Shopify is a powerful and complete e-commerce platform that let's you sell online and run your own online store website. Shopify powers more than 1,000,000 online stores worldwide.

The Shopify platform is optimized for online selling with a comprehensive dashboard system for Order Management, Customer Records, Inventory Tracking, Shipping and Fulfillment. The system generates Detailed Reports of sales, audience and analytics for you to monitor and better tailor your products and marketing.

Shopify has a wide range of useful and high tech features to make it easy for you to manage your online business.

Storefront / Online Store Website

1. Professionally designed and Web Standards-Compliant web site
2. Beautiful, modern and smooth User Interface / User Experience (UI/UX)
3. Full blogging platform
4. Your own brand and domain name
5. Update content easily from dashboard

Shopify is built-in with an intuitive Shopping Cart and Checkout system.

1. Mobile commerce ready - Customers can make purchases from their smartphone
2. Safe, secured and encrypted transactions - Increase customer trust
3. Integrated payment gateways (e.g. Paypal, Stripe, ipay88, billplz, molpay, etc.)
4. Offer flexible shipping rates - By zone, by weight, by price
5. Automatic tax rates calculation

Manage all your online store operations from your Shopify Dashboard. You can also manage your online store on the go with the Shopify mobile app.

1. Mobile App
2. Customer accounts
3. Manage inventory
4. Organize products
5. Order fulfillment
6. Refunds
7. Email notifications
8. Instantly communicate with customers via email messaging or calls

Market and sell your products better with Shopify's powerful marketing tools and add-ons.

1. Discounts, Sales & Promotion mechanics
2. Gift cards
3. Social media integration
4. Google Ads
5. Product Reviews
6. Sell on Facebook

You do not need to purchase an additional web hosting plan for your online store as it is hosted directly on Shopify's servers.

1. State-of-the-art data servers
2. High speed content delivery network (CDN)
3. Unlimited products and uploads
4. Unlimited data/traffic bandwidth
5. Free SSL certificate
6. Automatic upgrades

Reports can be generated from your Shopify dashboard.

1. Sales, products, orders & traffic reports
2. Export reports to spreadsheets for book-keeping or accounting
3. Connect your store to Google Analytics to monitor traffic sources and metrics

There are many articles and comparisons of Shopify vs other ecommerce platforms available to read online. We recommend Shopify if the objective of your website is to sell products and process orders, because Shopify brings full and strong features to run an e-commerce business.

Infrastructure

Shopify's technical infrastructure, systems and database are more reliable as Shopify utilizes technology such as:

1. Level 1 PCI Compliant hosting and shopping cart software
2. Content Delivery Network (CDN) - a large network of servers across the world that ensures optimum speed no matter where your online store is accessed from globally.
3. Unlimited bandwidth that can cater to high volumes of traffic - with NO HIDDEN FEES

If your website is built on a self-hosted platform instead (such as Woocommerce, Magento, Joomla, Opencart, Zencart, Prestashop), you will need extra effort as well as costs to maintain and handle security issues, vulnerabilities (such as hacking, malware, phishing, data breach, brute force attacks, etc.), limited disk usage, server bandwidth limits and data backups separately.

Support

Shopify provides 24/7 support from their Help Centre should you encounter any issues with their services. You can also engage Shopify Expert services to help you with your online store setup and tweaks. Shopify Experts are trusted experts recognized by Shopify through years of experience as well as highest criteria/ standards of expertise.

Mobile App

Another top feature of Shopify is the availability of the Shopify Mobile app, which lets you manage your online store directly from your smartphone, anytime and anywhere. Get instant alerts through push notifications when a new order is placed.

POS Sales Channel

In addition, Shopify has also launched the Shopify POS sales channel, which is available with your Shopify plan. The POS, or Point-Of-Sale system lets you create orders made in-person by customers at a physical location, record payments and sync your inventory stock level. This feature is useful for businesses who have retail outlets, sell at events, trade fairs or pop-up stores, which bridges the gap between online and offline commerce.

Ultimately, we recommend Shopify if you want to grow and scale your business with the right technology and support.

Shopify offers affordable subscription plans to support new entrepreneurs and startups. There are 4 different Plan levels that you can select, depending on your business size. You can upgrade or downgrade plans at any time.

As of 24 May 2022, the pricing for Basic and Shopify plans has been updated to offer our merchants better value and lower entrance barrier into the ecommerce ecosystem.

1. Basic Shopify Plan - USD$19/month

Perfect if you are just starting out your new online business with fewer products, the Basic Shopify plan comes with an ecommerce website and blog.

Limits:

1. 2.0% Transaction Fees
2. Staff Accounts x 2
3. Gift Cards - Allow customers to purchase prepaid credits/cash value to shop
4. Professional Reports & Advanced Report Builder not included

2. Shopify Plan - USD$49/month

Choose this plan if you already run an ecommerce business with regular traffic/sales and are migrating your online store over to Shopify platform.

Benefits:

1. Only 1.0% Transaction Fees
2. Staff Accounts x 5
3. Gift Cards
4. Professional Reports & Advanced Report Builder INCLUDED

3. Advanced Shopify Plan - USD$299/month

This plan is great if you are a more established business and want to scale your ecommerce website according to your sales turnover/volume.

Benefits:

1. Only 0.5% Transaction Fees
2. Staff Accounts x 15
3. Gift Cards, Professional Reports & Advanced Report Builder INCLUDED
4. Third-party calculated shipping rates - Show calculated rates with your own account or third-party apps at checkout
5. Ecommerce automations and workflows are supported

4. Shopify Plus - Enquire

Take commerce to the next level with a fully customizable enterprise platform tailored for your corporation.

1. Customize tasks and workflows for your entire organization
2. Integrate with world-class systems such as ERP software, CRM software and enterprise management solutions through APIs
3. Sell seamlessly whether online or offline physical locations
4. Did we say Customization? Yes, Shopify Plus can be customized, from checkouts to after-sales.

Not sure which plan to pick? Please talk to us. We can advise based on your needs.

In order to accept payments, the online store relies on Payment Gateway providers to process payments for orders. Payment Gateway providers allows you to accept various payment methods such as:

1. Credit cards (Visa, Mastercard, American Express, Discover, etc)
2. Debit cards
3. FPX Transactions - real-time payments from current/ savings accounts
4. Internet Banking - Maybank2U, Cimb Clicks, Public Bank, HLB Connect, RHB Now, OCBC Bank, UOB, BSN, Bank Islam, Bank Mualamat, HSBC, Standard Chartered, Alliance Bank, Ambank, etc.
5. Mobile Wallet/ E-Wallet

Payment Gateway providers are companies that provide online payment processing services, and they charge a fee to use. Fees vary according to different services offered. This may include setup fees, annual fees and transaction fees.

Some of the popular Payment Gateway providers in Malaysia are:

1. iPay88
2. MOLpay
3. eGHL
4. Billplz
5. Paypal - Worldwide
6. Stripe - Worldwide

The business owner is advised to apply for a merchant account with the preferred Payment Gateway provider separately. The application requires documentation such as financial statements, Companies/SSM incorporation documents, proof of identity/ ownership as well as verified application forms.

After successful application, we will then be able to integrate your preferred Payment Gateway with your online store checkout system.

Business owners from Singapore can use Shopify Payments to accept payments without the need to apply for a separate Payment Gateway merchant account. Shopify Payments may be launched in Malaysia in the near future.

Some examples of paid Apps that provide Add-On functionality to your online store are:

1. Automation Systems - AI (artificial intelligence) or Conditional logic powered actions
2. Email Marketing Services - send out mass electronic direct mail to mailing lists
3. Customizable Products - sell products that allows customers to make personalizations
4. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) applications
5. Customer Loyalty System - Rewards, collect points, redeem point for next purchase
6. Affiliate Marketing Programs - Referral links, influencer commissions, etc.
7. Tailor-made functions - unique requirements to cater for different types of industries

Sitejojo provides Expert services for the installation and setup of these Add-On functions.

The time needed to setup your ecommerce website depends on the size of your business (such as number of products, contents, information, etc.) as this depends on the amount of work required. On average, we can complete building an online store within 3-4 weeks -- from the start (basic building blocks) until launching of the Live, tested and functioning online store to the public audience.

We take pride in our attention to detail, ensuring that our work services is of high quality and standard. Therefore, we would refrain from accepting projects with very tight deadlines to ensure that our work quality is not compromised.

Yes, Shopify offers 14 days Free Trial if you register directly at their website.

Here's some good news! When you sign up with SiteJojo, we will create a Development Store for you, which means you do not have to pay any subscription fees during our time used to develop your store.

This development period has no time limit, so you will only start your Shopify subscription when your site is ready to launch.