Choosing Between Shopify and Crafting Your Website: A Guide for 2024

Published on: 29 February 2024 Last Updated on: 31 July 2024

Starting an e-commerce journey or considering a platform transition requires essential choices. This guide looks into Shopify and custom websites, breaking down their pros and cons. Whether you’re new to business or a seasoned entrepreneur, the aim is to give you valuable insights for making intelligent decisions.

Decoding Platforms: Shopify And Custom Websites In Focus

Shopify is an easy-to-use e-commerce platform with global reach. On the flip side, custom websites are tailored to specific business needs, giving more control and coding skills for setup and upkeep.

A Detailed Exploration: Shopify vs. Custom Websites

User-Friendliness:

Shopify excels with its e-commerce-centric design, offering an intuitive interface and swift customization options. Custom websites demand technical proficiency involving web development, coding skills, and meticulous management.

Domain And Hosting:

Shopify streamlines the process by eliminating the need for separate domain and hosting decisions. On the other hand, custom websites require careful consideration for goals, structure, and usability.

Content Management:

Shopify serves as a CMS, facilitating easy content editing and reorganization. Custom websites rely on CMS platforms like WordPress but need a more intuitive nature of Shopify’s interface.

Website Construction Effort and Time:

Shopify allows rapid online store setup in just one day with guided instructions. Building a website from scratch is time-consuming and depends on factors such as size, complexity, and technical skills.

Pricing:

Shopify offers plans with additional costs for apps, themes, and domain subscriptions. Custom websites involve costs for hosting, domain, SSL certificate, development, extensions, and payment processors.

Design And Customization:

Shopify provides over 100 customizable templates and a user-friendly drag-and-drop builder. Custom websites offer complete control over design and functionality.

Maintenance And Updates:

Shopify integrates seamlessly with over 8,000 third-party applications. Custom websites require a more complex selection, investigation, and maintenance process.

Support:

Shopify ensures 24/7 customer support through various channels. Custom websites rely on the developer or agency, with support quality varying based on skills and responsiveness.

Unveiling Advantages Of Using Shopify

Advantages include a user-friendly interface, easy configuration, comprehensive e-commerce features, and robust support. Let us try to understand the pros of using Shopify for the sake of better understanding.

Easy To Use E-commerce Platforms

This is one of the biggest advantages of using Shopify. Shopify is built mainly for the average people and not the skilled developers. It’s quite simple to add the products and then create discounts. The web design of it is quite friendly. With the help of drag-and-drop editing tools, you can navigate the software for a pleasant experience. The platform itself provides software for hosting.

Supporting Wide Renge Of Busienss

One of the benefits of using the software is supporting a wide range of products like outdoor gear, home goods, beauty supplies, clothing, and digital products. A study tells the fact that household storage containers, bike saddles, kitchen towels, and toy kitchens are considered the highest-trending. Therefore, if your business involves one of these categories, you can bank on Shopify.

Low Startup Costs

Shopify’s relatively low monthly fees make the entire setup affordable. Shopify has a 14-day free trial period. Hereafter the users have to pay a monthly subscription fee. The basic plan starts at around $29 per month. The following level is $79 per month. Finally, the top package is $229 a month.

Customized Themes

Once you sign up for the account in Shopify, you gain immediate access to around 70 themes that are free of cost. One can easily implement them. It may be easy to get carried away in the design elements. You can spend quite a lot on purchasing the theme from the Shopify store.

Drawbacks involve limitations in customization options, potential content and visual optimization issues, and relatively high transaction fees.

Unveiling Advantages Of Using Custom Websites:

Advantages encompass heightened customization, freedom from platform constraints, extensive third-party integrations, and flexibility in coding and development. Drawbacks include the need for coding expertise, significant budget requirements, time and effort demands, high risk, manual setup, ongoing maintenance, and limited support. However, let us try to understand the advantages of using the customized software here in detail.

Unique Design

One of the advantages of using a custom web design is presenting uniqueness and individuality. This feature is exclusive only to the customized products where you decide with the designer regarding the website. It makes the brand stand out from the crowd.

Custom-Fit

The custom website design cost is less, allowing you to create aesthetic aspects of the template. The design of the product serves. There are unique business needs and expectations. This is why businesses try to design their website to handle their overall personality regarding the product. Due considerations are also provided to the users’ experience, navigation, unique color schemes, and, in the end, the overall personality of the websites.

Seo Optimized

Another benefit of personalized websites is their SEO optimization. The customized website design allows for the website to be designed according to the specific SEO technique. It surely facilitates better ranking on the search engine. The better the ranking, the better opportunity gets created for business development. This is one technical point where the customized versions are well ahead.

Growing Reputation

The growth and development of business depend on reputation building. Brands try to make their best effort to ensure better connectivity. With the help of customized website design, you can establish a relationship, and through better networking, you can create a unique brand for your company.

Ultimately, with the help of a customized reputation, you can grow your ownership and control over your website. Therefore, customized website designs have their gateway to achieving success in the long run. Businesses take the help of these websites to attain a competitive edge.

Strategic Conclusion

Align your choice with unique needs. Whether opting for Shopify or considering a different platform, trust the adept Shopify developers at VT Labs https://www.vtlabs.org/ for safe and precise site building designed to serve your requirements. Their commitment involves leveraging cutting-edge tools to facilitate a smooth digital transformation journey.

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Ankita Tripathy

Ankita Tripathy loves to write about food and the Hallyu Wave in particular. During her free time, she enjoys looking at the sky or reading books while sipping a cup of hot coffee. Her favourite niches are food, music, lifestyle, travel, and Korean Pop music and drama.

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It was a real pleasure to read your article. You are a very good author. Awesome article.

Reply 2024-03-02 14:33:36

Top 5 Customer Experience Podcasts

We’re seeing increased digital penetration, rising competition for the same target audiences, and consumers with extremely high expectations. Right from the first time a consumer interacts with branded content on social media to the time they become a return customer, everything depends on customer experience. Every vertical of your organization needs to build on the customer experience. From upskilling your customer to encouraging your team to listen to customer experience podcasts, businesses should be looking to learn and improve the ecosystem at every opportunity. In this article, we are looking at the top five customer experience podcasts and how they can help brands. However, before we begin, let us look at how podcasts are redefining customer experience. Customer Experience Podcasts: What are they? In the past few years, many businesses have started to realize that for customers it’s all about the experience. Numerous other competitors are offering the same product or service at the same price points. Why then should consumers choose one over the other? This is where brands need to evolve a highly productive customer experience process. A customer experience podcast (CX Podcast) is a great way to help brand personnel understand the ins and outs of creating a successful strategy. These podcasts are hosted by brands that work on customer analytics software products. You can also find a lot of CX thought leaders and experts offer podcasts to help brands and aspiring professionals. Most of the content of these podcasts revolves around insights and inspirations to chart the perfect customer journeys. In the following section, we spoke to industry leaders and multiple brands and created a list of the top 5 customer experience podcasts in the industry. List of 5 Best Customer Experience Podcasts 1. SentiSum's Podcast SentiSum’s Podcast finds leaders in e-commerce, customer experience, and customer service and gets them to tell their stories. With an aim to unearth radically different ideas and to drive forward the customer experience space, the SentiSum podcast is a must-listen for CX leaders. SentiSum has been able to get together some of the brightest minds in the industry including Augie Ray from Gartner and Sean Mckee from Schuh. Their insights into how businesses need to be informed and take the appropriate decisions and steps are inspiring to say the least. 2. The Active Campaign Podcast As you might know, Active Campaign is a leader in email marketing and sales automation among other things. Active Campaign’s podcasts offer real-time customer stories of their successful campaigns. While some insights are great, others look to push the brand name forcibly into the discourse. This tends to take away all the attention from learning and knowing about customer experience, to simply be just another promotion tool. 3. C-Space Podcast C-Space CEO, Charles Trevail is one of the leading names in the CX podcast world. The success of the podcast is primarily due to the fact that it concentrates squarely on the consumer. The podcast talks about how consumers think about brands. This kind of reverse engineering of sorts helps brands understand consumers better. Routine interactions with business leaders, intelligentsia, and marketing studies create decent episodes. 4. (A) Podcast Series One of the best things about (A) podcasts is its emphasis on new technology. The episodes on the podcast are routinely intertwined with new tech like Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, etc. The podcasts also show the influence of these in business areas like Chatbots, Content Marketing strategies, CRM, etc. While all this information is great to have, it can sometimes drift away from offering solutions to CX issues and problems. 5. Roger Dooley’s Brainfluence Podcast Roger Dooley is a persuasion expert, who deals in complex neuroscience, brain-behavior, and psychology. This helps brands to understand CX from a biological and psychological standpoint. Roger Dooley frequently invites industry thought leaders and intertwines great discussions blending software, innovation, automation with human behavioral analysis. The podcasts are insightful, inspiring, and can help you understand human behavior. The Final Word There is a reason why brands like Coca-Cola, Nike, Apple, and others focus and invest billions of dollars in enriching customer experiences. They understand that giving the right experience to a customer can help in creating lifelong repeat ones. This does not only help in contributing to repeat purchases (sales) but also puts out a great word about the brand. If you are a business looking to engage with CX on a greater level, you can start asking your team members to listen to the above-mentioned five podcasts. Read Also: 5 Most Common Digital PR Mistakes And How To Avoid Them The 7 Steps to Create a Storybrand to Ensure Marketing that Works How Customer Success Can Help Grow Your Business Tips on How to Create Repeat Customers 7 Ways To Communicate With Customers In A Better Way!

Pros and Cons of Oil and Gas Investment

Gas and oil are commodities that will always be in demand globally. No matter where you are in the world, people seem to be needing oil and gas more and more, be it for transportation, to run businesses and factories, and machines, and to do daily tasks such as cooking. Because of its increasing demand, it’s a highly favored investment choice by business owners and investors around the world. However, as with all other industries, the petroleum industry does have its pros and cons. Here are some of them: The Pros: 1. There Are Tax Benefits And Advantages: Naturally, economists and the respective governments encourage investors to put their money in the energy and petroleum industry. The more businesses in the energy sector, the higher the demand for this commodity, as the price per barrel of oil also tends to stabilize more. Remember this is important as almost all aspects of man's daily life are highly dependent on the energy and petroleum industry. To encourage investors to stay attracted to gas and oil businesses, governments provide for annual tax benefits and deductions. Some of these include the following: When you invest in a limited liability partnership/gas company, such as the CEFM Oil & Gas Investment Fund, 15% of your share can become a part of your tax-sheltered income, which means that this 15% of your total stock will not be subject to taxes. In the event of stock depletion, governments can allow for certain allowances to keep your company's cash flow reports stable. 2. The Gas and Oil Industry Is a Lucrative Trade: Gas and oil are both commodities. You cannot go through your daily life without either of these two. Even the simplest and most rural forms of living require gas, such as lighting up gas lamps at night. At present, the petroleum industry makes up 10% of the total gross domestic product of the world, representing an amount of around $10 trillion. This figure does not end here, as it is bound to grow even more as the global population increases in number. 3. The Rate of Return on Investment Is High: Economists around the world found that the return on investment from oil and gas companies is usually around 5 to 10 times more than the capital that you put in. It is tough to find any other investment opportunity that allows for the same favorable returns. When exploration of an oil reserve starts, profit can begin to accumulate after the first two months; this speed is unrivaled by any other business sector. The Cons: 1. There Is a Limit to Growth: Oil and gas reserves are not taken from a renewable source. Eventually, the time will come when these resources will be fully depleted. As the demand for oil continually increases by the day, so does the rate of these reserves eventually being maximized and fully depleted. You can only do so much. Further, this industry needs to fulfill a lot of environmental responsibilities, such as the rehabilitation of the reserve that was drilled up for oil explorations. Doing this entails costs for the company. 2. There Is a Huge Political Risk Involved Because oil is a commodity, it is but natural that political governments intervene. As much as they would want to protect a private company's interests to make sure investors in the market will stay, they are also protecting their political interests. Therefore, any change in trade factors concerning political state agreements, tax reform laws, treaties, and the like will significantly affect the price and stability of the oil. This would mean that you cannot ever shy away from any involvement of politics in your business if you decide to invest in the petroleum industry. 3. The Market Price of Oil Is Always Fluctuating: As more and more individuals demand gas and oil, its market price will continue to fluctuate as well. Increased demand for goods will increase the supply; hence, the competition is high, so the costs have to decrease. This economic fact is good for the consumers but bad for you as the business owner. Profit is always what you have in mind, and in the oil industry, there is a ceiling as to how much you can increase the price of gas and oil. Conclusion: As lucrative as the oil and gas trade may be, do remember this list of its pros and cons. The disadvantages are not to discourage you from investing in this business sector, but it will help you make a better and wiser decision on where to plant your hard-earned money. Anchoring your investment in an informed decision will help you earn better growth on your commodity investment plan. Read Also: Investing In Property Is Investing In Your Future Safeguard Your Loved Ones Against The Dangers Of Radon Gas

3 Product Launch Tips that Dramatically Increase Your Success Chances

The product launch is a proud day for your company and a vital one as well. If you want that product to succeed, you need to find a meaningful way to connect with the customers. That can be more challenging than you might realize at first. We’ll run down the three things you should do to make sure your product launch works. Doing these three things won’t guarantee the product’s success, but it gives you the best chance to get the market penetration for which you’re undoubtedly hoping. Product Launch Tips that Dramatically Increase Your Success Chances There are various product launch tips that can increase your success chances significantly and some of the major ones we have described below. Have a look! 1. Announce the Product Via the Right Venue or Channel As you’re getting ready for your product launch, your company’s employees might be a little bit nervous. Your R and D department might have worked on that product for weeks, months, or even years. You might need this product to succeed if your company is going to remain afloat or gain ground over your competitors. If you want to give that product the best successful chance, you should announce it at the right venue or using the proper channel. That venue might be your website, but it could also be a podcast. You might also set up a press conference and announce the new product that way. If your company is just a startup, though, a press conference is probably not a possibility. You haven’t established yourself yet, so there’s no reason why the press would care enough to show up. You might choose social media as a way to announce your new product is out now. If you do, you’ll need to figure out the right platform to use. You should utilize what social media platform you know your customers use the most. Using an online video editor, you can create a video introducing your product. It could be Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, or something else. You might also announce the new product via your website. Again, that’s only going to work if you’ve already established your company and a good amount of people know about it. 2. Build the Anticipation to a Fever Pitch You also need to run a marketing campaign before dropping the product to attract as much attention as possible. Think about the marketing leading up to a new movie or album release. Consider the various ways the marketing team drums up as much anticipation as possible. Exactly how you can promote the product before the launch depends on several factors, such as what the product is, how much money you have to work with, and what channels you have available. You might release featurettes on your YouTube channel about the product for months in advance. You can offer related merchandise if that’s practical. You might offer a limited edition of the product for those who preorder it. Try to fill up the waitlist on your website. You could include a special giveaway that comes with the product, but only for the first 500 customers. 3. Make Sure Your Product Fills a Need The last thing you need to think about is whether your product addresses a customer pain point. The pain point is something the customer wants or a need they have. If you do a lot of market research using advanced analytics and customer surveys, you should develop a very clear idea of what your customers want. If you don’t bother to do that, you’re leaving the product’s success up to chance. That can’t happen, especially if you’ve sunk a lot of time and energy into this particular product. If you miss the mark when you feel like you’ve determined what your customers want, that can be an error from which your company might not recover. Remember that if you’re deviating too much from what your customer base has bought in the past, you’re taking a significant risk. If you launch a product that’s a major departure from your prior offerings, offer it in a much more limited capacity. If it catches on, you can mass-produce it. You have a much better product success chance if you derive your product from what you already make. If you’re a clothing manufacturer, for instance, and you decide to expand your brand to something wildly different, like office supplies, the odds are against it succeeding. The Final Thoughts You’ll need to plan the launch meticulously, with painstaking research and customer focus groups beforehand. If you do all that, you can probably count on a strong reception. With any luck, your product might go viral. It could be what propels your company to new recognition and previously unseen success. Hence, this is all about product launch tips that will help you to dramatically increase your success chances. Read Also: How Customer Success Can Help Grow Your Business Five things to consider before starting a Business 7 Growth Hacking Ideas that will Boost your Startup