eBlack Diamond is a service provider building strategic alliances with technology partners to deliver comprehensive ecommerce and digital solutions to our clients. This article will focus on Shopify. It will give a high-level review of the Shopify company, service offerings, technology, and how it can help entrepreneurs and businesses to succeed selling online.
Shopify is a robust, all-in-one commerce platform to build and manage online stores. From a small single product shop to the largest enterprise operations, Shopify has the features and services to go to market and reach a worldwide audience. Established in 2006, Shopify provides web hosting, an ecommerce store builder, payment processing, shipping, and marketing tools in one package, making it easy for small to large size businesses, get online, operate, and grow sales over the internet or in person. As a Shopify Service Partner, eBlack Diamond offers consulting and design services to help clients leverage Shopify’s features and launch a professional ecommerce store.
Shopify was founded in 2006 by Tobias Lütke, Daneil Weinand, and Scott Lake. According to Wikipedia, the idea began when Lütke (a programmer) and his partners needed an online store to sell snowboards. Dissatisfied with existing platforms, they built their own solution on Ruby on Rails and then launched Shopify later that year. From these early beginnings, Shopify has grown rapidly, with an IPO in 2015, and continuously expanding their services and ecosystem to become one of the leading ecommerce platforms in the world.
Shopify provides a user-friendly interface. It is an administrator dashboard that can be accessed via a web browser or by using the Shopify mobile app. The web-based browser Shopify Admin is the central hub for running your storefront. Logon to any desktop or laptop to manage products and inventory, process or fulfill orders, track sales, or view live website analytics. All store setup, domain access, communication preferences, shipping, and taxes are controlled via Shopify Admin.
Shopify offers a mobile app for IOS and Android devices where store owners can manage their ecommerce stores through their phones. The app provides a mobile interface to review and fulfill orders, manage inventory, and similar configuration settings.
Additionally, Shopify provides a point-of-sale mobile application. The POS app allows for integration with a remote credit card reader or turn your mobile device into credit card reader with tap to pay for sales in person or at an alternate location. (Be aware of local state, county, and city regulations for tax and business license requirements.)
Shopify comes with several built-in features that facilitate all stages of selling online. Key capabilities include:
Multi-channel sales: Sell online through your website on Shopify platform, social media marketplaces, and in person with use of POS. Shopify integrates products into sales channels. These channels can control where you choose to sell your products, your e-commerce store, Facebook/Instagram, Pinterest, Google, or POS.
Market Segmentation: Shopify allows you to set up markets which include Domestic, International, or further segmentation to control specific countries and states where to sell your products.
Shipping Discounts: Through Shopify Shipping, merchants can get discounts on carrier rates. Shopify clients can get reduced pricing on USPS, UPS, Fed Ex, or DHL versus retail rates. In addition, shipping insurance is included as part of the discount price.
Inventory Management: Shopify automatically tracks inventory across sales channels. When items are sold or restocked, the quantities update instantly in your online store and physical locations. This unified inventory sync can prevent overselling when enabled and simplifies stock management if selling in multiple locations.
Taxes and Duties: Shopify can calculate sales tax for many regions. Domestic customers can assign products a category and Shopify will automatically apply tax rates based on that city, county, and state. For international, higher tier plans support duties and import tax calculations at checkout.
Analytics & Reporting: Plans include built-in reports and dashboards. You can track sales trends, customer visits, product performance, and more through Shopify Admin. Higher plans unlock additional built-in reports and custom reports may require custom configuration.
Shopify design is based on themes. Themes are pre-designed templates for building the online store. Shopify’s Theme Store offers hundreds of website templates that are free – to a one-time cost of several hundred dollars to use. Shopify documents over 800 of these to choose from.
Free themes cover a wide range of styles and industries and include features like slideshows, featured products, and allow basic customization. For more advanced needs, premium themes or customizations are available from Shopify Partners. Paid themes or customization often include extra features like animations, advanced filters, or complex page layouts.
While Shopify’s core platform is feature-rich, merchants often use apps to extend functionality. The Shopify App Store contains thousands of apps for everything from marketing to inventory. Some capabilities (like basic email marketing, contact forms, or reviews) can be handled with built-in tools or free apps. However, many specialized features require paid apps. For example, bundling products, loyalty programs, advanced email campaigns, or custom product filters often use apps with monthly fees. It’s common for merchants to install a mix of free and paid apps. Adding several apps can quickly raise the monthly costs. In planning a Shopify store, it’s important to budget for any app subscriptions cost on top of the Shopify plan fee.
Shopify uses a mix of technologies. The theme templates, which is the front-end, is coded in Liquid, Shopify’s own templating language. Editing themes and the code can be done directly through the admin dashboard on Shopify hosted environment. Alternately, developers can install the Shopify CLI, command-line interface tool to replicate the environment on their local servers to build and test themes before deploying them through a platform such as GitHub.
Liquid tags load dynamic content, products, collections, cart info, etc. into the storefront to generate the webpages. Objects embedded with standard web technologies (HTML, CSS, JavaScript) create the visual look.
Shopify apps or integrations can be written in many languages. For example, PHP, Python, Node.js, Ruby, are all supported when calling Shopify’s APIs. Advanced developers can fully edit or build themes using various programming languages and can write custom back-end apps to extend Shopify’s features. When ready to move, the tools are here. All it takes is the right guide and a clear goal.
Building a Shopify store can be easier with a partner. The Shopify Partner program aligns with Shopify specialist to allow partners and developers to create development stores (trial accounts) on behalf of their clients. This means eBlack Diamond can set up clients store in a demo mode, customize it fully, and test everything before the project goes live and the client begins paying for a Shopify subscription.
A good approach is to have partner like eBlack Diamond build and refine the store during the trial period in a project plan. Implement a phased approach:
Working with eBlack Diamond takes advantage of this workflow: we provide affordable eCommerce consulting and design services, using Shopify’s free trial environment to architect and deploy ecommerce solution for our clients. This trial period allows new stores to be built and tweaked through a scheduled timeline, ensuring a strong launch.
Existing Shopify store owners can hire an expert or may require an immediate need due to human resources changes. They should engage with a Shopify expert such as eBlack Diamond who know the ins and outs of Shopify and can perform complex customizations. For example, an expert can audit store theme and update its design or layout (editing Liquid/JS/CSS), optimize site performance and SEO, and add new features via custom code or apps. If store is slow or hard to manage, a partner can streamline workflows, implement better integrations, and make stores look and work better, which may improve conversion and user experience. eBlack Diamond offers these expert services to enhance existing Shopify sites.
Shopify offers multiple subscription tiers tailored to business size. A complete description can be found at https://www.shopify.com/pricing
As of this article publishing summarized rates:
All plans include the core Shopify software, hosting, and an SSL certificate. Payment processing (with Shopify Payments) carries fees that vary by plan: e.g. Basic: 2.9% + $0.30 per online transaction (2.6% + $0.10 in-person); Grow: 2.7% online, 2.5% in-person; Advanced: 2.5% online, 2.4% in-person. If you use an external payment gateway instead, Shopify adds an extra fee (currently 2.0% for Basic, 1.0% for Grow, 0.6% for Advanced).
Pros: Ease of use and completeness of platform.
Cons: Can become costly as features are added.
Shopify offers an outstanding online selling platform for small and medium businesses. It provides an all-in-one, easy-to-use setup with powerful features and support. Its major advantages are quick setup, reliability, and extensibility. The key trade-offs are ongoing costs and customization required (especially without developer help). Working with a knowledgeable partner like eBlack Diamond can help you maximize Shopify’s strengths by choosing the right plan, themes, and apps, and by implementing custom enhancements to ensure your store succeeds online.
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