How does Shopify Work and What is it?

In the eCommerce landscape, Shopify has emerged as one of the trusted choices among merchants. More than 190K Shopify stores run in the UK, which showcases the platform’s extensive popularity. The various plans offered by the eCommerce platform make it suitable for both B2B and B2C businesses.

A Shopify agency can build high-performance online stores with a friendly UX (user experience) and drive sales. The eCommerce platform offers various out-of-the-box features that help launch and run online businesses. 

But what is Shopify and how does it work? 

Let’s find out.

What is Shopify?

Shopify is a fully-hosted eCommerce platform ideal for launching small, mid-scale, and large-scale online stores. The platform offers multiple plans that are ideal for running a range of businesses. It is an excellent choice for companies looking for an all-in-one e-commerce solution. 

For example, the platform provides standard functionalities such as payment processing, order & inventory management and shipping discounts all from a common Shopify dashboard.

Enhanced security, superior client service, marketing & SEO benefits make Shopify development the most suitable option for eCommerce. However, before you launch your business on the eCommerce platform, it is essential to know the answer to the question: how does Shopify work?

Before we answer this, let’s have a look at the features of this e commerce business platform. 

Shopify Features

• Customisable Themes: Shopify merchants can choose from a range of customisable free and paid themes with built-in support for animations & special effects.

• AI-Powered Efficiency: You can use the platform for content generation, automating replies, and more.

• Shopify Apps: Extend the online store’s functionality with Shopify apps that can seamlessly integrate with the platform. 

• Optimised Checkout: Shopify offers quick checkout with standard payment gateways, which helps to boost businesses’ conversion rates. 

• Self-Hosted: It is a self-hosted platform that eliminates the hassle of finding secure hosting and enhances the security of the online store. 

Shopify offers some of the standard features in all its major plans:

• Building an online store
• Listing unlimited products
• Access to 24/7 support by phone, email, and chat
• Handling manual order creation
• Generating discount codes & gift cards
• SSL certificates
• Abandoned cart recovery feature
• Customer segmentation
• Marketing automation
• Fraud analysis
• International market management
• Language Translation
• Currency Conversion
• Shopify App Store
• Local Payment Options
• Product pricing by marketing tools

How does Shopify Work?

Shopify works in three major steps, involving building & launching the online store, selling products, and ensuring optimum business growth.  Here’s how: 

Step 1 – Set up Your Shopify Store

Do you know how to build a Shopify store? The main aspects of building the Shopify store are:

Customise a Suitable Theme

You can choose from 70 store themes, which come with drag-and-drop capabilities. This allows you to play with the look of the site, changing colours, images, and fonts to create an appealing online store. Shopify Themes are responsive, which means they can run on all devices including desktop, mobile, and tablets. 

Set up Payments

You can use Shopify Payments or set up a different payment gateway to receive money from customers. Choosing a different Payment provider requires you to pay transaction fees, which vary between 0.15% and 2% for different plans.

Add a Buy Button

The Shopify platform lets you embed click-to-buy links for your products on social media platforms. You can also embed links to sell on other websites.

Step 2 – Sell products

Once the Shopify store is live, the next step is to manage inventory and sell online. You can use the platform to: 

Manage Inventory

You can track the stock levels and manage inventory among stores and warehouses. Further, you can handle orders via the fulfilment method or by using the delivery location. 

Ship Orders

The Shopify platform lets you ship label prints and launch discounted shipping rates seamlessly. It also permits tracking orders from the dashboard as they reach the customers. 

Sell Across Multiple Channels

When selling via Shopify, you can list products on Google, eBay, Walmart, TikTok, Instagram, and other sites. This allows you to own an online store across multiple sales channels, called omnichannel selling.

Step 3 – Grow Your Business with Shopify

Once you start running the online store, the focus is on growing the business. The platform offers various tools geared towards the business growth of the retail stores.  

Connect with Customers

Shopify lets you connect with customers via chat integrations, emails, and other channels. You can also run ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram.

Borrow Funds

Shopify store owners can borrow funds from Shopify Capital to grow their business. However, it is essential to check the terms and conditions of Shopify pricing, like interest rates and other factors, before leveraging this option.

Wrapping Up

The standard Shopify plans, such as Basic, Shopify, and Advanced, provide merchants with 24/7 customer support. Additionally, enterprise-level stores running on Shopify Plus can leverage dedicated customer support.

At chilliapple, an award-winning ecommerce agency, we tailor unique digital stores. Our experienced professionals ensure personalisation based on business’ products, industry, target audience and budget.