What Is Shopify and How Much Does It Cost?

Why turn your website into an e-commerce site?

Having a website is already a very good basis for getting more visibility from your target clientele. However, if you have products or services for sale, you certainly miss many business opportunities by not offering online sales.

In Canada and around the world, e-commerce has been expanding for several years. With technological advances, consumption patterns have changed and continue to change, all the more so with the pandemic we are going through. E-commerce is now essential for all businesses.

Here are some statistics from a Statistics Canada survey "Electronic Retailing and VOCID-19: How did online shopping open doors while many closed":

• $3.9G: Online retail sales in Canada in May 2020 (+99.3% compared to February 2020 and +110.8% compared to May 2019).

• 11.4%: The proportion of online retail sales in Canada in April 2020 (versus 3.8% in April 2019)

• 63.8%: Monthly e-commerce progress in April 2020 for retail trade in Canada. In-store sales fell by 25.3%.

What is Shopify?

Shopify, like Woocommerce, Magento or Prestashop, is a CMS (Content Management System) for people who want to sell their products online. If you are a beginner, the platform is simple and use is intuitive. Shopify is for you! Unlike many CMSs with free installation, Shopify offers a package system, without any transaction fees on your sales. From managing your content, to selling your products online, through inventory and inventory management, Shopify allows you to manage your online shop from A to Z. Shopify also offers Shopify Plus which is rather intended for large companies with large sales volumes. The price is obviously very high than Shopify but the platform offers many more options and customizations.

What are the prices of Shopify?

With regard to rates, Shopify offers 3 packages:• Basic Shopify at $29 USD/month,• Shopify at $79 USD/month• Advanced Shopify at $299 USD/month.

In each package, the number of products is unlimited, the SSL certificate and hosting are included and there is no transaction fee if you use Shopify Payments.

On the other hand, the purchase of the domain name is paid and the price varies between $13 and $54 USD per year.Concerning the theme, if you choose a paying theme you will have to pay between $140 and $180.If you decide to entrust the migration of your website to Shopify to a web partner, you will need to add the agency or freelancer's hourly rate to your expenses.

Finally, if you entrust the creation of content to a writer, it will cost you between 10 and 30c per word.If you have difficulty estimating your budget and defining your needs before using a professional, the HelloDarwin team will be happy to contact you.

Choose your digital partner to migrate to Shopify

Despite Shopify's simplicity, website migration is not within everyone's reach, it requires many skills and especially a lot of time. If you prefer to focus on your know-how and do not have sufficient resources in your team to do so, you can choose an external provider to complete your project.

For a large-scale project such as website redesign, it is best not to be mistaken in choosing its provider.

Instinctively we often make the choice of turning to suppliers that have been recommended to us by our entourage, but it must be borne in mind that a supplier that has been a good "do" for a person in your entourage will not necessarily be for you.

In order to avoid an error of judgment, it is recommended to contact suppliers who have experience in your field and who can help you with the budget available to you.