Shopify: The Rocket Booster of E-Commerce
May 25, 2021
Shopify: The Rocket Booster of E-Commerce
Score 7 out of 10
Vetted Review
Verified User
Software Version
Other
Overall Satisfaction with Shopify
The need to have an affordable online e-commerce solution became even more of an issue since many businesses could not carry out their regular brick-and-mortar operations during the past 15 months. As a company that provides web services to small and medium businesses, Shopify presented a fairly straightforward solution for us to offer websites that could be launched very quickly and be easily maintained by either the customers themselves or our technical staff. The Shopify Partners program is a great option that allowed us to facilitate setup and management of Shopify accounts on behalf of customers who could not mange it themselves.
- The Shopify platform has built-in templates which are offered either for free or for a price so that the look of a site can be customized. Even after choosing a template, the platform allows for a great deal of customization in terms of colors and the order of certain features on the page.
- Even though Shopify is a subscription service, it has some very flexible options for stopping the service for specific lengths of time with varying permissions. For example, if a small business owner needs to step away from the business and not have the store "open', they can do so for up to 3 months at no cost as long as certain conditions have been met. These options are worth checking out especially for seasonal businesses.
- The availability of the Shopify Partners program is also a great help for customers who might not have the knowledge or time to build the site themselves. For businesses that offer developer services, it is also a good way to help potential customers.
- Shopify is affordable if you just need the basics for your store. However, once you start to customize it or try to add more features you can quickly find yourself paying additional monthly charges. While this good for the developers who invest time and effort to build apps for Shopify, it can leave businesses spending more than they intended or going without certain features.
- While Shopify offers backup and restore options for sites if you need to leave the platform completely and return later, leaving the platform to move your data to another platform isn't very easy. This means that businesses need to think carefully about what they will need in the long term before committing their resources to Shopify.
- On the ability to customize, Shopify has made great improvements in the selection of available themes and apps but the selection is nowhere near as diverse as other popular e-commerce platforms. So again as a business person, you need to carefully consider what your e-commerce roadmap looks like in terms of features and functionality. Shopify may be ideal to get most businesses started, but may not scale well as the business grows.
- The documentation available for the Shopify platform was easily accessible and simple to follow. This allowed us to provide the web building services with an increased level of efficiency over other methods.
- The relatively low investment cost to add new businesses to the Shopify platform give us a good price point to offer to newcomers in the e-commerce arena.
- Unfortunately, not all businesses fully understood the limitations of the Shopify platform but were still willing to try it because of the low price point. This resulted in some frustration when the businesses eventually came to the realization that they could not get the site exactly the way they wanted for the price that was being offered.
Shopify vs WooCommerce on WordPress. Shopify was better suited to smaller businesses with fewer design demands, limited budgets, and small product inventories. WooCommerce on the other hand was better suited for larger businesses with more complicated e-commerce needs such as customized checkout processes, large complex inventories, and the need for greater control over the design of the website. The important factor for us was helping each business identify their needs and goals early so we could help them make the best decision.
Do you think Shopify delivers good value for the price?
Yes
Are you happy with Shopify's feature set?
Yes
Did Shopify live up to sales and marketing promises?
Yes
Did implementation of Shopify go as expected?
Yes
Would you buy Shopify again?
Yes