Shopify Development

Why Shopify?

Shopify is easy to use, has a robust feature set, and will support the future growth of your store.  It’s also a fully hosted solution which provides a higher level of reliability and security.  It’s quickly become one of the most popular Ecommerce platforms with approximately 25% market share. 

There are currently over 4,250,000 stores powered by Shopify.

Shopify is an excellent solution for stores of all sizes, from small stores to extremely large ones with thousands of products as it’s  designed to be both scalable (it’ll handle thousands of customers shopping at once) and extensible (easily add functionality using apps).  

Shopify also allows you to go where your customers are and sell across a number of other channels (Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Shopping).  It also supports multiple languages and currencies. In addition, they have POS and inventory management systems that integrate your offline and online stores, should you have both. 

Strengths

• Easy to administer, even for non-technical users.
• Reliable and scalable hosting, ensuring your site remains up and running, even when it gets bombarded by large spikes in users.
• Lots of out-of-the-box features including multi-language support, multiple currency support, flexible coupon & discount options, analytics, reporting and much more.
• Highly customizable, both the appearance and functionality.  There are also many apps (extensions) available which can extend your store’s functionality.
• Integrated POS system available.
• Drop shipping integrations available.
• CMS and blogging functionality, so that you can manage your entire site easily from one platform.
• Ability to sell across a number of other channels (Amazon, eBay, Facebook, Instagram, and Google Shopping) or add buy now buttons to any site or blog post.
• Is kept updated and security patches are applied automatically, reducing your maintenance costs.

Weaknesses

• Reporting is limited on lower plans.
• No multi-storefront option.
• If you don’t use their payment gateway, Shopify charges a transaction fee on every sale (between 0.5% and 2.0%).  However, if you use the Shopify Payments gateway, you just pay standard transaction rates (their rates are competitive).

Technical Specifications

• Cloud hosted solution.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Shopify the best eCommerce platform?
Shopify is an excellent solution for most needs and is one of the leading eCommerce platform with over 25% of market share (over 4,250,000 stores run on it).  However, which platform to use really depends on your needs.  Specific needs like integration with a certain POS or inventory system may suggest other solutions for your needs.   Shopify can also be more expensive if you want to use a certain payment gateway (rather than the one Shopif provides).  If you’re unsure, get in touch and we can help you decide which is the best solution for you.

Why use a hosted platform like Shopify over an open source ecommerce solution?
There are a number of really good open source ecommerce platforms available, but just because you’ll save on the licensing cost doesn’t mean they’ll be cheaper in the long run.  First of all, you’ll need website hosting, SSL certificate (for secure payments), a payment gateway, and a number of other things in order to make your store work properly.  There are also maintenance costs as open source systems need regular maintenance (upgrades and security patches), and your server will as well.  These extras are all included in Shopify’s monthly cost, so the cost difference may be less than you think and sometimes the ‘free’ solution can actually cost more. 

Does Shopify support different languages?
The customer-facing part of your online store can be built out to communicates in whatever language(s) you like.  The back end of the store is available in a wide range of languages as well, including English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Does Shopify support different currencies?
Yes, Shopify can accept payments in just about any currency, as long as you can find a payment gateway that accepts it.  Shopify can also support a wide range of crypto currencies including Bitcoin, Ethereum, and Litecoin.

Does Shopify calculate and collect GST?
Yes, Shopify can be configured to calculate and collect the amount of GST/PST/VAT for your locations.

What shipping options are available with Shopify?
Shopify supports a wide variety of shipping options, depending on your location and where you’re shipping to.  You are able to setup as many shipping options as you like and allow the customer to choose which is best for them, based on shipping times and variable pricing.  Some shipping companies provide apps which calculate exact shipping costs, while others will provide a schedule with approximate costs determined by weight and box size.

Does Shopify have a POS (Point of Sale System)?
Yes, Shopify have their own POS which is fully integrated with their online store, allowing you to track sales, inventory and customer data across locations and bringing together your online and brick and mortar stores.  Shopify also integrates with a number of other 3rd party POS systems.   

Does Shopify integrate with Accounting software?
Yes, Shopify integrates seamlessly with Quickbooks, Xero, and other popular accounting software, automatically importing orders/sales, and inventory information.

Does Shopify support Stripe?
Shopify supports over 100 different payment gateways including Stripe.

Does Shopify support PayPal?
Shopify supports over 100 different payment gateways including PayPal.

Does Shopify have it’s own payment gateway?
Yes, Shopify offers Shopify Payments at competitive rates.

Can I use my own domain name with Shopify?
Yes, definitely!  It’s easy to point an existing domain name at your Shopify store.

Does Shopify host your domain?
Yes, Shopify is a fully hosted ecommerce solution.  If you already have a domain name, you can just update your existing DNS to point at your Shopify store.  Alternatively, you can buy a new domain name right through Shopify and they’ll look after your domain name and DNS for you. 

Does Shopify support GA4
Yes, Shopify supports Google Analytics 4 and other analytics platforms.  Shopify has basic analytics already built right into the platform, but for additional analytics a separate program such as GA4 is needed.

Can I import a product list from an existing store in another platform?
Yes, there are apps which will pull existing product lists and info into Shopify from a number of different ecommerce platforms.  And if there isn’t an app for that, then we can manually export and import the data. 

Does Shopify take a percentage of sales?
Yes, they take anywhere from 0.5% to 2.0%, depending upon the plan you’re on (you’ll pay less per transaction for the Advanced Shopify store).  However, Shopify will waive this fee if you use their Shopify Payments gateway.  As a result, over 85% of stores use Shopify payments when it’s available.  However, it’s currently only available in select countries including the United States, Canada, United Kingdom, Australia, Ireland, New Zealand, and Singapore.

Is Shopify good for SEO?
Yes, Shopify has most of the SEO features you’ll need built right in. Some of the built-in SEO features include easily editable on-page elements (page titles, descriptions, custom URLs, and alt tags), auto generated XML sitemaps, 301 redirects, canonical tagging, and structured data.  In addition, there are a number of SEO plugins available which further extend the SEO capabilities of Shopify.

Other Ecommerce platforms we service include: BigCommerce, Magento, and WooCommerce.