Shopify is one of the quickest and easiest ways to create an online store.
I spend most of my time working with WordPress, but occasionally I get to work on a Shopify site.
Here’s some lessons I’ve learned along the way..
Try using their Lite plan first ($9/mo)
Before you spend a lot of time and money getting your store created, start with their Lite plan and see if you can get sales on your existing website with a Buy Button, through your Facebook page, or in person with their mobile app.
You can always upgrade later.
Pick a theme that has lots of options
It’s not cheap when you need to hire a developer to write code and make you something custom.
Because not only will you need to pay them to create the first version, but you’ll need to keep paying them to make changes later on.
I would recommend that you choose a theme that gets you most of the way there and then hire a developer to add the few crucial features that you need.
I’ve had my eye on the Flex theme for a little while.
Haven’t tried it yet, but it looks amazing.
It’s a little more money than most of the premium themes, but it seems like you could create any layout you want without having to code anything.
I’ll let you know how it goes when I finally get to play with it.
Use Shopify Payments to process credit cards
If you use any other credit card processor, Shopify adds an extra fee on top of it.
I think they used to integrate with Stripe, but now they have their own branded thing called Shopify Payments that (I think) is built with Stripe behind the scenes, but I’m not sure.
They have a bunch of apps, but the good ones cost money
Shopify has their own mobile app for you to manage your store from your phone, but they also have a Shopify App Store where you can choose from thousands of apps that give your online store more functionality.
There are some free ones, but a lot of them will cost you more money every month.
It looks like they let you sell CBD
I’ve never tried CBD.
But I know there’s a lot of people trying to sell it online and a few of them have come my way looking for help.
Setting up a WooCommerce store with WordPress has been a good option, but just recently I came across a page on how to use Shopify to sell CBD.
Might be worth a look for those who are interested.
You can store custom data
It’s not as cool as WordPress, but I like knowing I have a few options to store custom data so I can make Shopify pages do what I want.
Metafields sound promising.
Other Random Thoughts
Your theme doesn’t stay updated automatically.
Make sure to backup your theme files.
It’s possible to sell on Instragram.
I’ve heard of people syncing their store products with Amazon so they can sell them over there too.
Migrating from another platform is not easy.
It’s a pain to create a second custom form on your site.
(I still don’t know if I did it right the last time.)
I’m not crazy about the “/pages/” part in the url of a page, but there’s nothing you can do about it.