Sometimes you might want to have a Shopify ecommerce store designed on a subdomain of your main website.

For example you might have yourdomain.com using WordPress and then want a new Shopify store developed on store.yourdomain.com.

At this point you’ve probably got a domain for the shopify store as something like mystorename.myshopify.com

In this guide I’ll take you through the steps to change the Shopify store domain from mystorename.myshopify.com > store.yourdomain.com.

This is actually super-easy to achieve and takes around 5 minutes to complete the domain setup. So long as you have a Shopify store setup along with access to the domain account then you’re ready to go.

The way in which you’ll do this will depend on your specific setup. I’m guessing that you are using cPanel with your host for the main website – if not then your host/domain registrar should have documentation for how to add CNAME records (because that’s what we’re going to be doing).

Step 1 – add your domains to Shopify admin

Login to your shopify store and go to online store > domains

You need to add an existing domain to your Shopify store. So just click the button to add an existing domain in the top right hand corner.

You can call your subdomain whatever you want but in this example we’re going to call it store.

So add the domain store.yourdomain.com – remembering to change “yourdomain” to your domain.

Then we need to add the www version of the domain – so add www.store.yourdomain.com – remembering to change “yourdomain” to your domain.

Step 2 – Login to your cpanel hosting account (or alternative) and go to the Simple DNS Zone Editor.

You need to add 2 CNAME records which point to your store – so scroll down to the CNAME section (not A Record).

The first will be:

Name: store.yourdomain.com.

CNAME: mystorename.myshopify.com

The second will be:

Name: www.store.yourdomain.com.

CNAME: mystorename.myshopify.com

Once those have both been added you just need to do one final thing

Set the preferred domain in Shopify

DNS changes can take some time to propagate so it might be a good idea to wait 24 hours before doing this final step – up to you. We changed ours immediately and it was fine but not all domains are the same – if you do decide to change it then don’t make the website public for 24/48 hours.

Login to Shopify and go to online store > domains and select the primary domain you wish to use – you can use the www. or the non-www version.

Once you’ve set and saved the primary domain – just go around and check everything to make sure it’s all working. It may take some time for SSL to be issued on the subdomain and for the DNS to propagate but your new Shopify store on a fancy new subdomain should be good to go in 24-48 hours.

If you need help one of our Shopify developers to help you with this process then just Contact us – we’re always happy to help.

The post How to setup a shopify store on a subdomain appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

A simple step-by-step guide on how to move your website to a new domain and not lose those precious Google rankings.

Moving a website to a new domain is quite a big decision if your business relies on traffic from Google and other search engines. And many businesses will be put off from moving domains for the simple reason that they can’t afford the perceived risk.

We recently decided to move domains because of the availability of the TLD .design. And since around 75% of our customers come from organic Google searches we couldn’t afford the risk of screwing things up. Before the move we were ranking in the top ten for some pretty competitive keywords like “web design London” and “ecommerce development”. You’ll be happy to hear that we still are.

Here’s how we moved domains and kept seo positions

Disclaimer – There’s no guarantee that the same will work for you. This is what worked for us. It needn’t be said that if you’re unsure what you’re doing in any of these steps then I suggest you hire an expert to minimise the chances of screwing up.  Things also change so make sure you are also following the guidelines from Google.  You do need to know some technical stuff to make this happen and I’m assuming you have a designer/developer on your team to make things happen.

Step one – Copy the website over to the new domain

The first step is to simply copy the website onto the new domain. If you have a WordPress website then the best way to do this is with the Duplicator plugin.

These are the important things we did from an SEO angle at this point:

• Blocked the new website design from robots.txt
• We rewrote many of our URL’s for improved SEO
• Because we had changed the URL’s structure on the new domain – we then had to add 301 redirects on the new domain from old URL’s to new URL’s.
• We then fully tested the site. Running scans like broken link checker. And making sure the website passed the Google Mobile test, pagespeed was good etc.

Step two – Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools

I’m assuming you’re using Google Analytics and Webmaster Tools on the old domain. If you aren’t then you need to do this step for the old domain first – leave it for a month and then come back to this step and do it for the new domain.

Step 3 – Install a new Google Analytics tracking script on the new domain and verify in Webmaster tools

Add a new GA tracking script to the new domain and then add and verify it in Webmaster tools.

It’s going to give you an error warning because it’s blocked from robots.txt but that’s fine for now. We left our website for a month because we were busy but I don’t think that makes any difference – you can plough on to the next steps.

At this point you should be happy that the new website is good to go live and set aside a few hours to do the following steps in one go.

Step 4 – Remove the Robots.txt block on the new website

Simply remove the robots.txt block so that Google and other spiders can index the site.

Step 5 – Backup your old website

In the next step you’ll delete the old website so before doing that just make a backup of all your files and database.

Step 6 – 301 direct the entire old website to the new website

Easiest way to do this is via .htaccess. You want to 301 redirect the entire website to the new domain. This gist contains what you need to put in .htaccess in order to achieve this – obviously remembering to replace olddomain.com with newdomain.com.

Check to ensure all links are redirecting to new pages

After performing this sitewide 301 redirect via htaccess then just test a few pages to ensure they are redirecting to the new domain correctly.

Step 7 – Tell Google you’ve moved domains

In webmaster tools (for the old domain) you need to initiate a move of address so Google know you’ve moved domains. This is quick and simple and you can follow instructions from Google on the Change of Address Tool.

Step 8 – Submit the new site to index via webmaster tools

In webmaster tools for the new domain you should submit the site to the Google Index. Just Follow Google’s instructions here. If you’ve got a sensible site structure you should just have to do the homepage and then select Crawl this URL and its direct links.

Step 9 – Move Any Backlinks you can to the new domain

If you have control over any of your main/important backlinks (link from other websites) then I suggest you point them to the new domain at this stage. Not essential but it will speed things up a little.

Step 10 – Monitor Google Positions and Webmaster Tools for 404’s

At this point most of the work is done and it’s a case of monitoring and making sure everything is ok. Look for 404 errors in webmaster tools and monitor positions using either webmaster tools, Semrush or manually.

Conclusion

We found during the first week that Google had both the old and new domain in the search results which was great bonus. After a week just the new domain was showing. Our positions were below normal for that week but they climbed back up and were at their original positions after one week. There was no notable loss of traffic in the long term but we had reduced traffic for a week whilst Google did its thing.  Not bad for moving to a fancy new domain.

If you need help moving domains for your website one of our expert WordPress web developers can help. Just contact us.

The post How to Move Website Domains Without Losing SEO Positions appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Some people may have noticed Google Webmaster Tools is reporting little or no traffic the past week. Diving deeper into the problem we found that Google have a reporting error in the GWT console. Here is the status update from Google:

– A system error began dropping all Search Analytics data after Aug 31. We hope to fix the problem soon and add back the missing data.

Hopefully things will be resolved soon and data will begin tracking again.

Status Update: 8th Sept 2016

Webmaster Tools Data Missing After 31st Aug

Google seem to have fixed this issue and data is reporting as per usual although we have noticed a dip in traffic on some sites which is probably due to another update – currently monitoring.

The post Webmaster Tools Data Missing After 31st Aug appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Here we’re going to walk you through the top 24 benefits of Shopify Plus – recently chosen by our ecommerce developers as the best ecommerce platform for 2017/2018 and beyond. We wrote this list specifically for people looking for the benefits of Shopify Plus in relation to other enterprise class solutions and other Shopify Plans. You may also be interested in reading our Shopify Plus Review.

The benefits of Shopify Plus are given below in no particular order and some of them will only make sense to developers or people already experienced with Shopify. A certain amount of knowledge about eCommerce is assumed. If you need help deciding on enterprise class ecommerce solutions please contact us.

24 Benefits of Shopify Plus

1. 99.99% uptime guarantee – Shopify Plus is a hosted SAAS eCommerce solution and you don’t need to worry about the servers going down. They are blazing fast and can handle traffic spikes all year round. We’ve used Shopify for years, tested it to the max and the results are in: Shopify Plus servers (provided via Fastly) are awesome.
2. Shopify Plus has a PCI level one compliant checkout – and has integrations available for all major gateways. Meaning you can accept credit and debit card payments without spending lots of money on payment data security. That’s all taken care of from day one.
3. Shopify Plus offers a fully customisable and brandable checkout experience – developers can add custom css/scss/liquid code to the checkout pages. Shopify Plus is the only Shopify plan which allows you to add this code at the checkout level – other plans allow light customisation only in the checkout pages.
4. Same domain checkout – with Shopify Plus the customer can stay on your own domain. On other Shopify plans (and some other platforms) then the customer will be redirected to Shopify’s servers for checkout because of PCI compliance. However with Shopify Plus the customer stays on your own domain always and the checkout is still PCI level 1 compliant.
5. Dedicated Merchant Success Manager – with Shopify Plus you get a dedicated Success Manager who can help you grow your online business and maximise sales. These people help merchants thrive and are always there for advice and support. They can also help you connect with designers, developers and marketing experts that specialise in Shopify.
6. Shopify Scripts app – merchants using Shopify Plus have access to the Shopify scripts app which allows developers to create and integrate awesome ruby scripts onto your website (a very useful tool for developers).
7. Multiple stores on subdomains for no extra fee. Shopify Plus allows merchants to have clones of their stores on subdomains for no extra fee. Many merchants require this so they can serve a version of the store in a different currency/language.
8. Scalability – Shopify is a highly scalable platform and the Plus plan is the top most tier. No matter how much you trade or plan on trading Shopify Plus will scale with you. The servers and the checkout can handle serious amounts of traffic and transactions.
9. Security – Shopify Plus is a highly secure eCommerce solution with multiple layers of protection to keep your business and customers safe.
10. 40+ migration tools. Migrating to Shopify Plus is very easy – and Amazon even suggested Shopify as a migration platform after they closed down their own clunky eCommerce arm of the business.
11. With Shopify Plus you get a free SSL certificate.
12. Shopify Plus allows you to sell on multi-channel sales. Shopify Plus has integrations with many 3rd party platforms and apps are available to fill the gaps. With a single store on Shopify Plus you can sell on multiple platforms and keep your stock and product data in sync.
13. Advanced reporting – Shopify Plus allows merchants advanced reporting features in the store – allowing merchants to understand their customer flow, behaviour and sales without having to integrate with 3rd party tools.
14. Accelerated support – Shopify Plus merchants jump the queue and get support faster than other Shopify merchants. Most other eCommerce solutions don’t even have any support at all.
15. Shopify Plus will save many merchants money when factoring in all costs (such as maintenance fees for other platforms and transaction fees on other Shopify plans).
    With Shopify Plus you get a Launch Manager – who helps you get your store online faster by providing platform training, assisting with third-party integrations, and finding partners to work on design and development projects specifically for your business.
16. With Shopify Plus you get additional API calls that let you integrate with custom apps faster.
17. Shopify Plus offers a Wholesale channel that lets you create a separate, password-protected wholesale store.
18. With Shopify Plus you can use the Bulk Account Inviter app to invite customers to activate their accounts for your online store. This app is really useful after you have imported customer accounts from another platform or from another Shopify store.
19. Shopify has a thriving designer/developer community around it – making a store with Shopify Plus a sounder long term investment for your business. If you need a Shopify expert for design, development or marketing you will not struggle.
20. Shopify has a vast and growing number of app integrations for 3rd party platforms and services. So if you’re looking to integrate your store with a 3rd party platform or service then it shouldn’t be a problem – just take a look in the app store. Even if there is no app available you may find that there is a private app available by the third party for integrating.
21. Shopify Multipass API is exclusively for Shopify Plus merchants and allows you to manage customer logins seamlessly if you have customers with accounts on another platform. An awesome and essential feature for any enterprise class store with multiple content sites.
22. Shopify Gift Card API is also exclusively for Shopify Plus merchants and allows customers to pay with a gift card. Developers can use the API within Shopify Plus stores to display, manage and offer gift cards for the customer.
23. Shopify Discount API is also exclusively for Shopify Plus merchants and allows developers to create, manage and destroy discount codes via the API programmatically.
24. Shopify User API is also exclusive to Shopify Plus merchants and allows developers to programmatically access users of the store and create custom experiences based on this. Very useful for manipulating redirects for specific account users when using a multi-store setup.

Not sure if Shopify Plus is right for your business? Drop us a line or start a free trial with Shopify Plus.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post 24 Benefits of Shopify Plus – the Enterprise Class eCommerce Platform appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Heard about Shopify Plus but can’t find detailed pricing information for the plan? Asking how much Shopify Plus costs? You’re not the only one. Dozens of people search for Shopify Plus price/cost information every day and most people simply don’t find it. Instead they all end up on the same page on Shopify telling them to get in touch.

Some people are fine with giving their contact details out and others aren’t. This article is for those who are curious about the pricing structure of Shopify Plus but aren’t yet ready to hand over their email address in exchange for it.

Please note – this article gives a detailed overview of Shopify Plus and is quite long. You can also use our Shopify Price Calculator which also includes Shopify Plus pricing/costs. This tool allows you to calculate Shopify Pricing/Costs in an interactive way based on your sales/gateway.

Why Don’t Shopify Publish their Plus Plan Prices

This is what the normal Shopify plans are priced like and as you can see the Plus plan pricing is missing:

The reason Shopify themselves don’t actually publish Plus fee information like they do for other plans is fourfold:

1. Shopify Plus is still quite new and we guess they hadn’t (until recently) quite decided on the longer term pricing structure of the plan.
2. Shopify would like to capture your information as a lead – in exchange for the pricing information – so their sales people can get in touch and try to sell it to you as a solution.
3. It’s not a simple pricing structure like the pricing for the other Shopify plans.
4. Probably the fees for Shopify Plus would scare some smaller retailers away from the platform’s other plans (which are much cheaper).

The good news is that it’s not that complex to calculate potential Shopify Plus fees and so long as you’ve got 5 minutes to spare and can do some basic maths – you’ll be able to calculate your potential Shopify Plus platform fees without having to talk to a sales person. Ready?

Update: since writing this article we’ve developed an Interactive Shopify Pricing Calculator which includes pricing for Shopify Plus.

Before we get down to numbers though – please note that this is all about real costs (hard cash) for Shopify Plus rather than value or benefits of Shopify Plus. If you’re looking to understand more about the value of Shopify plus in comparison to other plans or platforms you can read our review of Shopify Plus or the top 24 benefits of Shopify Plus. Or if you really want to get into serious details you can contact us to schedule a consultation with one of our Shopify/Magento developers (but we do charge hourly rates for consultation time).

Shopify Plus Pricing was updated in 2017

Note: that this is the pricing structure of Shopify Plus as it is in June 2017 when this article was published. Things may well change in the future – but this is how things are now as of this moment. And since these pricing changes have been phased in during the first half of 2017 we don’t think they will be changing for a good while yet. They should certainly stick into 2018 and 2019 and we’ll try to keep this post updated as any changes come in.

All fees are in US dollars and Shopify will always bill you in that currency – regardless of the currency of your store or plan you have. Whilst this may seem trivial to some – it is an important consideration for businesses outside of the US. (for example after the Brexit vote our UK clients saw their real term costs of using the platform climb by around 20% because of the weak £ vs $. Worth noting for non US based clients.) Those points aside:

Shopify Plus new Price Structure for 2017 (and beyond)

How much will it cost to run a store on Shopify Plus?

Your cost calculation for running a Shopify Plus store will consist of:

1. Shopify Plus Platform Fees – this is the specific platform fee which is paid directly to Shopify for using the platform as a Plus client. This gives you access to the software, hosting and support and is the figure most people are looking for but it doesn’t really give the full picture because you’ll also have to think about the following:
2. Payment Gateway fees – for processing payments using Shopify Plus. All payment gateways have fees for using them and Shopify charges different fees depending on the plan you have.
3. App fees – apps extend the core functionality of Shopify. All Shopify stores – regardless of the plan they have – use apps.
4. Maintenance fees – ongoing costs for maintenance of a Shopify Plus store. Like with any store you’ll face ongoing maintenance fees. We’ll talk about these.

1+2+3+4 = your approximate total fee for using Shopify Plus as a platform.

Let’s work through each one to try to get an approximation for your business when using Shopify Plus.

1) Shopify Plus Plan – The Platform Fees

The platform fees of Shopify Plus go to Shopify for the hosting and the software and the support.

The Shopify Plus pricing model is all based on store usage. Usage is a vague term. Shopify Plus uses percentage of monthly sales to calculate your usage of the platform. So usage means sales in this context. The idea is that if you sell more – you use more server and support resources.

(I have a lot of experience with ecommerce clients and can safely say that sales does not equate to platform use or support needs. But this is just the way things are done on Shopify. Deal with it.)

Shopify Plus has a floor price (or minimum fee) which is $2,000 and also a ceiling price (maximum fee) which is $40,000.

The platform fee is charged at 0.25% of monthly store sales if you are not using Shopify Payments as the payment processor/gateway. This means that you are using one of the many other supported major gateways such as Sage or Braintree.

If you are using Shopify Payments as the gateway then the % of monthly sales is dropped to 0.15%.

Where you are using multiple gateways (e.g. Paypal and Shopify Payments or Sagepay) – then the reduced rate only applies to transactions processed through Shopify Payments.

You will need to sit down with your accountant to talk about the best solution for payment gateway. It will very much depend on your business location and sales volume. You may well have a gateway already. In short – Shopify Payments is a good value option for certain businesses in certain countries if they want a POS. Shopify Payments is not available in all countries and it doesn’t support things like 3d secure which is pretty much essential in some sectors. I would suggest that you get quotes from the main payment gateways which support your specific needs and do a quick cost calculation. Likelihood is that Shopify Payments will not make financial sense unless your volumes are low.

So the absolute minimum platform fee you will pay on Shopify Plus is $2,000 per month. That’s the basic platform fee and the lowest price that any store using Shopify Plus can expect to pay. So expect to pay that even if you’re just starting out with Plus.

The absolute highest fee you will pay is $40,000 /month – and no Shopify store will ever need to pay more each month for using the platform. That is the highest possible fee regardless of sales.

A few examples of Shopify Plus Platform Fee Pricing:

Jimmy’s Big Drills

Jimmy runs a Shopify Plus store and sells $10,000 worth of big drills every month.

Jimmy’s usage calculation would be $25 per month (0.25% of $10,000) assuming he was using any gateway other than Shopify Payments.

But since there is a minimum fee of $2,000 for Shopify Plus – Jimmy would pay that. And to be honest – if Jimmy was selling $10,000 worth of drills every month he would be better off on a lower Shopify Plan unless he was planning on scaling his drill selling business very quickly.

Diamond Skinny Tea

Diamond skinny tea sells $100,000 worth of tea laced with laxatives every month (that isn’t a joke – a real company do this and do very well out of it).

Anyway, bitching aside, their usage calculation for Shopify Plus would be $250/month.

But since there is a minimum fee of $2,000 for Shopify Plus – they would pay that.

With sales in that region this business may well be able to swallow the $2k/month platform fee for using Shopify Plus. Because it is a fantastic ecommerce solution and has some pretty cool features above the other plans.

Luxe Fast Cars

Luxe fast cars sells $1,000,000 worth of fast car parts every month.

Their usage calculation for Shopify Plus would be $2,500.

This is above the $2,000 floor price so they would pay $2,500 per month for using Shopify Plus.

Conclusion

You can immediately see that Shopify Plus is not for small merchants. Even with the benefits Shopify Plus brings – small sales wouldn’t justify the platform fee.

In short: Shopify Plus stores with monthly sales between $0 and $800,000.00 USD will all pay $2,000 per month just for using the platform. Everyone else will pay more – up to the ceiling price of $40,000 – based on a 0.25% transaction fee (or 0.15% if using Shopify Payments).

2) Payment Gateway Fees for Shopify Plus

Above was the transaction fees for Shopify Plus (0.25% if not using Shopify Payments. 0.15% if using Shopify Payments). Regardless of whether you choose Shopify Payments or not – all gateways have additional fees to the transaction fees charged by Shopify. These vary by country and sales volume but expect to pay in the region of 1.5-3% with (often) a fee per transaction.

For example in the US using Paypal and monthly sales of $3 – 10k you will be charged 2.9% + $0.30 USD.

Using Stripe in Germany you’d pay 1.4% + €0.25 per transaction so long as the card is European.

You will need to ask around the various providers for the best rates in your country. Stripe is very competitive at the time of writing.

3) App Fees

Almost all stores on Shopify use paid apps regardless of the Shopify plan. This is nothing unique to Shopify Plus – as all Shopify plans have paid apps – but clients moving from other platforms like Magento may scoff at the thought of paying a monthly fee for an app when they are used to fixed prices. Apps extend the core functionality of the platform to cover functionality not everybody needs. Some apps are free and some are paid. The paid apps range in price from a few dollars to a few hundred dollars per month.

Some apps are developed by Shopify. Many are developed by 3rd party developers/companies. And Shopify maintain control over the quality of apps in the app store.

Examples of apps include Quickbooks or Sage integration, Mailchimp integration and wholesale pricing. Generally speaking most apps are in the $5-30 bracket. But some niche apps cost a lot more.

Most Shopify Plus stores spend less on apps than a similar store on a lower plan because they often have custom work done to the store and have their own integrations. On average our Shopify Plus clients spend $100-200 per month on apps. The amount you spend on apps will very much depend on your business and needs. If you aren’t sure then I’d budget $200 and be sure that you have a decent and experienced Shopify developer on board when selecting apps (because a few of them are best avoided for higher end sites).

4) Maintenance Fees for Shopify Plus

All ecommerce stores have ongoing maintenance fees including Shopify Plus. In our experience – on average – the maintenance fees of Shopify Plus clients are 1/5th of the fees for maintenance fees on Magento. The simple reason being that you do not need to maintain your own server. Shopify do that for you and offer a 99.99% uptime promise for Plus stores. The core software is updated and maintained by Shopify also and so there’s no need to do security updates or patches.

Contact us for help with Shopify Store Maintenance.

Is Shopify Plus Good Value

Hopefully I’ve answered this question already. Shopify Plus is the top most Shopify plan and is designed for enterprise class clients. It can absolutely be excellent good value for enterprise businesses who need a robust, low maintenance solution.

But it would be a killer for a small business with low sales. Only you will be able to calculate if it’s a good value plan for your business.

If you’re not sure if Shopify Plus will be the right plan for you financially I’d suggest starting on a lower plan and upgrading when the time is right.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post Shopify Plus Price/Cost Breakdown – How much Does Shopify Plus Cost? appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Interested in accepting Bitcoin in your Shopify store? Or even Litecoin or Dodgecoin? Bitcoin has exploded in recent years and there’s no reason why you shouldn’t accept it as a payment method in your store. It’s not difficult and doesn’t take much time. Ready to start accepting Bitcoin with Shopify?

Before we start – there are some business risks associated with accepting Bitcoin and we should all be aware of them. Many of the major exchanges have been hacked in recent years leading to missing coins and huge swings in value. And accepting Bitcoin will make your accounting more complex. That aside – we think Bitcoin is a great payment method for certain types of businesses. Since you’re reading this we assume you’re one of these businesses.

The good news is that accepting Bitcoin has become pretty damned easy these days using Shopify. Here we’re going to talk you through the steps of setting up your checkout so you can safely accept Bitcoin with Shopify.

Step 1 – Open a Shopify Store

The first thing you’ll need is a Shopify store so if you haven’t got one now is the time to open a demo store. It will take you around 10 mins to do this. If you already have a Shopify store then skip this and jump to step 2.

Step 2 – Select a Bitcoin Exchange/Wallet

There are currently a few integrations for Shopify which allow you to accept Bitcoin.

The big three are:

Coinbase – allows you to accept Bitcoin

Bitpay – allows you to accept Bitcoin

GoCoin – allows you to accept Bitcoin, Litecoin & Dodgecoin

Step 3 – Choose which Bitcoin Wallet/Exchange you will use

If you just want to accept Bitcoin then I’d strongly suggest using Coinbase since they are the biggest and most established. We don’t see much traction with litecoin yet or Dodgecoin. The second biggest coin is Ether and we think that Coinbase will add this soon.

IMPORTANT: Be sure to select a business account during signup.

Then go to merchant settings and open a merchant account.

Give them the information they need.

You can’t integrate Shopify and Coinbase without a business account with a merchant account activated – you’ll just get a load of errors.

Step 4 – Assign the wallet/exchange to your checkout

Now you’ve decided on which wallet/exchange you’ll use then it’s time to set things up in the Shopify admin.

Here we’ll walk you through the steps for Coinbase but the steps are pretty similar regardless.

So go to admin > settings > payments

Scroll down to Alternative Payments and select your service provider.

You’ll see that if you select Coinbase you need to enter some API information. This is what connects your Coinbase account to the store.

Step 5 – Create your API keys

Go here and create a Key + Secret pair in your API settings in Coinbase.

To do this click + new api key

Enter your password.

Then enable BTC wallet (primary)

Ignore API v2

Show permissions for API v1

Select Merchant

Click create.

Ensure you’ve got enabled in a green box after doing this. If it’s grey then something is wrong – try again. It should look like this.

Copy your Shopify api keys to Shopify. It should look like this.

Step 6 Set your redirect addresses

In Coinbase you may also want to set your redirect URLS for after the transaction. Perhaps you want to create a custom landing page for Bitcoin customers telling them that their order will be dispatched once the transaction is confirmed?

Step 7 – Create a test transaction

Almost done. But we must test it.

Log out of your Shopify store and pretend you are a customer. Add a product to the basket and go through the checkout selecting Bitcoin as the payment method.

If there is a problem go through the steps again carefully. This is what you should see after clicking to pay with Bitcoin:

Problems Accepting Bitcoin with Shopify?

Many people see an error after the redirect. This is usually because they haven’t set up as a business account and activated the merchant account. If you’re still seeing errors after following our instructions then reach out to Coinbase first since it’s probably something to do with your account setup. Our Shopify developers would also be willing to do it for you (for a fee). Just ask us.

Tips for Managing your Shopify Bitcoin Orders

Bitcoin payments can be slow to confirm – sometimes taking hours. If you send that nice shiny iPhone off whilst it’s still pending then you could lose out. Make sure the bitcoin payment is confirmed/complete!

Never store all your coins in one exchange/wallet. If you’ve got a lot of money in Bitcoin then either convert to cash or move to a cold wallet (offline). Never leave lots of coin in an online exchange.

Have fun accepting Bitcoin with Shopify.

And if you need a Shopify developer for the Bitcoin integration – contact us.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post How to accept Bitcoin in a Shopify Store for Payments (and Litecoin/Dodgecoin) appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Ethereum (ETH/Ether) has recently become a popular altcoin. Merchants on Shopify may be looking to accept it as a payment method for their store.

At the time of writing there is no plug and play gateway which you can use to accept payments with Ethereum and Shopify doesn’t natively support alt coins. We’ve written an in depth article here about how to accept Bitcoin with Shopify and this article also covers Litecoin and Dodgecoin if you wish to accept those. But if you want to accept Ethereum with Shopify then you’ll need some custom work doing on your store by a Shopify developer.

Requirements: shopify store (start one for free here if you don’t have one) + coding skills (Liquid, js, css, html and a third programming language of your choice – e.g. PHP or Python) & a server.

If you have those things then crack on reading to get the gist of what to do. If you don’t have coding skills you’ll need to hire a Shopify developer. Just contact us.

Quick and easy method:

Step 1 – build a currency file for the store which includes all the currencies you with to display as well as a conversion for Ethereum. This will be used to convert your prices via js on the front-end for the user. I’d suggest setting a cron job to update these conversions 2-4 times per day and it needs to sit on an URL with SSL. This is something you’ll need to do on another server. Pull that onto the store-front and give the user a currency picker or display ETH & another currency. You’ll be able to use a few API’s to get the ETH price but I’d suggest using Coinbase.

Step 2 – build a widget for payment in Ether using Coinbase. If you don’t have a merchant account yet with Coinbase you can open one here. It must be a business account and you must setup as a merchant there.

This should give you some embed code which you modify with some liquid variables to build the correct payment/order.

Step 3 You’ll need to hijack the order process at some point and ask them if they want to pay with Ether or other payment methods. I would do this on the cart page unless you’re on Shopify Plus (when you can do it during checkout). I’d probably bind a function to the checkout button.

Step 4 – regardless of where step 3 happens you’ll also need to create an order with the orders API and bind it to the same event.

Once this is done then the user will be able to checkout and pay you with Ether. It will be a bit of a hack but it will work.

They won’t go through the usual order process on the Shopify checkout. They will pay via a Coinbase widget and then the order will be created with the orders API.

The downside to this method is that orders must be verified manually before being dispatched which isn’t practical in many situations.

The more complex/complete solution would be to pass the order details to a second server (i.e. your server) from Shopify, create/accept a payment with the Coinbase API and then post a new order to the store using the Shopify Orders api on purchase confirmation. Then send the user back to Shopify. That could be done and would be the ideal solution until one of the main alt-coin start updating their apps to accept Eth.

Need help accepting payments with Ethereum (ETH/Ether) on Shopify? Contact us and we’d be happy to give a quote.

The post How to Accept Ethereum with Shopify (ETH/Ether) appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

At Liquify we’ve rapidly become the go-to developers for Shopify Plus merchants who’ve been let down by other Shopify Plus developers and partners. Very often through missing deadlines or not supporting them with problems quickly enough.

Why do these Shopify Plus merchants find us? Because we’ve built a reputation of getting the job done on time and on budget and we fix problems quickly when they arise – prioritising them over our other workload (when it’s business affecting.)

In helping these merchants and hiring our own team of Shopify developers we’ve come to understand a lot about the mistakes people make when hiring developers – specifically for Shopify.

We’ve compiled a list of 10 questions you should ask any potential Shopify Plus developer before hiring. Because you shouldn’t simply hire the first person who calls you back. In fact you should take that as a warning sign. People who are good at what they do are busy, very busy and you may need to fight or wait to become a client.

There’s a dearth of quality Shopify Plus developers out there and no shortage of bullshitters, cowboys and amateurs. Nobody needs them when running a business.

Here are the top 10 questions you should ask a Shopify Plus developers before hiring to help you hire a genuine Shopify Plus developer.

1. Have you worked with Shopify Plus before? In what capacity and for which clients?

Here you’re looking for concrete evidence that the person (or persons) you are dealing with have specific examples in their portfolio with Shopify Plus.

Having experience with Shopify itself is not enough. The Shopify Plus platform is packed with additional features and API’s and so you need to know that your Shopify Plus developer knows what these features are and how to maximise them to your benefit.

Shopify Plus merchants are also very different to regular Shopify merchants. They demand more and expect more and are usually selling a hell of a lot more. So you need to be sure that your developer can handle you as a client.

Here you want to be able to see live URL’s and be able to corroborate that work against their portfolio.

2. What are the main advantages of Shopify Plus?

Any Shopify Plus developer should be able to give you the run down of the main advantages of the platform they are claiming to be an expert in.

Likelihood is that you’ll need to understand some technical stuff to really understand what they mean. Because the main benefits of Shopify Plus are technical. If you’re unsure on the main benefits of Shopify Plus then you can read all about them here: Main benefits of Shopify Plus.

3 What are the API’s for Shopify Plus and what can be done with them?

API’s are application interfaces. They allow developers to do some cool and useful stuff with Shopify stores. You need to be sure that your potential Shopify Plus developer(s) knows about the various API’s which are available to your store as a Shopify Plus Merchant. You can find a list of the API’s available in the top benefits of Shopify Plus.

4 How much will Shopify Plus cost?

Every developer who specialises in Shopify Plus should know what the platform will cost you. It’s not a terribly complicated calculation and you should know what it will cost before investing in the platform. You can use our Shopify fee/cost calculator to get an estimate or you can read our article about the costs/price of Shopify Plus.

5 How about Ruby? Can you code ruby for the Shopify Plus ruby scripts app?

This isn’t a deal breaker but ideally any Shopify Plus developer should be able to code in the Ruby programming language. This is so that they can use the Ruby Scripts app which is specifically for Shopify Plus. This powerful little app allows you to have custom code deployed from the same server as your store without having to rely on a 3rd party hosted app which in turn allows you to depend on fewer servers.

6 How much can my checkout be customized in Shopify Plus?

The checkout with Shopify Plus can be customised but some people are not clear on exactly how much it can be customised. In short: any Shopify Plus developer should be able to tell you exactly what you can and can’t do with the checkout using Shopify Plus. There are some hard limits which Shopify Plus developers need to work within regarding the checkout and your developer should be aware of them. Ask and if they say you can do whatever you want then don’t hire them. It’s not true. There are limits.

7 What features do you think Shopify Plus is missing? What are the downsides of Shopify Plus?

Everyone who is an expert will freely bore you to death with their expertise if you let them. Ask your potential Shopify Plus developer what he or she thinks are the main downsides of Shopify Plus. We’ve listed our top 5 disadvantages of Shopify Plus here.

8 What options are there for selling in multiple currencies with Shopify Plus?

Many Shopify Plus clients want to accept multiple currencies in their store. Ask your Shopify Plus developer about doing this. It’s currently not possible and most stores use clones of the original Shopify Plus store – of which you can have up to 10 with Shopify Plus at no extra cost.

9 What programming languages can you code at an advanced level?

Any Shopify Plus developer should be absolutely 100% comfortable with the following: HTML, CSS, Javascript and Liquid. Ideally they will also be able to code Ruby and for bonus points they’ll also be able to work in PHP because you may need external apps building at some point and PHP may well be the best option.

10 What is you average fix time for problems with Shopify Plus stores?

Shopify Plus stores generally have high sales. That means that every minute of downtime is expensive.

Downtime and technical problems should be dealt with swiftly and there should be a clear procedure from your Shopify developer about how they will handle emergency and scheduled work.

Does your potential Shopify Plus developer have a phone number? How long is their email reply usually? What are their office hours. Some developers take days to reply to emails and that’s not acceptable if you’re losing sales or upsetting customers.

As a benchmark we have a retainer for Shopify Plus clients with a minimum of 20 hours per month (so they guarantee to hire us for that time per month minimum). For that they get a phone number and 12 hours per day office hours with an average response time of 1 hour. If a problem is business affecting we drop all other work and focus on that.

Conclusion

We hope this article helps you to hire a decent Shopify Plus developer. If you’re struggling to find one then drop us a line. We’ll be happy to help if we can.

Interested in Trying Shopify Plus?

Interested in trying Shopify Plus? Why not get a free trial.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post How to Hire a Shopify Plus Developer – the Ultimate Guide appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

At Liquify we’ve been huge fans of the introduction of the Shopify Plus platform. The platform has taken huge strides since being introduced and is now firmly the leading enterprise class ecommerce solution.

You’re basically looking at a two horse race in eCommerce at the enterprise level: Shopify Plus or Magento. In our eyes Shopify Plus is a much better investment these days with lower ongoing costs and a quicker launch time.

Whilst we’ve written already heavily on the benefits of Shopify Plus as well as a comprehensive review of Shopify Plus we’ve not written much on the pain points for merchants or the downsides of Shopify Plus.

Today we’re going to discuss 5 features we’d like to see added to Shopify Plus over the coming years. These are the top five features we’d like to see added to Shopify Plus and have come directly from working with Shopify Plus merchants. They aren’t really disadvantages of Shopify Plus for the average merchant but for some they are. We would like to see these features addressed in the future to Shopify Plus.

1 Multi-Currency Checkout for Shopify Plus Stores

We’ve said this many times and here we’ll say it again: we would love it if Shopify Plus was extended to allow multi-currency checkout. Currently there are no options for multi currency checkout through a single Shopify store as there is with Magento.

The current solution is to have multiple clones of the same store on subdomains serving different geographical regions. And whilst this works perfectly in cases where different languages need to be used also (it’s better for SEO to have multi-lingual content on subdomains) it’s a pain point for Shopify Plus merchants who wish to offer a single language and multiple currencies at checkout. These merchants basically need to sync up multiple stores to accept multiple currencies simply because Shopify doesn’t support multiple currency checkouts. Each Shopify store can only have one checkout currency.

Whilst many payment gateways accept multiple currencies, Shopify itself doesn’t handle multiple currency checkout from one single store which can be a problem for some merchants. It would be amazing if this could be changed for Shopify Plus merchants. Like I said, it’s a pain point for merchants who simply want their content in one language and to accept multiple currencies at the checkout.

We think this is one of the main disadvantages when it comes to Shopify Plus and so would love to see Shopify roll out a multi-currency checkout for Plus merchants.

2 Customisable Back End for Shopify Plus

In the future we’d like to see metafields being bundled into the Shopify core to allow us to add custom fields directly in the admin and have them appear directly on the product/post/page admin without having to use an app. It should take inspiration from the awesome advanced custom fields (ACF) plugin for WordPress – with a repeater function.

This won’t mean much to the non-developers – or even developers who are not familiar with Shopify. In short and non-technical terms: metafields allow us to add custom data to products which is then displayed on the front end of the website (e.g. a custom size chart or a designer headshot for a product).

Currently these additional fields of information can be added but it needs to be done so through an app which makes the process a little less user-friendly and time consuming. Our Shopify Plus clients want everything to be as simple and fast as possible and almost always they need metafields.

And we’d also like to be able to brand the backend for our Shopify Plus clients. Adding their logo and brand colours. It’s nowhere near as important but we think at en enterprise level it would be nice to be able to do this for clients.

3 Staging/Sandbox Zones for Shopify Plus

We’d like to have a simpler & quicker way to roll out changes and test new apps/themes for Shopify Plus merchants.

It’s very easy to clone a store design/theme with Shopify but it’s not very easy to clone everything we need to test fully and to roll out a staging site.

With one click (and only one click) we’d like to be able to clone an entire Shopify Plus store into a sandbox environment. That copy would take everything including apps, payment gateways, customers and all history and put it into a sandboxed developer area which would be inaccessible to customers.

From there we could tinker with the theme or build new apps without having to worry about if we’ve copied everything correctly manually. It would save us time and allow us to roll out changes faster.

4 Same Server App Hosting

A big pain point we’ve had with some Shopify stores is that they are running apps which are hosted on second rate servers. Shopify Plus itself has a pretty sweet server uptime of 99.99% using the Fastly CDN but if an app on a Shopify Plus store is running on a server which doesn’t have the same level of uptime then what you have is a potential problem. Not many people know this but for every app which affects the front-end you are essentially reducing your uptime.

Using an app with your Shopify Plus store which is hosted on a rubbish server is a bit like putting cheap tyres on a formula one car. At some point they’re going to blow and when they do it will be ugly.

Some apps which have been allowed into the Shopify theme store have caused problems with stores because their servers are not the best. These servers don’t offer the same uptime as the Shopify Plus CDN and if the app is coded badly (i.e. doesn’t fail silently) then you could end up with lost sales. We’ve seen it happen and we’d like to see it stop.

Imagine a Shopify Plus store with 10 apps all running on different servers and if one of those fails then the whole website fails. There goes the downtime promise of 99.99%. Whilst we appreciate this isn’t Shopify’s direct fault we’d like to see more control over app hosting – especially when it comes to Shopify Plus stores (since downtime is usually more costly to them than regular merchants).

We’d like to see all apps in the app store being deployed/hosted on the same origin server as the stores. That would solve the problem.

In the meantime we suggest you choose your Shopify apps carefully…especially if running on Shopify Plus. You need to know how the app is hosted and if it’s a front-end app you need to be absolutely sure it’s going to fail silently before using it. Otherwise you’ll be inviting expensive downtime.

A great solution here for Plus clients is to use the ruby Scripts app. This powerful little app will allow any decent Shopify developer to add custom code which can replace apps – especially those for the front end. Leading to fewer server dependencies.

5 Custom URL Re-writing

Re-platforming is a huge decision for established online merchants. Many merchants look to move from Magento to Shopify since it’s become a better business decision.

One thing which many merchants worry about when migrating to Shopify (or any platform) is their SEO positions may be affected. Most merchants who contact us for migration to Shopify are very concerned about this and rightly so. ‘Can we maintain our Google positions?’ is usually one of the first questions they ask. Healthy Google positions are their main asset.

With Shopify you do have some limitations on the URL structures which can make migration tricky for some merchants. There are some URL structures which can’t be changed within Shopify and even though things can be redirected with a 301 – it would be slightly better for SEO to maintain the exact same URL structure as the original store – especially if it’s an aged store.

The reason is that you that you do lose some link juice (SEO power) when doing 301-redirects instead of mapping directly to the same URL structure. We’d like to see Shopify Plus offer merchants complete control over the URL structure of their store for the simple reason of maintaining SEO positions when migrating from other platforms. This won’t affect many Plus merchants, only some.

Conclusion

Shopify Plus is in our opinion the leading eCommerce solution for enterprise class merchants for 2018 and beyond. We’ve covered the main benefits of Shopify Plus along with a comprehensive review of Shopify Plus. These five features above are what we’d like to see added to Shopify Plus over the coming couple of years to make this platform even better. Watch this space…hopefully our requests will be answered.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post 5 Features we’d like to see added to Shopify Plus in the Future appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Today we’re going to quickly look at adding a Google survey popup on the order confirmation page of a Shopify store to gather Google reviews from customers. The most likely reason you’ll want to do this is to gather reviews so that you can display them in Google search and Google Shopping.

Before we begin you must first complete the onboarding steps here. These allow you to start gathering the customer reviews. Without that done – this will not work and you won’t be able to gather reviews.

If you’ve completed the onboarding steps you now need to copy the following code to your additional scripts section of your Shopify checkout settings.

In this example we are only going to collect reviews from UK customers only (but the code can easily be extended/modified to cover different countries). This is simply a quick reference and it assumes you can code and read Liquid. If not we’ll happy custom code this for your Shopify store. Just contact us.

There are 2 things you should change in the linked code. Enter your merchant id into the bit where it says: “enter your merchant id here”. Then replace the 7 in the assign with the number of days for delivery. Better to be on the safe side her – if delivery is usually within 3 days put 4.

That’s it. As long as you’ve done the initial steps and modified the code correctly you’ll see something like this on the order confirmation page:

Customers will then be asked if they would like to review you. If they say yes – then the customer will get an email around the delivery date.

That’s it – you can now start collecting reviews on the order status page of your Shopify store.

The post Installing Google Customer Reviews Code in Shopify Checkout using liquid appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Shopify and Woocommerce (with WordPress) Compared

Confused about whether to use Woocommerce vs Shopify? Thinking about starting an eCommerce store or moving platforms? Not sure which eCommerce platform is right for your business? You’re not the only one confused when it comes to the choice between Shopify vs Woocommerce. Thousands of people search in google for this very answer every month. And getting the right answers is difficult. You have to wade through a load of information and consider all the fragments of information – some of which may not be up to date or terribly accurate.

We’re an eCommerce agency and have built and maintained eCommerce websites with both Shopify & Woocommerce. So we’re in the perfect position to compare them so you can make an informed decision about which is the most suitable eCommerce platform for your business.

This article was written in November 2017 and we’ll try our best to keep it updated because platforms do change and evolve. Remember: when comparing platforms you should always pay attention to when the content was updated. Things move quickly online and what was true 5 years ago no longer is the case.

Over the years we’ve helped thousands of clients make the tricky decision about which eCommerce platform is right for them. And some clients have gone on to make substantial seven figure sales because of listening to our advice.

Today we’re going to go into detail about which is the best ecommerce platform between Shopify and Woocommerce. We’ll cover all the important things like feature, costs, security, scalability and more. They are both popular platforms.

Before we get down to details – we’re going to just have an overview of the two platforms. But if you’re interested in something specific you can also jump straight on down to one of these:

• Shopify Overview
• Woocommerce Overview
• Features – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Security – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Costs – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Scalability – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• User Interface – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Client Success – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Integrations – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Developer & Designer Community – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Ease of Maintenance – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Documentation – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Support – Shopify vs Woocommerce
• Shopify vs Woocommerce – Conclusion & Final Score

Shopify – An Overview

Shopify is a dedicated eCommerce platform. Important word in that last sentence is dedicated. It was built from the ground up for eCommerce by eCommerce specialists and has been gaining traction ever since launching in 2004. It’s become so popular that Amazon’s own offering (Amazon Web Stores) couldn’t compete with them. We’re talking about a monster platform here which was built for businesses that sell online and is now listed on the NY stock exchange. Big brands like Tesla and Disney use it. It’s fucking amazing.

Shopify supply the software you need to run an online store as well as the hosting to deliver your store to every corner of the world – all in one package. It’s a fully hosted SAAS service with all the features you could ever need. You get everything you need to run a store for a fixed monthly fee (starting from $29/month – view all Shopify plans and pricing here).

In short: Shopify is the most versatile and comprehensive dedicated eCommerce CMS in the world and it caters for every kind of business. It’s fast, secure and pretty damn good value. If you are thinking about running an online store/shop you need to give this platform some serious consideration.

Important points to note about Shopify when comparing to Woocommerce:

• It is a dedicated eCommerce platform
• You pay a fixed monthly fee which covers everything – including updates, security, support, hosting, software and more.
• It is fully PCI compliant (which means that you can safely accept credit/debit cards without breaking the law).
• You get full support 24/7 – by email, phone and chat.
• It has a 2 week free trial which you should try.

A lot of people get confused about Woocommerce and WordPress and what it all means. Let’s start at the beginning:

WordPress is a blogging platform. It’s not a dedicated eCommerce platform. Typically WordPress is used to power non-eCommerce websites. Websites which are content based typically use WordPress. So out of the box – WordPress can’t be used for eCommerce.

This is where Woocommerce comes in. You can make a WordPress powered website into an online store with the use of a plugin called Woocommerce. (a plugin extends the core functionality of the WordPress platform.)

WordPress is open source – which means that people who develop and maintain the core code and plugins errr…do it for free. Or at least that’s the common mis-perception. Think about it for a moment as a business owner. Does anyone do anything for free? Really? Really? Really? Do people with a high level of skill really spend their free time making software for purely altruistic reasons?

Of course they don’t. Only a total moron would believe that. True – developers love to share code. But that doesn’t mean they want to code for free.

If you scratch below the surface you’ll find that everyone who develops for WordPress has an ulterior motive. Their initial offering may be a free piece of software but the ultimate goal – is almost always business and making money. Sometimes it’s even more malicious. This is something which is often overlooked in the Woocommerce vs Shopify argument. So if you think WordPress and everything around it is is free you need to get a reality check. There is no such thing as a free website. More on costs later…

WordPress is self-hosted. That means that you need to pay for a host and then install the WordPress software (which is free) and then add the required plugins (one of which is Woocommerce) to launch your online store. The core WordPress software is free but hosting is not. And a lot of good plugins (which you will need) are not free. It’s a false economy to think that it’s free.

The important things to note about WordPress are:

• That it’s not a dedicated eCommerce platform.
• A woocommerce store is usually setup by an amateur blog owner.
• It’s not free (as many people often say) – you do need to pay for a host, probably some apps/plugins also as well as security and maintenance. More on the costs of running a WordPress site below.
• Woocommerce is a plugin which can be used to make a WordPress blog into a store. So you have a blog with store functionality added on.
• You are also responsible for (paying for) security updates which a developer will need to do.
• You get no support. Your hosting provider will not help you with your website – when you have problems you will need a developer.
• WordPress + Woocommerce + a cheap server is not PCI compliant. This means that you cannot safely accept credit/debit cards. It’s not secure – more on this later.
• There is no free trial.
• Scalability is hard with Woocommerce – more on this later.

Below we’re going to go into more detail and compare platforms on different aspects. At the end of each we’ll give a score.

Features of Shopify vs WooCommerce

Both Shopify and Woocommerce give you the tools you need to sell products online. We’re not going to spend much time on this because the simple answer is that both give all the required features for running an online store. Whether you’re selling online courses or homemade jam – both platforms offer absolutely everything you could ever need to run an online store. In terms of features they are pretty close. Shopify comes out on top because it has a killer feature called channels – which enables you to sell on multiple channels like Amazon and Facebook in seconds. WordPress doesn’t have this feature.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Features:

Shopify: 7 points
Woocommerce: 3 points

Shopify vs Woocommerce – Security

Security should be a major consideration when it comes to running an online store and is usually overlooked by newbies. Focus on security because it will cost you your business one hundred fold if you don’t.

How secure will the customer data be? Can you securely process credit and debit cards? Can it be easily hacked? These are the questions you need to be asking yourself as an online business.

Shopify trounces WordPress with Woocommerce on security. Why? It’s all about accountability.

Nothing is safe online. Absolutely nothing. Even the most sophisticated corporations in the world get hacked. You can’t open a newspaper without seeing a new hacking story.

With a Shopify store – Shopify provide a PCI level one compliant server which they are responsible for. They are responsible for maintaining the security of payments on the checkout which means that if something goes horribly wrong – all the fingers of blame go to them. They develop the code and they are liable for maintaining it. They maintain the security and they provide some pretty solid levels of security. It’s not your responsibility.

I’m yet to see a Shopify store get hacked. Their security is excellent.

With WordPress + Woocommerce you are responsible for hosting the website and every detail of website security. If you get hacked – it’s your fault and could cost you big time. You do not have a PCI compliant checkout and since it’s open source code – everyone can see and find the security loopholes. Some of the biggest plugins for WordPress have been found to contain code which allows just about anyone to hack them – leaving millions of websites vulnerable.

This doesn’t mean that WordPress with Woocommerce can’t be made secure. You will need to spend a lot of money on security. In the first instance – to harden the server, database and WordPress installation. And then to check the plugins and theme for malicious code. And these things need updating every month. We’re not saying that you can’t have a secure WordPress website. You can. It just costs a lot of money and you need to keep maintaining it. With Shopify you don’t. You’re secure from day one.

Interestingly – not so long ago Woocommerce themselves (as in the company that develop the plugin) got hacked – leaking card details online for months. Our business card details got stolen also and money was taken from our account. This was because a server running Woocommerce was compromised. If Woocommerce themselves can’t even make their own software secure then who can?

Shopify vs Woocommerce on User Security:

Shopify: 10 points
Woocommerce: 0 points

Shopify vs Woocommerce – Costs

The cost calculation of Shopify vs Woocommerce is one where most people screw up and forget all the potential costs. It’s a false economy to think that WordPress is cheaper than Shopify. It sometimes is but often it isn’t. There are 3 main costs to consider with a platform: platform fees, hosting fees & maintenance fees. Let’s cover them all:

Shopify Costs

Fixed platform fees: starting from $29/month.

Hosting fee: $0

Maintenance fees: $0

WordPress/Woocommerce

Platform fees: $0

Hosting fee: $20-750/month depending on usage/speed (a $5/month hosting package will not do). $100/month for decent international hosting.

Maintenance fees: Unknown? $50-500/month

Anyone who thinks that maintenance on a WordPress website is as simple as clicking to update WordPress and plugins obviously doesn’t know what they are doing. Updating a plugin, theme, database, server – often results in a broken website. We see it every week. People who don’t know what they are doing try to update the website and break it. Usually the result is lost sales and a few hours work from a developer.

When you have a WordPress website with Woocommerce you need a host. If you are selling internationally you need a host and a CDN (content delivery network). So you should bank on spending at least $30-50 per month minimum. If you spend more you’ll get a better host. If you have lost of customers/traffic it may cost more. Decent WordPress hosting usually costs around $100/month for a mid sized Woocommerce site.

So – as you can see – Shopify offers a better deal for most online businesses. They will take care of your hosting and maintenance. WordPress can be a few dollars cheaper to launch – but with a cheap shared host you won’t be selling much and will need to pay someone to maintain the site. In the long run it will cost much more.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Costs/Price:

Shopify: 7 points
Woocommerce: 3 points

Shopify vs Woocommerce – Scalability

When you start an online store you need to think about scalability because you will start to grow and as you do your eCommerce platform will need to grow with you. So which platform is more scalable out of Woocommerce + WordPress and Shopify?

Shopify is far, far more scalable than Woocommerce for the following reasons:

• Shopify allows you to train staff quicker than with Woocommerce.
• Shopify integrates with many third party tools and services (which you’ll need as your business starts to grow) and custom integrations can be built as required.
• Shopify has different plans – each unlocking different features and you can upgrade at any time.
• And at the very top of the Shopify ecosystem you can use Shopify Plus which is the best eCommerce platform in the world and used by huge brands like Tesla and Disney.
• Shopify delivers web pages to every corner of the world using a very fast CDN so scaling internationally is not a problem. You’re already able to sell hundreds of products a second from day one. You don’t need to worry about hosting and uptime – Shopify’s servers manage huge volumes of traffic every day and can process unlimited transaction.
• Most importantly in scalability – Shopify has channels. Channels allow you to instantly sell in different marketplaces like Amazon (the biggest marketplace in the world) and on Facebook (the biggest social media platform in the world.) These channels are expanding all the time.

Channels totally blows WordPress and Woocommerce out of the water here. Imagine having a store. In a few clicks you can expand to Amazon – connecting with millions of customers worldwide. Then Facebook. Your sales have suddenly trebled. All data and stock is synched. WordPress doesn’t offer that. Shopify does.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Scalability:

Shopify: 9 points
Woocommerce: 1 point

User Interface of Shopify vs WooCommerce

WordPress wasn’t built for eCommerce. And the Woocommerce back-end is as ugly and unintuitive as shit. I’m not going to lie to you. Woocommerce is a bit like using an old Windows computer from 1998. Shopify on the other hand is sleek, simple, intuitive and highly efficient. Shopify is like a high performance Mac.

Shopify has invested in employing people who think things through in terms of UI/UX. WordPress with Woocommerce is just cobbled together in the admin section. Anyone who is used to working on a Mac or anyone who values their time should definitely use Shopify. It’s faster, smarter and designed for people who need to get things done.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on User Interface:

Shopify: 10 points
Woocommerce: 0 points

Client Success – Shopify vs Woocommerce

We have several Shopify clients seven figure annual sales. We have no clients using Woocommerce with anything close to six figure annual sales. All our successful clients are all on Shopify.

Woocommerce and WordPress power around 30% of online stores each. Remember that most Woocommerce stores are setup by amateur bloggers who sell very little.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Client Success

Shopify: 10 points
Woocommerce: 0 points

Integrations – Shopify vs Woocommerce

As your online business grows you’ll find that you need to integrate with 3rd party tools. Typically these are things like: accounting software, warehouse and fulfilment, mailing lists, inventory syncing etc. The list is endless.

Both WordPress and Woocommerce make it very easy to integrate with 3rd party tools. Shopify has some better tools for integrating with accounting software. But most major software houses will develop integrations for both so we’re going to call this one a draw. You won’t struggle to integrate with 3rd party tools with either of these platforms.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Integrations

Shopify: 5 points
Woocommerce: 5 points

Developer & Designer Community – Shopify vs Woocommerce

Both Shopify and WordPress have an excellent designer/developer community. You will not struggle to find people to help you with your store.

Both these platforms have a thriving ecosystem of designers and developers. Shopify tends to have more eCommerce focussed designers/developers simply because it’s a dedicated ecommerce platform. WordPress tends to have fewer eCommerce experts because most people don’t use WordPress for eCommerce.

Shopify has an official Expert directory with a high level of control on who is listed. We’re official Shopfify experts and work hard to maintain that status. WordPress doesn’t offer an experts directory but many design agencies and freelancers work with WordPress.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Designer & Developer Community

Shopify: 6 points
Woocommerce: 4 points

Ease of Maintenance – Shopify vs Woocommerce

Maintenance is required on all eCommerce stores from time to time. This is not about changing the design of the website or the products. It’s about updating the core software and host so that it’s secure and will continue to work with everything else on the website as well as the devices that people use. For smaller stores maintenance can be 2-3 times per year but larger stores require weekly or even daily maintenance.

With WordPress & Woocommerce you are responsible for doing this maintenance. Nobody will do it for you. Nobody will remind you. You’ll need to hire a developer to make a backup of the site before making any server configuration changes or updating the core software/plugins. So expect downtime and costs.

With Shopify you do not need to do any maintenance whatsoever. None. The core Shopify software is updated by the Shopify team. Apps are updated by the app developers and the host is all maintained by Fastly. It takes you no time and you don’t even need to think about it. Job done.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Ease of Maintenance

Shopify: 10 points
Woocommerce: 0 points

Documentation – Shopify vs Woocommerce

Both Shopify and Woocommerce provide excellent documentation for all the common tasks you’ll need to do with the software. We’re pretty confident that you’ll find the answer to your questions within their documentation. Shopify’s documentation is usually more up to date with interactive demos which puts it on top.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Documentation:

Shopify: 6 points
Woocommerce: 4 points

Support – Shopify vs Woocommerce

Shopify provide 24/7 support. If you have a problem with your store they are there to help in chat, email and on the phone. Woocommerce do not offer any support for your store. If you have purchased a theme/template from them then they will answer questions relating to that product and only that. So they will help you understand how to change the color of a button using one of their paid templates but little else. If you have a problem you’re on your own with WordPress and Woocommerce – you need to hire a developer or expert to get solutions. Shopify are there for you and will help resolve your problems – it’s part of your monthly fee.

Shopify vs Woocommerce on Support:

Shopify: 10 points
Woocommerce: 0 points

Shopify vs Woocommerce – Conclusion

Final score Shopify vs Woocommerce (Out of 110)

Shopify: 90
Woocommerce: 20

In short: only an amateur would start a Woocommerce store. It’s not a professional, secure or scalable solution. We don’t advise anyone to use it for eCommerce unless they are already a WordPress blog owner and they only plan on selling a limited range of products with payment via Paypal. In this case Woocommerce may be fine. In all other cases Shopify wins vs Woocommerce.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post Shopify vs Woocommerce – the Ultimate Guide appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

We’ve just been featured on a Shopify expert’s post by websitetooltester.com talking about our business and favourite Shopify hack. Check it out.

The post Shopify Experts appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Interested in running a wholesale branch of your online business? Wondering which is the best ecommerce platform for this? Magento? Shopify? Woocommerce? SAAS? Self hosted? Open source? Custom built?

Not sure which is the best value platform for you and your customers? Choosing the correct platform for wholesale eCommerce isn’t easy. And our clients always have loads of questions about choosing the correct wholesale eCommerce platform.

So we’ve decided to spend some time writing things down to give our existing clients, and potential new clients, an overview of the options. It will hopefully save us all time.

When choosing an ecommerce platform you absolutely need to make sure you are spending money on a platform that will:

• Support your wholesale business needs
• Scale and change with you (because your business needs will change)
• Integrate with everything you need to integrate with
• Be easy for you (to update)
• Be easy for your customers (to find and purchase products)
• Be secure (a lot of people don’t think much about this one)

Whether you’re in the planning stage of a wholesale startup or have an established business already and wish to make your wholesale sales online – you need to spend some quality time looking at which ecommerce platform is right for your business.

Reading around online and speaking with ecommerce experts will play a large part of this. This article is written for those people who are specifically looking to launch or re-launch a b2b, wholesale ecommerce store in 2018/2019 and are unsure of the options.

The 3 Categories of eCommerce Platform

eCommerce platforms fall into these main categories:

SAAS – software as a service. By far the most common option in 2017 is SAAS solutions – not just for eCommerce but for everything. Here the software and hosting are provided and maintained by the SAAS company. For a monthly fee you get everything you need to run your online wholesale ecommerce store. Larger SAAS ecommerce platforms include Shopify & BigCommerce.

Open Source – most people are familiar with the concept of open source software. Some eCommerce platforms are open source. This means that anyone and everyone develops for it and people re-use the code of strangers. Whilst this can be cost saver for non-ecommerce it absolutely isn’t when you’re running an ecommerce store and thinking about important (business critical) things like data security and compliance. You’ll usually pay a hell of a lot more in security maintenance and hosting than you would on SAAS every month going down this route. In our opinion only a naive fool with no respect for data security would use open source code for a sizeable ecommerce project unless they have a developer who specialises in security working in-house. Main open source ecommerce platforms include: Magento, WordPress (+ Woocommerce or another plugin) or OpenCart.

Bespoke – the only option for some businesses is to get a bespoke platform built. This is usually the option people go for when they outgrow all the SAAS platforms available. You absolutely need an in-house team here if going down this route. Building a custom eCommerce platform is a monster task with everything to consider from security to hosting, integrations and features. If you need a custom solution built you will not be reading this. You will have a team of developers in house already who will be able to tell you these things. You don’t hire an agency for this.

The Options for Wholesale eCommerce

Many people complain that they are spoilt for choice these days – in many markets there are simply too many products and options to choose from. The good news is that in wholesale eCommerce there are only 2 options (out of the box) which you should need to consider.

These options are Shopify and Magento. Shopify is an SAAS product – so it’s software as a service. Magento is open source. So if you’ve been reading this article closely you’ll know already that for using Magento you’ll need an in-house developer who specialises in security.

We have Shopify developers in house. And we also have Magento developers.

This article will focus on these 2 options only. There are plenty of other options for eCommerce but most of them are chasers, diggers and dreamers. These are the main players in eCommerce: Shopify and Magento.

Both Shopify and Magento are dedicated ecommerce platforms. There are other ecommerce platforms out there but we won’t be talking about them. All I will say briefly is this: Woocommerce is popular amongst small traders/bloggers but highly insecure and you absolutely do not want to be using it moving forwards – it’s not a professional solution. Bigcommerce is about as big as a flea compared to Shopify and Magento and far less flexible. Volusion is a bit 1998 and dead in the water. The other ecommerce platforms are too small and insignificant to consider.

So it’s a 2 horse race when it comes to wholesale ecommerce platforms. Shopify vs Magento.

Hopefully after reading this then you’ll understand which is the best for your business.

An introduction to Shopify Wholesale

Shopify is a hosted SAAS service. This means that Shopify maintain the software and servers which power your wholesale ecommerce website. In a few clicks you can roll out an (unbranded) store using Shopify and have everything you need to sell internationally.

Obviously it takes a bit more than a few clicks to get trading – but you get the point. Shopify makes selling online easy. You’ll need a designer/developer to brand your store, complete any integrations, integrate any apps, set everything up and connect and test your payment gateways. (Some smaller retailers chose to do this stuff themselves but generally the results have much to be desired.)

Shopify is the biggest SAAS service for eCommerce in the world. It’s listed on the NY stock exchange and the Toronto Stock exchange. It was one of the highest performing stocks on both those exchanges in 2017 because it’s ecommerce software is booming. The growth seen from this platform in the past few years has trounced every other platform. Year on year growth is outstanding. And this is because Shopify have just got the product right and they’ve kept making it better all the time. If any of you are reading this article on an Apple device – Shopify is the Mac of the eCommerce world.

We’ve been with Shopify since the early days and an approved Expert of the platform since 2014. Running an online ecommerce business is pretty damned easy using Shopify. But we have a special case today and that is wholesale. How specifically does Shopify work with wholesale?

Shopify basically offers 2 options here. Regular Shopify stores with they use of a wholesale app or Shopify Plus with the wholesale channel. For those who are new to Shopify the vast majority of people use regular Shopify. Shopify Plus was introduced as an enterprise class solution to cater for larger ecommerce sites and big brands. Smaller to mid sized retailers will use Shopify and larger retailers will use Shopify Plus. Read: What is Shopify Plus for more information.

With both options you’ll need a Shopify developer to set things up properly for you.

Using a Wholesale app with regular Shopify

The regular Shopify platform doesn’t really cater for wholesale out of the box simply because most smaller retailers don’t need it. However you can easily use an app to extend the platform for wholesale functionality. (Shopify apps extend the core functionality of the platform.)

There are a number of apps which will allow you to convert an ordinary Shopify store into a wholesale store including but not limited to:

Wholesaler app (0-$48/month)
Wholesale Hero ($29.99 – $49.99 /month)
Wholesale Pricing (Free – $54.99 /month)
Customer Pricing -($29.99 / month)
Wholesale Pro ($23.99 – $149.99 / month)
Wholesale Pricing ($24.00 – $49.00 / month)
Wholesale Simplified (FREE)

These Shopify wholesale apps all have their own features and quirks and you will only need to chose one based on your business needs. In a moment we’ll discuss the advantages/disadvantages. But first let’s cover the second option for wholesale and that is the wholesale channel on Shopify Plus and how it’s different to using an app.

Using the Wholesale Channel with Shopify Plus

Shopify Plus is the top most Shopify plan. It caters for bigger businesses and accelerating startups an and is packed full of more features than the regular Shopify plans. Shopify Plus is for the enterprise class merchants and to use it you will be spending $2k minimum per month (calculate Shopify fees/prices here).

One of the features exclusive to Shopify Plus is the Wholesale Channel. Let’s just take a moment to discuss channels as they are pretty important with Shopify stores. Shopify have taken huge steps in recent years to allow store owners to sell via multiple marketplaces including Amazon, and Facebook.

Each place where you sell products is a sales channel. Let’s say you have a basic online store with Shopify. In the Shopify world we call this your Online Store sales channel. With Shopify you can easily then connect your online store with other sales channels like: Amazon, Facebook, Etsy, Retail Store etc. We’ve seen retailers double their sales simply by connecting their store to the Amazon sales channel btw. One reason why Shopify is the best ecommerce platform for 2018.

Now, Shopify Plus merchants have access to an additional sales channel called the Wholesale sales channel. Here you can run a regular store for B2C and then through the wholesale channel have a separate domain for wholesale customers. The stock and inventory is synced between them and pricing/customer accounts are all separate. You can have things like tiered discounts and customer groups as well as a simple interface for ordering multiple products. The video below shows the wholesale sales channel for Shopify Plus in action.

Shopify Wholesale Apps vs Shopify Wholesale Channel

In short: the Shopify Wholesale channel on the Shopify Plus plan is by far the superior solution over all the apps available. If you are using – or can afford to use Shopify Plus – then you should use the wholesale channel. It’s a cleaner, more professional solution built around the needs of a traditional wholesale customer and retailer.

There are a number of apps and all have different features and functionality. Yes you can achieve tiered discounts with these apps. Yes you can have certain products accessible only to certain customers. But the problem most people face with the wholesale apps is that they all rely on some kind of hack to make them work. Some use hidden variants, some use hidden products. None of the apps offer a single ordering screen for many products which you’d find in a typical wholesale store. The Shopify wholesale channel offers all these things on a separate domain.

The end result when using an app is that you basically have your B2C site and B2B site combined and with some hidden products/variants based on user login. This is fine for some smaller businesses who don’t want to spend a lot of money on their online store. But for bigger retailers this is far from ideal. It’s slow and ugly and there’s a lot of potential for things to go horribly wrong.

The Wholesale Channel with Shopify Plus creates a separate store. There are no hacks or tricks or hidden products/variants. You have a separate B2B store and a separate BTC store. Very quickly you can create a wholesale store and all products are synced so your inventory is up to date. It’s much quicker and easier for the wholesale customer to shop and get invoiced. Much more professional.

You can set tiered prices and discounts for groups of customers. The stock is synced between the two stores. The B2B customers can order everything from one simple, clean interface.

If you would like to see this in action with a Shopify Plus developer then contact us.

Also you can start a free trial with Shopify using the link below and add the wholesale channel or one of the apps mentioned. Note: to continue to use the wholesale channel you’ll need Shopify Plus – you may try it in the 2 week free trial below.

Benefits of using a wholesale app with Shopify

The benefit of using an app rather than the wholesale channel is pretty much all about costs. A Shopify Plus plan is required for using the wholesale channel and many smaller retailers find the price tag of Shopify Plus too much. A merchant can save on monthly fees when using an app since the combined cost of the app and regular Shopify plan is lower than the cost of Shopify Plus plan.

Interestingly some merchants save money on monthly fees when moving to Shopify Plus simply because of the lower transaction fees. Compare Shopify plan prices here. If you’re not quite ready for the step up to Shopify Plus the wholesale apps can be a low cost solution in the short to medium term.

At some point it makes sense for a business to be using Shopify Plus since the platform offers many benefits which we’ve discussed at length here in our article on: The Benefits of Shopify Plus as well as lower transaction fees.

Benefits of using the Wholesale Channel

The wholesale channel offers a separate domain for wholesale customers with stock syncing which means you keep wholesale and retail customers separate. It offers tiered discounts and customer groups as well as a simple interface for customers to order through. You can set discounts by collection, customer group or volume. You can also password protect it to allow access only to authorised wholesalers. Customers can create a draft order which you can easily then send as an invoice.

Take a look at this video explaining the benefits of the Shopify Plus Wholesale channel.

An introduction to Magento Wholesale

UPDATE Jan 2018
Note: As of DEC 2017 we are no longer suggesting anyone uses Magento for eCommerce due to recurring security concerns with the platform unless they have an in-house developer who specialises in security. Please be advised that we are no longer taking on any Magento clients and are removing the platform from our range of platforms. We are actively migrating clients to more secure platforms.

Why? Well, in 2015 it was reported that outdated or unpatched Magento web stores are susceptible to a Cross-site scripting attack (an attack which allows people to steal credit card and customer data). By 2016 this had become less of a threat. But in 2017 security company DefenseCode reported that Magento CE web stores are susceptible to Remote Code Execution attack. Essentially rendering the vast majority of Magento stores insecure.

It’s estimated that up to 260,000 Magento stores could be vulnerable to such an attack in April 2017. If spending time/money on security is not a problem for you then read on. Else use Shopify for your Wholesale eCommerce needs.

Magento

Magento is an open source eCommerce platform. An open source product is one that many developers contribute to from all over the world. This is a great idea in itself and many successful open source projects run around the world – especially with software. Indeed, some of the best software in the world is open source.

There was a time when the platform showed serious promise but as the note above shows – it’s become a trouble platform because of the security issues around it.

Who Owns Magento?

Magento is something of a special case though when it comes to ownership and if you’re making a long term investment in an ecommerce platform (because it is expensive to migrate after setting up shop and integrating) you need to be aware of who owns the platform you’re working on.

So even though Magento has an open source version – the platform and core code and hosting services – are owned by investors. Magento (in 2018) is owned by a private equity firm Permira. They took the platform on from Ebay who took it over bit by bit. Before Ebay purchased it there was another couple of owners and part owners. You get the picture. It’s been a pass the parcel project with a number of investors buying it in the hope of selling it again for more.

Rumour has it that Magento isn’t delivering returns on the initial investment made by Permira and this may in the coming years for yet another sale. Many developers have blamed the lack of platform development on ownership changes. Shopify on the other hand still has the same CEO as when it was founded. It’s just become a public company and re-invests everything back into growing the platform.

These things aside – Magento currently offers an Open Source alternative to Shopify for wholesale ecommerce. In order to setup shop on Magento you’ll need a dedicated server which is PCI compliant. You’ll definitely need at least one developer and you’ll want to make sure that they are up to date with all the security updates and issues which come naturally with Magento because if you are making sales people will try to hack you every week. How much does it cost to hire a full-time Magento developer to do this? It will really depend on your location. In England a decent Magento developer will expect to be paid around £50k per year. In the states perhaps $70-100k.

So you’re looking at quite an expensive site from the start. Magento is more expensive that Shopify Plus. Typically a secure Magento site will cost 3×4 a Shopify plus site to run and keep secure.

Advantages of Magento over Shopify for wholesale eCommerce

So why use Magento? The main reasons why people would want to use Magento instead of Shopify or Shopify Plus are to do with 2 things only. There are only 2 things with Shopify that are very difficult to achieve correctly. That is multi-lingual functionality (with decent SEO) on the single domain and multi-currency checkouts on the same domain.

So if you need a single wholesale store with multiple currencies and/or multiple languages then you should consider Magento. It doesn’t mean you should definitely use it (who actually needs everything on the one domain?) but you should consider it.

If your wholesale store is in one currency and all content is in one language then Shopify will be a better choice for you. Forget Magento in this case. Magento is only a benefit where you need those 2 specific things. Else it becomes an expensive burden.

Remember- that security patches need to be done weekly with Magento (and almost all OS sites). If you take shortcuts with security your customer data will not be secure and people will hack you.

Magento Wholesale Plugins

Magento as a core platform – like Shopify – doesn’t really cater for wholesale. You’ll need to use a plugin/app to create the wholesale ecommerce functionality you require and your developer will be able to advise on which is the best solution.

The following plugins allow wholesale functionality on a Magento site:

https://bsscommerce.com/magento-wholesale-fast-order.html
https://amasty.com/sales-reps-and-dealers.html

There are more and your Magento developer will be able to advise and test on the most suitable solution.

Conclusion – Which is the best Wholesale eCommerce platform?

In 2017 Magento saw some serious security vulnerabilities exposed. Most people have lost faith in the platform and are looking at options for migration. It’s still an option for some people but they are few and far between. Shopify on the other hand has ballooned with rapid growth and absolutely no major security breaches. So you’re essentially looking at Shopify or Shopify Plus as the best eCommerce platform for 2018/2019 and beyond. If you’re on a budget the regular Shopify plans with an app should be fine. If you’re a more established retailer then Shopify Plus will be a viable option moving forwards for wholesale.

Questions about wholesale eCommerce

If you have any questions about wholesale eCommerce or wish to get a quote for setup and migration then feel free to contact us. One of our developers will get back to you within 24 hours.

The post Which is the best ecommerce platform for Wholesale online businesses? appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Shopify have recently introduced Live View in the admin dashboard which can be used to view customers and orders in real time. Similar to Google Analytics Real Time – this tool will allow you to see your customers mapped out all over the world. Pretty cool hey?

Here you can see the live map of customers/sales in a Shopify store. It’s available in both Shopify and Shopify Plus and you do not need a Shopify designer or Shopify developer to access.

To access Shopify Live View then go to your online store admin after logging in. Located at yourstore.myshopify.com/admin. You will then see the live view button:

Simply click on “See Live View” and it will take you to the fullscreen map of customers on your website.

You can then zoom and scroll around to see where your customers are in the world. A very useful little tool for having a visual overview of performance and store analytics.

Need help with your Shopify Store? Contact us for Shopify design, development and digital marketing.

The post Shopify Live View – New Shopify Dashboard Feature appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Need to hire a Shopify expert for your store? Designer, developer, setup or marketing? Whether you’re looking for a Shopify expert or a Shopify Plus expert – get off to the right start by learning how to hire the best Shopify experts.  Here we will tell you how to hire a Shopify Expert the right way.

When it comes to e-commerce, you want to stand out. With the ease of accessibility meaning everyone from stay-at-home mums to big enterprises are looking to sell online, you need to deal with this competition (and no, we are not recommending a hitman!)

Most merchants have simple needs, they want a level of store customisation that suits their brand with functionality that complements their offerings and this is where a Shopify Expert comes in. Although a Shopify store is very easy to set up, doing it by yourself can take a lot of time, which is not ideal, particularly if you are running on multiple platforms or simply don’t have the time to devote to it.

To answer this need, Shopify has cultivated a community of e-commerce specialists called the Shopify Experts. An official Shopify expert helps merchants on the platform, whether old or new, grow their online presence and ensure their success with the best services.  They will carry this badge on their website:

Where do I hire an official Shopify Expert?

The Shopify Experts list has its own microsite within the main Shopify domain. You can search for an expert through the search box using the name or a keyword which is particularly useful if you are searching according to your niche.  Access the Shopify Experts directory here.

Key things to consider when considering which Shopify Expert to hire

You have several things to consider before you even decide to hire a Shopify expert.

What’s the issue? You first need to identify the problem and what you’re looking for so that you can find someone suitable, you may not need a developer for example, but could instead need a Shopify designer. Doing this makes sure you find the right kind of expert to help. And writing things down will help you get multiple quote quickly.

Location, location, location. Honestly, location means nothing because most Shopify Experts have no need to meet their clients face to face. It’s all digital! Aside from saving time, effort and money, it also means you can working with expert Shopify developers or Shopify designers anywhere in the world and tap into their skills.  Most experts use online tools like Sketch and Invision to prototype reducing the need for face to face meetings.  Typically you’ll pay 100% more for face to face meetings with a local Shopify designer/developer.  That being said, you can browse though the top Shopify Experts in almost any geographical location if you’re looking for someone locally or in your time zone at least.

Pricing. We all don’t like to admit it, but pricing plays a role in deciding which Shopify Expert to choose but don’t be afraid to ask for the price. Seasoned Shopify Experts won’t hesitate to give you a ballpark figure once you’ve given them a clear brief and description of what you want to change on your store. You can choose to work with Shopify experts who are more within the price range you are comfortable with because you can’t be expected to outlay money on your business without first shopping around. So most Shopify developers or designers will already know this and be happy to oblige.

Check portfolios. How else do you know if someone is legit or the right fit for your brand? Most Shopify designers are adaptable but they may have general aesthetics that they adhere too or a lack of experience in your particular niche. So, looking at previous work can determine if it’s going to work out. The projects made by reliable Shopify developers are often linked to their own websites so try them out, test how well they are made and how easy they are to use.   You can check our Shopify design portfolio here.

The last two considerations —price and portfolio—go hand in hand. You can actually gauge if the price of the services that the expert quoted based on the quality of the work they have done for previous clients.

Should I hire a developer who is not an official Shopify Expert?

The short answer is no – not if you want quality Shopify development work. Aside from your own peace of mind, the Shopify developers, photographers, marketing specialists, and designers are carefully vetted through a stringent process before they can even apply to be included in the Shopify Experts Program. And must demonstrate a high level of knowledge to be allowed to get in to the program. Shopify experts must also demonstrate a commitment to design & development on the shopify platform.

The people or companies that have been included in the Shopify Experts Program have been able to show that they are authorities in their line of work and have the experience to back it up! Why would you want to trust your business and brand to any less?

Are all Shopify Experts capable of design, setup, and development?

No. There are 5 categories:

Shopify designers – who deals with visuals.

Shopify Developers – primarily working on the back end and apps.

Setup Experts – deal with store setup and configuration

Marketing Experts – Can help give you the edge over your competition, bringing customers to your store through various digital marketing strategies like SEO.

Photography Experts – Helps draw attention to your products using strategic positioning and photography.

Some Shopify experts may only be listed under one category because of the specialty of their services, while some may have experience in a well-rounded package so this is one of the reasons why understanding exactly what you want is important.  You should also note that only some Shopify experts deal with Shopify Plus & so if you’re using this platform rather than the regular Shopify platform you should hire a Shopify Plus Expert.

Need to hire a Shopify expert?

Contact us today for Shopify design, development and customisation. We’re official Shopify designers, Shopify developers, setup and marketing experts and we work with Shopify Plus on a daily basis. We are passionate about everything eCommerce and we have the awesome skills to help your business grow and succeed online.

The post Where and How Do I Hire A Shopify Expert? appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

The steady growth of Shopify and increasing needs of merchants for experienced Shopify developers has opened a lot of doors in the field of ecommerce. But which Shopify apps should Shopify developers use?  First we’re going to take a look at what Shopify apps are before moving on to which apps are the best for Shopify developers.

Apps are a cool way for Shopify developers to give users what they want and extend store functionality without having to re-write the same code over and over. Instead, Apps allow Shopify designers a way to give merchants interesting features or integrations that serve the wider marketplace too, so everyone benefits.

What is a Shopify app?  And why would a Shopify developer need one?

A Shopify app is a plugin for your existing Shopify store that adds certain features or functionality. You can choose from free and premium apps depending on your needs.  Some apps are more suitable for merchants and some are more suitable for Shopify developers/designers.  In general you should expect to pay for quality apps – to ensure that the developers maintain them and official Shopify apps are available in the Shopify app store.

Apps allow you to extend Shopify store functionality to meet merchant needs and keep up with the competition. Shopify developers can create apps for almost anything from functional back-end help to increased payment or inventory options, all the way through to marketing tools.  Here are the top 5 Shopify apps for developers (chosen by our Shopify development team):

Top Shopify developers use: Shopify Metafields App by Accentuate

Custom Fields by Accentuate takes metafields to the next level. This app gives you greater customisation on your products, collections and blogs so that you can seamlessly define custom fields at an admin level. Shopify developers choose it because it gives merchants a super simple way to manage metafields.  It can be used for loads of things like: defining custom upsells/resells, adding landing page data, allowing merchants to create multiple landing pages from the same template, adding custom size charts, adding specific product data, defining global and customer metafields.  You can do just about anything with this app – it’s a bit like what ACF for WordPress.

Top Shopify developers use: Shopify Scripts App

The Scripts Editor is a Shopify development app based on Ruby that allows developers to create discounts depending on what is in their customers’ carts as well as provide other dynamic and interactive cart actions. This is excellent for high volume transactions as well as customising the payment experience to reward multi-purchases or other customer loyalty behaviour.
Aside from discounts, Shopify designers can further add value to the customer experience by allowing the Shopify developers to add more payment and delivery options to the store they are developing.

The downside? This app is only available to Shopify developers that deal with merchants in Shopify Plus. This app will not work on a regular Shopify store. If you are interested in upgrading to Shopify Plus then contact us.

Top Shopify developers use: Beanstalk App

Many Shopify designers and developers use Beanstalk to write and review the code of themes they are working on. To further boost Shopify development, designers can integrate Shopify with the Beanstalk app to import files from Git to Shopify. Once it is done, you can now use GitHub to build on or update the files from your store.

This means that you get an integration across both platforms to make changing or updating themes easy and seriously reduce the development time.

Top Shopify developers use: Power Tools App

If you’re looking for speed in your ecommerce development projects, Power Tools Suite is the way to go. The Shopify development tools from Power Tools that you use most often are bundled together so it is easier to manage and maintain your online store.  Deploy Smarter Collections, powerful tag filters, pricing rules and bulk actions that make updating large stores a dream.

It creates automated pricing, has smart deletion options and can create a trending product section to increase sales! It’s the dream for any Shopify developers who want to automate and speed up repetitive processes.  And in the free version you can bulk edit tags which is super useful for managing collections and filters in large Shopify stores.

Top Shopify developers use: Replay

With ecommerce development and improvement in logistics, Shopify stores can cater to customers globally. But, with that huge potential comes a bigger problem. How do merchants deal with multiple stores, languages and currency? The typical solution with Shopify is to clone a store.  Replay is the app for Shopify designers who are dealing with stores that they need to set up mirror environments for quickly. This could be because the store offers the same products but in a different language or currency or it could simply be for deploying a staging environment.

It would be too time-consuming for even the most seasoned Shopify developers to do everything manually. What Replay does is that it copies the data on products, inventories, and blogs from one store to another as well as importantly syncing the data across all the stores so a sale in one will be reflected in all the others.  The only thing you need to do first is deploy the menu structure and then you can start to clone away.

Conclusion: Top 5 apps for Shopify Developers

Shopify developers need a range of tools in their arsenal which can change depending on the store they are working on or the needs of the client and apps help them get there. These are some of the best apps to help them do this to create lasting solutions in Shopify development and cater to the merchants they provide for.

Need to hire a Shopify developer? Contact Liquify Shopify developers today to see the difference certified Shopify Experts can do for your online store today.

The post Top 5 Shopify Apps For Shopify Developers appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

If you’re looking to have an effective Shopify store, there’s no better way to do it than with qualified Shopify experts. You can focus on what you do best while allowing Shopify developers to work on the back end programming behind your store functionality and Shopify designers to deal with your visuals.

But these Shopify experts did not get to where they are without having the essential tools of the trade. From productivity and organisation, to development, communication and creativity, you better believe that when you hire Shopify Developers they are bringing an arsenal with them to actualise what you want!

In a short span of time, many tools have transformed from clunky, large, stand-alone programs into sleek and streamlined add-ons and plugins that go with your favorite browser.

If you’re looking to get into front-end web development, or looking to upgrade to dealing with high volume merchants in Shopify Plus, these are the best tools you can use.

1.Top Shopify Developers Use Chrome Developer Tools

If you want to hire Shopify developers, make sure they have the knowledge of Chrome Developer Tools or DevTools. Being built into the Google Chrome browser offers a smooth transition and a speedy way to easily diagnose coding problems. Shopify designers can also benefit from DevTools because they can easily iron out any layout issues.

2. Top Shopify Developers Use Trello

It is rare that when you hire Shopify developers and designers, these people live in your area. Many developers prefer working from home because of the frequently extended hours when coding or designing and when developing a Shopify store, it is important that the design and the coding teams are in sync or on the same page.
Trello, however, makes collaboration and communication of ideas between Shopify Experts as smooth as possible. It streamlines processes and allows you to easily see the tasks that are due, create checklists to follow for continuity and makes remote team management easy. Dashboard updates also allow leaders to delegate effectively and update the client from their own login without needing to communicate directly which is perfect for those working across time zones.

3. Top Shopify Developers Use Slate

Another web development tool that Shopify designers and developers favour is Slate because it provides a framework for building themes – regardless of the end design or intended use. This was introduced in April 2017 to help developers and designers alike to help speed up developing and deploying custom Shopify themes to stores.

4. Top Shopify Developers Use Sublime Text

To seasoned Shopify developers, coding can be considered easy. However, the whole process of coding, editing, and testing for bugs still takes up the bulk of the project’s timeline, particularly with Shopify Plus clients or bigger rollouts and multiple platforms. That is why you need to hire developers who produce quality results and have a proven track record of short turnaround times.
Sublime Text is a programmer’s dream because it’s more than just a text editor and allows Shopify developers to speed up the whole process, do multiple selections at once, interactively change multiple lines and even rename variables with ease. It’s highly responsive and also allows split editing for easier side-by-side coding. Aside from custom-built components, it also allows access to packages of program controls and commands developed by the programming community.

5. Top Shopify Developers Use GitHub

Store owners hire Shopify developers to spruce up what they currently have because while some sections of the store works perfectly, other areas need tweaking. This type of integration can be a hassle for Shopify developers because some developed code may not work (or works differently than intended) with an existing store’s coding.
Sometimes this can have disastrous results which is made worse if you have a large merchant in Shopify Plus, but this can be avoided by developers who use version control systems like GitHub. GitHub is a platform that helps people find solutions to their problems in the software they are building, giving Shopify experts valuable programming tools and access to a development community so they can get help from other Shopify designers or developers when they encounter a speedbump. With this selection of minds, troubleshooting takes less time and is more efficient, overcoming issues quickly.

6. Top Shopify Developers Use Shopify FD

ShopifyFD is a free, handy tool that makes the lives of designers and developers much easier. Its main purpose is to unify important JavaScript snippets into one easy-access tool which is available as a bookmarklet and a Chrome extension. It is not, however, supported by Shopify but the developer of this tool is very active in providing support through the Shopify forums, GitHub, and on Twitter and is now an employee of Shopify Plus.
Shopify development experts continue to use this tool because it has useful features that can speed up store development, for example the ability to edit metafields inline so you don’t have to open another window to do so. This saves time and helps you avoid inadvertently closing the wrong window allowing you to do bulk editing, tagging, and asset uploads to make you more efficient (perfect for using with larger shops and merchants in Shopify Plus.)

7. Top Shopify Developers use Power Tools Suite

Another tool that Shopify experts like to use is the Power Tools Suite. It is an easy-to-use add-on to your Shopify store that can help the customers filter through the store like they would in major online platforms like eBay or Amazon. The ease of use can help improve the overall customer experience as well as your SEO.
The Power Tools Suite can easily be installed, but if you need help, their support team can also assist you to do it properly. If you have a lot of products for any given category, your customers can easily narrow down their choices by using the filter style menu. If you want to run a sale on particular items, you can simply set the policies and then have it revert to the original price once that sale period is over. You can even automate your pricing and give discounts for bulk orders. A massive time saver for Shopify developers who also need to update content for clients.

8. Top Shopify Developers Use Slack

Communication is important, particularly across time zones and when you hire Shopify developers, designers and experts to upgrade your store, you don’t want anything to be missed. In slack, you can create groups or talk independently to segregate according to projects and processes as well as keeping up to date with one another, making it easier to manage overall.
Slack also incorporates many of the existing productivity and communication tools into one platform. Aside from organising conversations, you can also drag and drop files into the relevant chats to easily transfer them. Plus, with the search function, no one misses out when they join the group or loses information because they can search for relevant topics or discussions.

9. Top Shopify Developers Use Spotify

Working from home and late into the night is par for the course for many Shopify Experts. Working alone can help them concentrate, avoid distractions and get lengthy coding done in a comfortable atmosphere. But, music is important in the creative process and can give a much needed boost in the right direction. No one wants to sit in silence right?
Spotify allows you to set up your playlists from a bunch of songs available in the app and you can sync it across devices so that you can listen to it from anywhere. You can use your PC, Mac, or your mobile phone to stream the music that sets you in the mood and keeps creative juices flowing.

10. Top Shopify Developers Work on a Mac

It makes no sense to hire Shopify developers who are super talented but don’t have the required workhorse to complete the tasks. The more complicated your project, the better the hardware should be. The Apple Mac Pro helps the serious programmers and Shopify designers to edit and develop programs.
The Mac Pro is the priciest member of the Apple family but it is also the most powerful computer that the company offers. It offers the best experience in web development and for developers, it’s highly encouraged to use a Mac over other computer hardware brands. With a Mac, rendering videos and photos is a breeze with its high-powered graphics and if your development team requires specialised software, then the Mac Pro is for you.

11. Top Shopify developers use Sketch

For the serious designers, Sketch is a dream Mac design tool. It doesn’t require top-of-the-line specs so it can still run on a Mac Mini and it is easier to use and understand, unlike Photoshop. You can edit and resize anything you draw to any dimension, but the image still remains as sharp as the original.
Shopify Designers can render almost any design in Sketch as close to a finished web page which is very helpful for web developers who constantly use HTML or CSS because they can make sure that their designs look great in whatever version. It’s also great for anyone to use Sketch for things like user interface design, web design, or even mobile app development.
So, regardless of whether you’re working with a small startup or a big enterprise on Shopify Plus, make sure you have the right tools to hand to make it a success!

Need custom Shopify design or development work?

Contact our Shopify developers and designers for a quote.

The post The Top 11 Tools for Shopify Developers appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

In this article we cover the Shopify ecommerce platform and ask – is Shopify legit & is Shopify safe? Because many people ask this very question every day of the week and it seems as if nobody with the required knowledge has bothered to sit down and write an article about it.

It can be overwhelming trying to come up with an eCommerce solution, regardless of whether you’re a sole trader, startup or even an established business. As technologies grow, so does the risk of investing in an old or redundant platform which will be more of a burden than a business asset.  It’s important to understand the platforms you sign up, give your data to and operate on so that they don’t negatively impact your business and your brand!

Finding the right eCommerce platform can be daunting, and you’ll have to consider a variety of factors before making your decision. From the features that are offered and the price points that are most successful, to the target audience that you attract, but possibly most importantly, the security that they offer. After all, you will be handling highly sensitive user data like email addresses, home addresses, credit card information and phone numbers (if not more) and with recent legislation changes you need to make sure you and your business is 100% compliant.

One ecommerce platform that is trusted by millions of shops worldwide is Shopify. But two questions are really important that you get an answer to is: Is Shopify Safe? and Is Shopify Legit? Let’s find out.

Is Shopify Safe?

Shopify is an SAAS eCommerce platform that lets you open your own online store, and has a wide array of options that will aid you in reaching your goals. Many who are interested in using the platform to open their own shop often wonder: “Is Shopify Safe?” this is completely natural and the simple answer is; yes – absolutely!

Shopify is the safest ecommerce platform out there, it is listed on the New York stock exchange and running since 2006. It’s trusted by millions of users and merchants alike (over half a million merchants use Shopify to sell products) and when compared to other platforms, Shopify is the only one with no recorded major security breaches, which is another reason why so many businesses use it: they know their data is safe with Shopify.

Okay, so you’re still asking “Is Shopify Safe?” so let’s look at who trusts them (nothings better than a referral right?) Worldwide merchants trust Shopify, from Lady Gaga, all the way to Tesco and Tesla and as the biggest hosted ecommerce solution in the world, it has plans for everyone – whether you are an individual or an established multinational business.  We manage and maintain a number of multi million $ stores and they are all hosted on Shopify.  And none of them have been hacked ever.

Shopify has made sure it is secure: they are PCI compliant and to help give you extra protection, they offer free SSL encryption for every single store that is launched on the platform. When compared to open source alternatives, like Magento or Woocommerce for instance, Shopify is much safer!  Open Source solutions are not secure by their very nature.  SAAS solutions like Shopify have a locked code base and a PCI compliant checkout.

Is Shopify legit

Shopify seems to have taken all the safety precautions needed to keep its users safe, but some might still be wondering: “Is Shopify Legit”?

Again, quite simply – yes. There’s no doubt about it, it’s not a new platform that seems too good to be true, it’s a huge, established business that has been disrupting the ecommerce market since its launch back in 2006. It is the backbone of both small and large online stores all over the world and if some of the largest global giants can trust them, so can you, even if you’re a small fish.

As we speak, Shopify has over 2000 employees and worldwide offices and to put things into perspective, Amazon, one of the largest retailers in the world, shut down their own eCommerce SAAS solution because they couldn’t compete with Shopify.

There was a recent complaint about the Shopify platform from a famous short seller on the stock market Andrew Left who watched some Youtube videos and came to the (slightly short sighted) conclusion that the eCommerce platform was a get rich quick scheme.  But…well…we have to ask ourselves whether Andrew Left has ever built, run or touched an eCommerce store.  Because everyone is turning to Shopify – it’s the Apple of eCommerce.  We build eCommerce stores every day of the week and for 90% of clients Shopify is the best investment.  For the past five years our eCommerce developers have voted consistantly the best eCommerce platform in the world.

So, Is Shopify Legit? And is it safe? 100% yes.

If you have questions about choosing an eCommerce platform you may be interested in reading: The Best Ecommerce Platform of 2018/2019.  You can also contact us with any further questions about ecommerce solutions – we have experience with all platforms including Woocommerce and Magento.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post Is Shopify Safe & Is Shopify Legit? appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

Looking to Get an Unlimited Free Trial With Shopify?  Or simply want to test the Shopify platform out for a couple of weeks for free?

Having an online shop can bring you lots of new customers, branching your business into the digital era and allowing for plenty of growth, but how do you pick the right platform?

There are many ecommerce solutions available out there, but why should you have to pay for something that might not suit you and your business? Shopify is an excellent platform and what makes it even better is the possibility of getting an unlimited Shopify free trial so you can get to know the ins and outs before you commit!

How to Get a Free 14 Day Trial with Shopify

If you are researching online eCommerce platforms for your business, you have most definitely stumbled upon Shopify. Shopify was established back in 2006 and has been a disruptive factor in the world of ecommerce ever since, starting new trends and upping the game for all competitors (even seeing the downfall of Amazon’s SAAS solution.)

As an SAAS ecommerce service, Shopify is aimed at small and large businesses alike. No matter whether you are a big enterprise, or have a home based business, you will easily find a Shopify plan that will have exactly those features that you need. Before you pay for a plan of your choosing, however, you can also test it out. Shopify offers a free trial that is available for 14 days before you make a final decision just like most reputable companies and you can get started by subscribing to a Shopify Free Trial using the following link.

How to Get an extended Free Trial with Shopify

Once this free trial is over with Shopify, you don’t need to panic if you haven’t made your decision and many aren’t aware that there is another option. You can easily get an extended Shopify free trial and here’s how it works (it’s super easy.) Once you have subscribed for the usual Shopify free trial, you can ask (nicely!) for another 14 days or alternatively, ask to have your shop put on hold until you’ve made your decision.

The easiest way to do this is by contacting Shopify support and explaining the that you are testing the Shopify Free Trial, but are not sure whether it’s right for you. Do not demand the extended Shopify free trial because they don’t have to give it to you, but if you’re lucky they’ll grant it to you. If your store is put on hold, don’t panic, you won’t lose your store if it’s on hold. Simply choose the right plan and as soon as you pay, you’re back in business (literally.)

How to Get an Unlimited Free Trial with Shopify

Having an extended Shopify free trial is a great way to get to know the platform better, but it can get even better than this.

If you have hired an official Shopify expert, you have the ability to have an Unlimited Shopify Free Trial too. This might seem odd, but some shops take a very long time to get everything ready before the launch event, so it’s a very useful option to have and give you the extra time you need. To get this unlimited trial, you will need either to be working with an official Shopify expert/partner or become one yourself.

Want a free trial with Shopify?

If you wish to know why millions of shops worldwide are using Shopify for their online stores, sign up for a 14 day Shopify Free Trial here. If you are more interested in an Unlimited Shopify Free Trial through a development account, please contact us and we will happily set it up for you in no time.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post Shopify Free Trial – How to Get an Unlimited Free Trial With Shopify appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.

So, you’ve heard of Shopify! But, how does Shopify work? Chances are you may have used the Shopify platform as a customer without even realising but if you have an ecommerce store (or you need one) it’s time to figure out how Shopify works and jump on the bandwagon.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a hosted SAAS ecommerce service that allows its users to open up their very own online stores and sell their goods or even services.  You can sell online, in person, via Amazon, Facebook, Ebay…all from a single Shopify store.

The Shopify platform is simple and intuitive, all the while having a number of features that help you have a complete overview of everything happening in your store and your sales. Thanks to Shopify, many people have achieved great success in selling their goods and products so if you’re wondering, “does Shopify work for my business?” the answer is most likely, yes!

Our team have been creating Shopify stores since 2010 and some of those stores we have created have gone on to scale to 7 figure sales within 12 months.   Simply put Shopify is the easiest and lowest cost route to running an enterprise ecommerce store.  It’s also the fastest growing eCommerce platform in the world.

How Does Shopify Work?

The Shopify platform offers a complete solution for setting up an online store, so if you have products you wish to sell and make them available to your customers, you can easily create a store with Shopify to do so. The store creation is fairly straightforward, so even users with no prior experience will be able to do it easily (you don’t even have to be tech savvy.)  All you need to do is sign up for a free trial below and start following the instructions.

So, how does Shopify work if you don’t have products?

If you have products, great, put them on. If not, no problem. Shopify works with dropshipping apps too so your customers can order through you and the wholesaler or manufacturer fulfils the order their end!  The vast majority of Shopify stores are selling physical products and services and for this Shopify works perfectly.

There are also a number of Shopify plans and each plan unlocks different features within the platform and how Shopify works is that each plan is tailored to the type of merchant you are. Certain Shopify plans are more suitable to startups while others cater to large-volume or established merchants! Check out the Shopify different plans, features and pricing here.

How Shopify works depends greatly on the plan you choose and the level of customisation a Shopify developer does on the store. But after you have decided on a Shopify plan you’ll have access to over 100 available templates or themes that are easily applied to your storefront.  As well as hundreds of apps that extend the core functionality.

The first step in seeing how Shopify works is to start a free trial. You can start a free trial below and learn about how to get an extended free trial with Shopify here.

The next step, after starting a free trial is to add products, which is super easy too:

Click “add a product,” > enter product title > description >add an image (or two) > set up visibility > organization >and pricing> voila, sell, sell, sell.

Of course – we’re leaving out some of the small details like connecting a Paypal account or payment gateway and setting shipping rates etc but it’s essentially as simple as selling on Ebay.

In case you are still confused about how Shopify works, you get a run through on the screen during setup and it’s VERY simple to start as a new merchant. There are also a ton of apps you can browse in the Shopify App Store which you can integrate to your store to improve functionality and user experience.

Does Shopify Work?

If you are wondering whether Shopify is any good for you, the simple answer is – Yes. If you want to know how does Shopify work on a bigger scale, just look at their current statistics. They are one of the biggest SAAS eCommerce platforms available that currently powers over half a million stores and with figures like that, there must be a reason they are so popular.  Many large brands use Shopify including Tesco, Tesla & Budweiser.

Does Shopify Plus Work the same way?

Shopify Plus is the top most Shopify plan geared towards larger brands and established retailers. It works in the same way Shopify does but is a much more powerful version of the platform and for some can be more cost effective than other Shopify plans (because of lower transaction fees). See how Shopify Plus compares to regular Shopify plans here.

Need Help Getting Your Shopify Store to Work the Way You Want?

Does Shopify work for you? In case you are having trouble and can’t seem to get your Shopify store to work how you want it to, feel free to reach out to our Shopify development team, who will gladly help you out with customisation, branding, integrations and more. Just drop us a line.

Disclosure: where we link to external websites we may use affiliate links if available. If you click through to the website it can sometimes result in a payment or benefit to the site. You will receive the same product or service – we simply refer you to them. We take no responsibility for the content we link to and the content of this article is our opinion.

The post How Does Shopify Work? The Ultimate Guide to How Shopify Works appeared first on Liquify Web Design London.