#1 Platform For Average eCommerce Businesses & Start-Up Companies
First off let me note I am not affiliated with Shopify by any means, nor am I profiting from providing my opinion on their software.
Pro's of a Shopify Website:
Decreased Maintenance
Built In Shipping Features – Easy to activate
Built in Payment Processors – Easy to activate
Shopify's Custom Payment Gateway – Shopify Payments
Scheduled Shopify Payments Payout
1000's of Shopify Apps
24/7 Support
As a manager at a successful Website Design & Marketing company I'm equipped with over 5 years of professional hands on experience throughout the Website Development & Online Advertisement industry for B2B & B2C businesses. With this first-hand, practical experience, I have had the opportunity to experiment, analyze, and research various types of tools and software for creating websites, performance enhancement, cart & checkout functionality, and furthermore helping to convert and attract traffic & new audiences to that new space... (and so on and so forth)
Of course you can certainly sell products on almost every platform out there, and for the experienced programmer/developer, getting around any loopholes or revising a script is probably second nature by now. The biggest issue I, and my team, have seen with website platforms like WordPress comes down to 1 key factor – MAINTENANCE.
WordPress is a wonderful tool, and the developers have done a great job creating a platform that makes it SO easy for ALMOST anyone with basic computer skills to design, and launch a website. This is all great! Be warned – this does come with a cost.
MAINTENANCE – TESTING – TROUBLESHOOTING:
Yes, though any platform will require maintenance here and there -You'll notice the pattern start to form when dressing up your WordPress site with fancy plugins and widgets.
Cart plugins like WooCommerce require plenty of upkeep. Setting up Payment Processing & Shipping can be quite the adventure to any newcomer as well.
All is good and well with website functionality for quite some time, until you receive a phone call from a customer letting you know - “I haven't heard back from you in months! I tried contacting you through the website multiple times!”.
After some troubleshooting, and a in depth conversation with your IT department you realize... THE CONTACT FORM IS BROKEN!
Contact forms & submission forms are notorious for breaking within the WordPress platform. They require frequent updates, and in certain situations, downgrades, to resolve any present issues.
Unless you have someone, or yourself, dedicated to TESTING the websites forms daily, you are likely to miss potential business due to broken, or misconfigured submission forms via your website. Whether if it was the Plugin version that caused this, or a PHP conflict, you are now loosing potential business that could have been yours, had the platform been just right for your needs.
DON'T GET ME WRONG! WordPress is, and will continue to be, a great tool for businesses, start-ups, and affiliates for utilizing a simple yet flexible platform. I will continue to work with it personally, for and with my business.
However, if your agenda is selling products, and keeping a fully functional website with great FREE support and the least amount of WEBSITE MAINTENANCE possible, then I BELEIVE the answer is - … DING DING DING “SHOPIFY”!
SHOPIFY FOR E-COMMERCE SOLUTIONS:
Perfect, we now understand the difficulties in maintaining a functional “easy to build” website like WordPress. The question still remains, why is Shopify better for my E-Commerce business?
So let's go back to the big 3:
MAINTENANCE – TESTING – TROUBLESHOOTING:
Durning the initial set up process you will go through various phases of building your site. These topics are, but not limited to – content creation, styling, formatting, website functionality, form & cart functionality, etc...
The beauty of Shopify is, once these areas are set in stone, you ARE ALL SET!
Vola!
No more broken contact forms – No more broken carts – No more “Error Establishing Database Connection” errors. All things that are very, very common in platforms like WordPress.
Shipping & Handling
Setting up functions like Shipping & handling are BUILT INTO THE SHOPIFY PLATFORM. So long as you are properly registered with your trusted Shipping Carrier, setting up these features are extremely simple and require just a few clicks of a button!
Payments
Shopify offers dozens and dozens of payment processing gateways, pre-installed on the Shopify Platform.
For a full list of payment processors available in your country, check out the following link - https://www.shopify.com/payment-gateways
For those of you located in the USA, see the list below directly from their website:
+100 payment methods for 9 Latin America countries via EBANX
2Checkout
2Checkout Convert Plus
Adyen
Affirm
Afterpay North America
All popular payment methods | Paysera
Amazon Pay
Asiabill
Atome - 3 easy payments, 0% interest
Authorize.net
Bambora
BitPay
Braintree
Bread
Buy now, pay later with Klarna
By dLocal: Cartões locais, transferências bancárias e Boleto
By dLocal: Local cards, Bank Transfers and Cash Payments
By dLocal: Tarjetas locales, Transferencias Bancarias y Pagos en Efectivo
Cartão de Crédito e Boleto via EBANX
Cartão de Crédito em até 12x via EBANX
Cayan
Chase Paymentech (Orbital)
Checkout.com
China Payments
Citcon
Coinbase Commerce
CoinPayments.net Crypto Payments
CyberSource
DigiPay
Divido
EBANX Payments for Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, Argentina, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, Paraguay & Uruguay - 100+ Cross-border Payment Methods w/Transparent Checkout
FasterPay
First Data Payeezy
G2A Pay
iDEAL (Mollie)
Ignite Payments
iPayLinks
Katapult
Laybuy
LianLian Pay
Merchant e-Solutions
MONEI
NihaoPay
Oceanpayment
PayBright
PayEase
Paymentwall
PayPal Express Checkout
PayPal Payflow Pro
PayPlus
Paysafe
Pinwheel
Psigate
PUT IT ON LAY-BUY
QuadPay
QuickBooks Payments
Sage Payment Solutions
Sezzle
Shopify Payments
Skrill
Splitit Monthly Payments
Vantiv (Litle Platform)
Vantiv Integrated Payments
Windcave
Windcave PxPay
WorldPay (Direct)
WorldPay (Offsite)
엑심베이(Eximbay)
Setting up these payment methods are again, as simple as a few clicks of a button.
For startups and freelancers, Shopify offers it's own built in custom processor – Shopify Payments.
Shopify Payments is a very simple way to accept online payments. This eliminates the trouble of setting up a 3rd party payment provider or alternative type of merchant account. With Shopify Payments you are automatically set up to accept all major payment methods immediately once your account is created.
To be sure that your payment gateway is properly set up, Shopify even offers the ability to “test” these payment gateways. This is a must before you launch your site, and I'd even recommend purchasing your own product to confirm everything is working properly.
For complete instructions on testing you specific Payment Gateway, check out the following link - https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/payments/shopify-payments/testing-shopify-payments
Again, this is not endorsed by Shopify by any means. Merely Shopify is a platform I've stuck by for the past 5 years or so, and continue to support. Professionally, my team has built many great e-commerce sites with Shopify using the very convenient features this article discusses.
We continue to sell more and more Shopify websites, and I'm still convinced this platform is #1 for your average E-Commerce business.
If your business is in a specialized field such as the Firearms, Weaponry, or Automotive industry, then maybe there are some better options out there – as Shopify does have a policy against selling certain goods. However if that is YOUR industry, I'm sure you are up-to-date on policies and guidelines that are to be followed.
In addition there are certain platforms that are designed specifically to help these specialized industries, and if that is the case you may want to do additional research for a E-Commerce platform better suited for your Business agenda.
Thank you for taking time to consider my beliefs as to why Shopify is the top overall E-Commerce platform for you average business selling goods online.
Please let me know what you think!
Do you have any better suggestions? I'd love to experiment with a new platform, and test out any software that you might recommend.
Have a great day!
-subconcreations