Shopify Website Development Services

Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform and is suitable for businesses of all sizes, while also catering to a wide range of industries. But is it right for you? That depends on your needs and budget.

Shopify has a very wide feature set and is a great solution for most needs, but there are some less-expensive solutions out there as well and solutions that take slightly different approaches to their platforms. If you’re unsure, get in touch and we can help you navigate this very important decision.

An e-commerce platform is used to sell goods online and process payments, while a content management system (CMS) is used to build and manage a website and/or blog. There’s a lot of overlap; Shopify includes web content and blog management functions, and most CMS systems have plug-ins available to enable e-commerce.

Depending on what you want to achieve, an e-commerce platform (like Shopify) could be the right solution, but a CMS solution with e-commerce (like WordPress with WooCommerce) might be a better fit. If you need help deciding, we can advise you.

There are a number of “free” open-source e-commerce platforms available, but free doesn’t always mean cheaper in the long run. Your site will need hosting, an SSL certificate, a payment gateway, and a number of other things to work seamlessly—and all of these things come at a cost.

Open-source systems will also need regular security patches and upgrades—as will your server—so there will be ongoing maintenance costs. These tasks are all overseen by Shopify and included in its monthly price, so the cost difference may be less than you think.

In some cases, the ‘free’ solution can actually cost more. Ultimately, you might prefer Shopify’s predictable monthly cost to the possibility of getting a surprise bill for a security patch gone wrong or having to bring your store back online after it’s taken down by hackers.

Your store can be built so its customer-facing elements communicate in whatever language(s) you want. The admin area of the store is also available in a wide range of languages, including English, Chinese (Simplified), Chinese (Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.

Your store can accept payments in just about any currency as long as your payment gateway accepts it. You can also allow your clients to pay in their local currency or provide them a number of options. Shopify also supports a wide range of cryptocurrencies, including Bitcoin, Ether, and Litecoin.

Yes, Shopify can be set up to charge the correct GST/VAT for your locations, including overseas sales.

Yes, Shopify seamlessly integrates with it, automatically importing sales, order details, and inventory into Quickbooks.

Yes, Shopify will integrate seamlessly, automatically importing sales and order details into Xero.

Shopify supports over 100 different payment gateways, including Stripe.

Shopify supports over 100 different payment gateways, including PayPal.

Yes. Shopify offers Shopify Payments at competitive rates. However, it’s only currently available in certain countries—Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Czechia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong SAR, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Netherlands, New Zealand, Portugal, Romania, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Shopify takes between 0.5% to 2.0%, depending upon the plan you’re on. You’ll pay less per transaction with the Advanced Shopify store. Shopify will waive this fee completely if you use their Shopify Payments gateway. As a result, over 85% of stores use Shopify payments where it’s available.

If Shopify doesn’t have the feature you want, you can always build it using a custom app. Building a custom app is usually fairly straightforward for a developer who’s familiar with the Shopify API, but it really depends on what you’re trying to achieve. Naturally, advanced functionality will be more difficult to build than something more straightforward.

Shopify apps can be built using a wide variety of programming languages and frameworks, so there’s no one set way of developing a Shopify app.

It’s usually quicker and more affordable to start with an existing theme and just make the design modifications you’d like to it. However, it really depends on your design. If you design something very unique, then you might be better off developing a custom theme from scratch. If you decide to modify an existing Shopify theme, be prepared to make some concessions, as the code can be inflexible in some areas or is just generally difficult to work with at times.

A good developer will have a good base theme that they build on top of, giving you the best of both worlds—faster development time but also the ability to customize whatever you need.

Yes, Shopify can use a custom-registered domain name like myamazingstore.com. You can register your domain name through Shopify directly or point it from any existing domain registrar service (e.g., GoDaddy, Dotster, etc.).

If you already have one, you can easily use your existing domain name, pointing it at your new site so that customers can easily find your new store when it launches.

Shopify hosts the site for you, so you don’t need additional web hosting. And it’s good too. It’s fast, reliable, secure, and scalable (it won’t even crash when your Black Friday sale goes viral!).