Success With Shopify by lhywantk - HTML preview

Conclusion

Whether you are brand new to the ecommerce business or you are an experienced seller online, Shopify can certainly help you make more money, create more effective ecommerce stores and overall, be a better online seller. Let’s review some of the things discussed in this book.

Part One: Introduction to Ecommerce

If you have never been involved in the world of ecommerce before, it can be a challenging one to start. Ecommerce depends upon getting customers to your website and it is quite a bit different than starting a brick-and-mortar business. In fact, you could take the analogy so far as to say that starting an ecommerce business is like starting a little store that looks like every other store in a city that has hundreds of millions of stores. While you can rent a retail space on the main drag and get lots of walk-in traffic in the real world the only way that you are going to get to the front page in the search engines is through the use of good SEO practices, keyword research and understanding the business of ecommerce completely.

That’s why part one starts out with showing you what you need to know to be involved in this world. Product selection is one of the most important things that you can do because your product name is often what people search for and if you can choose the right products that are going to outrank other websites selling the same items; you are going to get the majority of the customers. In addition, understanding things like the market size of your niche, the customer that you are trying to appeal to and who else on the web is competing with you for those customers are all factors that will determine how successful you’re going to be.

When you begin working with Shopify, you are going to quickly realize that there is a lot to learn about ecommerce and while you don’t need to know everything to get started, the more quickly you can learn things like making yourself unique among your competition, as discussed in Chapter 5, the faster you will be successful. Understanding your product types, the laws regarding your ecommerce business and all of the other information that you need to be successful are things that you should be teaching yourself as quickly as possible. Don’t be afraid to learn from online videos, lectures, seminars and even classes offered in your community.

Part Two: Setting up Shopify

Learning the business of ecommerce is definitely important, but if you are going to be using the Shopify platform it is just as important that you understand Shopify and learn everything you can about how to use it. The reason is: Shopify is an incredibly powerful application and if you don’t learn everything you can about how to use it properly you are going to be missing out on sales. You will probably be successful even if you only learn some of what the platform has to offer, but why would you want to limit your ability to make money.

Some of the ways that you can learn how to use Shopify better is included in this book, but there is a great deal more information that is provided by the Shopify platform itself, using the help guides, the manual, documentation and the other Shopify resources that are listed in Chapter 18.

In the second part of this book, we’ve discussed how to choose the right Shopify package and what all of the various features mean for your business. Also, you have probably come to the conclusion that the Shopify platform is a great deal more powerful than just about anything else out there and should definitely be your top choice if you want to be a successful ecommerce business owner.

Part Two has included the five basic steps that you need to get your store up and running which are as follows:

Your initial setup – all of the things that you’ll do to get your store started with

Shopify and be prepared to add your first products.

Adding your products – something that has a great deal of customization behind

it and something that you definitely should learn all about using the materials in

the Shopify manual before you even add your first product.

Setting up your shipping – this is a fairly straightforward process, although it is

quite powerful in its own right, and Shopify makes it easier than most. In fact,

Shopify not only makes it easier on their customers than most, they make it more

cost-effective as well, which is good for your bottom line every time you sell

something.

Customizing your payment solutions – You have a lot of integrated payment

solutions when it comes to Shopify and there are some powerful options. But

perhaps the biggest advantage that the platform has over all of the others out

there is that it provides you with such a simple payment solution with low fees

and no need to set up third-party merchant accounts. If you don’t want to,

you don’t need to go any farther than Shopify Payments to get paid for your

sales.

Customizing your Shopify store – Shopify makes it easy to create the perfect

look for your store with over 100 free themes that all look very professional and

even more premium themes for those who are a bit pickier.

Part Three: Making Your Shopify Store a Success

The last part of the book deals with applications and details outside of the Shopify platform that you can use to make your store even better. The features and add-ons that can be integrated with Shopify are numerous and should definitely be evaluated to see if they would make your store better.

One of the most important chapters of this section is Chapter 18, where you will be able to see all of the learning tools that Shopify provides. From the documentation and comprehensive manual complete with screenshots and animations, to the user forums where you can get specific advice on problems that you are facing directly from other Shopify users. In addition, this chapter expands on some of the more important aspects of ecommerce such as using social media to make your store more effective and making more money through the use of trends and holiday shopping.

Your Success is up to you When it comes to the success of your store, there is only one person that it depends upon – you. While you have a huge number of tools and resources available to you with the Shopify platform and all of the benefits that comes with it, none of that will make much of a difference if you aren’t willing to put in the work to make your store a success. However, even for the most uninformed ecommerce owner, success can be had with Shopify if you choose good products and follow the advice in this book and from experts in the field of ecommerce and continue learning and improving as you make money.