Benefits of Shopify E-Commerce for Small Businesses
It’s almost the biggest shopping season of the year so we’re here to give you the top benefits of having a Shopify store!
Within the last ten years, the way we buy and sell products has changed significantly. The biggest change has been an increase in online storefronts, also known as E-Commerce. This was especially due to the pandemic when most storefronts had to close doors. In order to even keep their businesses afloat, many business owners resorted to online sales. Shopify is one of the leading e-commerce website platforms out there. It makes it easy to sell products online and has made it accessible for anyone to start, run, and grow a business.
As a studio, we truly love Shopify and recommend it to our product-based clients. We’ve built more than a dozen sites on the platform and we even run our very own Shopify store through our side project, The Branded Good! Here’s a breakdown of some of the top benefits Shopify can provide to a small business.
Less Upfront Costs
Having a retail space can be expensive, very expensive. You must consider rent of a retail space, licencing and permits, fixtures, equipment, insurance, renovations, and furniture. Entrepreneur.com estimates that opening a brick-and-mortar store can cost between $2,000 - $100,000 depending on the scale. For many small businesses, that is a big number to swallow. E-Commerce allows you to get your business off the ground from the comfort of your home and gives you the flexibility to sell from anywhere. Even by hiring a designer to create your Shopify website for you, you are still incurring lower upfront costs. An added bonus? Having a strong web presence is important. Operating your business online allows you to build that brand loyalty and client base, setting you up for success if you do take the leap to open a retail location down the road.
Tip:
Shopify is built to scale with you. Shopify POS system seamlessly integrates with your online shop allowing you to keep track of inventory, reports, and customer profiles in one place and allows you to sell both online & offline with ease.
Top Inventory Management
In comparison to many other e-commerce website builders out there, Shopify has one of the most in-depth views of your inventory and products. Business owners have the ability to group and tag products by categories and create collections. You also have the ability to create up to 100 different variants of a single product! When you hire us to build your Shopify website, we can help you set up your inventory or even just provide a few pieces of advice.
Tip:
Shopify Learn is a learning resource with over 100 tutorials, courses, and webinars for like-minded business owners to learn at their own pace. Oh and it’s free! It doesn’t require any additional subscription or upgrades.
Marketing Made Easy
Most businesses are found through a quick Google search so it’s more important than ever to keep up with your digital marketing. That’s why all of the websites we create for our clients come optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). With Shopify, their SEO tools make it easy for clients to maintain optimized SEO and expand their audience reach. Built-in features such as blogging, customer groups, and marketing reports are user-friendly and allow you to manage your business’s marketing within the platform. Another marketing feature is the ability to link your Facebook and Instagram shops to your Shopify store. This allows you to tag your products directly into your posts. This also allows any user shopping from social media to be redirected to your website for checkout, making the sales process even easier! If there is something more specific you’re looking for, the Shopify app store has thousands of custom plugins that easily integrate into websites.
Tip:
One of the benefits of e-commerce is the ability for customers to leave reviews. Having customer reviews, especially on product pages from previous customers, can improve your Shopify marketing without having to run a large or expensive marketing campaign.
Increased Reach & Robust Analytics
The biggest benefit of e-commerce by far is the ability to reach a larger audience compared to traditional brick-and-mortar stores. Online stores allow customers to shop 24/7 from anywhere in the world. With real-time Shopify sales analytics (via the mobile app or on your browser), you’re able to see what’s bringing customers to your store, where they are shopping from, what they’re buying, and your most popular products. E-commerce is a great compliment to retail locations as well, giving clients more flexibility to browse and shop at any time.
Tip:
Integrating your retail store with the Shopify POS system can give clients the flexibility to buy online and have their items shipped or picked up in-store.
There are so many more benefits to Shopify and that’s why we get excited when clients ask us to build their online shop. What we’ve listed is just an introduction of how Shopify can benefit any small business. As we become more integrated with technology and digital media, e-commerce is becoming an essential tool for businesses to thrive and survive. Take the first step towards online sales and we’ll help you get started!