What is the Shopify website builder?
Before answering that question, just a very quick rundown on what “Shopify” is for those who don’t already know.
Shopify is a platform that allows you to easily create and host eCommerce stores. It takes a lot of the sting, confusion and headache out of the process of designing a website, finding a host and getting it online so you can start trading with it. Shopify streamlines this process, makes it very simple and gets your store up and running in very quick time. Shopify even handle all the payment gateways for you.
So How Do You Get Started On Shopify?
To begin with Shopify offers you a 14 day FREE trial to check it all out. After that you will be billed monthly to set up and host your eCommerce store on the Shopify platform. It’s well worth it though, as you would ordinarily have to pay for web design, website administration and website hosting anyway, with of a lot more time and hassles attached.
Shopify makes all this quite easy and everything you need is conveniently located in the one place. The Basic Shopify package starts at a low $29 a month, so not much outlay really for the major convenience factor.
Once you have started your free trial you have access to everything you need to get going. Shopify supply you with over 100 professional and elegant storefront themes that you can use. It’s actually fun choosing the theme that will best suit your business, and all Shopify themes are fully customisable so you can get your eCommerce store looking just right. If you have HTML and CSS experience, then you can customise your theme even further. But if not, each template comes with an easy to use theme settings editor to make adjustments.
Start Accepting Orders Within Minutes
Once you have your store built and loaded up with your products, your store will be live on the web and you can start accepting orders within minutes. Everything you need to get going is right there in Shopify. In fact, you can even create an app for your store so it can be loaded up onto smartphones and tablets. Now that’s pretty cool!
Some Other Cool Features Of Shopify
Within your Shopify admin area you can track all of your customers, learning details about them that will make for invaluable retargeting opportunities down the track.
Your website is a fully-featured content management system (CMS), where you have complete control over your site’s navigation, look and functionality.
You can even set up a blog on your Shopify store. This allows you or your staff to write on topics relevant to your business. Blogging regularly helps to increase traffic to your site and is a must for a successful online business. More traffic means more sales.
There is even the option of offering gift cards for purchases on your store.
Shopify handles all credit card payments and payment gateways. No third parties involved. Your site comes with an SSL Certificate, giving it trust and legitimacy in the world of eCommerce.
Multiple languages and currencies can be used for your online store, as well as setting up the tax components of various regions.
Social media integration so you can share your new store with your networks and quickly get the word out.
Shopify handles much of the all-important website SEO for you within its platform and the design of the Shopify architecture. Further SEO can be obtained through regular blogging.
Shopify Web Hosting
-
Use your own domain name
- Unlimited bandwidth
- 99.99% uptime
- Level 1 PCI compliant
- Easy to set up and upgrade
- Super fast servers and page loading speeds (extremely important)
- 24/7 support
Build An eCommerce Store With Shopify
If you really want to get fancy with your Shopify store, you can always hire a web developer to help you enhance it and take it to the next level. But otherwise, the Shopify website builder is designed for the masses. Anyone can set up a beautiful eCommerce store with Shopify’s themes and platform. You don’t need tech skills.
Click the banner below to discover more about Shopify.
I discovered a website post that explains in detail the process of building your online store with Shopify and you can read it here.
Darren Burton
Latest posts by Darren Burton (see all)
- NeuroGym: Harnessing Neuroscience for Personal Transformation and Success - October 31, 2023
- Is Lotto Profits a Scam or Not? Read This First! - August 27, 2019
- How to Boost Your Website’s Affiliate Sales - November 22, 2018
I have been hearing more about Shopify from different sources and see the benefit of having everything in one central location for setting your website up.
Is this platform one in which you need to supply your own products/services and mail them out or is it something like you sell products that you promote and once paid for, you then pay the supplier and have a drop shipper or something deliver them?
You could set up a drop shipping site with Shopify, unless there’s something in their terms that doesn’t allow it. I don’t know for absolute certain because I’ve never done drop shipping, but it is essentially an eCommerce store and that’s what Shopify specialise in. You can really create any sort of site you want on there from my understanding, including sites that offer services.