What are the Unique Features of Shopify?

We are well aware of the fact that online shopping has gained immense importance over the last few years. The craze of online shopping further escalated after the hit of COVID-19 when there was a nationwide lockdown imposed in most countries and people were barred from stepping outside their homes. At the present, it has become essential for shop owners to upscale their businesses and make a move toward digital platforms where they can exhibit their products and reach out to a broader audience. When we are discussing the several benefits and unique features provided by different platforms, Shopify deserves special attention. The unique features of Shopify enable users to efficiently build and run their online stores with its outstanding Content Management System.

Research shows that millions of businesses in 175 countries across the world have made over $496 billion USD in sales using Shopify. This implies that the unique features of Shopify make it extremely convenient for business owners to sell their products online and also empower individual business owners. Undoubtedly, Shopify features and benefits provide extensive services to enhance your productivity and expand your business with its comprehensive customer-centric approach. But we need to understand what makes Shopify unique from others to see get an understanding how far businesses can be prosperous using Shopify platform.

Also read: Comparing Shopify and Shopify Plus

What makes Shopify unique?

There are many e-commerce platforms operating in the competitive market but Shopify features and benefits offer the best fit for your business to bloom for a few reasons.

• Shopify offers a 14-day free trial for everyone to create an online store so that you find it convenient to check whether it is relevant for your business or not. Also, you will be able to explore all the features and functionalities available on the platform. So, if you have your products ready and wish to merchandise then you should definitely consider Shopify.
• By availing the Shopify features and benefits you will be able to create an online ecommerce website with all the functionalities including shopping cart, inventory, and payment as well. The unique features of Shopify ensure that all these activities sync up well and function seamlessly. Moreover, the platform makes the payment process simple by just plugging and playing nearly any payment gateway.
• Shopify supports 50 languages and has an integration of 70 payment gateways so it becomes very convenient and user-friendly for merchants to sell their products to the world. The multiple Shopify features and benefits enable its users to access out-of-the-box SEO, excellent tools for content management, and Abandoned cart recovery options.
• Shopify introduced Shopify Plus program in 2014 to cope with Magento, Volusion and Demandware to attract large-scale business owners to their platform. The excellent Shopify Plus features offer a complete enterprise e-commerce platform developed from lavish merchants and brands. At present, there are 25,733 domains using Shopify Plus.

Now we will discuss in details some significant unique features of Shopify.

6 Unique Features of Shopify

In this section, we will discuss the 6 major unique features of Shopify that can be used by the business owners to leverage their growth and attract customers.

1. Shopify POS

Shopify has a distinctive feature called Point of Sale or Shopify POS that allows businesses to merchandise their products in the real world. For example, businesses can run their physical pop-up stores to sell their products offline and at the same time accept payments from buyers using a card reader. These payments are directly aligned to the company’s Shopify inventory that also keeps a record of every sales transaction for the company.

This feature of Shopify provides a centralized dashboard and this is why businesses don’t require to maintain separate Sales records in-store and for online purchases. This application is extremely suitable for Apple devices (iPhone & iPad) and enables users to customize/personalize Orders, show customer purchase records, and offer discounts. Moreover, it can also provide customers rewards if the online store is equipped with an active loyalty program.

Shopify POS is extensively used to plan and create business strategies like personalized Marketing Campaigns for in-store customers. This application is offered by Shopify in two options, Shopify POS Lite and Shopify POS Pro. The Pro version comes with superior features such as In-store Analytics, Omnichannel selling and many more.

2. Incredible SEO Tools

We all know that Search Engine Optimization or SEO is the key element that drives growth and visibility for every online business. Shopify offers some incredible SEO tools and services that merchants can use to achieve their desired business results. The SEO tools available on Shopify allow customers to easily get to your online store.

Moreover, Shopify offers support for different third-party application integrations to let users efficiently optimize their websites. Smart SEO is an application available on Shopify App Store that comes with amazing useful features for business owners such as automated metadata input, structured data to various search engines, including Google, and provides multi-language support, and lots more. There is another important application called Booster Image and SEO Optimizer that is used to improve traffic from google image search. This app automatically optimizes Meta Tags, Alt Text, Site Maps, JSON-LD, etc.

3. Shopify Analytics

Shopify consists of various analytics tools that allow users to track their online store’s performance. Shopify Analytics provides crucial insights about Customer Activities, Marketing, Sales, and others to help businesses optimize their work operations and opt for better strategic decisions for improving sales.

Shopify’s actionable dashboard shows critical metrics like Product Analytics, Live view, Demography of Visitors, Total Purchase, and many more. These metrics can be seamlessly consolidated with Google Analytics to accentuate Shopify Analytics’ capabilities. The tool also provides multiple reports, including Marketing, Inventory, Acquisition, Order, Sales, Profit, and a wide range of Custom Reports.

4. Shipping and Security Measures

Shopify is a highly secured platform compliant with PCI standards. Shopify is certified Level 1 PCI DSS compliant. This compliance is applicable to all the online stores powered by Shopify. Shopify is extremely cautious about protecting your store and have invested considerable amount of time and money to secure PCI compliance. Ranging from annual on-site assessments validating compliance to continuous applying risk management strategies, Shopify is committed to keep their platform secured for your business. Shopify meet all the six PCI standards which are: –

• Maintain a secure network.
• Maintain a vulnerability management program.
• Regularly monitor and test networks.
• Protect cardholder data.
• Implement strong access control measures.
• Maintain an information security policy.

Most importantly, Shopify provides a free SSL certificate for every store so that all the data, content, and transaction details remain safe. Business owners can get automatic shipping rates from big shipping carriers like FedEx, USPS, and UPS. Shopify manages major tax rates of different countries and states automatically depending on the location. Also, business owners can make the average size of their orders better by offering free shipping services and discounts to customers by setting up some price points.

For more information about Shopify’s PCI Compliance reports, see here: –

Viewing Shopify's compliance reports.

5. Abandoned Cart Reminders

Studies show that on average, 68% of customers have the tendency to abandon their Shopping Carts before making a purchase, which results in a huge fall in sales figures. But if you are running your store on Shopify, you are privileged because it has Abandoned Carts Checkout Emails. This is another exclusive feature provided by Shopify that enables users to identify customers who have selected products in their carts and you can send emails to remind them of those abandoned products.

Merchants can also easily automate this entire process by upgrading their stores to Shopify’s advanced subscription which offers more exclusive Shopify features and benefits. This will let them save a lot of their precious time and enhance revenue generation.

6. 24×7 Technical Support

Shopify has an active 24×7 technical support team that is committed to listen to your queries and resolve your issues. Shopify’s customer support can be reached via email, phone, or live chat and you can expect an immediate response. This is how Shopify provides unparallel assistance to its customers. Besides,  Shopify Help Center is packed with a number of community discussion forums, user guides, extensive documentation, and tutorials. They also have eBooks & webinars in Shopify Compass, along with a wide range of advanced Shopify University guides. In addition, you can access a vast database of FAQs available on Shopify where users find answers to their relevant questions for resolving their queries on their own.

These unique features of Shopify are helpful for businesses of all sizes and structures. It can be said that Shopify is a next-generation facility that has a cloud-based platform for making businesses create their own path of success. Another interesting and user-friendly feature of Shopify is that business owners can run their online store efficiently on this e-commerce platform with no prior knowledge of advanced technology.

Some Top Shopify features list  

Shopify features list consists of the following useful information,

• Shopify offers 70+ top-notch themes for your online storefront.
• Every Shopify store has a free 256-bit SSL certificate for keeping your store secured.
• Shopify provides multiple useful integrations for drop shipping.
• Shopify offers some outstanding SEO tools and practices.
• Shopify can easily automate store e-mails.
• Shopify has user-friendly inventory management.
• Shopify can host with unlimited bandwidth.
• Shopify provides actionable dashboard for analytics.
• Shopify offers a portable Shopify App that is mobile friendly.

Shopify vs Shopify Plus  

Shopify Plus is a fully hosted enterprise e-commerce platform developed for small, medium and big enterprises to help businesses achieve their desired goals and improve their performance. Shopify Plus features consist of new exciting features, integrations, your store’s underlying code, dedicated support system and many more.

Now we will analyze the major differences between Shopify and Shopify Plus.

The primary difference between the two can be understood from the point of view of users. It can be explained with a simple reference, Shopify is for those business owners who want to set up small and medium businesses, whereas Shopify Plus is more suitable for enterprise-level business. For example, Nestle, Hawkers, Kylie Jenner, Budweiser, etc.

Shopify plans enables you to customize your Shopify theme templates using the editor but it becomes hard to switch to a completely new theme whereas Shopify Plus plan allows more better and superior customization, allowing you to access Shopify’s theme language, Liquid. With the help of Liquid, you will be able to make changes more easily in the backend at the code level for greater control.

Shopify Plus features allow users to take full advantage of third-party apps because it includes enhanced API resources such as GiftCard, User and Multipass. To put in simply, Shopify Plus allows more API integrations than Shopify.

Shopify Plus features offer a wide range of exclusive Shopify apps in their app store such as Wholesale channel, Shopify Flow,Launchpad, Bulk Account Inviter , etc. These are not accessible to regular Shopify users.

There are many more differences existing between the two and Shopify Plus is more offers more flexible services to its users. But we can’t deny the importance of regular Shopify platform and its extensive usability features. It is the regular Shopify platform that has come up with its new version called the Shopify Plus. As a beginner or a small-scale and medium-sized business owner, it is always advisable for you to start with Shopify instead of availing the Shopify Plus features. But you can always choose to use the Plus feature if you see an impressive growth in your business and you need the functionalities and advanced services offered by Shopify Plus to expand your business regime.

Wrapping Up

You can always consider Shopify while making the first move to start your business. According to studies, sales on Shopify have topped $100 billion so far. It is one of the leading prestigious online e-commerce platforms with multiple dynamic and useful features to help businesses sell anywhere from their comfort zone. Shopify supports high-end security features, a wide range of third-party integrations, valuable analytics, and user-friendly interface to stand-out in the competitive market from other e-commerce platforms.

So, are you ready to start your online e-commerce store with Shopify? Reach out to us at Webuters today to launch your Shopify store.

Our Shopify experts at Webuters are always ready to help you with all the guidance you need to make your business a huge success. Whether you run a small organization or work for a huge business empire, we at Webuters are here to assist you with everything in your e-commerce journey with Shopify.

Connect with us today.