Choosing Tools: Zøtapay and Shopify

Choosing the right tool for your e-commerce website can be a real challenge. That’s not down to a lack of suitable and available solutions – on the contrary – some amazing solutions exist – as long as you know the right ones to choose. Online businesses need to look at the pros and cons of shipping options, payment processors, SEO performance, costs, and other factors to find and pin down the right solution to suit their business needs. 

Shopify is an increasingly popular platform for eCommerce companies but is it the right tool for you? This review will tell you everything you need to know about Shopify and how it can be utilized through Zøtapay to your advantage.

1. What Is Shopify?

Shopify is a web solution that allows you to create your own online store. It is suitable for both beginners and pros, as coding skills are not required.

Shopify was created back in 2006 by a young man from Germany who needed a simple eCommerce solution for his business as he wanted to start selling snowboards online. Within a few short years, Shopify became the number one tool for many companies wanting a simple online store to sell their products and services.

Shopify’s aim is to allow users who don’t have coding or design skills to build an online store for their business.

2. How Does It Work?

Shopify runs on its own servers, so you don’t need to purchase web hosting facilities. Shopify is fully customizable to meet the specific and individual requirements of a business. One of the primary benefits of Shopify is the fact that it already has more than one million users and is growing consistently year on year. That matters because such a large user base makes the prospect of financial difficulties less likely. As such, Shopify is considered to be stable and trustworthy.

3. Shopify: Pros and Cons

All platforms come with their own pros and cons, and Shopify is no exception to this rule. Many of these pros and cons depend on the type of eCommerce website used. Here’s a handy list of pros and cons. 

4. Are Shopify’s Features Good?

The short answer to that question is yes, depending on the type of e-commerce site. Let’s take a closer look at the various features and functionalities available in Shopify. With this platform, one can create and launch an online store in a few hours. Custom solutions will need more time to develop, but as we have said in the Pros and Cons section – Shopify’s support is second to none. With this, you can utilize various online tutorials or request support via live chat.

Themes and designs look professional and are responsive, which is really important these days. But we will talk about this later in the themes section.

Let’s look at some of Shopify’s best features:

Manage products

Adding, removing, and managing different products is a vital feature for any online business. With Shopify, these actions can be carried out simply, seamlessly, and quickly. You can even add a list of products via a CSV file, which is highly convenient, especially for larger stores. Shopify’s easy-to-use system guides the user through steps that result in fantastic-looking products. 

Manage stock

The SKU (stock-keeping unit built into Shopify) lets you manage your stock and prevents you from selling out of stock items. Keep in mind that Shopify will let you add a maximum of three variants to the same product (e.g. size, color and material). 

If you are selling digital products, such as videos, images, documents, you will need to install an additional free app, developed by Shopify. 

Another thing to consider is whether your online store is subscription-based or takes recurring payments, as the latter is not a standard feature and requires integration from an external app and possibly employing a developer for coding. 

If you want to integrate a feedback form on your store, you need to customise fields, which you can code or app yourself. 

Shopify collections

Shopify collections help businesses to categorise your products by groups, so your customers can search more easily. When a new collection is added to your store, Shopify generates a link where you can share the whole collection with a simple link. Keep in mind that creating sub-categories isn’t possible unless you use an app.

Shipping

You can set up the shipping rules that best suit your business and products. One great feature is that Shopify connects your store with postal carriers and automatically displays the accurate shipping costs on the checkout page. Keep in mind that this feature is only available in some countries.

Themes templates

Shopify’s theme templates look professional and modern. As such, the chances of finding the perfect Shopify theme for you are high. They offer at least 10 free templates, but you can purchase an even more professional theme if you have a budget of $140-180. If you need a more specific design tailor-made for your business, you can contact the Shopify community to develop one for you. 

When you select a template, research properly which is the best one for you according to each of the sections. Every theme is limited to the available sections only.

5. How To Connect Shopify To Zøtapay?

Zotapay is here to help you with your integration with Shopify. We are a global payment service facilitator, offering secure and innovative technology for a range of online payment processing solutions.

To connect Shopify to Zotapay, you need to follow a few simple steps. Simply visit the following link and follow the steps: https://shopify.zotapay.com.

6. Shopify Alternatives

While Shopify is an excellent eCommerce platform, there are some other fantastic alternatives. WooCommerce is another complete solution that enables the creation of an online store easily. The main difference between Shopify and WooCommerce is that the latter is open-source and free and is a plugin for WordPress. In which case, you would need to have a hosted website, so if you already have one, WooCommerce could be a better fit. WooCommerce can also be connected seamlessly with Zotapay. For more information about the right eCommerce solution for your business, check out our article about WooCommerce.