Shopify
The all-in-one e-commerce solution with integrated payment and low entry barriers is popular with small and medium-sized companies worldwide.
License, Architecture and Technology
A Shopify store is a proprietary e-commerce software that is offered as Software as a Service (SaaS). Shopify merchants therefore do not have to worry about hosting, operating, updating and backing up their store.
As a leading, cloud-based omnichannel store system, Shopify places great importance on reliability and scalability. Various online and offline solutions for retailers are combined in one overview. Thanks to over 1,000 plugins and templates, some of which are available for a fee and some for free, the closed modular system can be easily expanded. As a retailer, you have full access to the HTML and CSS files of your store.
Special Features
As an all-in-one e-commerce solution with low entry barriers, Shopify also makes it easier for technical amateurs and beginners to open their own online store. The platform offers online merchants a powerful back office and a central overview of their business processes.
As a Shopify merchant, you can access a wide range of functions for multichannel commerce. Regardless of whether you want to offer your products in the online store, via social media, via online marketplaces such as Amazon, in a local store or pop-up store - the all-round carefree package provides a solution for everything.
A Shopify store is also well positioned when it comes to SEO and content marketing: Store subpages, products and blog entries each have their own URLs in Shopify with freely definable meta titles and meta descriptions so that your customers can easily find you online. In addition, all themes available in the Theme Store are designed to meet the latest search engine requirements. In addition to the integrated blog function, captivating storytelling and product descriptions can also be created at product level.
You can use Shopify Apps to expand the range of functions of your e-commerce store individually and tailor it to your requirements and the needs of your customers.
B2B Functions
For a long time, Shopify offered hardly any relevant B2B features out of the box. With the acquisition of Handshake in 2019, Shopify took a step towards B2B digital commerce and helped merchants tap into demand in the wholesale market. However, Handshake is currently only available to businesses in the United States and Shopify's suitability for B2B digital commerce use cases is barely proven.
If you want to operate as a B2B retailer on the German market, you should take a look at the Shopify App Store. There are numerous apps there that you can use to add the desired functionalities to your store. With the help of separately purchased plugins, you can, for example, hide prices and the "Add to cart" button from users who are not logged in, display wholesale prices for B2B users or assign customer group-specific discounts.
