Do-it-yourself online stores used to be limited to having a store on Amazon, eBay, or some other service. It wasn’t really a “store” it was more like having a little kiosk in a behemoth online mall.
Enter Shopify. This great service lets you build an honest-to-goodness online store customized to your needs complete with your own domain name. Shopify allows you to easily add and edit items, manage your inventory, process payments, market your products, and track your customer buying patterns. Shopify also includes cool features like discount codes to track your promotions, full CSS and HTML control, a robust API, and even an option to create simple store blog.
Of course the biggest benefit of Shopify is that you don’t have to build it yourself or pay a designer to do it for you. You also don’t have to go through the puzzling set steps required to make a truly secure online store. Shopify handles all the SSL certificates, the hardware security, and the data backup for you. These are benefits common to most web-based applications, but it’s worth repeating just how awesome it is to have that sort of worry-free design available in an off-the-shelf solution.
Starting at $25 per month with a 2.0% transaction fee, Shopify is a bargain, especially when you consider the monumental price that most developers charge for making e-commerce sites. For businesses trying to bootstrap their way to success, Shopify is a no-brainer. But even big companies with deep pockets could save using Shopify as their Premier, unlimited plan runs a low $699 a month, which may be lower than bandwidth charges associated with running some online stores, let alone the development costs.
So, whether you’re a big business or just getting started, check out Shopify and see if it won’t save you money over the traditional route of building your own e-commerce site.
Sidenote: It occurs to me that combined with a service like Fulfillment by Amazon, Shopify could serve as the basis for a nearly hands-free online retail business. Now if only I had something to sell…
Cord is the director of new media at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University. He has been a web developer for over a decade, working with non-profits to rein in their web development costs and grow their online audiences through simple best practices.
