Which option can best scale your e-commerce business and bring you more profit?
When we are thinking about starting a new website for our business most people would think of either using Shopify/similar services or building their own custom website. Today we will look at which option gets the biggest bang for your buck, giving you the best chance of scaling your business up!
What can Shopify do?
In the recent Economic Impact Report, there are more than a million online businesses, likely thanks to the recent boom in E-commerce experienced during the COVID Pandemic. Business owners want a simple and effective way of selling their products to their customers.
You may be asking: “So Why is Shopify so popular?”
Well, Shopify has a quick, no-code interface with dedicated hosting for the platform that is easy to use. This means no technical skills or design degrees are required to create a website, which means even your four-year-old nephew could start one. They also have pre-built themes with limited customization and zero ability to edit based on the Liquid base code. Users also don’t have to worry about buying a new domain or finding a hosting provider. You can also receive analytics on your store’s performance and use its essential marketing & SEO Tools, along with its built-in app store comprised of Shopify plug-ins.
So what’s the catch?
Despite being so convenient, the blogging feature has no category, tags, or layouts. It has limited control over optimizing paid conversion rates due to restraints. It does not have email hosting and can only support limited out-of-the-box branding. It also only has manual order & inventory management with limited flexibility and sometimes clunky operational processes.
So, if you want to scale your business up past the initial growth phase, differentiate your business from your competition, and achieve higher brand awareness and profit, Shopify might limit your growth.
What about building your own website?
Normally what puts people off about building your own custom website is that it is relatively difficult to build on your own unless you have a team of dedicated developers who can take all the work out of your hands. But surprisingly it actually makes up for everything that Shopify doesn’t allow you to do!
Unlike Shopify, you are not limited to pre-set templates instead you can build the exact specifications and needs you want for your dream business. You can have custom-made websites that showcase your brand’s image and personality. You will not be restricted by templates with the sky being the limit, outshining your competition who is still using a cookie-cutter template.
From an Order Management perspective, a custom build website also allows you to have process automation for ordering and inventory management and the flexibility to provide numerous self-service options and features.
For marketing which is without a doubt the most important aspect of your online business, you can also leverage advanced marketing & SEO abilities, made just for your custom brand and customer loyalty functionality (feedback, recommended products,). You can have the unlimited ability to A/B test, improve funnel, and optimize customer experience to improve paid conversion rate. You can also have Countless integrations and APIs available for data capture, automation, and optimizing business workflows to scale when needed, giving your business the tools to scale up efficiently.
Let’s talk money!
Let’s be honest, the big question you are asking is what about the price? Isn’t a custom website more expensive? Well… not necessarily.
With Shopify the paid plans are $79 and $299 per month & with a service charge on each sale; additional costs for premium themes, templates, apps, & plugins will rack up those costs to a price point that would end up being higher than you expected.
With a custom website, the upfront investment costs are associated with design and development. But if done correctly it will yield a higher ROI(return on investment), and the end product will totally be owned by you, unlike Shopify which you have to pay every month. Additionally, your opportunity cost of spending time trying out the templates and hours of moving text boxes around on Shopify would probably be way higher than outsourcing a beautiful custom design website to a trusted developer team. In other words, time is money, you could be working on your passion, craft, and other administrative tasks while developers are building your dream website.
In Summary:
So if you are a business owner who wants to scale up his business in due time and see your business growing over time, then the answer might be having your custom design rather than a Shopify website. With more control over your brand’s image allowing you to outshine your competitors, more marketing capabilities, and a higher ROI, building your custom website has more overall benefits that will help your E-Commerce business take off!
Still got questions? How about we explain this to you through food? Our very own chef Guy stepped into the kitchen recently to explain which option is better for your e-commerce journey. Click here to check out our brand-new video!
Valere is an award-winning software development agency that has built over 300 top-rated applications for startups and Fortune 500 companies in all verticals like healthcare, finance, sports, fitness, education, and more. Their apps have been featured by the New York Times, and have been consistently recognized as Apple App Store’s top featured apps, TechRadar, and Google Play Store’s top featured apps! Schedule a call with us today to learn how we can help your team create the perfect software or application that can Accelerate Your Business Goals!
