It’s no secret that the business industry is witnessing significant changes. To stay relevant, you need to adapt to changes quickly.
In today’s digitally dominant era, it’s paramount to have a solid online presence for your small business.
Looking for a perfect eCommerce platform that can meet all the needs of your small business?
If so, Shopify is your best solution. It’s the fourth-largest eCommerce platform worldwide, with around 11% market share and over 4.3 million live websites operating on Shopify. Therefore, Shopify is an optimal platform to set up your online store and manage it effortlessly.
And no, Shopify not only helps set up online stores but also extends its services and Best Shopify Apps to businesses for marketing, managing, and setting up POS for payments.
This detailed guide is your one-stop destination for learning how Shopify can help small businesses.
All-in-One Platform
Shopify serves as a single platform to enable small businesses to start their ecommerce store, set it up digitally, and market it to build a brand identity.
This platform provides small business units with immense capabilities via the Best Shopify Apps, themes, and tools, right from setting up a store to creating an online presence, marketing, and branding.
By leveraging Shopify, businesses can sell anywhere and everywhere:
- Online stores
- Shopify POS or point of sale
- International commerce
- Buy button
- Sales channel
- Custom storefront tools
- From a website using the checkout page
SEO Optimization
SEO is not that easy for small businesses, and doing SEO on a fresh site can take a financial toll on them. Luckily, Shopify is SEO and performance-optimized.
This eCommerce platform takes care of several technical SEO aspects, such as proper robots.txt.file and Shopify sitemap generation. In addition, it can serve all your images in WebP format, regardless of how you upload them, to help browsers load your product pages quickly.
That being said, you might need the help of Shopify experts to handle aspects like metadata, image optimization, redirects, etc.
Comprehensive App Store
In addition to many in-built themes and features, Shopify enables small businesses to use the Best Shopify Apps from its app store. Companies can even opt for Third-party integration to add additional functionalities to their online store.
In 2024, you can find nearly 10,000+ apps on the shopify store.
Using these free and subscription-based Shopify apps, you can optimize your store’s performance. For instance, you can achieve simplified site navigation and impressive UI/UX with Shopify apps, attracting more shoppers.
Dropshipping
With Shopify’s drop shipping option, you don’t have to worry about managing inventories or product deliveries.
You can directly deliver the products from suppliers to your customers. You don’t need to go through the hassle of arranging warehouses.
It’s especially helpful if you’ve limited funds for storing inventories.
Mobile-Friendliness
As a small business owner, your timeline is already packed. Wouldn’t it be nice if you didn’t have to worry about mobile optimization?
Don’t worry; Shopify can take care of it for you. The Shopify team very well knows that mobile eCommerce is growing, with over 29% of global users making weekly purchases through their mobiles. Therefore, the mobile website version has become the need of the hour.
With minimal effort on your part, you can create a responsive, fast, and intuitive Shopify eCommerce store that is easy to navigate on a mobile device.
Cost-Effective Marketing Tools
Most small businesses are limited in budget and, thus, subscribe to the ‘Basic’ plan. Even its
Basic plan overflows with marketing features and Third-party integration to drive traffic to your eCommerce store and boost your sales.
Each plan offered by Shopify includes abandoned cart recovery features, discount codes, gift cards, and marketing automation to streamline customer engagement.
In addition, this eCommerce platform has free native applications like Shopify Collabs, Product reviews app Shopify, Shopify Email, and more, helping market your business.
24/7 Support
Small businesses don’t have a huge in-house team to rely on whenever something goes wrong with their Shopify store.
It’s when you need help from customer support. Shopify extends many support and learning opportunities to small businesses. A dedicated Shopify customer support team is available for assistance via phone, email, or live chat around the clock.
Moreover, the Shopify website features many guides, blogs, podcasts, free tools, and research for self-help. The Shopify Help Center is another means to access the necessary help.
Widened Customer Reach
Whether you start an online store for handcrafted items or a clothing store, reaching a wider audience can be challenging for small-scale businesses. Shopify can make it simpler for you.
This eCommerce platform offers a lot of options to help small business owners widen their customer base:
- Social network integration to reach prospective customers or a wider audience.
- Apps like the Shopify form builder app can help businesses acquire targeted customers’ information and feedback and improve accordingly.
- Offers discounts, gift vouchers, and coupon codes to promote products and elevate sales.
- Facebook or Instagram selling opportunities.
- Product reviews app Shopify to boost product demand and create transparency.
- Advertisements can widen customer reach, which you can’t attain organically.
Increased Customer Engagement
You need to reach more customers. But you can’t stop there. You also need to engage them.
Shopify allows integration with social media platforms. You can have an excellent social media presence. Respond quickly to comments. You can also include user-generated content on your ecommerce site.
In addition, you can use the Shopify form builder app to learn more about your customers. You can get an idea on how they feel about your products and services.
Tailor your marketing activities accordingly.
Payments
You can integrate Shopify Payments with Shopify POS to process and analyze offline and online sales data together.
Shopify also allows you to use external payment tools through Third-party integration.
Concluding Words
Shopify is an excellent option for small businesses. They can help you establish an online presence. Shopify experts can make it easier to set up a Shopify store using budget-friendly tools, resources, and apps. So, consider going on your journey of growing your small business with Shopify.
Also Read: Simple Ways to Set Up Shopify Store for Dropshipping in 5 Steps
