Shopify

I've attended a Shopify master class speaker event, done some studying along a roadmap towards certifications on the platform, and I've begun some nominal work upon creating web stores as a developer seeking to start establishing an E-commerce and brand management solution.

Avantages

There are many aspects to the Shopify software platform, including 3rd party app development, e-commerce, retail Point-of-Sale hardware, affiliate programs for referring merchants, professional learning articles and paths to professional certifications of the Shopify platform.

In addition, the Shopify experience, for users, admins, developers, partners, etc. is richly engaging with Shopify retail store events, here in downtown Los Angeles. Shopify's retail store presence features master classes from professionals who have successfully launched brands and online and physical stores using Shopify's technology and features, as well as their own third party establishments which integrate nicely within the Shopify platform.

Inconvénients

There's a high learning curve to establishing a professional web presence in an E-commerce setting, and many steps and lessons to learn along the way, but for dedicated developers and entrepreneurs, the Shopify app is a truly viable tool for establishing an E-commerce web presence.

Overall, Shopify has been good to me. They made me a Partner because of the – you know I can't actually recall what the criteria was to become one – maybe you just apply to become one. But if you are a Partner, you can develop stores at no cost, and then get paid a referral fee and a residual for transferring it to a paying client. A very nice gesture towards us store-builders – I wish all creative software or SaaS platforms were as fiscally friendly. They also make it easy for devs looking to expand into Shopify App creation – so they can be on the receiving end of that sweet, month-to-month autocharged booty.

Avantages

Shopify is where it's at if you want to get involved in the whole Direct 2 Consumer craze! You could literally have a store, up and running and transactional in 10 minutes assuming you're computer / web literate, have a bank account, and a product to sell...For getting up and running with hundreds of attractive themes to choose from (not all on Shopify.com, there are online stores that sell themes...) you really can't beat the ease of Shopify – with just the right amount of freedom, and automation to make sure you can get your products and logo looking their best, and not accidentally break the whole thing. And if you know a little HTML/CSS, the sky is really the limit in terms of customizing the theme. Plus there's a Shopify "App Store" that offers every possible function you could imagine if you wanted something not natively offered such as pop-ups, rewards clubs, or wholesale pricing.

Inconvénients

In the beginning, I found it a bit cumbersome to deal with large catalogs with lots of variants (color / size) per sku. But Shopify and their lightning-fast chat support are nothing if not good listeners and they've made editing part of, or your whole catalog, much easier than ever before, with tons of filters for tailoring your product selection on the back end, to making almost any variable from Title, to Inventory, to Weight, easily bulk editable. So the thing I'll say that still stinks, is that all the apps charge subscription fees, which is super annoying, especially if you rely on a bunch of them. I would much rather pay a one and done license fee as opposed to $3 a month for my mailing list manager app, $16 a month for my Wholesale price tiering app, and $5 for my abandoned cart retrieval system. It adds up to a big, never-ending headache.

Feels like Shopify sucks you in and is not transparent. When you realize what the system doesn’t do...they apologize and are very kind but not very helpful. There are a bunch of awkward apps you can buy to fix the problems but they don’t work very well. Wish someone would just make an easy functioning system that met business that sell inventory on line and in person.

Avantages

It is easy to get a website up and running. Adding products is easy.

Inconvénients

WHERE DO I BEGIN:
-inventory records only go back three months...I was horrified to find out I lost 4 months of inventory records.
-to print a receipt...you need to buy and download an app...it is awkward to use and takes a couple minutes for the receipt to upload before you can print it.
-to have employees log in you need to download and app and pay monthly
-you can not do a credit on someone’s account if they return something...You need to either return their money or give them a gift card it is awkward and difficult to use.
-if you mark an order pending payment you cannot take payment on the POS system.
-you cannot add any vender information that is not visible to your customers.
-the duplicate feature when adding products doesn’t work properly....to hard to explain what should be duplicated and what shouldn’t but trust me it wasn’t created by someone that understands business

It's been a highly successful project. We went from having an idea to having a very successful website within a year. Upkeep is a breeze and they are always improving their software. In the 2.5 years we have been using Shopify software, I have never had to contact support or interact with Shopify about any issues. It just works.

Avantages

Shopify made launching a new website super easy. We had an idea to start selling a new product line that differed from what we were already doing, so we decided to create a new website. Shopify made it easy to design our website, create a product catalog and start selling. Shopify is low-cost but feature rich. They blow away the competition when it comes to launching new, and established E-commerce websites. It took less than 6 months from signing up to selling. Our store has been very successful and I credit that to how easy Shopify made the whole process.

Inconvénients

My only complaint is that we cannot use "Shopify Payments" to process credit cards for our product line. We have to use an external credit card processor and that makes it more expensive. Shopify charges additional fees if you do not use their in house Credit Card Processor, but will not waive fees when they do not allow you to use their processor.

I would give shopify top marks if it wasn't for the duplicate customer issue. Had I know about it I would never have chosen it in the first place.

Avantages

It is very flexible and does most things for a simple shop using the free themes and apps, however you will need IT skills to customise it further - or pay for specialised apps.
It is fairly easy to manage customers and orders using online or the POS application.

Inconvénients

The major omission is the inability to merge customer accounts - which often happens when customers change email or mistype when placing orders. What is worse is that this has been requested by many many merchants for over seven years via multiple support and feature requests and in a dozen or so threads on the community forum and shopify have simply ignored it.

As I run a primarily magazine subscription business having a clean customer database is essential.