eCommerce Website Design - Shopify Overview

Wellington Shopify Experts

Is Shopify the perfect platform for your e-commerce business?

Anyware are Wellington's flexible, expert e-Commerce developers since 1999. We can provide industry leading advice and support at any level from one off assitance when you build your own e-commerce store  to complete end-to-end service including intial concept, design, development and ongoing marketing.
Here is our take on Shopify.

	Shopify	BigCommerce	WooCommerce
Simplicity for Users & Admin	90%	70%	80%
Features & Extendability	70%	80%	95%
Support	90%	80%	70%
Blogging	50%	60%	100%
Set-up Cost
Ongoing Cost

Shopify Strengths

Shopify's power lies in it's superb simplicity. Almost everything you do with Shopify is easier and faster than with other shopping carts. It is easy to create your store, configure it, load products, create pages and process orders. It's also superbly efficient (for your developer) to customise the design of your store. All these things and their excellent support reduce your set up costs and your staff training and operating costs.

For a small business with simple requirements Shopify is likely to have you up and running faster and for lower set up cost than other e-commerce platforms.
As as SAAS (software as a service) product you never have to worry about hosting or problems with your web server because Shopify take care of it for you 24/7.

Shopify Weaknesses

The cost of simplicity can be flexibility. Shopify has slightly less features out of the box than other leading shopping carts and the limitations may hold your business back - or you end up paying higher monthly fees for 3rd party plugins to enable the features as your business and requirements grow.
There is also a transaction fee for 3rd party payment gateways and Shopify's blog feature is quite basic. More about those below.

It's a good idea to carefully evaluate your requirements before choosing Shopify, or be happy to either keep your business simple, pay more for plugins later or change platforms later.

Key Features

POS Hardware

Shopify has a POS application and range of POS hardware to suit any physical presence, including retail, tradeshows, pop-up stores or mobile sales . This includes card readers, cash drawers, receipt printers and barcode scanners. The app is designed to work on iPad and can also be used on Android. The hardware is currently available from Australia and will be available in NZ soon. Card readers must be sourced locally.

New Zealand Credit Card Processing

Our favourite online credit card processing facility / payment gateway for New Zealand Shopify websites is Shopify's built in "Shopify Payments" (which is based on Stripe). You can set it up in half an hour, there are no fixed monthly fees and there is no transaction fee for the payment gateway service. There is still a transaction fee for processing the credit card payment, but not for the "Shopify Payments" gateway / plugin. Your bank charges you a credit card transaction fee too.

Shopify also works with Paystation and Payment Express and a multitude of international payment gateways. While Shopify's built in payments system has no gateway transaction fees, there is a transaction fee for 3rd party payment gateways. This means if you use a credit card merchant account for your retail shop and you want to use the same credit card facility for your website, you will need a 3rd party payment gateway such as Paystation or Payment Express and that means higher monthly fees.

See our two monthly fee comparisons for more details:

• All-in-one credit card payment processing costs and option
• Credit card payment Gateway & merchant account costs

Support

Shopify have excellent support. It's free and available directly from Shopify 24/7 via email, phone, live chat or their comprehensive online support center. Large online help desks often give you canned responses which are not very helpful. This is rare with Shopify. They even go off and do research before answering your question if they think it will help you. We rate Shopify support at 90%.

You can also access Anyware's hourly rate based amazing local support. Our first core value is "Service: relentless pursuit of the perfect customer experience". See what our clients say.
Anyware can provide what ever level of support you need. We can set up yor entire system for you and even manage your products for you.
Or you could install the free trial yourself and set up your website and call us for help as and when you need us.
We can also set up the system and then hand over to you. What ever you need is fine with us.

Blogging

Shopify's built in blog is fairly basic, for example blog posts have no categories. If you specifically want a very simple simple blog then it could work for you. If you are likely  to need a blog that is flexible and satisfies your users expectations of a modern blog we suggest using WordPress and WooCommerce instead.

Shopify Examples

Get Free Advice

You don't know what you don't know. We'll ask the right questions to help you choose (or confirm) the perfect e-commerce platform for your business.

• Contact us for free advice
• Get a Shopify UNLIMITED development trial (not the usual 14 days)

Ecommerce Cost Comparison

Shopify plans start from US$29.95 per month:

Basic: $29 / month, card processing from 2.7% + 30¢.

Shopify: $79 / month, card processing from 2.5% + 30¢. Includes gift cards, reports and abandoned cart recovery.

Advanced: $299 / month, card processing from 2.4% + 30¢. Includes advanced reports and 3rd party shipping calculator.

See our Shopify and BigCommerce cost comparison to estimate your monthly fees.

Free UNLIMITED Trial

Shopify offer 14 day free trials. As a Shopify partner, we can give you access to an unlimited free trial. That means you don't pay Shopify any monthly fee until your website goes live.

Contact us today to get:

• Your unlimited free shopify trial
• Free advice to help choose the perfect Ecommerce platform for your business.