E-commerce is more than just a growing trend - it’s the way business will be done in the future. Total e-commerce sales have reached 2.304 trillion dollars in 2017, which is a 24 percent increase compared to 2016.  Most e-commerce businesses have a choice to go for an e-commerce platform or simply do everything by themselves from scratch. These platforms can be very useful, especially for new companies, since they offer their own resources to help you with website development, design, shipping, hosting, accounting, inventory management, customer service and much more.

Therefore, using an e-commerce platform is a reasonable decision for most startups. And Shopify is one of the most popular and reliable choices out there. More than 600,000 businesses are powered by Shopify, and since 2012 number of retailers has grown at an average rate of 74% per year. Among merchants and customers, Shopify is a platform well-known for ensuring simple and straightforward buying experience. Let’s take a look at this fact in more detail.

1. Loading speed

Speed of your website can be a huge factor for the success of your online business. A slow website literally chases away your customers – namely, 40 percent of users will abandon a page if it doesn’t load in three seconds. Furthermore, as much as 79 percent of web shoppers won’t be coming back to a website they consider to be too slow.

And this is where Shopify outperforms most e-commerce platforms, with only 3D Cart and Big Cartel showing better results among top 20 platforms. Its mobile performance is also top-quality - only Shopify and Big Cartel are rated top 5 in both mobile and desktop loading speed. Have in mind that mobile speed and overall experience is of huge importance, as mobile e-commerce is expected to make up 70 percent of total e-commerce sales by 2020.

2. Unlimited bandwidth and product inventory

One of the advantages of most e-shopping platforms, including Shopify, is that they take care of hosting. An additional benefit offered by Shopify is unlimited bandwidth, which may not seem like a necessary feature at first, but once your business grows, handling a large amount of traffic can be a serious problem.

Moreover, there’s no limit on the number of products you can sell. Both of these things are very important for the scalability of your business, and this is where Shopify excels. It makes your store easy to manage regardless of its size and helps you deal with the growth of your company and your sales smoothly and seamlessly.

3. Easy integration

One of Shopify’s trademarks is that it offers integration with numerous different platforms. This gives you a chance to sell directly on websites such as Amazon or some of the most popular social networks. Connecting your website with these can save you a lot of time, open new selling opportunities, help you get better analytics and reduce errors.  With Shopify, you can also easily integrate your store with big data tools, shipping carriers, drop shipping companies as well as fulfillment centers.

4. Ease of use

Moreover, Shopify delivers great user experience for both shoppers and vendors. It’s a platform easy to manage and handle even for those that are not exactly IT-minded. Customer support can be reached via phone, email or online live chat and is at your service 24 hours a day. For those that are new to e-commerce in general, Shopify even offers experts that serve as business consultants.

Another feature they provide is their own payment gateway, Shopify Payments, which saves you a world of effort when handling transactions and allows you to manage all your money on a single dashboard. In general, when it comes to ease of use, out of top 20 e-commerce platforms, Shopify is number one by a mile. 

5. Customization

It’s very important for your e-shop to look unique and avoid a generic and lifeless vibe. Shopify offers a wide range of themes and customization options you can choose from, according to the needs of your business and your customers. Despite being one of the simplest platforms to use out there, when it comes to choosing the best options and implementing them properly, turning to specialized website development agencies can be a good idea. Furthermore, a great selection of shipping and payment methods will help you offer your customers a fully personalized experience.

Conclusion

Of course, there are downsides to the platform as well, most prominently with their SEO. Bad ranking performance, forced URL structure and problematic WordPress plugins are definitely something to worry about. Also, a lot of helpful extensions and features provided by Shopify aren’t free. Nevertheless, Shopify is still a great choice for your startup. It’s quick, simple, easily customizable and delivers great user experience for all involved parties. Most importantly, when your company grows, you don’t have to worry about scalability problems. Shopify has everything you need and will be able to handle your business regardless of its size or type.