Shopify Shopping Cart Software Review (PART 2) | Get Fact Up #27
This week we continue the 3 part series on Shopping Cart Platforms. If you’re starting a new online business, or bringing an existing business to the online world, Shopify is one of the easiest e-commerce builders available to help you create a complete online shop. To make sure you select the right e-commerce platform for your business however, be sure to check out part 1 and 3 of the series.
Third party email domain name hosting i.e. Google Apps
Shopify pricing plans for different feature requirements.
Shopify's own app store allows plugins for additional customisation.
There are over 100 free and premium themes to choose from through Shopify.
Need support? Shopify have FAQ's and 24/7 Support available.
Ensure your online store is mobile friendly so it can be found by mobile searchers on Google.
If you are interested in MeMedia's Design and Development for e-commerce websites, or need any assistance - Contact us to discuss your project.
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GET FACT UP #27 TRANSCRIPT
- Good day Australia, I'm Chris Hogan. Founder and CEO of MeMedia. It's time to Get Fact Up.
Today in our second part of our three part series on shopping carts, we'll be covering Shopify. If you're transferring from a legacy shopping cart system or starting a new shopping cart business, then Shopify could be right for you. It's been touted as being the easiest shopping cart platform to get up and running in practically minutes.
So let's have a look at some of the positives of Shopify. With its Light Plan being only $9 dollars US a month, Shopify represents one of the cheapest ways to start selling using a hosted solution. Now obviously things can get a little more expensive as you want to add more features to your shopping cart platform. But, Shopify actually allow you to have unlimited products and data transfer from as little as their basic plan on that US $9 dollars a month. So, it's pretty great way to get up and running quickly and cheaply. And with the next plans costing $29, $79 and $179 US dollars per month for more features.
The other clear benefits of growing are that your credit card transactions fees go down slowly and its important to know that Shopify payments credit card fees can be configured to be billed in your selected currency. Eg, Australian dollars. It's important to know that you can also choose from a Shopify payment gateway or a third party gateway. Shopify payment gateways can keep your costs down. Shopify is currently the leading online shop builder. Powering over 243 thousand online shops and it's helped businesses process over 14 billion dollars worth of sales.
They have 24/7 support not to mention a huge following creating tons of helpful Shopify tutorials. Shopify is also extremely flexible and has many apps to meet your needs. And to extend the functionally of your online store, Shopify offer a large app store where you can choose from over 1000 different apps for you to plug in. Tools include accounting, customer service, inventory management, reporting, shopping, social, email automation, fulfillment and more. All of these apps can help you run a successful online store. As well as offer you the ability to plug in a point of sales solution into your bricks and mortar store.
So with Neto, they had a limited amount of themes. Shopify has 100's if not 1000's of themes for you to select from and you can also customize those with your developer or get some support directly from Shopify. Please make sure when selecting a theme that you choose a mobile friendly theme and there's heaps there to chose from. So you should be all right.
Now let's weight up a few of Shopify's cons. In addition to the monthly service fee that you'll be paying Shopify. There are credit card transactions to look out for and also payment gateway transactions. The payment gateway transactions can cost anywhere from point five of a percent up to two percent per transaction. That's the lowest value for the highest plan and obviously the highest value transaction fee for the lowest plan. So let's put that into context it's going to cost you 50 cents to two dollars per $100 worth of transactions. That's not too much
There is however one way to remove that transaction fee. And that is to use Shopify payments there own payment gateway system. Now let's have a look at some of the apps. The Shopify Office 1000 apps to extend the functionality of your eCommerce website. A lot of the apps are not free and they charge you a monthly fee to use them, which adds to the total of your monthly bill. Some of them can get quite expensive such is the popular Instagram shop plugin adding $100 dollars US per month to your existing bill.
Something MeMedia found when using Shopify is that it can be super quick to get set up. But may require a bit of technical knowledge to do so. The other thing is selecting that plan can be a little bit confusing so I hope today's presentation has helped you understand each of those costs barriers for you. So when choosing a plan, please make sure you watch which feature you absolutely need to make sure your shop is running smoothly.
Shopify offer 24/7 support so that you don't get lost in that technical mine field. If you feel like you need some local support put up your hand and MeMedia can help. So if you're looking for a solution to get up and running fast and your not really sure how many products your going to have then Shopify might be right for you.
That's all we have time for this week we'll see you next week Australia. For our review of Bigcommerce and we hope that you are one step closer to becoming a global local, selling your wares all over the world.
