Why Shopify Should Be Your First Online Store Platform

I ran an independent online store for a decade. I should have migrated to Shopify on day 1. 

The Story

On Thanksgiving Day 2013 - the day before Black Friday - my self managed, independent online store was hit with a "brute force attack" from Russia. We weren't hacked. Nothing breached our security and private data wasn't stolen. But a bot created in Russia added thousands of products a second to our shopping cart with the sole intent of breaking our store. Our servers weren't built for that kind of traffic and transaction volume, and our site crashed on the eve of the largest shopping day of the year. 

I jumped on the phone with our web developer and our IT manager. We contacted the company hosting our servers. The brute force attack on our site over-burdened the servers to the extent that every e-commerce company using this hosting company also crashed. 

Our team spent Thanksgiving Day from 11am until 2am identifying the problem, fixing the problem and getting our store open again for Black Friday. By 2am we had returned to stable operating conditions. At least, that's what we thought. 

At 9am on Black Friday it happened again. Once again, we organized the team, isolated the problem (a little faster this time) and had the site operating by Friday afternoon, having lost tens of thousands of dollars of revenue. 

On Saturday, business was stable. 

On Sunday of Black Friday weekend, we crashed again at 5pm and, once again, all the same team members were called into work to get us back up before Cyber Monday. By noon of Cyber Monday, we appeared to be fully operational, having turned off the ability for customers to access our website from any country outside of the US. 

Business appeared to be back to normal for the rest of the holidays. And then, seemingly just to toy with our business, the attack happened again, routed through a series of origins that were not blocked and we crashed on Christmas morning. Given its timing, I instructed our team to stay with their families in the morning, but by Christmas afternoon we were all working again. 

During that period of time, we were forced to buy expensive security software, we paid overtime wages to several already-highly paid employees, switched our server hosting to a larger, safer cloud and upgraded our e-commerce platform. 

We lost over $100K in revenue during these outages and incurred nearly the same amount in additional expenses. Just a few years later, we had to spend time and money on new, proactive upgrades because hackers are always getting smarter and we had to buy upgrades to stay ahead of newly-identified voulnerabilities. We found ourselves in a regular pattern of paying increased expenses for digital modernization to ensure that we never had to worry about attacks in the future. 

The Lesson

When you enter the world of e-commerce today, you're immediately competing against some of the biggest brands on our planet. Whatever product you are selling, there is likely a $billion company in your market. And for the decades that the $billion brand has been in business online, there have been hackers, jokesters and attackers trying to infiltrate their systems. There are $billion hacking organizations in the world that are equally sophisticated to the large brands you are competing with. 

Now, of course, when you're small you aren't a big target. But as you grow and your business becomes more profitable, your target grows too. And when you're finally attacked as we were in 2013, the cost is substantial - much more than it would be had we started with a $billion partner. 

Why Shopify?

I think it's important to note that I am not a Shopify affiliate. I am not paid for my endorsement. I recommend Shopify on the basis of my own experience. I own Shopify stores that I have started that generate millions in revenue. Based on my own experience, I would only begin an online store today using Shopify.

I will address a few Shopify cons below, but will begin with the pros. After more than a decade in e-commerce, Shopify puts you on an equal footing in terms of safety, technologies and efficiencies with Amazon. And it literally costs pennies a day to begin. Shopify allows you to focus on growing your business, without the worries of stability, content delivery efficiency and security. Plus they have add-on apps and features that are remarkably easy and reliable to use and also cost pennies. 

Shopify's business model depends entirely on your store being open and running smoothly 24/7 - exactly what you want. From the moment you partner with Shopify, you are both entirely aligned with a desire to grow your business. 

Shopify's content delivery network ensures that your site loads quickly anywhere in the world that your site is being viewed. So customers have a great, stable experience on your website.

Shopify's security efforts ensure that your site is never hacked. In over a decade, I have never once experienced the problems mentioned above when I was managing my own servers. 

Shopify stores all credit card information - so you don't have to. 

Shopify apps allow you to easily install review aggregators, back-in-stock alerts, automated emails, card abandonment programs and much more with a few clicks and zero programming education. 

Shopify has currency converters and language translators for you to sell anywhere in the world - expanding your market reach.

Shopify syncs easily with Meta so you can tag and sell your products easily on Facebook and Instagram.

Shopify syncs easily with YouTube shopping, TikTok shopping, Pinterest and others for easy integration.

Shopify syncs with Google to help you maximize your marketing efforts and easily manage and measure your marketing spend and return. 

Shopify is responsive and automatically formats to mobile and desktop based on where your customers are surfing your site. 

The Shop Ap is growing in size and beginning to compete with Amazon. And your shop is automatically included in the Shop Ap for free with no additional fees when you open your Shopify store. (Unlike Amazon that you have to maintain separately.) 

Shopify allows you to work with other Shopify retailers to sell their product on your site, and they can sell your product on their site with the click of a button. 

The backend of Shopify is easy to navigate, even for first time store owners. 

There are hundreds of Shopify themes to give your store a look that is different from other Shopify stores, but also to take advantage of programming efficiencies to keep your store loading speeds very fast. 

Shopify has a URL redirect system that will allow you to easily leave Shopify should you ever choose to do so, without losing your URLs. 

Shopify customers have a single log-in for all Shopify stores just like Amazon. It means that they only have to remember one password - making it much easier to get repeat business. 

Shopify offers zero-credit-check loans to growing retailers to help you fund growth when they see you have momentum at reasonable interest rates for signature business loans starting at 6%. Again - they want you to grow as much as you want to grow. 

In short, with Shopify, I can do the same volume of revenue, the same amount of marketing and have even more features and benefits on my site with 80%+ fewer employees and all the security advantages of a billion dollar brand. 

Why Not Shopify?

Of course there are drawbacks to Shopify as there are with any e-commerce platform.

Shopify's variable cost structure means that the more you grow the more that you pay them because they get a % of every sale. Some might say they would rather pay a lot up front when they are in start-up mode for all the security and modernization of technology so that when they are big their margins will be better. And, if you're well funded and growth is certain, it's hard to disagree. Maybe Shopify isn't right for you with their variable, pay-per-transaction fee model. 

While having hundreds of Shopify themes sounds like a lot, when you have millions of online stores they can begin to appear somewhat homogenous. Shopify stores all have a similar look and feel which is good (because consumers know when they are on Shopify stores and know it is safe) and bad (because it's "another" start up that looks bigger than it really is). 

There are many support groups that I have joined that seem to blame Shopify every time they have a bad day. "It can't be me. Shopify must be down and they aren't telling us they are down." I've been on those support groups on busy sales days for me, when everyone else is complaining. I've been on those support groups on slow days for me when everyone else is selling. Most of the time when sales are down on Shopify it is because of your marketing, merchandising, one of your settings - something that is in your realm of responsibility to fix. But many support groups will not yield in their certainty that Shopify is secretly hurting them. I haven't experienced this. 

When there are issues with Shopify, you can count on them to respond to your message and take your calls, but you will often hear, "We are aware of the issue and working on it." without an estimate of how long it will take. Sometimes the wait to fix a critical issue can feel like an eternity. But in nearly a decade, I've never had a major issue that wasn't resolved in a few hours at most and I can count on 1 hand the number of times that has happened.

Conclusion

When I started my first "side hustle" on Shopify, I knew that my biggest risk was the monthly fee. The least expensive plan is $30/mo. I spent the first month learning how to build my store and optimize my product for use within Shopify. I told myself that I would not spend more than $500 in my first year...because it was a side hustle - a hobby - not a real effort to immediately grow a business. 

With $360 in 12 months of Shopify fees and another $140 to use over 12 months for either Shopify add-ons or marketing, I went to work. I downloaded almost every free Shopify integration that I could - getting my product on social media and making regular posts and utilizing a hashtag strategy to help my posts get visibility. 

Seven months after opening, I generated my first sale of $240. By the end of the first year, I generated over $1,500. In year two I generated $3,600 and still not spending any money on marketing. Year three I exceeded $160,000.00 in revenue. And by year four I surpassed $1million in revenue. In the years that have passed since opening, I realize how I could have grown faster, sooner. 

Billionaire investor Warren Buffet said, "If you don't find a way to make money when you sleep, you will work until you die." 

I would argue that there is no reason not to have an online store of some sort today. You likely spend $30/mo right now on a single trip to your favorite restaurant or on popcorn at a movie theatre. 

Put that money into a Shopify store. Set up an LLC and take advantage of the tax benefits of owning your own business. Stick with it for the long haul - try to sell your product and build a brand. In 5 or 10 years, it can be a source of income that can help to bolster your retirement. Your business is an appreciating asset that you can sell, should you choose, at the time of retirement. 

It has never been easier to go into business for yourself and to find success in a global market. And Shopify should be the platform that you begin with - giving you the freedom to focus exclusively on product and marketing. 

If you aren't sure how to begin, take advance of our starter Shopify store launch program, or schedule a $99 discovery call and we can help you get started.