Is Shopify the best eCommerce platform for my company and products? It’s a question we often get. The short answer is yes it is. We have several reasons to back up why we feel this statement to be true. Here’s eight reasons Shopify could be the perfect platform for your eCommerce website.
Before we get to why Shopify should be your choice for an ecommerce webstore, for those of you that don’t know, Shopify is a hosted eCommerce platform that provides everything you’ll need to sell products online. The platform provides an interface to upload products, images and related content. Shopify also offers the ability to collect payments, offer different shipping methods, and sync with social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Out of the box they offer pretty much everything you need to get your eCommerce store up and running. With that said, let’s get to why we think Shopify should be at the top of your list when considering which eCommerce platform to use.
Eight reasons why Shopify continues to be the best eCommerce platform.
It’s a hosted platform
Hosting is an important consideration when choosing the right eCommerce platform. If you haven’t yet had an eCommerce store, you’ll quickly find out that you’re going to need a host for your website. The host is where your website lives. Shopify provides a great environment for your website to call home. Shopify provides a cloud-based, hosted solution. What this means is that you won’t need to worry about managing MySQL databases or server uptime’s – Shopify takes care of everything for you. This will end up giving you more time to manage your store and concentrate on selling your products and your services.
Great speed and up-time
For those of you that have experience with websites, you know that the inherent speed of your site is important for both user satisfaction as well as obtaining the ever-sought Google search ranking approval. The faster pages load, the more likely your website will provide a positive experience. The good news is that as hosted-platforms go, Shopify sites perform well in speed tests. Tied to this is the “up-time” or how often your website is available. You’d think this should be 100% of the time – but that often isn’t the case with sub-par platforms. Sub-optimal servers translate to your website not always being available. The good news is Shopify is able to boast a 99.9% uptime rate.
Security is priority
Hackers and spammers are busy 100% of the time trying to get into the backend of websites for all sorts of nefarious activities. In order for your website to be fully functional and to not be used for things like distributing malware, SEO spam and phishing – your eCommerce platform needs to be stable and secure. Here again, Shopify is on top of it. The platform is equipped with data encryption tools, offers protection for payment transfers, uses enhanced virus protection on a server level, utilizes risk analysis tools and has 24/7 security monitoring.
Tons of Apps to help sell your products
Shopify is loaded with Apps. Apps are what give Shopify advanced functionality not available with standard features inherent to the platform. The Shopify app ecosystem has thousands of 
choices. You can select apps to enhance sales, improve inventory management, integrate advanced reporting, provide robust promotions, use 3rd party accounting software and to offer all sorts of social media offerings – the list is comprehensive and extensive. Some of the apps are free, many are paid subscriptions. Whether the app is free or paid, you can be sure if you’re looking for an advanced feature, there is likely a robust app already available.
The platform is easy to use
As websites go, especially as eCommerce websites go, Shopify is easy to use. A lot of the heavy lifting when it comes to the technical details of managing an eCommerce store has already been taken care of for you. Most store management is done with a few clicks. Even more complicated processes like adding buying options to a product or managing navigational site links are streamlined and quite easy to edit on your own.
Multi-channel sales
One of the premier aspects of Shopify is how many vertical sales channels exist from which you can connect with new customers. Your products will not only be available from your online store, but you can also sync your products with Amazon, Ebay, Etsy, Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and many more channels that we haven’t listed. Suffice to say, Shopify is continually offering its customers the ability to share their product offerings and engage customers from a wide range of options.
Great looking themes
Shopify is a theme-based platform. This means that you get to choose from a large selection of free and paid themes. Each theme has been meticulously designed to showcase your products in unique ways. Most of the themes come mobile friendly. Many themes offer multiple ways to display your products and different color options to help give your store a unique look. If you’re wanting something even more customized, that’s where a Shopify developer partner comes in. You’ll find there are thousands of developers that can help take the look and functionality of your store to another level.
A free test drive
Shopify is so confident you’ll love what they’re offering – you can try it for free. Not only that, you get a full two weeks to tinker away in the backend. You can review the dashboard and store setup options, select a theme, upload products, create new product categories, review additional functionality in the app store and generally get a good understanding of exactly what the platform offers and how you’ll end up utilizing all the great features they offer.
Is Shopify the best eCommerce platform for my company and products? While we kept our list short with only eight reasons, it’s pretty obvious we feel Shopify is the best choice. Of course, there are many other reasons to support our claim that we didn’t include. Ultimately what it comes down to is their platform is packed with all sorts of state-of-the-art functions and features. In today’s highly competitive eCommerce market, it takes a lot to stay ahead of the pack. We believe the results are evident – Shopify is undoubtedly the leader and the rest of the eCommerce market is trying to keep up.
Looking for help with the Shopify platform? C Dev Web Design can help. You can reach us Monday-Friday at 800-508-9896, or contact us here.