Introduction
Whether you’re a small business in Ireland with no current ecommerce website or a national brand with an existing ecommerce store on a different ecommerce platform, Shopify is for you. Shopify is a complete ecommerce platform for selling your products online.
Working with a Shopify Ireland agency, I've helped clients experience the benefits of using Shopify to grow their businesses online.
In this article, I’ll outline why you should choose Shopify as your ecommerce platform for selling your products online.
Reasons To Choose Shopify In Ireland
- Shopify is affordable
- You can create a beautiful, professional store
- Shopify Payments cuts out the middlemen
- Shopify's App Store has an app for everything
- You can stop worrying about web hosting
- You can easily migrate to Shopify from other platforms
- Shopify support is available 24/7
- You can quickly scale your Shopify store as you grow
- You can access everything Shopify on your mobile app
- Shopify POS allows you to accept in-person payments instantly
- Shopify is a secure ecommerce platform
1. Shopify is affordable
As a business owner, costs are often top of your mind when making any decisions. Shopify knows this and is transparent with its pricing. Then you pay a monthly fee for using the Shopify platform and small transaction fees for every purchase made on your Shopify online store. These transaction fees depend on which Shopify plan you choose for your business. We recommend using this Shopify pricing calculator to determine which pricing plan makes the most sense for your business.
Shopify’s pricing model helps you scale your business using its platform without scaling up your costs at the same time. The cost of using Shopify decreases as you sell more because the transaction fees are lower for the plans that require a higher monthly subscription.
In the image below, I've modified Shopify's official pricing table only to include the information you'll likely find most useful. You can alternatively view the original, unmodified Shopify Ireland pricing plan.
We recommend the Basic Shopify plan for all small businesses starting out. You can upgrade/downgrade your Shopify plan at any time.
2. You can create a beautiful, professional store
Some of the world’s best-designed ecommerce stores use the Shopify platform, and Shopify offers readymade themes to help you emulate a lot of their functionality. You can explore the Shopify Theme Store to find a theme to match your brand - there are over 70 Shopify themes to choose from.
We are certified Shopify Partners and can help you design an ecommerce website on Shopify.
Shopify’s themes are designed for mobile-first experiences, meaning your store will look great for all your customers, no matter which device they shop. Every page, including the checkout process, is designed to look great and be fully functional on all screen sizes, including mobile devices. Considering the percentage of online orders from mobile devices is increasing year over year, having a truly responsive website design is critical for your business.
3. Shopify Payments cuts out the middlemen
PayPal and Stripe charge transaction fees on every order placed using their payment processors. Shopify built its payment processor, Shopify Payments, to cut out these middlemen and offer lower transaction fees for merchants like you. Shopify Payments allows you to accept payments from customers using VISA, MasterCard, American Express, Discover, Apple Pay, Google Pay, and Shop Pay. Customers can pay using their preferred payment method - whether that’s VISA or Google Pay.
While Shopify allows you to use third-party payment processors such as PayPal and Stripe, the transaction fees are higher for orders using these processors. I recommend using Shopify Payments as your store’s default payment processor and then offering PayPal as a secondary payment option as a small percentage of your customers will always want to use PayPal for placing their orders.
You can view a list of all Shopify’s payment providers for Ireland.
4. Shopify’s App Store has an app for everything
With the Shopify App Store, you can find a Shopify App for just about anything you need. For example, if you’re looking to create daily backups of your store in case you accidentally delete an order, you can download the Rewind Backups app. If you’re looking to collect and show off your customer reviews, you can download the Loox app.
Having access to such an extensive app store will save you and your business money in the long run because you won’t need to keep relying on a Shopify developer to build additional functionality you may need for your store. There’s probably already a Shopify app that does exactly what you’re looking for.
Like Shopify’s pricing plans, most apps offer generous free plans and then different tiers of payment that increase as you scale using the app.
5. You can stop worrying about web hosting
If you got a €1 coin for every time you worried about your web hosting, you’d be sitting on a fortune. No year goes by without your business (or any other online business) having an issue with your web hosting - either your website is down, or your web developer has broken something.
Good news: when you switch to Shopify, Shopify takes care of hosting your website. Their hosting is lightning-fast, which is super important, considering the link between decreased page load time and increased sales.
6. You can easily migrate to Shopify from other platforms
Sometimes you’ll find a platform or software that you’d love to use for your business, but the time, effort, and cost of migrating to that platform or software are too much, and you end up not making the switch. Fortunately for you, Shopify makes switching easy.
If you already have an existing online store on WooCommerce, Squarespace, Etsy, BigCommerce, Big Cartel, PrestaShop, Lightspeed, ShopKeep, or Square, then you can use the Shopify Store Importer app to import your product, customer, and order information from your existing platform into your new Shopify store.
If your ecommerce website is hosted on a different platform to those listed above (such as Magento or Wix), contact us to get help in migrating your data to Shopify.
7. Shopify support is available 24/7
You can get dedicated help from Shopify’s support team 24/7. Having access to expert support at any hour of the day is critical in ecommerce when your customers are shopping at your online store around the clock.
I use Shopify for my ecommerce stores, and their support team has always been extremely helpful whenever I’ve had questions. And the wait time to speak with an expert via live chat has never been longer than 5 minutes.
Shopify’s Help Center also offers excellent documentation and explainer guides on how to use Shopify. If you can’t find the answer you’re looking for in the help centre, we recommend you contact Shopify’s support team
8. You can quickly scale your Shopify store as you grow
Shopify provides you with the same technology as its enterprise clients such as Tesla, Gymshark, and Heinz - even though you’re paying a tiny fraction of the price of an enterprise subscription. This means you don’t need to worry about scaling as you grow your store - it’s all taken care of by Shopify.
This is a lifesaver for any growing business because you don't need to migrate to a different ecommerce platform when you get bigger and bigger; Shopify will handle whatever traffic you give it.
9. You can access everything Shopify on your mobile app
As a business owner, you’re frequently on the go. Shopify’s free mobile app allows you to receive notifications and view new orders on the go. Need to make a change to an order, product, or customer? You can do all these and so much more from the Shopify mobile app.
I find the Shopify mobile app most helpful in communicating with my staff about new orders and also for fulfilling, refunding, or archiving orders on the go.
The Shopify app also allows you to view your store's analytics, such as revenue, sessions, conversion rates, and more.
10. Shopify POS allows you to accept in-person payments instantly
Shopify’s Point-of-Sales (POS) system allows you to unify your in-store and online sales, so you no longer have to use multiple systems to manage your stock, customers, and order information. Shopify POS allows you to accept in-person customer payments at events such as markets or pop-up stores. Use the Shopify POS app to accept payments using your mobile phone or tablet.
Your Shopify POS is synced to your online store, so your product, customer, and information get updated in real-time. Gone for you are the days of selling the last available unit of a product in-store and then a few hours later having the same “last” unit be purchased through your online store.
11. Shopify is a secure ecommerce platform
Trust is a critical part of ecommerce and determines whether or not customers will trust your website enough to buy from you. 19% of abandoned carts are because the shopper doesn’t trust the site with their credit card information.
Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant, meaning Shopify is compliant with the standards set out by PCI. PCI is the globally recognised organisation for maintaining standards for secure processing of credit card transactions.
Shopify spends millions yearly on their platform’s security, so you can rest assured that your security concerns are being taken care of.
Your Shopify store will be protected with an SSL certificate (i.e. https://), meaning all communications between your customers and Shopify are encrypted and cannot be intercepted by third parties (e.g. hackers).
Shopify also comes with an in-built fraud analysis included in every Shopify plan. Shopify’s fraud analysis helps you identify orders that could be fraudulent. You can also use Shopify’s fraud analysis to review high-risk orders to avoid potential chargebacks - which can be a high cost for merchants selling online.
What are you waiting for? Get started with Shopify Ireland
Shopify is the leading ecommerce platform for selling online. Shopify has a pricing plan to suit your budget and requirements, and you can get your store up and running in days. Shopify’s ecommerce platform is built to help grow your business - it’s affordable and has the underlying technology to support your website as you scale to reach new heights. Shopify Ireland takes its security seriously and helps you securely accept payments from customers anywhere in the world.
