If you’re looking to sell more online, Shopify should be your go-to platform. Whether you’re totally new to e-commerce business, or your e-commerce sales have been stagnant, Shopify can help you revitalize your business.
It’s one of the most powerful and customizable engines on the market, while still being incredibly easy to use.
But why choose Shopify over another platform? And if you already have an existing e-commerce platform, why should you migrate?
In this article, we give you six compelling benefits of migrating to Shopify from your old e-commerce platform.
What is Shopify?
First, let’s explore what Shopify is and what makes it unique.
Shopify is the all-in-one commerce platform to start and grow a business. It’s extremely popular: it powers over a million businesses worldwide. And for good reason: it allows you to sell products online, turn your retail store into an online store, and generate sales using powerful SEO and digital marketing tools.
While Shopify has existed for more than a decade, the platform has stayed state-of-the-art by keeping up with design trends, security requirements, and technological updates. An outdated, expensive e-commerce platform could be costing you sales, so don’t get stuck in the past!
Here’s why you shouldn’t delay and migrate to Shopify today.
Migrating Advantage 1: It’s Quick and Easy to Set Up
With Shopify, you don’t need advanced knowledge of technology—anyone can use it.
You can create your Shopify account and add products to sell in your store in seconds.
Their back-end interface is also incredibly simple and user-friendly with minimal configuration required.
Shopify also maintains fast and secure servers for you, so you won’t experience any rage-inducing tech issues or software updates.
Your customers can also breathe easy knowing that their information is secure, as Shopify is level-1 PCI compliant and includes a 256-bit SSL certificate (that means it’s really safe).
Lastly, Shopify provides you with tons of documentation and tutorials to help even the most technologically challenged employee master the platform. You’ll save countless hours training your employees (and yourself) on how to use it.
Although Shopify is a breeze to set up, for enhanced customization, you may want to consider consulting with a team of Shopify experts who can help you get your site off the ground quickly, easily, and fully optimized.
Migrating Advantage 2: It Will Save You Money
Between custom web developers, hosting fees and expensive software, the costs of your e-commerce website can add up quickly.
Even if you invest in hiring professional Shopify developers and designers, using Shopify is still an easy way to save your business money versus a custom build.
After you enjoy the platform risk-free with its 90-day Shopify free trial, you can sell your products both online and in-person using Shopify for as little as $29 USD/month. There are three payment plans to choose from and Shopify clearly lays out the benefits of each plan on their website so you can determine which plan best suits your business.
You can also enjoy lower credit card processing rates than competitors by using Shopify Payments. The rates become even lower the more advanced your payment plan becomes. This lets you keep more of your sales revenue in the business so that you can reinvest it into additional growth.
If you’re a large business with a lot of customers and you’ve outgrown your existing storefront, Shopify Plus is one of the most cost-effective enterprise plans on the market—serving more than 7,000 global brands.
It will save you time too. Even if you have a massive customer base, it won’t take months and months to migrate your existing platform to Shopify Plus and it can save you up to 80% compared to your legacy system.
Whether you’re a big or small company, using Shopify can cut down on a number of e-commerce costs your business is racking up.
Migrating Advantage 3: There Are Tons of Customizable Themes
A sleek, modern theme design can truly wow your customers and convert your them into buyers.
Shopify’s most unique, identifying features is the ability to choose from a wide range of customizable themes, and Marketplace Solutions has been building a few of these custom themes based on our unique customer's needs.
While Shopify has both paid and free themes for you to choose from, Marketplace Solutions can completely customize a Shopify theme to your business’s needs.
Some of the features that customized Shopify themes include:
- Conversion rate optimization to ensure you’re generating as many sales as possible;
- Advanced filters for your customers so they can easily find the exact product they’re looking for on your site;
- Faster and more powerful storefronts so your customers aren’t frustrated and left waiting with slow load times;
- Cart abandonment recovery functionality to convert customers who’ve left your site without making a purchase;
- Customer relationship management so you can interact with customers in real time; and
- Social media integration to develop customer loyalty and keep users engaged.
With all these features and more, you can easily create a stunning, one-of-a-kind storefront that drives sales and aligns with your company’s brand.
Migrating Advantage 4: It Is Mobile Friendly
Well-designed, easy-to-navigate e-commerce websites are more important than ever due to the ever-increasing amount of sales coming from mobile devices.
According to Oberlo, online sales from mobile devices:
- are projected to reach $2.91 trillion in 2020;
- have seen an average year-on-year increase of 33.8 percent since 2016; and
- are two out of every three dollars spent on e-commerce sites.
With the majority of mobile sales increasing every year, using Shopify’s mobile-friendly platform and designs will help you drive sales and keep up with trends.
As we learned above, Shopify’s customizable themes have several advanced features. One bonus we left out is that they’re designed to be mobile responsive to make quick and easy shopping just a tap away for your customers.
Shopify also has a built-in mobile commerce shopping cart so your customers can shop with you anywhere.
Finally, if you want to access the back end of your site on the go, Shopify has mobile apps for Android and iOS so you can easily edit and check in on how your site is doing at any time.
Migrating Advantage 5: Its App Store Can Bring Your Functionality to New Heights
The Shopify App Store is a veritable playground for merchants looking to take their e-commerce websites to the next level, with more than 2,000 apps available for download to your platform.
Just like when you download one for your phone, whether it’s for free or paid, Shopify apps can tailor your e-commerce site to give you all the features you need to run your business and your customers need to have a seamless experience.
Of course, there are always pros and cons to adding Shopify apps to your e-commerce website, but they do provide a significant amount of added functionality for people who are not familiar with website coding.
Shopify apps allow you to:
- Customize shipping options;
- Add interactive social media platforms;
- Make online returns effortless for your customers;
- Add product reviews with photos to your products;
- Provide delivery estimates to your customers; and
- Create coupons and offer pop ups or banners.
Marketplace Solutions can also create custom apps for your website to add the exact functionality to your site that you’re looking for.
Our team will meet with you to determine your needs, create and test the app, integrate it into your Shopify store, and regularly update it to make sure it’s the app-le of your eye.
Migrating Advantage 6: Its SEO and Digital Marketing Capabilities
Even if you develop the most beautiful, easy-to-use e-commerce store in the world, if no one visits it, it won’t be around for much longer.
With the Marketing function in the Shopify platform, you can easily promote your products by sending targeted email campaigns, setting up abandoned checkout emails and more.
You can create automated campaigns that can show your products on Google to prospective customers or even send SMS messages to customers with promotions or announcements.
If you want to maintain ads on social media platforms like Facebook or Instagram, Shopify Kit works well as a free virtual digital marketing employee to make it easy to find customers and create sales.
Advanced data in Shopify’s Analytics function will tell you exactly how your efforts are driving results, including data on sales, returning customers and conversion rates.
Shopify also allows you to optimize your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) on Google and Bing. Some of this is done automatically by Shopify without even having to lift a finger, but their platform allows you to easily edit title tags, meta descriptions, URLs and image alt text so you can increase the search engine ranking of your e-commerce site.
Even if you’re not a digital marketing expert or if you’re a newbie to SEO, Shopify’s platform makes it easy to navigate these waters and reach your customers.
Conclusion
While there are several vendors on the market to help you sell your products online and generate sales, there’s no platform as comprehensive, affordable and easy-to-use as Shopify.
However, completely changing platforms can seem like a daunting task. But don’t worry—Shopify created a step-by-step guide on their help site for making the transition.
If the process still seems overwhelming for you, a Shopify expert like Marketplace Solutions is here to help. We can make the transition seamless for you and your team and we’ll be with you every step of the way.
Ready to Get Started? Sign up for your Shopify Free Trial today!
