With over 800,000 stores using their platform and over $100 billion in sales flowing through Shopify every day, it’s fast becoming one of the largest and best e-commerce platforms on the market.

We’ve dealt with quite a few different back-end frameworks, and Shopify is one that we’ve really clicked with. It’s a very capable framework that makes things easy for both the end user and the people behind the scenes. Here’s why we love Shopify.

Add-On Modules

Like another well-known web staple, WordPress, Shopify has a wide array of add-ons available that create extra functionality while working seamlessly with the platform. Picking and choosing the features you need is easy, and there’s an active community that can help if things somehow go awry.

From Facebook selling integration to bulk tag editing, there’s an app out there that can do what your business is looking for. And if you do have someone on staff who can code, it’s possible to dig into the back end too, meaning you can extend and advance your site even more.

Ease of Use

Shopify is one of the easiest e-commerce frameworks to use.

There are other options on the market, but they often take a level of fine-tuning on the back end that Shopify doesn’t. Shopify provides the software and the hosting, leaving you free to focus on the parts of your business that matter the most to you and your customers.

We’ve used Shopify with a number of people at various levels of tech-savviness. Shopify allows people who aren’t that comfortable with programming or troubleshooting to be able to understand their e-commerce platform.

They take the guesswork out of it, and since they do all the maintenance and upgrades themselves you don’t have to worry about clients forgetting about patches or updates.

Point of Sale

One of the biggest selling points for clients with both brick and mortar and e-commerce is the point of sale functionality that’s built in to Shopify.

When you’re dealing with a retailer that’s both physical and digital, the more integrated you can make everything, the better off you are. Creating a seamless experience between the two makes it easier for both the client and their customers. If you’re struggling with point of sale integration, using Shopify can help get you off on the right foot.

Marketplace Integration

Forty-eight percent of people trying to buy online now begin a search for products on a marketplace like Amazon. That makes marketplace integration more key than it’s ever been. If you’re not putting your products up on the major e-commerce marketplaces, you’re losing out on sales that could be yours with slightly more work.

Shopify helps with that. You can sell across multiple marketplaces seamlessly—it’s like having multiple storefronts. No matter where customers begin their search for products in their buying journey, you’ll be there front and center.

SEO

Shopify’s integration with SEO is something we’ve really appreciated here at Darkroom. Shopify allows you to customize your SEO everywhere. From product photos to tags, you can set your products up the way you need to and rank quickly on search engines.

There’s also access to advanced analytics built into the platform, so you can see exactly what your store is doing at all times. We love how integrated SEO is with the platform. It’s helped us build up rankings for our customers quickly in a way that other e-commerce platforms just aren’t as good at—even on the most basic version.

Marketing

The analytics tools you use for SEO are just as useful for other aspects of marketing.

With only a little effort, you can figure out where your customers are coming from and what they’re looking at, allowing you to customize your sales funnel and tailor your offerings to fit your audience. Creating a marketing plan for both the short and long term is simple with the analytics Shopify offers.

Security and Reliability

Since Shopify is a third-party hosted service, its security and reliability are out of your hands. You don’t have to worry about keeping things locked down—they’ll do it for you. And Shopify does that well.

SSL and PCI compliance are easily doable through the platform, keeping valuable credit card information safe. Add-ons are vetted and screened rigorously before being added to Shopify’s app store, so you don’t have to worry about downloading a plugin that will torpedo your whole site.

There’s also active, quick-responding support, so in the rare case that something does go wrong, it’s a much quicker process to get your store back on its feet than it is with some of the other big e-commerce platforms.

The biggest benefit is that you don’t have to worry about the security so much yourself. Leave it in their capable hands and you can focus on the actual selling part of your business.

There are a host of reasons that we love Shopify, but the biggest one is this: it makes life easier for our clients. It’s scalable, secure and reliable. For the price it does everything that most stores need, and it removes most of the technological burden from the client and places it on Shopify’s shoulders.

We don’t have to worry about teaching a lot of new technology, either …

It’s one of the most seamless “plug-and-play solutions” on the market right now, and we’ve had great success working with clients on Shopify-based stores. So no matter how big or how small your company, Shopify can be a tool that helps you focus on what really matters: growing your business.

It makes the e-commerce side easier, safer, more reliable, and more capable. It lets you integrate all parts of your business together. We’ve seen the benefits for our clients—and they can be yours too, if you decide to take advantage of them.