Shopify – Top 5 eCommerce Platform Benefits

Hey all! In our “Top 5 eCommerce Platform Features” blog series, we’ll be reviewing our favorite features and aspects of each major eCommerce platform. First up is Shopify. We hope you find it informative and enjoyable!

5. Innovation & Customization

The incentives available for the Shopify community foster continuous growth and the further development of working solutions so appealing to Shopify merchants.

Shopify’s referral program and awards for Shopify Partners and Shopify Plus Partners incentivize merchants to join the platform at all levels, excluding the Starter Plan.

All compliant apps under the new revenue plan are entitled to receive the full revenue on the first $1M USD and subsequently earn 85% of the total revenue once they exceed that threshold. This revenue plan is applicable to compliant apps as well as Shopify themes, ensuring equal earnings opportunities for both. Further details on the available incentives can be found on the Shopify Partner earnings page.

The production of competitive apps & themes along with the high standards these apps and themes should comply with before approved to be shared with the Shopify community, facilitate the development of a greater number of high-quality themes and apps that cater to the diverse customization needs of Shopify merchants.

4. Attention to Performance

Dawn is Shopify’s latest starter theme, and it serves as the foundation for all of their free themes. Every aspect of the theme was built with performance in mind, including accessibility. Rest assured that any modifications made to the theme will maintain its high standards of performance. This means that a newer version will not compromise on the theme performance.

Shopify 2.0 is promoting a return to fundamentals in theme development, with an emphasis on using HTML and CSS while minimizing the use of JavaScript. In addition, Shopify 2.0 themes offer a new feature, a GitHub Lighthouse action, that runs automatically when code is pushed. Lighthouse examines the homepage, product page, and collection page to assess how code changes impact the scores of these critical pages. This tool provides developers with valuable insights into the performance of their code changes, allowing them to optimize the site for faster loading times, better user engagement, and improved search engine rankings.

3. User-Friendly

The quality of Shopify’s documentation and their commitment to keeping it up to date is impressive. Despite regular announcements of new features and updates, Shopify continues to offer highly relevant and practical information to its users.

Shopify has taken steps to simplify app development through the creation of a design system called Polaris. As more apps adopt this system, merchants will benefit from a more uniform user experience. Polaris is designed to complement the user-friendly Shopify admin interface, which is easy to navigate for both merchants and developers.

2. Unique Sales Channels

The “Shop” feature is a fun and engaging way to promote a store’s products by showcasing them in the Shop app, if the store meets the guidelines. This is a great way for customers to discover your products even if they’ve never been to your Shopify store before. Customers can easily find your products through the Shop app’s search or product recommendation functionality.

Customers might first discover the Shop app when they use the accelerated checkout option, Shop Pay, which fills in a customer’s personal information for a faster checkout experience whenever they opt to use it. The app is also useful for tracking any items with shipping updates emailed to a customer.

Customers are rewarded when using Shop Pay through a Shopify storefront or through the Shop app with Shop Cash, though the Shop Cash can only be used in the Shop app. It’s a great way to incentivize customers to use Shop Pay when they checkout.

1. Low Barrier to Entry

Shopify offers a free trial with no setup costs that allows you to get familiar with the platform and decide which plan is right for your business before taking orders through your store. 

No technical expertise is required to launch a Shopify store. There are even free themes to choose from, including the Dawn theme that is included as the default theme for every Shopify store.

The Shopify platform takes care of routine concerns that exist for many other eCommerce websites, like hosting and security. This means merchants can open their online stores much more quickly and focus on creating the best user experience for their customers.

Conclusion

Shopify has several unique features that make it a top eCommerce platform. The platform’s focus on innovation and customization incentivizes the development of better quality themes and apps, and its attention to performance ensures that merchants can create websites that are fast and user-friendly. Shopify’s user-friendly interface, along with its Polaris design system, makes it easy for both merchants and developers to navigate. Finally, Shopify’s unique sales channels, such as the Shop app, allow merchants to showcase their products in fun and engaging ways, making it a popular choice for eCommerce businesses of all sizes.

There is no one-size-fits-all eCommerce platform. If you’d like to know if Shopify is the right software for your online store and how to leverage its capabilities to boost the growth of your eCommerce business, set up a free consultation with Trellis, a full-service eCommerce agency that offers services from strategy creation to implementation to UI and UX design to improve customer perception and digital marketing.