Shopify is a really successful e-commerce name in the west. The organization is headquartered in Ontario, Canada. The site developer was begun in 2004 and converted one of the most prosperous startups in its corner at the time. According to the developers, their program is applied by more than 200,000 customers. Full statistics. According to the official profile support, Shopify was involved in the number of the biggest property developers and shopify development company MakeBeCool can help you acheve your goals.
Table of Contents
Designs plus working with templates
The design selection process is a bit unusual for a SaaS platform, being closer to a CMS. The first step is to connect an online store from the main page (Add online Store) by selecting one of the tariffs. Design settings are located in the “Online Store” / “Themes” section. You will need to go to the Shopify store, where you can find both paid and free templates.
You can sort it right immediately by choosing “Free”. This will show you all 26 free templates. Most of them look interesting. They are modern, sometimes even daring. Large sliders, large photos, lots of clean space, stylish menus, including logos. Without any complex effects, but they look soundly, cheerful.
Each template is responsive. The possibilities for customizing them in Shopify are very solid, and they have distinct differences depending on the selected sample. You can fine-tune the color scheme element-by-element, fonts, header, footer, sidebar, basket, social bar, showcase appearance, etc. You can read the documentation for each template if something suddenly turns out to be incomprehensible. But the easiest way to figure it out is by typing.
Optimization (SEO) and promotion
Shopify contains all the SEO features you need for a website to be successful. For each product and page, you can prescribe the values of the meta tags of the title, description and keywords. Don’t forget about page titles and subheadings (H1-H6). You can add an alt tag to images to point search engines at their content – a very useful tool for a store where each product contains at least 2 preview photos.
Pros and cons
Objectively, Shopify is a cool eCommerce builder. In many ways, but not in all. In any case, for the domestic audience. Let’s list the advantages:
- General high level of functionality, ergonomics of the shop control panel;
- Support for advanced, extremely fashionable, useful technologies for displaying 3D models of goods and even AR – augmented reality;
- Integration with a bunch of marketplaces and social networks where you can display your products;
- Convenience of mobile store management thanks to the Shopify Ping app (iOS / Android);
- Lots of cool templates, flexible means of customizing the design and structure of each page;
- Rich SEO potential, solid sets of marketing and analytical tools;
- Powerful built-in app store;
- Free business courses for system users – Shopify Academy;
- Free 2 week trial period.
The disadvantages are related to the fact that it is not designed for us. The Canadian engine loves money plus is not adapted for comfortable use by the Slavs. Hence the disadvantages:
- You must manually localize the template if the store is not for an English-speaking audience;
- High cost of plans, paid apps and templates;
- Out of the box there is no possibility of synchronization with our social networks, payment methods, deliveries, applications like 1C, “MoySklad” and many other necessary things;
- The library of applications is not poor, but half of the range is useless, at least for us, Russian-speaking users;
- The engine takes a commission on sales.
In total, it makes no sense to use Shopify to create a store for the Runet audience. It is a waste of money, time and effort to optimize the problem engine, to make it acceptable for work in our market conditions. It is suitable for the development of Western stores – there is all the necessary infrastructure for this from applications, options, and more. So if you want to make a store for the bourgeoisie, you can consider Shopify, and even then he is not the main contender for this role. There are cheaper and more convenient platforms.
