Although Amazon is the biggest digital marketplace in the world, it doesn’t necessarily represent the best place where small sellers can generate income online. Strong competition and relatively-high fees make it look a bit less ideal place to sell products, so small companies and individual online entrepreneurs realized it would be much better to choose between some other alternative e-commerce platforms.
What is Shopify?
According to the company’s official website, Shopify is a complete e-commerce platform that lets you create, grow and manage an online store business. The platform enables you to create and customize a store from scratch and sell your products and services in multiple places (web, social media, online marketplaces, etc.).
It’s worth mentioning from the start that Shopify has some downsides, like any other platform. In terms of advertising, each online store must take care of its own. That means you will need to find the best advertising platforms available for e-commerce, in order to reach your audience and get wider exposure for your store and the products you promote. The bottom line is that advertising procedures can be learned, which is why marketing platforms like Clicksdealer.com, Clickbank, and others had become so popular.
Why Shopify is so popular?
One of the main reasons why people choose to create an online store with Shopify is pricing. You could choose from three different packages, starting from as little as $29 per month, to as high as $299 per month.
Second of all, you’ll have a completely independent website, where you can sell your products 24/7. This is an excellent opportunity to focus on a particular niche, target a specific type of people related to that topic or niche, and eager to find a solution to their problems (which is where your products comes in place) and thus potentially increase the conversion rate.
Also, you will have access to a wide range of customization features, being able to choose between different Shopify themes, according to your domain of activity.
You’ll be able to integrate several payment methods, including credit card processing, integrate PayPal, and others.
The platform also contains blogging functionalities, content management (CMS), search engine optimization (SEO), the ability to edit your store’s CSS and HTML code, the option to create multiple staff accounts, and many other useful features available for free.
Overall, Shopify represents one of the best alternatives for small businesses, with over 600,000 online stores powered so far, over 1,000,000 active users, and more than $82 billion generated from sales. The vast number of functionalities enables each user to customize his/her store uniquely and thus reach potential customers eager to buy products.