What is Shopify?
Shopify is a complete commerce platform that lets anyone start, manage, and grow a business. Since its launch in 2006, Shopify has processed $886+ billion in e-commerce sales.
Shopify is known for its intuitive and user-friendly interface, making it accessible even for those without technical skills.
The Importance of Design in eCommerce
Design in e-commerce is crucial because it significantly impacts user experience which influences customer satisfaction, engagement and ultimately, conversion ratesA well-designed e-commerce site ensures intuitive navigation, making it easy for users to find products, access information, and complete purchases seamlessly. Attractive and professional aesthetics build trust and credibility, which are essential for converting visitors into customers. Additionally, responsive and mobile-friendly designs cater to the growing number of users shopping on various devices. By integrating user-friendly interfaces, visually appealing layouts, and efficient functionality, e-commerce design plays a vital role in differentiating a brand in a competitive market, enhancing customer loyalty, and driving sales growth.
Shopify Design & Development
The design of your Shopify store will play a critical role in your businesses success, so creating a website that is practical, efficient and aesthetically pleasing is a must.
Shopify provides a good level of customisation through its themes and apps available in the Shopify store. Currently at the time of writing there are 13 FREE themes and 184 PAID themes to choose from, catering for all kinds of design requirements and industries. There is also a great range of apps available with new ones being added regularly.
Every theme allows access to edit the theme code which allows for custom code to be added, enabling extra functionality. All themes are optimised for mobile as standard so you can be confident they will work across all devices without any extra development work.
Your store, your way
Shopify provides built-in SEO features to help improve your store’s visibility in search engines and integrates with various marketing tools, such as email marketing services, social media platforms, and Google Analytics, to help grow your online presence.
99.99% uptime, super secure. The security and reliability of your store is a serious matter; Shopify provides secure hosting with SSL certificates, ensuring that customer data is protected, and being PCI compliant which is crucial for businesses that handle credit card transactions. Shopify guarantees a high uptime, meaning your online store is available to customers almost all the time.
Want to know the statistics of how your site is performing? Shopify offers detailed analytics and reporting tools to help businesses track their performance and make data-driven decisions and also supports integration with third-party analytics tools for more in-depth analysis.
Shopify supports growth. Suitable for businesses of all sizes, from small startups to large enterprises. Shopify can handle significant traffic and large inventories, making it a scalable solution. There are various pricing plans to accommodate different stages of business growth, including Shopify Plus for enterprise-level businesses.
The best-converting checkout on the planet
Tried and tested, Shopify has carried out extensive research and optimization to make every aspect of your store perform to the best of its ability.
Shopify has its own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, which simplifies the process of accepting payments and can save on transaction fees.
The world is your oyster. Shopify supports multiple languages and currencies, making it easier to sell to a global audience. Also integrating with various shipping carriers, providing options for international shipping.
The Future of Shopify
Shopify is always improving and upgrading its platform, twice a year they release ‘Shopify Editions’ which highlights all the recent updates from the platform in one place.
Some highlights from the Shopify Editions Winter ’24:
- Powering more complex products and attributes – We’ve improved how all products, even the most complex, are listed and discovered on Shopify with the largest update to our product model in over a decade. From a new app for merchandising products that come in multiple colours and styles, to a new product taxonomy, and more.
- Smarter search that better understands a customer’s intent – Semantic Search, one of our new AI-powered storefront search features, goes beyond keyword matching to better understand the intent behind a customer’s search. Customers can use more natural words and phrases, and get richer, more relevant results. Exclusive to Shopify Plus.
- Shopify Subscriptions app now in full release – Increase customer lifetime value and predictable revenue by offering your products as subscriptions with our new, free subscriptions app. Easily set up and manage subscriptions directly from Shopify admin, and give your customers the flexibility to modify or skip subscription orders directly from their account.
- Extend the world’s best checkout with more APIs and features – Checkout Extensibility is the new way to customise the highest-converting checkout on the internet. It’s now even more powerful with 14 new APIs and UI components, and is also supported on the thank you and order status pages. Exclusive to Shopify Plus. Upgrade from checkout.liquid now, get started with your personalised customizations report.
- New web performance dashboard – Track and optimise your storefront performance with trusted insights across three Core Web Vitals, with our new web performance dashboard. Over the past year, our infrastructure is 35% faster and we have expanded our global points of presence.
- Transform your product photography with AI – Create professional product photos with new AI-enabled image editing features. Instantly generate, match, or remove the background of your existing images using just a few clicks or keywords. No design skills needed. Available in early 2024.
Click here to view the latest editions.
Belleek Pottery – Migration to Shopify Plus
Promoting over 160 years of craftsmanship, Belleek Pottery is located in the quaint village of Belleek in Co. Fermanagh on the banks of the River Erne. This Neo-Georgian building is home to Ireland’s oldest working fine china pottery. Established in 1857, Belleek Pottery holds a very special place in Ireland’s cultural and commercial heritage. Producing more than 100,000 pieces of pottery annually, passing through 16 pairs of hands, Belleek has opened its doors by giving you the chance to buy their special pieces online. The Belleek Group comprises world renowned gift and tableware brands of Belleek Classic, Belleek Living, Galway Irish Crystal and Aynsley China.
Belleek Pottery made the move over to Shopify Plus in early 2024 and have seen a 20% increase in conversion rate as well as welcoming a 48% saving on platform costs!
Check out the website here.
References
