Why Do People Prefer Shopify?

This article explores the reasons why people prefer using Shopify as an e-commerce sales platform for their online business. Shopify offers a user-friendly and easy-to-use platform that is perfect for small businesses and does not require technical expertise or server development costs. With extensive documentation and countless video guides available directly from Shopify developers, the platform provides a quick and easy way to set up an online store.

Benefits of Shopify

If you want an expansive and detailed breakdown of why I love and personally use Shopify for my own personal projects then head over to my Shopify review. But for now, let's look at the top 10 reasons Shopify is growing so quickly and most importantly what people love using it as their shopping cart.

Shopify is easy to set up

Shopify is super easy and fast to set up and doesn't require the need for a developer, provided you're looking to build a basic Shopify store (like the vast majority) and don't need any fancy customisation.

The interface is intuitive and provides a solution for people new to eCommerce to get up and running quickly.

Tech is handled for you

The technology is handled brilliantly by Shopify with website performance at the core of everything, meaning you can focus on selling your products rather than building your website for weeks or months on end.

The code is built on Ruby on Rails which is a user-friendly software program that you can edit yourself if you need to and have the appropriate skill set.

You also have the ability to sell as many products as you like as your store grows because Shopify handles large inventory levels with ease.

Shopify is reliable

Shopify is a reliable and secure platform and provides you with an SSL certificate to encrypt all data and ensure PCI compliance when dealing with credit cards.

After all, you'll be processing customer credit cards and personal data so it's important to make sure that customer data is 100% secure.

Great support

Shopify provides 24/7 customer support, which includes a number of community forums, extensive documentation, and a range of advanced Shopify University guides.

Shopify is one of the fastest growing website builders in the world and has expanded it's reach massively over the past 10 years, as has the community surrounding it, meaning there is a small army of Shopify specialists on tap with plenty of experience to help you.

It's mobile ready

Shopify is mobile-ready, with mobile-responsive themes and a built-in mobile commerce shopping cart that ensures the online store looks great on all devices, and customers can shop freely wherever they are.

Shopify is flexible

The technology that Shopify deploys is customizable and flexible, meaning that you can adjust your store to suit your audience and niche.

The app store

Shopify has an ever-expanding app store with over 1,500 apps available to add functionality to the online store with an app for pretty much everything you need, from email marketing to image compression to brand loyalty programs

Good SEO features

Shopify's powerful SEO features and advanced analytics tools help the online store rank higher in search results and understand customer behaviour better.

Shopify's product and collection pages are easy to optimise for search engines, meaning you can quickly add all of the metadata you need.

Payment gateway sorted for you

Shopify's payment gateway, powered by Stripe, offers lower credit card fees and does not require a merchant account to use which is a great bonus.

You can also add additional payment gateways such as PayPal, Klarna, Apple Pay and Shop Pay to your store to give customers multiple ways to checkout with you.

You can also set up your Shopify store to pay out at a time that suits you best, be that daily, weekly or monthly.

Omnichannel selling

With Shopify, you can take a truly omnichannel approach to selling and reaching your target audience by hooking your store up to social media channels like Facebook and Instagram.

It really is a multi-sales channel approach as potential customers can quickly see your products and checkout straight from their social media accounts.

Abandoned cart recovery

Shopify's abandoned cart recovery service automatically tracks and emails potential customers who left a product in their shopping basket but left without buying it, helping generate more revenue for the online store.

And trust me when I say that abandoned cart recovery works. In fact, it was accountable for 27% of all sales over the last Christmas period.

Web hosting is taken care of

Shopify also takes care of the web hosting for you which is ideal for anyone that wants as many potential headaches removed as possible. And it's not like Shopify is hosting your store on rubbish servers either, because the servers Shopify use are specifically designed and built to host Shopify stores.

They also have fantastic uptimes, too. Which means your site will never be offline.

If for example, you were to choose Magento to build your eCommerce website you would need to look for expensive dedicated servers and hosting on top of everything else that goes into building a resource-extensive Magento site.

Disadvantages of Shopify

The disadvantages are well documented and to be honest, hardly problematic! For example, below are two of the main problems that people cite:

1. No access to the robots.txt file. And whilst this would be handy to have, it's hardly going to stop you from doing anything you need to do to build a successful Shopify store.
2. You don't and can't have access to the server where your site is hosted. As already mention Shopify is a self-hosted platform and they don't allow you to touch the server. And whilst it would be good to see the server logs, it's hardly the end of the world and I'd be surprised if you spoke to anyone this year who was annoyed at not seeing those logs.

Is Shopify perfect? Of course not, but no platform is unless you're prepared to spend tens or possibly hundreds of thousands of pounds on development fees for a custom site.

But overall Shopify provides an excellent service for the money. A service that allows you to plan and promote your products to your target market.