From a 5-person team working in a local café to a team of more than 4,000 people working in 5 offices located in North America. This is the story of Shopify, one of the most popular e-commerce platforms on the market, which has been in existence since 2004 and is gaining more and more fans. What is the reason for such popularity of this software?

Shopify is a kind of e-commerce platform, which is available in the subscription system. Just create an account on the site, choose one of the three price packages to start configuring your online store. You can also take advantage of a free trial period of 14 days to learn more about Shopify. With a high probability after this period, you will have a ready e-shop and start cooperation with this e-commerce platform permanently.

E-commerce is not easy. If you have ever tried to run a business, you probably know the reality of functioning in the network. In the beginning, it is worth to ask yourself a few key questions: What are you going to sell? How will you build a brand? How do you intend to direct traffic to your e-shop and boost sales?

Fortunately, on the battlefield, you are not alone with your dilemmas. Many entrepreneurs have already overcome this path. Their experience, needs and requirements have helped the Shopify specialists to develop their platform even better. There are currently more than 500,000 active shops on the Shopify platform, which together have boosted sales of more than 40 billion Euros. Which of Shopify's functionalities are its undisputed strengths?

The average rate of shopping basket abandonment in online shops is 68.81%. In other words, 7 in 10 customers add products to their shopping cart and leave without shopping.

Now imagine what happens if you don't have that knowledge and find it hard to monitor abandoned shopping carts? It's a huge loss, isn't it? This situation does not threaten Shopify users. All data is available in the Orders > Abandoned Checkouts tab. Here you can check the list of all customers who added items to their shopping cart but did not complete the transaction. Just send them an email to remind them of the selected products.

Every customer who creates an account in your online store will leave a visible "track". You will be able to quickly analyse the value of shopping baskets, frequency of purchases and select those customers who are most active in your online store.

Why is such information important? Because of this basis, you can build even better trust in your brand. Analyse your customers' purchase history and send them messages containing products complementary to those they have already purchased or of higher value. Cross-selling and up-selling methods increase the average order value by as much as 13%! What is important, this process can also be automated thanks to the integration of Shopify with the QuarticON recommendation engine.

It is no secret that discounts and sales help to increase revenue in online stores. In Shopify, to offer discounts, you can create discount codes, set automatic discounts or set sales prices for individual products. You can create discount codes for a specific amount, offer percentage discounts or free shipping. Customers can enter the discount codes they receive online at the checkout or in person if you are using a point of sale in a shop. This will surely make your customers feel honoured and happy to return to their next purchase.

Analytics is essential to check the effectiveness of your online store. How many people visit your shop? Where do they come from? How long do they stay? What channels did they use to reach your e-shop?

To receive data, go to the Analytics > Reports section and verify not only the financial condition of your e-commerce but also learn about the users' behaviour and evaluate the effectiveness of marketing campaigns. You also have the opportunity to view live what's happening in the store.

It is also worthwhile to integrate Shopify with Google Analytics. Just paste the tracking code into a specific field on the Shopify navigation desktop. This will give you even more data that you can turn into valuable business information.

Shopify provides a comprehensive overview of the status of all orders. Understanding how Shopify orders work is an essential part of doing business. When a customer places an order (using any of your active sales channels), it appears in the Orders tab. You can also create orders manually to register orders that have been placed outside the online store.

Efficient order management has a positive impact on building relationships with customers and makes you a reliable partner. What's more, your customer service department has less work to do.

Of course, these are not all the functionalities that make running an online store built on the Shopify platform easier. The specificity of each business is different, so it is worth to create a free account and check the real possibilities of this software.

​