I will be publishing a series of articles on Shopify, a platform I’ve frequently encountered in recent years—especially in the context of individual-scale production and dropshipping ventures—alongside my earlier articles on e-commerce (eCommerce) and how to start and grow an online store.
Let’s first take a look at the basic information about the company.
Shopify
Shopify, officially known as Shopify Inc., is a multinational e-commerce company headquartered in Ottawa, Ontario, Canada. The company offers an officially licensed e-commerce platform for online stores (online shops) and point-of-sale (POS) systems under the same name. The platform provides access to a wide range of services—including payment, marketing, shipping, and store management tools—through various membership packages, enabling businesses to easily leverage these features. With its extensive customization and integration solutions, a highly comprehensive sales system can be established. As a result, store owners can easily implement sales methods such as dropshipping1 2.
Thanks to its comprehensive and user-friendly store management options, the company has seen a steadily increasing number of users and sales volume annually. According to shared data, as of June 2019, over 1 million businesses were operating across more than 175 countries through the Shopify platform. Additionally, the company reported that its total gross merchandise volume surpassed $41.1 billion in 2018.
In 2004, the company was founded by Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand, and Scott Lake, initially used for the online sale of snowboard equipment under the Snowdevil brand name2.
Our first Shopify store was our own1
Lütke notes that during the development of Snowdevil, they were dissatisfied with the e-commerce products available in the market and therefore developed their own systems, using the open-source web application framework Ruby on Rails, completing a two-month development process before launching their first stores and releasing the platform as Shopify in June 20061.
In addition to new features added to the platform, in 2009, by introducing the API and an App Store, Shopify created an internal ecosystem that enabled developers to build applications for Shopify stores and subsequently sell them on the Shopify App Store.
As a result of these developments, the platform attracted significant investment over the following years, including acquisitions of companies such as Select Start Studios Inc. and Jet Cooper, and launched a range of new product offerings—including Shopify Payments and iPad-based sales point solutions—by 2014, when it became widely recognized. That same year, it also introduced a solution for large e-commerce businesses with access to enhanced features and support through Shopify Plus, alongside solutions for small and medium-sized enterprises2.
Each year, the platform continued to introduce numerous innovations and made further acquisitions, notably when in 2015, it announced Amazon’s decision to discontinue its Amazon Webstore service and positioned Shopify as the preferred migration provider, and in 2017, by introducing Amazon integration that enabled sellers to sell their products on Amazon from Shopify stores, it also became a viable solution for dropshipping2.
In subsequent years, Shopify introduced new features such as Shopify Chat, Bluetooth and other payment solutions, integrations with Mailchimp and Snapchat, company acquisitions, newly launched Shopify Studios, and a physical retail store (Flagship), among many other innovations3.
According to current data, Shopify’s Black Friday sales in 2020 grew by 76% compared to 2019, reaching $5.1 billion (compared to $2.4 billion in 2019), with 67% of these sales occurring via mobile devices (compared to 69% in 2019), and a 8-dollar increase in average order value, rising from $84 to $91 compared to the previous year4 5 6.
Features Offered
Shopify offers standard membership plans such as Basic Shopify, Shopify, and Advanced Shopify, as well as enterprise-level solutions like Shopify Lite and Shopify Plus. These membership plans come with features such as online store, sales point, sales button, and many other functionalities, as well as integrated marketing solutions7.
For example, in addition to its own Shopify store, you can also sell products directly through your personal websites using the sales button.
Shopify Usage
Shopify membership plans, except for Shopify Plus, generally offer the same sales and marketing features. With account setup, users gain access to the Shopify admin dashboard8.
If an online store feature is being utilized, after the store’s interface is defined using the provided free or paid theme solutions, the product addition step can be proceeded. On the other hand, if only a sales button is used instead of an online store, simply defining the products will suffice. Orders, products, customers, analytics, marketing, promotions, apps, and sales channels (online store, sales button, etc.) can all be easily managed through a single panel.
A wide range of definitions can be established for products, including seller, product type, collection, and variation. Additionally, through the product detail page, it can be determined which sales channels the products are accessible through.
As previously mentioned in my several articles on template engine, Shopify offers theme customization capabilities and utilizes the liquid template language for these customization operations. This enables external themes to be integrated with the store via the theme library both within and outside the platform.
Payment Providers
Shopify provides integration capabilities with numerous payment method providers, including PayPal Express Checkout. This allows for different payment methods (credit card, Apple Pay, Boleto, etc.) that vary by country to be selected. Among these options, credit card payments processed via PayU Turkey are available for use in Turkey.
Bogus Gateway is being used for test transactions, although test mode can also be enabled for the selected payment method.
Analytics and Monitoring Operations
Sales Channels > Online Store > Preferences 9 page, you can track store visitors using the Google Analytics and Facebook Pixel sections. For the [Enhanced E-Commerce]10 feature, the latest version of Google Analytics is required11. I will publish a more detailed article on this topic.
*[dropshipping]: Dropshipping. A retail model where the seller accepts customer orders but does not maintain inventory of the products being sold, resembling a frictionless marketplace.
*[Enhanced E-Commerce]: Enhanced eCommerce
Footnotes
- About Us. Shopify ↩ ↩2 ↩3
- Shopify. Wikipedia ↩ ↩2 ↩3 ↩4
- Free Tools. Shopify ↩
- Roxanne Voidonicolas. (2020). Black Friday Cyber Monday 2020: An Analysis of Over $5.1 Billion in Sales ↩
- Giles Thomas. (2020). Huge Shopify Statistics in 2020: Facts, Market Share & More ↩
- Chris Wagner. (2020). 9 Shopify Statistics that will blow your mind (2020) ↩
- Pricing. Shopify, Shopify Lite, Shopify Plus ↩
- Sign in to Shopify. Shopify Help Center ↩
- If you’re using the English panel, the relevant steps will be as follows; Sales Channels > Online Store > Preferences ↩
- You can read my articles titled Google Analytics E-Commerce Events and Reports and Google Tag Manager Enhanced Ecommerce Events. ↩
- Google Analytics. Shopify Help Center ↩