When we speak to business owners looking to set up shop online, the question of platforming is always a pressing and relevant one that comes up time and time again. It’s never been a better time to set up an ecommerce shop, but the range of platforms available does mean that it can be a little confusing or even daunting for someone new to ecommerce (or even those growing and re-platforming).

One of the platforms that makes our life easier as an agency is Shopify, which really allows us to focus on the selling, and the juicy search marketing bits which is what we’re best at. Rather than struggling to get tracking code on the site, or battling with difficult page management or awkward tech issues, we can focus on helping you achieve your goals.

It’s not about us, admittedly. But if less of your time can be spent on stock management, creating category pages and offers, and more time on what helps your business grow, that’s 100% a better use of your time. Here’s some of our favourite things about Shopify which make our life easier, and so make it easier for you to make more money, faster.

Super easy ecommerce tracking

I’ve long since lost count of the amount of times that as an agency, we’ve struggled with developers implementing Google Analytics’ ecommerce tracking on varying platforms. Either they think it’s not their job/remit, or we’re being arsey about it, and eventually we give up and try measuring revenue via ouija board. Not ideal. 

In Shopify though? You tick this box. That’s it. It’s as easy as entering your UA code to add Google Analytics in the first place, too.

Take it to the next level: while this is great for startups / getting started super-quickly, you’ll be better served by Google Tag Manager. Not sure what that is? You know where we are.

Cart abandonment emails by default

You needn’t go that far back to remember a time when email cart abandonment didn’t exist. What was once a pioneering idea is now an ecommerce must-have. Handily, it is enabled by default on all Shopify stores. 

We often see some of the highest revenue driven from even Shopify’s basic cart abandonment emails, because…. they still work. They work really well.

Take it to the next level: Custumoise your abandonment email, add some personality, branding, storytelling and give customers even more reason to return. 

Apps! Add stuff, without a developer

Part of the success of Shopify over the past 10 years has been its huge extensibility through the App Store. These plugins for your site enable almost everything you could think of, from product bundling, inventory management, customer support, competitions, and more. And all without a developer. Of course these are available on other platforms, but they tend to be not quite as helpful in terms of quality, or sheer quantity.

Think about how WordPress plugins work, and you won’t be a million miles away. While basic Shopify installations don’t allow access to some parts of the underlying code of the site, apps enable deeper, and more complex functionality to your site, in literally a few clicks.

Take it to the next level: Try a few of our favourites: Feed for Google Shopping, Zipify OCU, ShopSync, Bundler.

Super easy low-level SEO

While any platform that claims to nail SEO out of the box is stretching the truth, there’s plenty of good that a CMS can offer in terms of ‘best practise’ when it comes to having strong SEO fundamentals.

Shopify builds upon basics like simple URL structures and sitemap with ridiculously easy automated category page creation and basic metatag editing.

How many platforms let you create a category page based upon a brand and a price, and then give you a default URL and meta title which makes sense? It shouldn’t be so refreshing in 2021, but it’s a huge time saver for us, you, and makes it that much easier for search engines to understand your product groupings.

Take it to the next level: hire us. Even the greatest Shopify SEO apps will only perform low-level SEO, which is nothing without the right research and strategy.

Gift card support and support throughout pandemic

The wealth of entrepreneurs starting online businesses through 2020 saw business booming for Shopify, and its share price doubled through the pandemic. But in fairness, the company has given back somewhat, and made life easier for us all when physical shops have been closed.

Shopify added gift card support out of the box for all plans, enabling even the smallest or most offline retailer to be able to sell something, anything, during ‘these unprecedented times’. Some of these features will live on, as part of ‘the new normal’. 

Add this to local pickup support which was hastily added, longer free trials to get merchants set up, and even Shopify Capital to help struggling merchants with cashflow.  

Take it to the next level: can you do similar and give something back? Consumers are looking for conscious brands more now than ever, so can you do some real good with your business? Pro tip: Shopify even makes it easy to do this, with built-in donations at the checkout.

Useful reporting out of the box

Some CMS offer you some really quite obscure reporting, or even worse, very little/none. It’s not really a comprehensive out of the box reporting system that you need, I still love Google Analytics for that, but there’s some mega reports built in which are easily accessible in Shopify, like this one that tells you what customers are searching foe on your site (and failing).

It sounds really simple, but they’ve executed it with just enough ‘pay attention to this’ insight to make it useful.

Take it to the next level: if you’re at, or past peak customer accusation, the basic bones of a customer lifetime value reporting are right there within Shopify — see below. Getting a handle on lifetime value can take you from good to great.

Enough to get you started with email

It’s not Klaviyo, no. But if you’re just launching your first ecommerce site, and want to dip your toe into email marketing? Shopify’s fine!

Once you start collecting your customer’s emails (and Shopify will look after this for you), starting to email them on a regular basis to convert some of those 1-time shoppers into 2 or 3-time shoppers will make a huge impact to your business. Admittedly, its campaign builder is fairly rudimentary and won’t win any creative awards, but if you’re just getting started with email marketing, you can very easily send out some campaigns.

Take it to the next level: Honestly, it’s a nice to have, but for any real legwork you’re going to need an external email service provider. Both Klaviyo and Mailchimp play nicely with Shopify, via the Shopify App Store.

That’s not to say Shopify is perfect, far from it. But if you’re a retailer starting out and wanting to make a serious dent within your niche, Shopify can make life a lot easier for you. Want to spend even less time worrying about your shopping feeds, display advertising, and ecommerce management in general? That’s our speciality.