2010 Shopify Review: Overview

• Customizable CSS & HTML
• Fully Hosted Shopping Cart Solution
• Search Engine Friendly
• Easy Customer & Order Management Tools
• Accepts Google™ Checkout, PayPal, and Credit Cards

Note: This is an older review of Shopify done in 2010. To see the latest about what this ecommerce solution has to offer, check out our 2011 Shopify review.

Shopify Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

Shopify is an easy to use, comprehensive, hosted shopping cart solution that is designed to meet the needs of individuals and small businesses looking to operate an online store. This means that as you scale, they can accommodate your growth and you will not have to use a separate hosting company to power your business. The shopping cart software is made by JadedPixel Inc. out of Canada's capital Ottawa. With this robust shopping cart, you can quickly get setup to start selling your products online because it simplifies the setup which can sometimes be a complicated process.

Setup & Shopping Cart Customization

The Shopify shopping cart is rich with features that will provide you with all you need to operate a top of the line online ecommerce store. To start off you will have a variety of options on how you want to design the ecommerce shopping cart. They provide pre-made shop templates that you can use if you want to get started right away, or you can utilize HTML and CSS via their design tool called Vision to customize everything to your brand. If you do not have a background in design or do not have the time to design your shopping cart, you can always hire one of the many designers that specialize in Shopify tools.

Product Marketing & Management

When it comes to product management, Shopify has a user friendly interface that will allow you to quickly format your product descriptions and classify your inventory. You will also have the ability to implement tags on your products so that customers can easily find them when searching your store. The shopping cart also has fantastic inventory tracking that will allow you to work with variables like product weight or price. On top of all this, you will have access to real-time statistics within an user friendly interface and you can also easily implement Google™ Analytics or Crazy Egg for a deeper analysis of what your customers are doing in your ecommerce store.

Marketing Your Online Store

Marketing is one of the most important elements of your ecommerce store and Shopify has a great search engine friendly shopping cart. It will automatically set you up with a site map to help your site get indexed by the major search engines and create proper URL structures for your product pages so that users can better find them. Another great feature that you will have to promote your store is the ability to offer discount and coupon codes to your customers to use when checking out of the shopping cart.

Order Processing & Shipments

Order management is another part of the interface, which you will be able to learn quickly so that you can keep track of all of the purchases your customers make from within your cart. In terms of payment, Shopify allows you to integrate top payment processors like Google™ Checkout and PayPal®. As far as shipping goes, you can either handle it on your own or tie into supported partners like Shipwire or Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA). All you need to do is ship your products to them in bulk and they can handle shipping for you.

Customer Marketing

Shopify also wants to make sure you have as many apps as possible to use for your ecommerce store which is why they created an API for developers and an App Store. You can now go to the App Store site and pick up community driven apps like PowerReviews which allows you to provide your users with a simple way to review your products. As you can see this is more than just a shopping cart, it is a powerful tool to run your ecommerce store.

Shopify Review: Conclusion

Shopify is considered one of the easiest to use hosted shopping carts on the web. It was made with the most novice user in mind, but also has features for more experienced users. Generally, hosting a shopping cart yourself means that you will have many more options to customize the cart and utilize a broad range of feature sets. Unfortunatley, this is not too easy for most etailers, because they are not web developers. Because of this, Shopify has quickly become a popular solution for users wanting to get a store up fast and start selling. If this sounds like you, then we encourage you to consider this proven tool.