Shopify Review: Is This One of the Best Ecommerce Website Templates?
Deciding to build an online store is a big decision and a solid business case. Once you’ve decided which product to sell, your next big decision is choosing a great ecommerce website template. I’ve tried many ecommerce templates, and I can say without a doubt that Shopify offers one of the best ecommerce website templates and platforms when you factor in pricing, template options, style, and ease of use. use.
In fact, many ecommerce store owners have extremely successful online stores that use Shopify.
Let me jump right into the features and benefits in this Shopify review. I’ll also tell you about some of the drawbacks of this ecommerce platform, but in the end it’s one of the best ecommerce website options available (note that these are the features and benefits at the time of publication). this article). published).
Features and benefits of using Shopify for your eCommerce store
Free Trial:
You can try it free for 30 days. Take advantage of this offer by exploring the many ecommerce website templates they have to choose from. Take a look under the hood and discover how easy it is to get your online store up and running quickly.
50 ecommerce / storefront templates to choose from:
Shopify has 50 fantastic themes/template styles to choose from. You can also easily customize any theme or template you get to make sure you get the exact look and feel you want for your business.
No contract required:
When you use Shopify, you don’t need to commit to any duration. You pay month by month. I don’t need to tell you how advantageous this is. After all, when you’re starting out, the last thing you want to do is commit to long-term expenses.
No computer coding knowledge needed:
You don’t need to know how to build websites to set up a Shopify eCommerce store. Shopify makes it very easy to choose and configure any of its 50 templates by simply clicking the buttons.
Processing payment:
Shopify makes it very easy to integrate with a credit card gateway and/or Paypal. If you sell digital products, no problem, you can deliver them through an integrated app included with your Shopify subscription.
Use your own domain:
I cannot stress enough the importance of building your store on your own domain. Yes, you can use a Shopify domain, but in the long run it’s much, much better to start building your store on your own domain. Shopify makes it easy to create an eCommerce store on your own domain.
Why use your own domain? Because if you start getting links to your store (great for search engine rankings and highly recommended), if you change domains, those links you get to a Shopify domain go to waste. Start your business off on the right foot by investing the $10 it costs to get your own domain.
Low Monthly Cost:
Once you decide to use Shopify, it’s only $24 per month for a basic plan. You can sell up to 100 SKUs with this plan, which is a great deal in my opinion. There is also no setup fee. If you ever need to upgrade your plan, it’s easy to do. Shopify = flexibility.
In addition, however, you also pay a 2.0 percent transaction fee as part of your cost (when you upgrade plans, the transaction percentage goes down). This allows Shopify to charge low monthly flat-cost fees. Being able to limit fixed costs and have a variable cost option (ie costs directly tied to your sales) is a great feature and advantage as you get your online business off the ground.
SSL payment:
You definitely want to offer your customers secure shopping. With all of Shopify’s eCommerce website templates and plans, you can automatically offer secure shopping for your customers with industry-standard 128-bit SSL encryption.
Bandwidth: Unlimited.
This means that if you get an onslaught of visitors, your site won’t shut down. This is obviously critical to running a successful online eCommerce store.
Discount codes for your customers:
You must upgrade to a $59 monthly plan to offer coupon codes. If you’re just starting out, this isn’t necessary. Once you start generating sales, you’ll be in a position to monitor your sales and then decide if coupon codes can help you build your business.
Automatic backups:
Shopify backs up your store so you don’t have to worry about losing data.
Add a Shopify eCommerce template to your existing website:
If you already have a blog or website and want to add a store, that’s no problem with Shopify. You simply set your Shopify store to a subdomain (setting up subdomains is free of charge).
Customer service and technical support:
You can contact Shopify for help, use their Shopify forums, and see detailed tutorials on the Shopify Help Wiki. You won’t be left stranded to fight.
Dropshipping Integration and Partners:
If you don’t want to pack and ship your orders, you can use a partner provider like Fulfillment by Amazon, Shipwire, and Webgistix.
Shopify Drawbacks for Your Ecommerce Template Solution
- I don’t like that you have to upgrade to a $59/mo plan to be able to offer coupon codes. I find coupon codes to be a powerful way for a new business to generate income. Must be offered in all plans.
- Very few dropshipping partnerships. Now I’m not sure if you can set up drop shipping with a company other than Amazon, Shipwire and Webgistix. One of these 3 will likely suit your needs, but if not, it may be more complicated than it needs to be than setting up an automated order processing system. Again, this is something you should discuss with prospective shippers and Shopify.
Despite my 2 dislikes mentioned above, I still believe that Shopify offers one of the best eCommerce templates available anywhere.