has allowed us to simplify our shipping and payment process for our wholesale customers. The integration of the wide variety of apps makes finding the tools we need to use easy.

Pros and Cons

Shipping integration. Only takes a few clicks to fulfill orders and get them shipped out.
Accounting integration. Using one of the available apps, we can download transactions right into Quickbooks in seconds.
Shopify does a good job of collecting data and showing highlights and suggestions on the home screen of the dashboard when you log in. It keeps track of social network referrals and allows you to track back to links and stories where customers are coming from.
There are a lot of apps that integrate with Shopify to simplify marketing, customer service, and just about anything you need to reach your customers.

Not enough shipping details are allowed per item. Too many generalities.
Could be a wider range of templates to choose from for designing your website.

Return on Investment

Our eCommerce sales have increased 30% each year the past two years because of Shopify
We had some holiday sale prices on our site a little too long because there isn't a service that turns on and off sales within Shopify. You have to use a third-party app and pay for it.
The blog at the bottom of our site has produce a lot of traffic for us both direct to consumer and B2B.

Alternatives Considered

WordPress

Shopify is a lot easier to use than WordPress. However, you do lose a lot of options and functions you can get using WordPress. WordPress allows you to set up custom product catalogs with more options on individual products and auto grouping or bundling of products together. Shopify does require very little maintenance which helps free up a lot of time.

Other Software Used

QuickBooks Premier, Google Drive, Google Analytics

Likelihood to Recommend

Shopify is great for eCommerce companies without store fronts. A lot of options with the available apps to create a good customer experience. As a long term solution for a brand or manufacturer, there are limits with what you can do to provide product specs and arrange if this than that scenarios. A lot of functions you would want Shopify to do require an app and usually costs a monthly fee.

Shopify is a Great eCommerce Option

Software Version

Overall Satisfaction with Shopify