Shopify for Small Business: Know Your E-commerce Needs Before Buying
May 21, 2021
Shopify for Small Business: Know Your E-commerce Needs Before Buying
Score 8 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Basic
Overall Satisfaction with Shopify
We use Shopify for e-commerce as our storefront. It's the platform where we sell all of our products, and it also serves as a direct link to our customers. Additionally we use Shopify as an acquisition tool for our newsletters. It is generally only used by the marketing team, though the art team has also been involved to help design a storefront that aligns with our brand.
- Ecommerce store
- Ability for custom e-commerce store to align with brand
- Shopping transactions and payment
- Newsletter and social media integration
- Shopify only has baseline functionality. If your store requires certain features, or if you are interested in providing a more engaging storefront with expanded features, you have to buy separate apps for each individual feature.
- Because apps can stack up for each individual feature you may need, there are times where certain apps don't work well with others or disallow other features.
- Although one of the platform's strengths is the ability to customize for your brand, unless you're a developer, there are no easy tools that are accessible to do it on your own. You really do need a developer to do it for you.
- Shopify as an e-commerce platform helps us sell our product directly to customers.
- That said, the need to have a variety of apps to be able to to function as we need can be a financial burden for small teams.
We used WooCommerce for many years before switching to Shopify. We switched because WooCommerce is not as user friendly on the backend, whereas Shopify is relatively easy to maintain and update. That said, WooCommerce does have additional functionalities that Shopify does not (again, Shopify requires an app for many functions outside of a basic storefront, such as automatic renewals). This has ultimately led our team to ponder whether we should move back to WooCommerce. Currently we have decided to stay with Shopify. I would say that if you're a small business with many e-commerce needs, Shopify may not be the best option for you.
Do you think Shopify delivers good value for the price?
Not sure
Are you happy with Shopify's feature set?
No
Did Shopify live up to sales and marketing promises?
I wasn't involved with the selection/purchase process
Did implementation of Shopify go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Shopify again?
Yes