2011 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

Shopify is a unique hosted shopping cart solution that is perfect for the beginner merchant who wants to get their feet wet selling online. While Shopify may not be as feature rich as some of the best hosted shopping carts out there, it provides all of the necessary features to achieve success without randomizing the merchant. Shopify is extremely easy to use and allows you to get your store up and running in minutes. Merchants can choose between a variety of Shopify templates, customize CSS and HTML if they choose, or just use the easy setup tools to customize the look and feel of their storefront. Once products are placed in a store, they will be added to the Shopify network of stores, which is a great way to attract customers without having to wait for your store to rank in Google and other search engines. To learn what makes Shopify tick, find pros and cons, and see Shopify's overall ZippyScore™, read the detailed Shopify review below.

2011 Shopify Review: Shopping Cart Report Card

Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)	Shopping Cart Feature	ZippyScore (out of 5.00)
Overall Value (15%)	4.15	Customer Service (15%)	3.90
Level of Customization (15%)	4.19	Ease of Use (15%)	4.27
Search Engine Friendliness (10%)	3.55	Range of Tools Available (10%)	4.29
Depth of Reporting Tools (5%)	4.15	Social Media / Social Commerce Integration (5%)	3.90
Mobile Commerce Integration (5%)	4.58	Free Trial Features (5%)	4.25

Overall ZippyScore: 4.10 out of 5.00

2011 Shopify Review: Expert Shopping Cart Review

Merchants who want a very easy to use hosted ecommerce solution with great customer service, often end up choosing Shopify, which is a solution from Jaded Pixel Technologies Inc. from Ottawa, Canada. Shopify is best for merchants that want to focus as little as possible on marketing, as Shopify provides a lot of paid add-ons that can do the marketing for the merchant. Web designers also consider Shopify a top choice for their clients, as this ecommerce solution is very intuitive and offers unique designs that include W3C valid code. Shopify's guru program also makes it easy for any web designer to transfer their client over to Shopify without worry of future phone calls or requests for help.

Opening and running an online store can be a daunting process, but Shopify wants to ease the worries of merchants by providing them with a feature rich ecommerce solution which will help them to achieve their vision. They have a variety of packages that meet the needs of small to medium sized merchants, and do a good job of scaling with a merchant as their online store grows and becomes more popular. Ultimately Shopify has most of the features merchants need to open and run their online store with their hosted ecommerce software solution.

Setting Up & Designing Your Online store Through Shopify

Shopify has a quick setup process which is common among top ecommerce solutions, as it allows the merchant to input the core information required to get an online store up and running. This will go fairly fast, and then the fun begins as merchants get to focus on the design of their online store. The design of an online store is very important, as this first impression will often be the deciding factor on whether or not a consumer wants to start shopping, and ultimately check out of your shopping cart. What is great about Shopify that merchants enjoy is the Shopify Theme Store, which is the go-to place to find free themes, as well as high quality paid themes to help make your online store stand out. Shopify also recently partnered with WooThemes to have them create some custom ecommerce themes, but most know of WooThemes from their premium Wordpress themes. Most hosted shopping carts provide hundreds of free themes, while Shopify mainly provides paid themes. Luckily though, these paid themes are highly affordable with costs rarely exceeding a $100 one-time payment. And because they are paid themes, you can be sure that they are created by highly talented designers and far more unique than many free themese out there.

Once a theme has been chosen, the next step is to further customize the design, which includes adding things like the logo, main banner, and the color scheme. However this is just the beginning of what is possible in terms of online store design with Shopify, as you have full control over the HTML and CSS, which will allow you to make specific changes to the design to ensure it is unique. This is one of the big reasons why a lot of web designers like using Shopify to create online stores for their clients.

Those merchants wanting to go above and beyond in terms of the theme of their online store can choose to create a theme from scratch, and Shopify even has a helpful guide on how to do this, as well as a cheat sheet which provides all the essential technical details. Merchants should note that this is not recommended unless the person creating the theme from scratch has a solid background in web development. This is another reason why web designers choose Shopify over other hosted shopping carts.

Managing an Online Store with Shopify

Running a successful online store can be difficult without a great administrative interface, and Shopify looks to make things easy in this regard, so that their merchants can have more time to focus on driving customers to their online store. In terms of management, there are a a few key areas which are most important to merchants, and those include products, orders, and content. Product management is vital to an online store, and with the Shopify ecommerce software solution, merchants can easily organize as well as add or edit images, descriptions, product details, and even inventory levels. All of this is simple to do in the Shopify interface, and merchants new to selling online should not have any big troubles figuring things out. However if something is confusing, the Shopify team is there to help their merchants out with whatever they need for their online store. Overall, the admin interface is easier than most, though it may take a bit of getting used to at first. Be sure to take 15-20 minutes to familiarize yourself with the interface before delving to deep into this ecommerce solution. This will save you time in the long run when you start managing multiple products.

The order management tools within the Shopify administrative interface are something that most merchants will find easy to use. This is the section to use when you want to learn more about orders placed, inventory levels, and customer details. Shopify even has advanced order fraud detection within the order management tool, so merchants can be alerted if something does not match up. Overall the layout of Shopify's order management tool is very clean, as they only provide merchants with what is most relevant, so they do not get distracted with other unnecessary details.

Lastly the content management portion of Shopify is a breeze to use, and merchants can quickly add more pages to their online store, or create a blog or blog entry. Blogging is a great way to build a rapport with your customers, and it can also help with your SEO, since you will be putting up fresh content to your site more often. If there is something that you cannot find in Shopify for management, then you should preview their app store, which is a great way to get extra free and paid apps implemented into an online store. Shopify has apps for a variety of different purposes, so it is best to review all of the options at their site.

Marketing Your Online Store With Shopify

In terms of marketing, there are some things lacking with Shopify, but they still provide a decent set of features and tools for marketing an online store that most merchants would be content with. Shopify of course provides key features like the ability to use discount or coupon codes (not available on their Basic package), but those are just a small part of what a merchant needs. As for SEO, Shopify claims to have everything setup in a way which will not require you to seek additional SEO help, however some SEO experts that have reviewed their ecommerce software have found that it lacks a bit compared to other solutions. For instance, it is not as easy to implement 301 redirects with Shopify, or to create unique meta tags for each page. Also notable is the fact that reporting can be a bit slim with Shopify unless you install extra analytics apps (some of which cost a monthly fee). This can be problematic for SEO, as it will be harder to manage your keywords or understand your traffic sources. Of course, if you are willing to pay additional monthly fees for various add-on applications, then Shopify can be customized into a great solution that does everything for you so that you don't have to worry. As such, consider your budget when choosing Shopify as money can buy you quite a lot, but if you want all of these SEO tools as part of a low monthly cost hosted shopping cart, consider 3dcart.

One of the bigger focuses for Shopify, when it comes to marketing, is pushing merchants to their online app store, which has apps to help promote on Twitter, Facebook, or MailChimp. However since many of these apps come from third party developers, they do not all receive the highest marks from merchants. Whereas most other ecommerce solutions bake in social and email features, so that extra apps are not needed to make things happen. Shopify also offers merchants apps like Vurve, which puts your product ads on all of the major networks, and then optimizes your ad campaign for you. This is a newer technology from former Google and Yahoo! Search engineers, so there is not a ton of feedback yet on how well merchants are enjoying using Vurve. All in all, Shopify has a lot of options for marketing an online store, but they definitely have room to improve and bring more features into their core software offering at all hosted price points.

Customer Service & Shopify Gurus

Shopify has a newer effort for their customer service team which is known as the Shopify Guru, who is there to welcome new merchants and help them be successful with their online store. The Shopify Gurus are there to offer helpful marketing tips that merchants can use to increase the performance of their online store, and to be a guide to help merchants navigate everything in their ecommerce offering. Additionally Shopify provides a ticketing system for merchants to submit questions, and their general support team is available Monday - Friday, 9-5pm EST to help with whatever questions or concerns you may have. Merchants using the Shopify ecommerce solution can also reference their extensive knowledgebase that has tons of answers to common questions, or their community forums.

Shopify Pricing & Packages

Merchants considering the Shopify ecommerce software solution should know about the five different hosted packages offered, their features, and pricing. These factors are key in the decision making process when looking for an ecommerce solution to power any online store. The entry level hosted ecommerce package from Shopify is only $29 per month, and it allows the merchant to have 100 products and unlimited bandwidth. However merchants should be aware that they will also have a 2.0% transaction fee, in return for the unlimited bandwidth for an online store. Shopify also has hosted ecommerce software packages at $59, $99, $249, and $699 per month. On the high end $699 per month package, merchants receive unlimited bandwidth and are not charged any transaction fees. This option is a great fit for many large merchants, who want a cost that is going to be fixed each month, without having to worry about bandwidth overages. It is also important to note that the lower cost packages of Shopify do not have the same feature set as the higher end packages. Overall most merchants considering Shopify should be able to find a hosted solution which meets their feature needs and budget. To learn more, checkout the Shopify feature list.

Shopify Review: Conclusion

If, after reading about the Shopify ecommerce software solution, you think that it sounds like a great fit for your online business, then you should test it out. Merchants can sign up for Shopify and try it free for 30 days, but a credit card is required to get things started. This will allow you to get a better feel for the software, so you can decide if you want to move forward and choose it as the ecommerce solution that powers your online store.