Shopify : All you need to know about

If you're interested in E-commerce, chances are you've heard of Shopify for at least a few months or even a few years. And that's normal! Shopify may be the biggest revolution in e-commerce since Amazon. In this article I'll explain why after more than 15 years of e-commerce I've decided to stop all other e-commerce solutions and focus solely on Shopify. This article will be long because there is a lot to say about Shopify. I've prepared a small summary at the beginning of the article for those who don't have the time to read everything, but it would be a shame. For others you can add this article to your favorites bar, send it to you by email or via social networks so you don't lose it. I update it regularly with all the information that comes on Shopify.

Shopify : TLDR

If you're in a hurry and don't have time to read all the above points (TLDR: too long, didn't read) then here's what you need to know about Shopify in a nutshell:

Shopify is an e-commerce solution in SaaS, that is to say in monthly rentals, which allows you to create an e-commerce shop extremely easily.

You create an account via this address, you add a theme, a payment method, products, shipping costs, legal notices and here we go!

But Shopify also knows how to adapt to the needs of its users, and that's its great strength, thanks to two "killer features": the API and the APPS.

The api allows you to build almost any custom functionality for your Shopify site. It's still development and can be expensive, but even if Shopify is a SaaS solution, it's doable, which is already a feat among SaaS solutions.

And on the other side we have the apps, or apps that allow you to instantly add functionality to your e-commerce store with just a few clicks. Apps can be free, by subscription or on commission. Finding the right app is also one of the jobs of a good Shopify agency.

Shopify is today more than a million e-commerce shops running at the same time all over the world.

History of Shopify

Shopify is therefore an e-commerce solution, that is to say that it allows you to create an online shop without having to develop everything yourself. Because yes, before the appearance of e-commerce solutions, it was necessary to develop each functionality by hand, either by oneself or with the help of a team. That's how the first e-commerce sites like Amazon, Cdiscount, Rueducommerce, Pixmania etc ... were set up.

Today, custom development is still done but is less and less relevant for many shops. This is certainly not the opinion of development agencies and digital services companies (ESN), the famous former SSII because it is all part of their work that goes but it is done for the benefit of the customer (the merchant in our case).

By avoiding reinventing the wheel with each new e-commerce site, companies like Shopify can accelerate e-commerce projects and make them more reliable.

Why am I telling you all this? Well, because it's the story of Shopify! In 2005, when the two founders of Shopify wanted to create their e-commerce site, they simply couldn't find the e-commerce solution that suited them at the time.

So they chose to develop it themselves! And we can see that 15 years later and with more than a million online shops, it was frankly a good idea. Shopify has grown a lot since then, and that's what I like about this eshop system, to keep an e-merchant soul.

That's a big part of the reason why I gave up other e-commerce solutions some time ago. Shopify has understood so much how to optimize and facilitate the work of e-merchants that it would be hard to go back.

What is Shopify?

Shopify, as we've seen, is an e-commerce solution. It's a software available online, so there's no need to install it on your computer, all you need is an internet access. Moreover, it's a tool to create one or more online shops without having to worry about hosting, technology or too complicated configuration.

By creating an account on Shopify's French site, you will have everything you need to create your merchant site at your fingertips in just a few minutes.

It is possible to go through a Shopify agency or a Shopify partner to make the shop you create prettier or more professional or a little more customised if you have no e-commerce experience, you don't have the time or you want to entrust it to a pro.

Shopify will allow you to create your online shop but also to manage it! It will therefore be possible for you to :

• Create products that will be sold on the site
• Upload product photos and videos
• Create categories
• Create business operations
• Create description pages
• Create blogs and blog posts
• Changing freight charges
• Modify the design and ergonomics of his web shop
• Manage customer orders
• Manage the marketing of your eshop

In short, all the tasks of an e-merchant's daily life will be possible with a single Shopify application.

If you have a physical shop or a customer location, you can even use Shopify as checkout software with Shopify POS. But I'll talk about this later in the article in the "Shopify, Omnicanal software" section.

Shopify in figures

So, now that you know what Shopify is all about, let's look at some numbers to get a better idea of what Shopify is all about.

How many Shopify shops are there?

At the time of this writing, Shopify hosts more than one million e-commerce stores worldwide. It is, to my knowledge, the e-commerce solution with the most active shop on earth.

How old is Shopify?

Shopify is 15 years old! Still little known in France a few years ago, Shopify is nevertheless a pillar of e-commerce in the United States and Canada, his country of birth.

29 dollars per month

This is Shopify's base price for 100% feature access, including unlimited hosting of products, pages or orders. It's hard to do cheaper given the quality of the product.

480 000$ / year

This is the maximum price of the Shopify plus license per year. This may sound huge but for sites generating more than $200 or $300 million in annual sales, it's a budget that is completely competitive with other solutions! Indeed, with this price, you have access to everything and you can make an unlimited turnover.

3 million products in 48 hours.

This is the volume of products sold by GymShark on its Shopify site for the 2019 black friday. 3 million products in 48 hours. And we will hear again that Shopify is reserved for small e-merchants.

5300

This is the number of Shopify sites that are most active in the world in 2020.

25.8 million

This is the number of applications installed on all Shopify sites. We can therefore deduce an average of 25 applications per Shopify eshop.

1.4 million people

This is the number of full-time jobs that depend directly on Shopify. This includes Shopify's internal teams, all the companies of which Shopify is a client, as well as partners, agencies, consultants and above all the merchant clients! Anyone with a Shopify e-commerce site. It's a huge ecosystem that even surpasses Amazon! And yes, once again this famous comparison but we will come back to the competition between Shopify and Amazon.

Who is Shopify for?

Now that we've gone through the numbers and important information about Shopify. Who is Shopify for? This is an essential question because choosing the right e-commerce solution is important for the success of your e-commerce site. So let's take a look at some of the cases where Shopify has proven to be particularly successful.

Shopify and microenterprises

Are you in the category of very small companies, formerly VSEs? To find out, it's simple, you are a micro enterprise / VSE if your company has a workforce of less than 10 people and your turnover or annual balance sheet total does not exceed 2 million euros. This represents 93% of companies in France. It also probably means that you don't have a huge budget to invest or to devote with your e-commerce website and that your team is limited in number of people and maybe even in web skills. In this case, you'll love Shopify and you'll certainly like to take advantage of the very simple and easy to use interface on a daily basis. Unlike other e-commerce solutions that may make you pull your hair out or take up a lot of time. Shopify is perfectly suited for micro businesses, whether they are 100% online, 100% offline or want to mix the two. You can even replace your checkout solution with Shopify POS to become more efficient and multi-channel. With a monthly budget starting at $29.99 per month, Shopify is very affordable and it is possible to set up your first Shopify e-commerce store yourself with the help of my tutorial or my white paper.

Shopify and SMEs

An SME is an enterprise with fewer than 250 employees and an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 50 million or a balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 43 million. But even with a maximum of 250 employees, not all SMEs necessarily have a web or e-commerce team and often have large investments to make in production, sales or other areas. Starting an e-commerce business quickly and easily with a tight budget? Going with Shopify! Shopify at $79.99/month or Shopify Advanced at $299.99 is for you. This will allow your business team to focus on high value-added tasks and not worry about the technical side of things and delegate it to a Shopify agency.

Shopify and ETIs

An ETI, a medium-sized enterprise, is an enterprise which no longer belongs to the category of SMEs but which has fewer than 5 000 employees and an annual turnover not exceeding EUR 1 500 million or a balance sheet total not exceeding EUR 2 000 million. At this level of turnover or number of employees, you may be thinking that Shopify is not for you? Well, Shopify Plus is certainly the answer to many of the e-commerce needs of ETI companies. Indeed, the big advantage of Shopify for ETIs is that it is easy to deploy and work with for business teams while offering an impressive API for technical teams. By working with Shopify Partner experts, you will be able to provide a quick and easy interface to boost employee productivity while integrating all your data into your proprietary and non-proprietary IT systems. In short, with Shopify plus, you'll benefit from a unique, high-performance ecosystem to gain market share over your competitors.

Shopify and large enterprises

Of course, if you are a large company, you may already have a very complete and well-trained e-commerce team. But nothing prevents you from using Shopify on some e-commerce sites, for example for one of your brands, to test its efficiency and productivity. Many major companies have already switched to Shopify for their main site or secondary sites: Heinz, Nescafé, WWF, Lady Gaga, Hasbro, Staples, Lindt, GymShark, Budweiser, Tesla etc...

When should I choose Shopify?

Do you have business teams that want to work efficiently? Do you have problems with your current web agency? Are you taking weeks to deploy a feature on your site? Your technical maintenance budget is too high? You can't manage your site without the need to use a freelance developer all the time? Your site or your back office is slow? You don't want to manage the technical part, you just want everything to work perfectly? You want an ecommerce solution managed by seo expert ?

Then if you have said yes to at least one of these proposals, Shopify is totally for you!

You can't imagine how many projects I've come across in my career as an e-merchant and e-commerce consultant who would have liked to have known Shopify before choosing another e-commerce solution because they had exactly these problems.

Shopify is the solution to make your life easier by delegating technology to one of the world's most robust platforms. This allows the merchant to focus on his business: buying and selling and marketing.

Shopify, the anti Amazon?

In fact, since its creation, Shopify has been on a "merchants first" approach. This allowed them to build the most merchant oriented e-commerce solution I know. But for the past few years, Shopify has not only been creating software, they've been trying by all means to allow merchants to fight on equal terms with Amazon.

That's just it. It's a huge project that's been going on for a very long time to somehow unify the merchants for their own benefit and not for the Seattle platform.

Amazon has made access to online customers extremely simple but does it for its own benefit and doesn't hesitate to cut off access to those who don't do as it pleases.

Shopify allows merchants to launch or increase their online sales but in their name and according to their rules. Of course, let's not be naive, Shopify finds its account by

For me, one of the most visible aspects of this strategy is the opening of logistics centres in the United States. By doing so, Shopify really allows anyone to have a complete and operational pan-American network. The day that this is possible in Europe we may finally have a real competitor to Amazon for merchants.

Shopify: a multi-channel solution first and foremost

Among the big advantages that I haven't mentioned yet but that make Shopify an extremely interesting solution, is the multichannel capability. Let's be clear, if you have less than 10 stores today then Shopify can not only replace your e-commerce site but also your checkout software. Within a few weeks of work you could have a new e-commerce site, a free POS (point of sale) application, unified commerce and multi-channel customer management without any development.

This would deserve a full article to explain the multichannel aspect of Shopify but if you already have a Shopify shop, I invite you to test the POS application available only on Iphone or Ipad.

Try to transform your physical shop into a multi-channel shop thanks to Shopify POS, it will only take you a few minutes.

Shopify the most powerful e-commerce solution?

If I like Shopify so much it's because for me it achieves something I thought impossible: combining the power and flexibility of software as a service with the power of customization. Let's be clear, I've always believed that customizing your shop requires an open source solution to "do what you want". With Shopify it's history. You can take advantage of the huge benefits of SaaS, namely high technical reliability and rapid deployment and increased simplicity on a daily basis with the benefits of open source: customization, customization of the store according to your business.

With open source you often have to reinvent the wheel and make constant updates to avoid security holes. With Shopify, all this is included in the monthly license and you don't need to worry about it. All my customers are happy to have switched to Shopify because it has made them more productive and efficient in their business. And none of them have had to sacrifice functionality to migrate to Shopify. If you've ever dreamed of having a near-perfect e-commerce solution that allows you to focus on your business as a merchant instead of dealing with bugtrackers and technical tickets all the time then I recommend you try Shopify.

How do I create a Shopify site?

Create an account

First, you need to open an account on the Shopify website through this link (the link will open a new tab in your browser directly on the Shopify website): Don't worry, Shopify is free to start with. For exactly 14 days. In addition, Shopify will not ask you for a credit card or banking information to create an account. And since it only takes a few minutes to create a Shopify site, you can sell your products for free before that date. Well that said, subscriptions are really cheap to get started and get into the e-commerce business.

So once on the Shopify website, enter your email address and create a password (preferably secure!).

Then choose the name of your shop. This name will also become your sub-domain in myshopify. For example : maboutique.myshopify.com . You can use a "temporary" shop name because you will have to add a "real" domain name on top of it later" . The simplest is generally to take the name of your brand or your company.

Shopify will ask you a few more questions after that and then it will generate your shop. That's it, you've just created your first Shopify shop ! Congratulations, you've just created your first Shopify shop!

Yes it's that simple. But it is possible to go much further before putting it online. You will indeed have to add a theme, a payment method, shipping costs etc... I tell you about it in the dedicated article "create your Shopify shop".

Do I have to go through a Shopify agency or not?

If it's so simple to create an e-commerce site with Shopify, why use a Shopify web agency? Why spend money to get the same thing?

Well for several reasons, it is often necessary to go through an e-commerce agency that masters Shopify, like Pikka.fr for example.

Get a quality site

Even if themes often allow you to visually get just about what you want, it is sometimes necessary to make more in-depth modifications to create the exact graphic charter of your merchant site. An agency that understands Shopify will make the most of your design and adhere to Shopify's coding standards to ensure your site is maintained and up and running quickly.

Custom development

Do you need some specific elements on your site? An agency will be able to code in liquid the different elements to be displayed on your shop according to your needs: custom fields, conditional loops, specific sections, application integrations etc... There are many modification possibilities on Shopify to present your products according to your specifications.

Save time

Going through a Shopify agency also saves time. Indeed, creating your own site will take some time if you want to go further than just adding a theme or a few apps. Moreover, nothing says that your modifications will not slow down your site or make its evolution more complicated.

Having a guarantee

Even if Shopify works extremely well "naturally", going through an agency will ensure that everything works properly in the long run. You will also be able to entrust them with the task of upgrading, adding functionality and even redesigning it in the future if necessary.

Do I need to switch from an e-commerce solution to Shopify?

Given my enthusiasm for the Shopify solution, you'd certainly expect a resounding yes from me. I hope not to disappoint you but the answer is actually "it depends". If you have a very particular business model, maybe Shopify is not for you for example. If your site runs very well and your maintenance costs are very low, then it may not be time to invest in Shopify yet. If you have just switched to a new e-commerce solution then Shopify is not for you either.

But if you're not happy with your current site, if your staff can't work without a bug, if your site is too expensive to maintain, if you're looking for a long term solution then yes, it's essential to include Shopify in your analysis. No matter how big or small your e-commerce site is! Shopify is just as useful for small merchants as it is for larger ones. The price of the subscription and site creation project will be different though.

Benefits of Shopify

Why did I leave the other e-commerce solutions I've been using for over 10 years, some of them to move all my customers to Shopify? That's a good question that finds many answers in the benefits I find in the Shopify platform.

But what are the benefits of Shopify?

I've already talked about it a little bit above, but for me, Shopify brings together all the benefits of SaaS software and the benefits of extreme customization.

Without going into technical details, Shopify allows you to create and launch e-commerce or multi-channel sites of any size in just a few days. But it also allows you to modify and customize them in an extremely advanced way by giving access to numerous functions via the api and template files.

In other SaaS solutions, one generally does not have access to such technical depth. For some, for example, modifying a title tag can become a path of the cross. At Shopify, you can edit any piece of code in the client front office and inject variables of any type or create your own. Shopify has a real programming interface to do development and not just a bit of tinkering unlike other solutions.

A partner agency that masters the solution well can therefore create almost anything you want as an e-commerce site with Shopify. All this while relying on a hyper robust and global platform.

I still say that after 15 years of creating e-commerce sites "from scratch", Prestashop, Magento or others, it gives an incredible comfort to e-merchants while bringing very few drawbacks.

The disadvantages of Shopify?

But if Shopify is such an interesting solution, there are still some flaws that won't please everyone. You might as well be aware of them from the outset to guide you towards the best e-commerce solution. So let's take a look at the points I find less successful on Shopify so far.

Shopify and B2B

Shopify is not ideal for B2B, that's for sure. There are a lot of Shopify applications for B2B so it's not impossible far from it. On the other hand, the management of rights, payment authorizations, workflow a little pushed of orders are missing for the subscribers for the moment. For example, it is to my knowledge impossible to allow a customer to place an order up to a certain amount every 30 days and to invoice it. It is however a "customer account with pre-authorization" operation very common in B2B.

Similarly, it is impossible to have several entities in a customer. For example, a "tech" sub-entity that would have the right to order products of a certain collection and a "marketing" sub-entity that would be entitled to consumables or other. In short, to do B2B with price reductions on certain customer tags is quite feasible, but to go further it is for the moment more complicated on Shopify. Please note that, to my knowledge, there is no purely B2B e-commerce platform with the same quality as Shopify. It's not impossible that Shopify will be tempted by B2B in the coming years. If the Shopify team reads me, I'm here to help you!

Shopify and the API

Shopify's main quality is also one of its shortcomings. Let's rather say that it is a technical choice and that it has consequences. By relying on the API to modify each Shopify site, you can sometimes be limited by the API. Indeed, if the entity you were planning to modify is not accessible by the API you simply won't be able to access it.

Yet this is something very simple to do with any open source e-commerce solution. Once again, considering the compensation Shopify brings to the interface, the speed of execution and reliability is a price I think it's acceptable to pay. That's why it's important to draw up precise specifications so that your favorite Shopify agency can advise you on the feasibility of your project.

Shopify and Apps

Shopify has many apps. These apps do anything and everything. They sometimes replace a single line of code that should have been added in a template. In short, even if they have all passed a quality test by Shopify's technical teams, they have not necessarily passed a usability test.

I often see a dozen (or more) unused applications still present, active and billed on some of my customers' accounts. There are many agencies that just add shopify applications on top of each other without thinking about the overall structure of the site. This can present a risk for the maintainability of your site and its speed. Too many apps is not a good sign for an e-commerce site.

Choose wisely because each app is invoiced at the end of the month! Free apps are rare, except for those created by Shopify. In short, beware of app abuse which can make your site look like a Christmas tree or a hybrid creature between a race car and a heavyweight.

Shopify Competitors

In the long list of e-commerce solutions, there are bound to be solutions that compete with Shopify. To fully appreciate the benefits of Shopify, it is sometimes necessary to test other solutions to see their limitations. Here's a list of solutions you can try out to get a complete picture:

Prestashop

Prestashop is a French ecommerce solution that I used for a long time. The solution to be wiped by plaster pain with its version 1.7 which was delivered in pain. Since then the bar has largely recovered and a good operational team seems to be at the helm. Prestashop on the other hand suffers from its small financial size compared to Shopify. In addition, having not really succeeded in its evolution towards the cloud, Prestashop is for the moment a little in the middle of the lookout. I'm looking forward to Prestashop's future evolutions to see if they will come back in the race and improve their business model without being devoured by agencies. Because yes, today in the prestashop ecosystem there are a few missing agencies that are a bit disruptive and that could make all this evolve. Oh and contrary to popular belief, Prestashop can also support the load of large e-commerce sites. The biggest to my knowledge weighs more than 100 million euros in turnover. Not bad, right?

Magento

Magento is one of the best known e-commerce solutions in the world even if it seems less and less interesting. I have been able to use Magento for many years and I have always found it extremely complicated for not much. It's a real dusty gas factory on which you have to spend a lot of time and bring a lot of expertise to get to just about launch a proper shop. Obviously this is reflected in the cost of the projects and in Magento's target: the biggest merchants. Unfortunately since the acquisition of Magento by Adobe, things are not getting better. On the technical side I have the impression that everything is fine on the latest versions of Magento but on the financial side, the license migration proposed by Adobe are cold in the back. Many merchants complain that Adobe was five to ten times more expensive to switch to Magento 2. It is necessary to make the acquisition of more than one billion six hundred million euros of Magento profitable. I don't understand why Adobe didn't buy Shopify (which was 10 times more expensive at the time) since Shopify was already in SaaS and not Magento.

Mirakl

Mirakl is an e-commerce solution specialized in marketplaces. Ideal if you are a large retail or press player to add a marketplace brick. Very expensive (several hundred thousand euros per year), very specialized, a priori, you do not need to test Mirakl because if you are in the target concerned, you certainly already know them.

Salesforce commerce cloud

Formerly known as Demandware, Salesforce commerce cloud is a pretty good player at the moment in France if I believe my sources. With a focus on large accounts and a very efficient sales team, Salesforce commerce cloud lines up one brand after another. On the tech side, I have had less opportunity to use it but from the feedback I get, the few partner agencies make the projects very expensive.

SAP Commerce Cloud

SAP Commerce Cloud was also born following a takeover of Hybris by SAP to create SAP Commerce Cloud. Once again only dedicated to large or very large accounts, SAP Commerce Cloud is certainly one of your options if you have an IT department, if you consult the Gartner Magic Quadrant for e-commerce tools and if you have several months ahead of you and several hundred thousand euros of budget. Very strong, this solution is nevertheless extremely expensive to implement, still because of the lack of partner agencies on the market. But this is the kind of thing that can change according to the wishes of the publisher.

Oxatis

We're leaving the very large accounts for VSE/SMEs with Oxatis. To my knowledge, few sites exceed one million euros in turnover on Oxatis and the company has been experiencing setbacks on the stock market for the past few months. Today, the company itself was acquired by CMA CGM. A real opportunity or Marseille's cronyism? Time will tell. Oxatis could have become the French Shopify because they launched themselves into the cloud very early on. They may have lacked the cash to push the solution even further and make it 100% customizable. We must also recognize that on the French market, they were pretty much attacked by Prestashop since 2010.

Wizishop

Wizishop is Oxatis' most direct competitor. For the moment, the company is doing well, with a great deal of dynamism and a very present team. If you're new to e-commerce, it's possible to hesitate between Shopify and Wizishop because you can start by comparing them. More detailed and complete articles about Wizishop will be added on this site to better present and explain Wizishop.

Dropizi

Dropizi is the competitor of "Shopify dropshipping" if I may say so. It has been created by the same teams as Wizishop and offers a lot of features dedicated to dropshipping. If you're into classic e-commerce it's not for you. If you do dropshipping and you want a 100% French platform then check out my guide on Dropizi. If you're an e-commerce and dropshipping user then Shopify is still the easiest solution for you I think.

Shopify Guide Review

Well, after more than 5300 words, we come to the end of my guide and article on Shopify. I think I've done a pretty complete tour of the issue while limiting the number of topics so you can find your way around. For my part, I'm extremely happy to have chosen Shopify to launch my e-commerce website design agency. It's a real pleasure to be able to deliver reliable and efficient sites to customers. To test Shopify, you can use this link and enter your email, it will take less than 5 minutes to create your first shop. If you have any questions about Shopify, feel free to use the contact form below to ask me. I will also try to make some more operational guides and tutorials to complete this presentation of Shopify.

Ah yes, and I only regret one thing about Shopify: Not having bought shares in the company a few years ago :