In an age where the shift to online consumerism is becoming more drastic by the day there are plenty of reasons why business owners should be making the transition to a digital storefront. You can check out some of the main reasons why at one of our other blog posts titled “The Need to Go Digital: Creating an Ecommerce Online Store.” As this market continues to expand so will the number of ecommerce platforms out there that market themselves as the best choice to help set you up with your digital storefront. There are a handful of big name contenders out there currently, but perhaps the most trendy of these has become the ecommerce giant Shopify. One of the reasons Shopify is as big as they currently are is because of what they offer: convenience. The ability quickly to sign up, add your products, and start selling to the world in a short period of time. But what all gets sacrificed in order to achieve this level of convenience? Today we want to do an objective analysis comparing what Shopify offers to what Magna Web Services offer, and show to our readers why bigger doesn’t always mean better. This is broken down into five key points.

 

To start with when you have a website made by Shopify you are not given the option to create a 100% white label website. A white label website is a site that only has branding on it that is specific to the business using that site. Shopify will put its logo and links to their main page on the clients site, not allowing them to be removed. These are generally shown on the footer of the website. To some this is an issue, to others it is not. If the client does not mind we too will attach a small link to Magna’s homepage at the bottom of the footer for marketing and link building purposes. That being said, we have encountered clients who are very adamant about wanting their website branding to be distinctly their own with no other companies shown on it. When that’s the case we will gladly remove it for no extra fee, and we believe this is an option that every website owner should have.

 

Secondly, our relationship with our clients is significantly different to that of Shopify with theirs. Being that Shopify is as large as it is they have to hire chat support. Magna, on the other hand, geo-targets businesses in Western Canada, specifically Saskatchewan, Alberta and Manitoba, and therefore are always working with businesses that are no more than a few hours away from us geographically. This allows for us to plan for in-person meetings whenever possible, do Skype sessions, or talk over the phone. Building a rapport with our clients is extremely important, and one of the best ways to do this is through actually meeting the people we are working with. This also adds a level of accountability on our end that cannot be achieved by talking to someone over the computer.

Building a rapport with our clients is extremely important, and one of the best ways to do this is through actually meeting the people we are working with. This also adds a level of accountability on our end that cannot be achieved by talking to someone over the computer.

We strongly believe that the better you know your client, the more useful you can be when it comes to dealing with the subtleties of developing an online presence for them. This combined with the sheer size difference between Shopify and Magna Web Services means that we have a genuine personal interest in seeing your digital presence flourish versus another unknown face to solve a problem for.

 

The third point is in regards to the level of customization available to make your site look and feel exactly the way you want it to. In the first paragraph I begged the question what gets sacrificed in order to achieve the level of convenience that Shopify offers. Well, to a certain extent quality has to. This isn’t to say you can’t make a nice looking website with the page-building apps that Shopify offers. However, the onus is on you to design the site with WYSIWYG (what you see is what you get) page building software that offers a limited number of layout and functionality options. The ability and know-how to implement custom HTML, CSS and JavaScript is what often separates an aesthetically mediocre site and a captivating one. Chances are if you’re investing in an online store you are not going to want to try to sell to potential customers with another cookie-cutter looking website. Our team at Magna Web Services will help you with custom front-end development to help ensure your online store stands out from the rest.

 

Now let’s look at Shopify’s pricing model. It is as follows:

Basic: $29/month

Regular: $79/month

Advanced: $299/month

 

A table showing what each category consists of can be found on the Shopify pricing page here . Now if you’re looking to have an ecommerce website online for a relatively short period of time this pricing method may actually make a bit of sense. However, for those with a long term vision and plan for their ecommerce website you will find that this pricing method could begin to add up immensely going into years two, three and beyond. At Magna Web Services our web design fee is a one-time payment. As part of our maintenance service we also offer the ability to add additional pages whenever you want for a smaller one-time payment that is dependent on the number of pages you are looking to add.

At the end of the day we only charge for what we build for you, and if we aren’t building anything then we don’t think we should be charging you.

At the end of the day we only charge for what we build for you, and if we aren’t building anything then we don’t think we should be charging you.

 

The fifth and final reason why Magna Web Services is the best choice to go with is our comprehensiveness in the services we offer. A great looking, fully functional ecommerce website that doesn’t get anybody visiting it is just a poor investment. Word of mouth can only get you so far when dealing with a digital business. To get your reach to its maximum potential there are a number of different digital marketing tools such as Google Adwords that can be utilized in order to help you convert sales with users from all around the world. If you go with Shopify for your ecommerce website you will find yourself having to find another web agency to help with your marketing efforts because Shopify is simply the ecommerce platform, and does not include digital marketing services. At Magna we have both the tools and the know-how to help you establish your digital marketing campaigns saving you time, money and the hassle of having to shop around for this service.

 

After going through this post you may be thinking to yourselves “man, these guys really have it out for Shopify.” It’s quite the opposite, really. Their ability to create a popular platform that allows for users to quickly and conveniently create online stores forces us to acknowledge, respect and learn from them. That being said, I’ve personally been asked multiple times in the past what makes us different from them, and why potential customers should sit down with us instead of simply making a Shopify account. For that reason I felt I should make a blog post addressing some of the finer details in a split-comparison format. Hopefully you’ve learned a thing or two from it. We always welcome feedback so feel free to leave a comment below and we will get back to you as soon as possible!

 

Read another blog post by me called Search Engine Optimization: The Fundamentals

 

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