5 things you should know before you open your shop.

Quick Summary

If you’re setting up a brand new shop or if you’re moving your shop from another platform to Shopify, there are 5 things many people don’t know about that we think you should know before starting or making the switch:

1. There are costs beyond Shopify’s fees

2. You will be responsible for driving traffic to your site

3. Blogs are possible on Shopify

4. Shopify can connect to other sales channels (like Facebook / Instagram and Google)

5. Moving your products over isn’t always easy

So you’ve decided to open an online store and you’ve decided to do it on Shopify. Congratulations...we believe you’ve made the right choice! Shopify is one of the best platforms out there to build your online store. They only do shops and have thousands of shops running on their servers. They take care of security, which is incredibly important when you have an online store. And, because they have so many stores on their platform, their features are some of the best out there.

It’s a great platform (have we said that enough yet?) but there are some things you need to know before you build your shop (especially if you are moving your shop from another platform).

1. There are costs beyond Shopify’s fees

Shopify charges $29 per month for their basic plan and you get many features for that price. You can definitely run a nice store with just that. However, if you want to add any apps to your shop, the fees can quickly add up. What are apps? Apps are add-ons to your store that helps you add functionality and features to your shop. Some popular apps include Back in Stock (a notification service for your customers so that they can sign up to be notified when an item they had their eye on is back in stock and ready for them to purchase), Recharge (a subscription service app that can help you add subscriptions and recurring charges to your store), and Product Options (an app that can help your customers customize their orders). All of these apps charge an extra fee in addition to the Shopify plan cost. Some apps are free, but most charge a monthly fee to use them and can add $$$ to your costs every month. Other costs to consider include:

• Each purchase on your site includes a processing fee, which changes based on your plan level. For up-to-date information on Shopify’s monthly fees and processing fees, please take a look at https://www.shopify.com/pricing

• Shopify offers a theme store that elevates your website design. These themes are provided by designers and developers, so they frequently include more functionality and features than the free themes in addition to providing a superior brand experience.

Tip: We’ve shared a few of our favorite Shopify apps and we keep that list updated!

2. You will be responsible for driving traffic to your site

If you’re coming from an online marketplace (like Etsy, eBay or Amazon), having your own store on Shopify will mean that you can’t rely on that built-in marketplace anymore...and without this being built-in, you’ll have to drive your own traffic to your shop. Etsy and Amazon have their own marketplace, so people can happen upon your store while browsing. With Shopify you will have to bring your own traffic to your store through word of mouth, social media, search engine optimization, advertising, email marketing, etc. This can be a lot of work and will likely be key in determining how successful your store will be.

Thanks to Shopify’s growing Shop app user base, integrated SEO tools / insights, and ability to connect your store with other sales channels (more on this in a bit), this isn’t as bad as it could be with other services...but it does take additional know-how and effort.

3. Blogs are possible on Shopify

We often get asked if you can have a blog on Shopify and the answer is YES! In fact, we highly recommend having a blog on any site! Having a blog where you share insights about your company, industry and products not only helps your website visitors understand you and your brand better, it strongly benefits search engine optimization (SEO) and can help bring new traffic months after publishing your post. If you are on Pinterest, blogs are also a great place to pin from so you can drive even more traffic to your blog post. Finally, blogs are a great place to talk more about your products and feature them in different ways than in your product listing pages.

4. Shopify can connect to other sales channels (like Facebook / Instagram and Google)

Once you have your products setup on your store, you can connect your catalogue to other sales channels. Amazon, Facebook / Instagram, eBay, and Google Shopping all have Shopify apps that can connect your catalogue to their sales channels. Connecting your shop to these sales channels is a great way to have your product catalog in one place, but sell your products on many sales channels without the headache of managing different stores (inventory, updating descriptions, etc).

5. Moving your products over isn’t always easy

If you are new to having an online store, there are some things you will need to prepare before you launch (product images, product descriptions, pricing, etc). But if you already have an online shop, then migrating that information is easy, right? Yes and no. Although you already have access to the information you need, it’s rarely easy to import that information. Some YouTube videos and apps claim to make things easier, but even with those there will always be some things that need changing. Examples include product title changes and changes to variants. You are also likely to have issues with image hosting (as you want them hosted on Shopify for the optimal experience) and sometimes even with image dimensions (as you will want your images to be consistent height and width to display well on Shopify). Importing reviews to each product is also mostly a manual process. Be sure to include a buffer in your launch timeline for the migration process.v

If you keep these 5 things in mind, you will be in a great position to fully appreciate all that Shopify has to offer. If you are looking for more insights into Shopify, please take a look at our Shopify related blog posts or our Shopify launch checklist.