Shopify as an E-Commerce Solution + Custom Shopify Themes

I get asked about recommended e-commerce solutions a lot so I thought I would write up some information about one of the solutions I really like: Shopify.

Shopify isn’t a WordPress-based solution. It’s an external e-commerce solution. Your shop lives completely on Shopify’s servers vs. your own. Advantages to this are you don’t have to personally mess with getting an SSL certificate in place on your own hosting as Shopify handles everything when it comes to that and data security of your customer’s transactions. Also, just because it lives on Shopify’s servers doesn’t mean a Shopify store cannot be seamlessly integrated within a WordPress website. You can pull cart item counts and similar into the core WordPress site. While Shopify is making continuous progress on the content management front, it still makes for relatively convoluted management of pages that exist beyond the store. That’s why pairing it with WordPress is ideal.

One thing I love about Shopify is the ability to custom theme out a store with relative ease if you are a developer. I feel just as confident taking a PSD into Shopify as I do taking one into WordPress as there is the same flexibility to what you can do. Shopify also provides excellent developer documentation. Some e-commerce solutions are a nightmare to theme out so it’s definitely a huge plus from a development perspective when an e-commerce solution doesn’t turn customizing the look of it into a brutal experience. To do custom theming, you definitely need coding knowledge, though. If you are looking to set up a Shopify store without any coding skills, you’d likely be better off checking out the ample amount of free & premium themes that Shopify offers.

Shopify is definitely not the cheapest e-commerce solution but when it comes to e-commerce, choosing the best solution over the cheapest solution should win every day of the week. For the amount of features Shopify offers, I definitely think they’re a great e-commerce solution to consider and a wise investment to make. While I have worked with some WordPress-based e-commerce solutions, I will say that Shopify feels the most feature-rich and stable of the options I’ve worked with and I highly recommend checking them out.

Check out Shopify by clicking here. (Full disclosure: that is an affiliate link and you can visit Shopify.com directly, as well. They’re awesome!)