While the number of product variations is quite generous

this can be an issue for certain products requiring more product options. Shopify’s strict limit of three product options may require a creative workaround, like combining multiple product options into a single choice. Although you may be able to do so and be relatively happy with the results, it may result in a longer build time and affect the overall user experience.

Fortunately, you can find third-party apps in the app store to solve this dilemma. In fact, there are several apps available that can lift this limit, but they come at a cost. If you don’t want to pay for one of these apps, you can also integrate ‘line item property’ coding into your Shopify site. However, this will cost you time. Plus, you must know how to edit code and feel comfortable doing so.

Ultimately, if you’re selling products that don’t require boatloads of options and variations, Shopify will definitely work for you. That said, more out-of-the-box flexibility with product options would be nice.

Shopify’s Approach to Product Categories
While there is some room for improvement when it comes to Shopify’s handling of product pages and options, its handling of product categories is top-notch and much better than many of its ecommerce website building competitors.

Not only can you can add products into a ‘collection’ manually, but you can also save a heap of time by using Shopify’s ‘automated collections’ function. With this, you simply establish rules pertaining to product tags or titles and the platform automatically places imported products into the right category or collection.

This automatedBig Boss vote categorizing function can literally save you hours or even days of tedious work, especially if you have hundreds of products in your store.

Importing Data to Shopify

t’s not the sexiest topic, but no Shopify review would be complete without discussing the importing of data, which can make or break your experience with an online shop builder.

Fortunately, Shopify makes this process simple and easy by allowing you to import important product data directly from a CSV file. This is extremely helpful and will save considerable time if you’re migrating data from a different platform or bulk uploading several products to your Shopify store.

Shopify Plus customers can also utilize new features like the command-line tool and Transporter app to import products as well.

As far as text-based data goes, you can also import content from WordPress, Tumblr, and other blogging platforms. To do so, you can simply copy and paste the content, use a third-party app, or if you know what you’re doing, use the Shopify API.

Creating Product Variations with Shopify
Shopify allows for up to 100 product variations. However, these variations can only be applied to three different product options.

For instance, if you’re creating an ecommerce website to sell hats, you can have up to 100 variations of a single hat based on size, style, and color.

For instance

 the Shopify interface doesn’t automatically crop uploaded images with different aspect ratios. This means your product catalogue may contain images in different shapes, which will negatively impact the design of your site.

That being said, you can easily resolve this with any photo editing program, but you must adjust the aspect ratios prior to uploading the images. This can be a time-consuming hassle, especially if your site contains hundreds of products.

Another potential drawback relates to Shopify’s Facebook integration. While using Shopify to populate the shop section of a Facebook page is rather simple and easy, there is only a buy button and not an ‘add to cart’ option. So, you can only sell one item at a time via your Facebook page.

Although this is fine for some online sellers, merchants who average multiple items per sale will find this single item setup downright frustrating. To be fair, however, these limitations are due to Facebook, not Shopify. However, you should be aware of them and may be better off encouraging followers to click a link or button that directs them to their actual Shopify store.

Aside from these minor gripes, Shopify offers a clean, user-friendly interface with a minimal learning curve, making it an excellent option for most busy or technically challenged users.

The Shopify Interface

Unlike some website builder platforms, which all strive to provide a user-friendly interface but somehow miss the mark, Shopify is streamlined and straightforward to use. It has a modern, clean interface that allows you to create and manage a Shopify-powered online store.

Beyond that, it also lets you:

• Embed a buy button to sell directly from any blog or website

• Manage your Shopify products and Amazon listings from a single location

• Use your Shopify store to list products on eBay

• Embed a tab or button on your Facebook page for showcasing and selling your products on Facebook

• Directly sell to customers and provide support in Messenger

• Sell products on Buzzfeed, Houzz, Instagram, and other social media channels

All in all, the Shopify interface is straightforward and makes selling via each of these channels remarkably easy. However, there are few interface-related problems worth mentioning.

Basic Shopify:

• Sell both digital and physical goods
• Choose from dozens of free and paid themes
• Organize products into categories
• Process credit card transactions using Shopify Payments or third-party payment gateways
• Integrate with PayPal for more payment options
• Choose your preferred shipping method and automatically calculate shipping rates
• Avoid shopping cart abandonment
• Optimize for first-page search engine rankings
• Include a blog for improved brand awareness and rankings
• Manage content with CMS functionality
• Edit the HTML and CSS of your online store
• Import and export customer data
• Offer discount codes
• Create multiple staff accounts
• Access a POS app
• Print shipping labels and more!

As an alternative to Shopify Payments

s an alternative to Shopify Payments, a third-party payment gateway can also be used. With Shopify, there are more than 100 of these payment gateways to choose from, which is far more than the choices available with Bigcommerce and similar Shopify competitors.

Using third-party payment processors or gateways, however, takes a little configuration. A merchant account must be set up, and depending on the provider you choose, you’ll need to pay a monthly fee, transaction fees, or both. Plus, Shopify will charge a transaction fee as well, the amount of which once again depends on the type of plan you select.

Whether or not it is cheaper to use a third-party payment processor or Shopify Payments will depend on the Shopify Plan and/or the payment processor you’re using.

With payment handling and processing out of the way, let’s move on to Shopify’s themes and the visual appeal of Shopify stores.

Shopify Themes – An Endless Selection to Choose From
Shopify provides its users with 10 free themes to use for their ecommerce site, and there are multiple variants of each theme, resulting in several different actual design templates. In addition to being attractive, the templates are also responsive, so they display quite nicely regardless of the device being used.

If these free templates don’t exactly work for you, there are 60 premium, fully responsive Shopify themes available in the theme store to choose from as well. However, since they are ‘premium,’ each once costs an additional $140-$180.

If you have an idea of what you’re looking for, there are several filters you can use to narrow down your options. In fact, you can view theme templates by layout style, home page type, industry, and more, so finding the right theme for your online store isn’t very difficult at all.

However, Shopify Payments is only available in the following countries/regions

• United States
• Canada
• United Kingdom
• Germany
• Spain
• Ireland
• Australia
• New Zealand
• Singapore
• Japan
• Hong Kong

If you’re not based in one of these countries, you will need to use a separate third-party payment provider, which will have its own fees to take into consideration.

If using Shopify Payments, however, there’s no need to worry about transaction fees at all, which can save you considerable money. Nonetheless, you must still take credit card fees into consideration. Also known as a credit card rate, these fees can range from 2.4 to 2.9 percent in the US or 1.5 to 2.2 percent in the UK.

That being said, the exact rate may differ depending on the type of Shopify plan you’re on. The more expensive the plan, the lower the fees will be.

Shopify Plus

esigned for enterprise-level businesses, Shopify Plus isn’t a solution for ordinary store owners who sell products on a smaller scale. Rather than the off-the-shelf plans above, it’s specifically tailored to the needs of each client.

Needless to say, the pricing isn’t published, and neither is the scope of what it offers as each varies from client to client depending on their individual needs. This advanced solution is designed for large Shopify stores with high volume and global businesses who need more functionality, development, and support than an out-of-the-box solution can provide.

Overall, Shopify’s plans and pricing are quite consistent with those of Bigcommerce, Squarespace, and other key competitors. In fact, the largest difference lies with Shopify’s ‘Lite’ plan, which allows you to use Shopify’s key features on another site for a small monthly fee but lacks the functionality to build a fully hosted store.

Accepting Payments with Shopify
There are two payment options available for customers of a Shopify online store. The most straightforward and least costly option for store owners is the platform’s built-in payment solution, Shopify Payments.

Advanced Shopify

This Shopify plan is the company’s flagship out-of-the-box ecommerce solution. It costs $299 per month, which is significantly more than Shopify’s other ready-to-run plans, but you get to harness the full might of Shopify’s abilities and enjoy some really neat advanced features.

For instance, Advanced Shopify store owners can create up to 15 staff accounts rather than five or two. This allows you to have an entire team operating your online store in different capacities.

With this supercharged plan, you’ll also benefit from even lower transaction fees and credit card rates. Speaking of rates, one of this plan’s key features is the inclusion of calculated shipping rates. Thanks to this feature, you can use several different shipping companies to ship your products and show the different real-time rates of each.

Another nice feature of this plan is the Advanced Report Builder, which is great for generating a variety of low and high-level reports for various aspects of your ecommerce business. The other plans are perfectly fine for most, but this plan was made for businesses in need of a powerful and scalable solution.

Shopify Pros and Cons Before we get into the nuts and bolts of Shopify and examine everything it has to offer, here’s a snapshot of its pros and cons.

Pros:
• Extremely popular
• One of the least expensive ways to begin selling online
• Zero transaction fees with Shopify Payments
• Clean and easy-to-use interface
• Excellent for dropshipping
• Abandoned cart saver
• Ability to sell from Facebook and/or an existing site
• Wide range of appealing themes and templates
• POS, AMP, and VAT MOSS functionality
• Huge selection of apps
• Built-in blog included
• On-the-go management via mobile device
• Ability to purchase profitable pre-built stores

Cons:
• Only three product options
• Some functions require app investment
• Professional reporting requires a higher plan level
• Shopify Payments is only available in certain countries
• Unavoidable fees for third-party payment gateways
• No MailChimp integration
• Image aspect ratios may need adjusting
• Only sends one abandoned cart follow-up email
• Difficult to export blog posts
• Lack of technical support