What is Shopify and How Does Shopify Work? (2022)

Let’s figure it out

You might have seen a YouTube video about using Shopify to launch an online store, or perhaps your friend keeps bringing up the topic and you’re too shy to ask. Fortunately for you, we’re going to explain what Shopify is, the benefits and drawbacks of using Shopify, what it offers, and much more. So let’s get started.

What is Shopify?

This e-commerce website builder has features for both novices and e-commerce professionals. Bloggers and store owners alike use Shopify, an ecommerce platform that enables you to create your online and offline store, as well as sell products using Shopify POS or your own website.

Although most new store owners start on Shopify’s Basic plan, which costs $29 per month, if you’ve been in business for a while, you may prefer Shopify, Advanced Shopify, or Shopify Plus depending on your business needs. Shopify pricing starts at $9 per month if you use the Lite plan. In order to try Shopify out for yourself, you can sign up for a free 14-day trial. During your trial, you can create your own online store, test out free Shopify apps, and if you promote vigorously enough, make your first sale.

What Does Shopify Do?

You are expected to open a storefront, display products, interact with customers, accept payments, and more as you enter the online selling world with Shopify as your foundation. Consider Shopify’s platform as a facilitator working to simplify the process of selling products online. It provides all the tools you need to manage each of those activities.

What is Shopify Plus?

The enterprise ecommerce platform from Shopify, called Shopify Plus, is designed for bigger companies or companies that want to grow. It includes advanced reporting features, higher priority customer support, the ability to handle more orders, and other features.

What is Shopify Lite?

On the $9 plan, you can also send invoices, sell both online and offline, and use Messenger chats. If you have a website that isn’t hosted on Shopify, sell with a Buy Button without Shopify’s hosting.

What is Shopify POS?

The POS app allows you to accept payments from your iPhone, iPad, or Android device. Using Shopify Point of sale (POS), you can conduct in-person sales at physical stores, trade shows, pop-up shops, and other events.

Why Shopify? Pros and Cons of Shopify Ecommerce

As opposed to other platforms, Shopify has a number of benefits that make it the best choice for e-commerce businesses.

Shopify Pros

1. Detailed Shopify Admin

You’ll find a wide range of reports and tools in the backend of your Shopify store that can help you understand how your online store is doing, such as the ability to quickly view the number of orders. Shopify is a comprehensive tool for an online retailer, allowing you to get a detailed understanding of all of your online store’s details, including finding your best-performing product pages and watching a real-time view of your website visitors to see what stage in the funnel they’re in.

2. Free Features

On Shopify, a free theme is automatically loaded onto your store, which you can begin customizing however you like. If you’re building a new website, you likely need to pay for a theme (the design/look of your website), but You even have the freedom to modify your website to match your branding style, which makes Shopify perfect for beginners who want to jump in or experiment to see what the possibilities are. There are also thousands of ecommerce-themed stock photos you can choose from taken by Shopify photographers, as well as free fonts that are already installed on your store, as well as the option to change the color scheme, add your own photos, and more. Beyond all of that, you can take advantage of the various Shopify tools and to build a better, more powerful website. You can find them in the “free images” section of your Shopify theme. Another choice is to send your items to a professional photography service.

3. Shopify is on a Cloud Network

My favorite benefit of switching from WooCommerce to Shopify was that my website would be on a cloud network rather than a server. Anyone who has ever paid for a server knows very well that they crash at the wrong times, making you lose a lot of money from downtime. Your website is less likely to go down when it is on a cloud network, making it easier for you to run your business. This cost is included in your subscription, so you don’t have to worry about it. If you share a server (which is what most new entrepreneurs can afford), you kind of have to hope that the other websites aren’t as popular because servers frequently crash on Black Friday or during major events.

4. There’s a Plan for Everyone

In order to operate a business, you will need to pay for products, marketing expenses, a new domain, and of course Shopify. However, Shopify has a pricing plan for everyone. Shopify Lite, which costs $9 per month if you’re really strapped for cash, Shopify Plus, which offers white-glove service, and the ability to upgrade as your business expands are all available options.

5. Tons of Apps

However, if you’re looking to add products to your store, take a look at the DSers app (the Basic plan is free and includes up to 3000 products on your store; adding an app to your website is not required). The Shopify App Store has a ton of paid apps, but it also has a ton of free apps, so you can literally find one for almost anything there.

6. Tons of Support

The Shopify support ecosystem is vast, and there is always someone willing to help you grow. There are even Facebook Groups created by Shopify users who want to help new store owners succeed. Shopify wants you to succeed on their platform, so they have a blog where ecommerce experts share their best strategies, so if you’re still wondering, why choose Shopify?, the depth of support the company offers should offer a convincing answer. And that’s why they have so many customer service representatives who will be happy to answer any questions you have, as well as why they created Shopify Academy (now known as Shopify Compass), where you can take free ecommerce courses and learn at your own pace.

7. Low Barrier to Entry

Did you know people had to mail checks to Amazon when it first launched? Yeah, those days are over. Anyone can start a Shopify store. It won’t be easy, but it’s a heck of a lot easier than it was to build an online business 20 years ago. Shopify is leading the effort to lower barriers to ecommerce, and as time goes on, it’ll actually get even simpler to build an online business. When you compare Shopify to other solutions, you’ll understand why thousands of businesses sign up for this platform each year.

Shopify Cons

1. There’s a Learning Curve

Building a Shopify store is more like starting a business than creating a passive income stream, and starting a business isn’t always simple. It takes months of trial and error to figure out how to use Shopify and create a profitable store. However, Shopify is generally intuitive; it just takes a little bit of getting used to. It can take some time to know where every section of your store is located in the admin.

2. Shopify Alone Won’t Guarantee Your Success

Your success, not Shopify’s, depends on you having the right attitude that drives you to learn and the marketing skills to market your company more effectively than the competition. The issue is that while Shopify has a ton of fantastic features and apps that make running an online store simpler than creating something from scratch, the success of your store ultimately rests with you.

Shopify Overview: How Does Shopify Work?

Your online store is hosted by Shopify, an ecommerce platform that also provides payment processing so you can accept and receive payments for the goods you sell. Shopify helps organize the layout of your store’s appearance through themes (which you are free to change or modify however you want). Here’s more on Shopify dropshipping. Shopify also provides a variety of dropshipping apps, which let you choose from millions of products and start selling them the same day without having to pay for inventory in advance.

How does Shopify operate then?

So, you’ll need to design or modify your Shopify store, add products to it, and test your website to make sure it works properly on desktop and mobile before releasing it to the public.

When a customer visits your online store, you can see in real-time in the Shopify admin whether they are adding items to their cart or making a purchase, so if you’re selling online, you promote the heck out of your products at that point. Customers can opt-in to your email list when they become customers, allowing you to remarket to them. You can access Shopify reports to understand your audience better. When a customer makes a purchase from your store, Shopify will handle the transaction for you, ensuring that you are paid.

With so many features, Shopify is essentially your go-to tool for creating a successful online store because it not only enables you to create an online store but also provides insights about your customers so you can better serve your audience.

What Can You Sell on Shopify

You can sell anything on Shopify, including fashion, beauty products, home goods, and garden supplies. Here are a few well-liked items you might want to think about selling:

1. Clothing
2. Jewelry
3. Home accessories
4. Travel products
5. Baby or maternity products
6. Bags and luggage
7. Fitness accessories
8. Beauty products
9. Kitchenware
10. Pet products
11. Automotive accessories
12. And much more!

Shopify does, however, have a number of strict rules regarding what you cannot sell, and if you do, you run the risk of having your account suspended:

1. Certain firearms and their parts
2. Counterfeit or unauthorized goods
3. Gambling products
4. Regulated products or services
5. Adult products
6. Drug paraphernalia
7. Event tickets
8. High-risk businesses such as bankruptcy lawyers, computer technical support, telecommunications equipment, etc.
9. And more.

For those new to online selling, it helps to know how to avoid counterfeit goods when sourcing products for their store’s inventory. Basically, if it’s illegal or regulated, it’s likely also not permitted to sell on Shopify.

Useful Tool for Shopify Store Management

Effective methods along with correct strategies lead to business success. Invest your time and energy in the right things that help you make the right decisions. Don’t hesitate to look for help, no matter a person or a tool, even if it may cost money.

SimplyTrends is an all-featured data analysis tool for Shopify sellers. With SimplyTrends, you can:

Find Winning Products in just One Click:

Stop wasting time on a series of tedious test work to determine a product. Use SimplyTrends and find winning products straight away by searching for products that are actually selling across 1 million Shopify stores, and get inspiration with profitable ads across social media platforms.

Discover Competitors with Detailed Data Displayed in One Place:

Don’t drag yourself behind your competitors just because you spend a lot of time looking for them. Focus on marketing strategy instead of data collection. Using SimplyTrends hunt stores and products you are competing with, and review their performance, marketing, and product strategy to sharpen your competitive edge.

Track Competitors in a Twitter-like Feed:

To understand what your competitors are doing, you may need to spend energy and time hanging around competitors’ websites and social platforms. Save your time with this easy way — — click the button “Follow” on SimplyTrends’ store finder page, then you can keep track of competitors’ every move effortlessly — from product launch to Facebook ads publish.

Sort out the Exact Supplier You Want

Suppliers are essential to almost every business. Are you still seeking suppliers from a large quantity but struggling in picking out the one that can provide the exact product you want. With SimplyTrends, drop an image and you can instantly find the right suppliers direct from factory AliExpress.

Pros

• Easy to find winning products and successful stores in your niche
• Reveal all details on products, sales, traffic, and marketing channels of any Shopify store
• Monitor your competitor’s every move in real-time
• Reverse image search of direct-from-factory suppliers
• Chrome Extension provided

Cons

• You can only spy on Shopify stores.

Explore more with SimplyTrends to see how it streamline your business.

How to Grow Your Shopify Store

Here are some suggestions to help you get started on Shopify for growing your Shopify store:

1. Create Ads — You can run ads on various platforms such as Facebook, Google, and almost any other social network. Ideally, you want to pick the platform where your audience spends the most time. It’s also important to choose a platform where the targeting options are expansive, allowing you to exactly pinpoint the ideal customer. To date, Facebook and Google are the most popular ad platforms. But ultimately, you want to pick the one that’s best for your niche.
2. SEO — SEO is a powerhouse at bringing in relevant traffic to your website. Almost all new store owners neglect ecommerce SEO as a growth tactic. Oftentimes, new entrepreneurs want to make a quick buck so they focus on ads. However, after months of investing in ads they realize that their acquisition costs are too high.With SEO and content marketing, you can drive free organic traffic to your website. The right strategy can also lower your acquisition costs and improve the conversion rate.
3. Social Media — Before you make your store public, you should already be building an audience. For example, starting an Instagram account a few weeks before launching your store allows you to promote to an audience at launch. With an audience in place, you’ll potentially be able to generate some sales with the link in your bio or Story.

Shopify Customer Reviews

You can find people sharing their experiences with Shopify on G2, Merchant Maverick, and many other websites. There are a ton of Shopify customer reviews on the internet, so you can seek third-party validation about its credibility at any point.

Frequently Asked Questions About Shopify

Is Shopify legit?

Since its inception in 2006, Shopify has introduced a number of features to assist regular people in setting up their own online stores. You can use the platform to set up, design, and manage your ecommerce store across multiple sales channels, including mobile, web, social media, and marketplaces. You can be confident that when you subscribe to Shopify, you’re investing in a reliable solution because Shopify ratings show that users are incredibly satisfied with the technology and ecosystem of the platform.

Is Shopify good for beginners?

The platform comes with an already built store structure, so you just need to put the remaining objects (theme, products, etc.) on top to get your shop going. Yes, Shopify is built in such a way that beginners and non-tech savvy folks can use it without problems. Using Shopify, anyone can launch an online store, from retirees to college students.

Is Shopify good for small businesses?

In a word, yes. Shopify’s pricing and user-friendliness make it one of the best options for small businesses. Signing up to Shopify gives you access to a store builder, free themes, payment gateways, unlimited products, and more. Shopify is also user-friendly — you don’t need any tech or coding skills to get the most out of its features — and you get all that plus tons of learning resources to help you launch successfully for just $29 per month.

What Is Shopify and How Does It Work?

Shopify is all about improving commerce for everyone, so it might just be the ideal platform for you. Take advantage of the free trial to test it out for yourself and see what all the fuss is about. If you’re looking to make money online, Shopify is the best platform for online retailers, so it’s best to create your own online store using this ecommerce platform and see for yourself.

Try SimplyTrends, you can discover, spy and track any Shopify dropshipping store’s REAL TIME sales, ads, strategies AND Grow Your eCommerce Business Now.