Hooked on Shopify

Now I know what your thinking – I’ve heard that somewhere before.

Well it’s Shopifys’ tag line and used to feature quite prominently in various marketing promos. The thing is you shouldn’t just treat this as some throwaway remark.

It’s true.

In just a few minutes ANYONE can have their own shop up and running as a Shopify store. But, just because you can open a store in between the ad breaks doesn’t mean you should. If you really do want a business for life then think about these things first before you get carried away.

Price

Anyone can sell for the least money, but can you really survive long term making 20% margin? Remember cheap and value are two different things. Even with the world economy as it is now people still appreciate quality. And quality has a value. You only have too look at Shopify itself for this to be true. Shopify isn’t the cheapest ecommerce platform and in fact as well as a monthly fee they also charge a transaction fee on each sale. Has this hindered their growth? No. They currently have over 10,000 stores that believe what they are offering is value for money.

System

Now I’m not necessarily talking about computer or software system here, more the processes which define your business. This is important. All successful companies have systems which make them unique and set them apart from the competition.

McDonalds – They worked out a system years ago of how to create fast food that’s the same the world over. You may not like it but wow what a business model.

Amazon – Possibly the most well know ‘system’. Jeff Bezos created the ultimate ecommerce destination by figuring out a great business process. Just seemingly simple things like 1-click ordering make Amazon easier to use and more efficient than there competitors.

LingsCars – Now most of you will probably have never heard of Ling, but just bare with me on this. Ling is a Chinese imigrant who runs a successful and ever growing car leasing business here in the U.K. Nothing particularly special there. But instead of being like every other car leasing company and having a pretty site, not really updating it and getting people to phone for information Lings website is her whole system. All communication with customers from when they first make an enquiry to when the car gets delivered is driven from within the website using her self-made processes. Now you might not like her website but the system is genius, especially when you consider the items being purchased.

And this leads onto…

Scaleability

Yes, you may be a startup running out of your front room, but scaleability is key to your success. If you can scale faster, easier and cheaper than your competition you can get economies of scale. And this is where it gets really interesting. You can now get your widgets even cheaper and make more money from each sale. You  now invest that money in your process and…

You are on your way. Just start and repeat.

So now you’ve got your Shopify store you can also use it to drive your business for life. It’s not just a piece of software that’s installed on a server somewhere and has a shopping basket built into it. This is an ecommerce platform that can be the centre of your business, easily extend into different systems and scale with no hassle.

From $25 a month I reckon that’s amazing value.

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