eCommerce Shopify

What is a eCommerce Shopify website?

Start, manage and grow your new online store with reach as far as you can imagine. With expert guidance, you can build your dream platform.

Shopify is a closed eCommerce platform that allows you to easily sell online by choosing a template that can be personalised to suit your business needs. Shopify helps businesses market and sell their goods and services without the large upfront and expensive build and development costs. You can choose among a wide range of templated online shop designs and then personalise it to suit your business. Shopify makes it easy to perform the initial build and list your products with a range of packages to suit your needs. They also have enterprise solutions for more complex organisations and ‘lite’ solutions that incorporate simple plugins into your website. Shopify has grown substantially in recent times due to its ease of setting up an eCommerce website in a few simple and easy steps.

eCommerce is the way to do business in the 21st century. No one likes to wait for shop opening hours! Users want convenience and the ability to access any store that they want 24/7. Accessibility, convenience and the best user experience are three qualities that must be considered when designing a successful and effective eCommerce platform. Once you have developed an eCommerce platform that satisfies these requirements, you then need to optimise it with Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) or Google Ads. The reason for this is that people will struggle to find your business initially unless you have a known brand or you are appearing in search results (whether paid or organically). When a user inputs relevant keywords, your business needs to be ranked in the consideration set because that will give you the best chance of winning. eCommerce Shopify websites have proven to rank quite well especially when you consider the initial budget requirements versus a site made in Magento for example. Shopify also works well with social which can be very helpful when launching a new brand, product or store.

Why should I use Shopify for my
eCommerce website

Shopify doesn’t require developer skills

Shopify helps businesses market and sell their goods and services without the expensive build and development costs. You can choose among a wide range of templated shop designs and then personalise it to suit your business. Shopify makes it easy to perform the initial build with ongoing maintenance, choose from a variety of packages to suit your needs and integrate apps to help solve regular problems (e.g. reviews, accounting integrations). Shopify eCommerce websites make it easy to sell products to your online market without being a developer which is quite unique and empowering. Our experience has found however that Shopify’s off the shelf templates & solutions will involve some level of customisation from a Shopify developer or Shopify expert. The amount of development required however is significantly less than other platforms such as Magneto. Another major positive for Shopify is the safety and security offered by the Shopify platform. As a ‘closed platform’, the hassles around website hacking, data security, data integrity and maintenance are minimised. All of these are very helpful if you don’t have the development team available to manage this ongoing for you.

Whether you use Shopify or another platform provider, the requirement to make sure that you personalise your website to achieve success is critical. Unfortunately this is when you might run into some issues with Shopify. When you start to personalise you website you will begin to incur development costs, ongoing costs and other fees you probably didn’t scrutinise when creating the site. The initial setup costs might be minimal but once you start crunching the numbers including app add-ons, transaction fees and other Shopify costs you may very well have been better off paying the initial cost as a once off. It is very important therefore to do the research and calculate the Break Even Point (BEP). This will help you determine what is the right platform and solution for your business.

Integration & security is easy with Shopify

One of the great benefits of Shopify is the ease and ability to integrate third party apps with the click of a few buttons. All apps in the Shopify store have been verified by Shopify meaning there is a level of quality, confidence and security installing them. Shopify allows you to readily setup a staging environment to test the apps on before rolling them out. Once you are satisfied with the result you can easily update your site with the click of a button. For a large number of people who just want to give e-commerce a go, these functionalities alone are enough to choose Shopify over other competitors.

Are you interested about transitioning to an eCommerce Shopify solution? We can help you design, build and implement an operational eCommerce Shopify platform that you can use to optimise your sales and enhance your business growth. There will be other steps that you will need to take to fully operationalise the platform, but we can help you from a build and digital marketing perspective. You will need to consider integration with your payments system, warehouse management system and logistics systems so that you can successfully coordinate online sales, dispatch and delivery of products to your customers.

Shopify is good for SEO (with limitations)

A question we often get asked is whether Shopify is good for Search Engine Optimisation (SEO). Our results and experience with Shopify eCommerce platforms suggest that you definitely can win organically. Shopify templates however differ as do their ability to rank for SEO. Ensuring the site has clean code, runs quickly is easy to navigate and maneuverer will also have an impact on the SEO results. If Shopify is the platform you are planning on building an eCommerce solution with, we would suggest doing a number of tests, read reviews of the theme and try to find some live examples and see if they are ranking. The question of whether Shopify is the best platform for your organisation should centre more around the website requirements, budget and site maintenance. If you need help to further understand what is involved and which platform might be the appropriate choice for your business, don’t hesitate to reach out for a discussion with one of our digital marketing and Shopify experts.

Our research suggests that accessibility, convenience and the best user experience are three qualities that must always be considered when designing a successful and effective eCommerce platform. Once you have developed an eCommerce platform that satisfies these requirements, you will need an ongoing focus on SEO to ensure you win the rankings long term. Engaging a digital marketing agency with an understanding of the Shopify platform can help you enhance its performance. Stopping short of investing in SEO will compromise the effective operation of the eCommerce platform. While you might have all your products online, clear images and descriptions, easy to use shopping cart and the best delivery times in the market, if the public cannot find you then you will not receive a good return on investment. We encourage our clients not to assume that because they have a website on the internet, anyone can find their business. Most users of the internet do not know about your business and will type in keywords to find relevant businesses. If those keywords do not bring up your business, then more work needs to be done.

Why should I partner with Sharp Instincts for my Shopify platform?

Your online presence needs to be managed carefully to ensure you maintain your brand persona as well as getting the best ROI. To ensure you get a quality eCommerce Shopify that delivers we recommend working with one of our team of Shopify experts. We have experience working with a number of templates, designs and apps to ensure you get the best result with a seamless experience. At Sharp Instincts, we pride ourselves on delivering based on your business goals & objectives. We will make sure you Shopify analytics and sales are growing along with your overall business revenue. Some of the reasons our customers have partnered with us for their Shopify stores include;

  • Expertise in delivering end to end projects
  • Excellent understanding of SEO for Shopify
  • Proven track record in delivering results
  • Experience in integrating apps to existing websites
  • Improving the UX and overall feel of a Shopify site
  • Running successful Google Ads & Social ads campaigns with Shopify sites
  • Transparent and honest pricing and delivery

Shopify Experts Melbourne

At Sharp Instincts, we pride ourselves on delivering based on your business goals & objectives. We will make sure you Shopify analytics and sales are growing along with your overall business revenue. Our experience in digital marketing positions us to help you elevate your online presence. For a confidential and no obligation discussion, call us on 1800 512 124. Being an Australian service provider, we got the best Shopify Experts Melbourne.

Frequently Asked Questions

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