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Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

In the competitive beauty industry, standing out requires more than just talent and creativity—it also demands a robust network. Etienne Ortega, founder of makeup line ORTEGA, embodies this combination of artistic flair and entrepreneurial acumen. From transforming his passion for makeup into a career to launching his own brand, Etienne’s path highlights the importance of networking, particularly in the beauty industry.

“You have to build a strong foundation to grow a clientele,” Etienne says. “For me, I always found myself to be disciplined in my workspace. Like the importance of just simply being on time, giving 150% effort, even when I had no celebrities or even a full clientele, that was my pattern. I was showing up on time, being responsible and always being respectful.”

On the Shopify Masters podcast, Etienne shares his strategies for aspiring entrepreneurs eager to turn their passions into thriving businesses.

 

Early inspirations and networking beginnings

Etienne’s earliest memories include watching his mother apply makeup, which sparked his interest in beauty. He spent his formative years not only perfecting his craft but also building connections. “I was just drawn to [makeup] and found myself getting more involved in beauty,” Etienne recalls.

As a teenager, Etienne started offering his services for proms and other events, quickly realizing the importance of word-of-mouth referrals in expanding his clientele. “I had to be scrappy and make sure that I was making ends meet to balance all those responsibilities,” he explains. His commitment to his work enhanced his skills and grew his professional network, which was crucial for his career development. His ability to connect with clients and exceed their expectations led to increased demand for his services and more opportunities.

The pivotal role of relationships

While working at a bustling barbershop at age 18, Etienne observed and interacted with various stylists, including one named Hilda, whose work ethic and client interactions influenced him. These early experiences highlighted the benefits of being part of a community where skills can be shared and opportunities can flourish. “I just don’t have any secret sauce for you, because there’s no shortcuts or cheating. I’ve just done the work. I used to stay at the salon … two extra hours and take walk-ins and just say yes to everything,” Etienne says. “And the universe responds to that. The universe sees everything and gives back to you.”

It was his skill as a hair and makeup artist that initially caught the eye of actress Eva Longoria, who admired his work on a dinner companion 15 years ago. It’s his work ethic, however, that has maintained that relationship and opened doors for him since the initial connection. “Looking back, maybe I wasn’t ready to [work with celebrities], but I got the opportunity and I took it,” he says. “And, she loved me. I’m always going to be grateful for Eva because she opened a lot of doors for me.”

Establishing ORTEGA

Despite challenges related to starting a new venture, Etienne’s commitment to authenticity and quality remains steadfast. Each product released under his brand reflects his personal style and professional standards. The blue color that represents the ORTEGA makeup line pays homage to the agave in the Jalisco region of Mexico where he was born, and it’s also his younger brother’s favorite color.

After 17 years in the beauty business, Etienne knew the connections he had made—some he had worked with for more than a decade—would support his ventures. His business partner, ORTEGA CEO and cofounder Eric Kaufman, is a friend of 15 years whom Etienne admires for many reasons. “I reached out to him, you know, cause he’s a good guy and he’s a hard worker,” Etienne says. “And he was, you know, interested in this opportunity with me.” 

Etienne’s high praise for Eric is likely something his roster of clients, fans, and friends might remark about him as well. Those aforementioned clients, fans, and friends include the previously mentioned Eva Longoria, as well as Actress Salma Heyek, singers Lana Del Rey, Christina Aguilera, Karol G, Kali Uchis, and Demi Lovato, along with the Kardashian and Jenner family. All of whom expressed their readiness to support an ORTEGA makeup line.

The continuous importance of building connections

Even after launching ORTEGA, Etienne continues to stress the importance of enhancing his skills and networking. His collaborations with other artists and celebrities have increased his brand’s visibility and brought in diverse perspectives that enrich his product offerings. “I continue to exercise my craft all the time,” he says. “I never feel like I’m the best because makeup changes often and new trends always pop up. For me, it’s like a constant, ‘OK, I got to try this. I want to do that.’”

For aspiring entrepreneurs, Etienne’s journey underscores the critical role of building and maintaining a strong network. It’s not just about making connections but nurturing them into meaningful relationships that support and drive mutual growth.

Subscribe to Shopify Masters for more insights from successful entrepreneurs like Etienne and additional resources to help you start and grow your entrepreneurial career.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Starting a business isn’t cheap.

Developing products, researching market trends, securing inventory⁠—there’s no shortage of costs for a startup business. But if you haven’t even started selling yet, where does the money come from? For up-and-coming entrepreneurs, securing business financing before having a chance to prove yourself can be tricky.

The application process for small business grants involves more than putting your name on a list and waiting for a deposit. Not every grant is right for every business, and understanding how grant-issuing organizations evaluate applicants is crucial to securing the financial assistance you need.

If you plan on investing the time and energy into applying to a small business grant program, it’s important to understand the available options. Here’s a list of resources to help you pick the right grant for your business.

Federal SBA grants

The US Small Business Administration (SBA) is a federal government agency that provides support for small businesses (based on certain size standards), with the goal of strengthening the nation’s economy.

The SBA has Small Business Development Centers across the country and offers a wide variety of federal grants, loans, and other programs that help connect small business owners with funding opportunities from federal, state, and local governments. Here are some SBA grants and programs that can help support your small business:

State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) 

The State Trade Expansion Program (STEP) offers federal small business grants throughout the US to assist existing businesses in expanding globally, offering funds for foreign-market trade shows and expansion opportunities. 

Veteran assistance programs

The SBA offers a number of veteran assistance programs that provide grant funding for veteran-owned businesses. 

Women-owned Small Business Federal Contract program

The Women-Owned Small Business (WOSB) Federal Contract program offers funds specifically to women-owned businesses, with the goal of leveling the playing field for women entrepreneurs.

HUBZone program

The HUBZone program provides assistance to small businesses with the aim of fueling growth in historically underutilized business zones. 

Natural Resources Sales Assistance program

The Natural Resource Sales Assistance program prioritizes small businesses and assists them in securing federal government contracts through a bidding system. Eligible industries include timber and forestry products, minerals, coal, oil, gas, and real estate.

Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer programs

The SBA coordinates both the Small Business Innovation Research Program (SBIR) and Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR). SBIR is aimed at businesses conducting innovative research and development projects with commercial potential. There are 11 participating agencies including: 

• Environmental Protection Agency (EPA)
• Department of Agriculture (USDA)
• Department of Health and Human Services (HHS)
• Department of Education (DOE) 

The Small Business Technology Transfer Program (STTR) is designed to encourage joint research and development projects between small businesses and research institutions.

Other federal small business grants

Apart from the SBA, there are a number of other federal agencies offering grant programs for small businesses in the US.

National Institutes of Health

The National Institutes of Health continues to offer a variety of funding grant opportunities for businesses developing biomedical research related to the COVID-19 pandemic.

USDA Rural Business Development Grants

USDA Rural Business Development Grants (RBDG) are offered by the US Department of Agriculture to help with technical assistance and training programs for small rural businesses. Funds are also given for non-technical uses, such as entrepreneur training and long-term business strategy planning. The business must have fewer than 50 new workers and less than $1 million in gross revenue. 

US Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency

The US Department of Commerce Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) has a wide variety of small business programs intended to assist with the growth and development of minority-owned businesses throughout the United States. 

US Department of Energy clean energy grants

The US Department of Energy clean energy grants are offered to businesses that have previously received SBIR or SBTT funding to assist in creating clean energy and to fund companies whose goals are to combat climate change.

US Department of Agriculture’s Rural eConnectivity program

The US Department of Agriculture’s Rural eConnectivity Program is a grant program offering federal small business grants to companies and projects that assist rural communities (particularly in disadvantaged communities) or that help to mitigate the effects of climate change within rural areas.

Grants.gov

Grants.gov offers tons of federal small business grants—primarily for organizations and not individuals—from various federal agencies, like the Bureau of Educational and Cultural Affairs and the US Department of Commerce.

State and local grants

Many local and state agencies also offer small business grants. These grants can be industry-specific or focus on broader economic development goals. To find state and local grant opportunities, visit your state’s economic development agency website or contact your local chamber of commerce.

Non-government grants for small businesses

Government agencies aren’t the only source of small business grants and financing: Many private corporations and nonprofit organizations also offer private grant programs designed to help small business owners start and expand their companies.

Comcast RISE

The Comcast RISE Investment Fund offers assistance to help independently owned businesses grow by providing funds for advertising, marketing, business consultations, entrepreneurship education, commercial creative production services, and other technical assistance.

Patagonia

Activist-minded outdoor brand Patagonia offers funding for small businesses seeking to address the core causes of climate change and confront environmental injustice.

National Association for the Self-Employed

The National Association for the Self-Employed is an organization that provides a broad-range of assistance programs for small businesses to help them be successful and competitive in the marketplace. The NASE offers growth grants of up to $4,000 for small businesses with the potential for growth. The grants can be used for business purposes including marketing, hiring, and technology equipment.

500 Global Flagship Accelerator Program

The 500 Global Flagship Accelerator Program provides $150,000 in seed capital and mentorship for fast-growing technology companies with the goal of promoting technological innovation.

Halstead Grant

The Halstead Grant offers a top prize of $7,500 in startup capital, as well as smaller grants to businesses innovating and advancing the artistry of the jewelry industry.

StartOut Founders Program

The StartOut Founders Program aims to provide resources that include its startup accelerator Growth Lab for LGBTQ+-owned businesses at every stage of development, from aspiring founders at the ideas phase to established companies looking to grow.

Second Service Foundation

The Second Service Foundation is a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting the growth of veteran-owned businesses through access to coaching, financing, and educational resources. Its grant program, the Military Entrepreneur Challenge, awards capital grants to eligible businesses based on factors such as positive social and community impact. The amount of the small business grants vary by event.

Corporate grants

Corporations, or their foundations, also provide small business grants. You might want to consider a corporate grant if your business closely aligns with the corporation’s goals and mission. These types of grants may also offer more flexible eligibility compared to federal grants. Examples of corporate grants include:

FedEx Small Business Grants Program

The FedEx Small Business Grants Program is open to businesses with fewer than 99 employees and that have been in operation for at least six months. FedEx awards more than $225,000 in grants to small businesses, including $500 in FedEx print credits to awardees.

Venmo Small Business Grant

With the Venmo Small Business Grant, 20 small businesses are awarded $10,000 in grant funding and free promotion on Venmo’s social media accounts. Plus, you get access to free technical resources and mentorship. To qualify, you must have a US Venmo account and valid business profile. You also must have less than $50,000 in annual sales and 10 or fewer employees.

Grants for women-owned businesses

Some small business grants focus on women in business. Here are a few examples:

Cartier Women’s Initiative Regional Awards Program

The Cartier Women’s Initiative Regional Awards Program offers grants up to $100,000 to entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses in their initial stages of development that are working to meet one of the 17 UN Sustainable Development Goals.

IFundWomen grants

IFundWomen, a marketplace for women-owned businesses to network and secure partnerships and financing opportunities, has partnered with brands like Adidas, Caress, Botox, Visa, and more to offer grants to women-owned businesses. Apply to the Universal Grant Application Database to qualify for future partner grants. Grant amounts vary by partnerships.

Foundation for a Just Society

The Foundation for a Just Society (FJS) offers grants to local, national, regional, and international organizations that work to advance the rights of women and LGBTQ+ people. The FJS focuses its efforts in Francophone West Africa, Mesoamerica, South and Southeast Asia, and the US Southeast, as well as some areas of New York City. Grant amounts range from $50,000 to $500,000.

WomensNet’s Amber Grant

WomensNet is a community of entrepreneur-minded women supporting businesses led by women starting their entrepreneurial journey. The organization awards monthly Amber Grants of $10,000 each and additional $25,000 end-of-year grants to women entrepreneurs.

Stacy’s Rise Project

This Hello Alice and Stacy’s Pita Chips partnership gave rise to a program supporting women entrepreneurs through $25,000 business grants, mentorship, and other resources. Requirements for the Stacy’s Rise Project include being a small business selling consumer packaged goods and $25,000 to $1 million in annual sales.

Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund

Hello Alice, in partnership with DoorDash, offers $10,000 grants via its Restaurant Disaster Relief Fund, with the goal of assisting restaurants in recovering from natural disasters such as fires and floods.

Grants for BIPOC-owned businesses

There are numerous grants geared toward helping Black, Indigenous, and other people of color (BIPOC) start and grow their businesses. Here are a few to consider:

BOSS Impact Fund

The BOSS Impact Fund focuses on financially elevating Black women entrepreneurs with $10,000 Invest In Progress grants. The program, a partnership between Hello Alice and The BOSS Network, also provides mentorship opportunities.

Founders First CDC grant programs

Founders First bills itself as “the largest national platform for growing businesses led by diverse founders.” In addition to providing coaching and accelerators, the org offers a variety of grant programs for founders who identify as Latinx, Black, or Asian. Grants are available to residents of Southern California, Chicago, Pennsylvania and New Jersey, and Texas with a $100,000 pool divided among 25 recipients in each area.

Coalition to Back Black Businesses grant program 

The US Chamber Foundation, in collaboration with American Express, launched its grant program as part of a multiyear initiative to support small businesses owned by Black entrepreneurs. Recipients receive $5,000 grants, mentorship, and opportunities for future financial support. The latest cohort was eligible for an additional $25,000 Enhancement grant.

Other funding for small business owners

Aside from small business grants, there are other ways for a new business to secure the startup funds it needs to grow. If you’re looking for other methods of financing your startup, here are a couple of options to look into:

Small business loans

Small business loans are one of the most common ways that new entrepreneurs secure funding for their businesses. Unlike grants, loans need to be repaid, so it’s important to understand how much money you need, what it will be spent on, and how you plan on making the money to pay the loan back.

TIP: Want to know how much it will cost to take out a loan? Try our free business loan calculator.

Learn more: How To Get a Small Business Loan: 6 Steps To Take

Crowdfunding for small businesses

Crowdfunding has become one of the most popular methods of raising money for startup businesses, largely due to online crowdfunding sites that make it accessible to nearly anyone.

Rather than seeking a large sum of money from an organization or angel investors, crowdfunding involves collecting small sums of money from ordinary people that believe in the potential of your own business.

Learn more: How To Do Crowdfunding: With Expert Tips and Examples From Successful Campaigns

Equity crowdfunding for small businesses

Equity crowdfunding is similar to—but a little different from—ordinary crowdfunding. With equity crowdfunding, everyday people commit smaller sums of money to your business in exchange for equity.

Non-accredited investors can participate in crowdfunding within limits. Previously, new businesses could sell shares only to accredited investors, meaning there was strict net worth criteria that kept members of the public from being able to invest. The restriction also acted as a huge barrier to entrepreneurship, since newer merchants are less likely to have built a network of wealthy investors.

With equity crowdfunding, investment and entrepreneurship have become more accessible.

Learn more: Equity Crowdfunding: Definition, Advantages, and How To Do It

Capital investors for small businesses

Capital investors refer to both angel investors and venture capital funds. Accredited investors can help provide funding for your business startup in return for equity ownership or convertible debt (a loan that may be converted into equity in the future). For example, Backstage Capital is a venture capital fund that invests in underrepresented groups in entrepreneurship, offering funds for small businesses owned by women, people of color, and LGBTQ+ founders.

The biggest benefit of capital investors is that they can provide you with large sums of money in a relatively short amount of time. At times, they can also provide valuable mentorship as you work to grow your own business.

Learn more:

How to get a small business grant

1. Look for grants within your industry
2. Read the eligibility requirements carefully
3. Make sure your business aligns with the organization’s mission
4. Know what you’ll be spending the grant money on
5. Focus your pitch on innovation and expansion
6. Deliver on your promises

Small business grants are offered by all kinds of organizations to all types of businesses with a wide range of values, missions, and functions. If you’re starting out as a small business owner and looking to apply for small business grants for your startup, here are some key points to keep in mind:

1. Look for grants within your industry

Many small business grants are industry-specific, so it can help narrow down your search if you focus on organizations and research institutions within your particular industry. Focusing on one industry also builds buzz around your business and can help build connections with industry figures who may be able to offer guidance and investment opportunities.

2. Read the eligibility requirements carefully

It sounds obvious, but it’s not hard to overlook aspects of grant eligibility requirements and end up putting effort into applying for a grant you’re ineligible for. Read the requirements carefully and evaluate whether you qualify for the grant award. If you’re unsure whether you qualify, contact someone from the organization and ask.

3. Make sure your business aligns with the organization’s mission

Organizations that provide small business grants do so in the hopes of achieving a specific goal they care about deeply. Ask yourself how your business model helps contribute to achieving this goal. If the answer is hard to parse, you might want to consider applying for grants with another organization.

4. Know what you’ll be spending the grant money on

Some organizations stipulate allowable expenses for grant money. But even when they don’t, it’s still important to have an idea of how you plan to use the money. When an organization is determining whether to issue your business a grant, having a solid business plan and knowing how the money will be spent will help them understand more clearly how your business aligns with their mission.

5. Focus your pitch on innovation and expansion

Organizations that issue small business grants typically favor for-profit businesses that they see as innovative, forward-thinking, and on a path to growth. Focus your pitch on how you plan to scale, any new technologies you might be developing, and what your business can do to help the organization with its mission.

6. Deliver on your promises

Small business grants are not loans, so lenders aren’t expecting to be paid back. They’re not investment capital either, so issuers aren’t expecting to own assets of your business. But that doesn’t mean that small business grants don’t come with expectations and incentives.

Issuers still expect a return on investment, just not a monetary one. Instead, organizations that provide small business owners with grants want to feel confident that your business idea contributes to their organization’s mission⁠—whether it be a common good, an innovation in a particular industry, or economic growth in a specific community.

A small business grant isn’t necessarily “free money.” Grant issuers often have stipulations about how the money can be spent, sometimes even spending the money themselves on specific resources they believe will help your business grow.

Fuel growth in your startup with a small business grant

The first few months of running a business are often the most challenging. It takes time for a business to become profitable, but costs can add up quickly.

Small business grant programs can make a world of difference for a new small business owner. Not only do they provide a vital injection of funds, they can also help to establish connections and networking opportunities in your industry and meet your business needs early on.

If your business has the potential to innovate and serve the public good, chances are you’re a great candidate for a small business grant.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Implementing a sales channel strategy has become a requirement for every business. The strongest brands use multiple sales channels to meet customers where they already spend their time. 

By providing convenient ways for customers to shop, you can increase your ecommerce business’s reach and brand recognition. Spreading your business across platforms also boosts resiliency, as you become less dependent on a single channel or market.

Here, learn about the different types of sales channels used by online businesses—and how you can leverage them.

What is a sales channel? 

A sales channel is a pathway that businesses use to reach customers and sell their products. Online marketplaces, retail stores, and social media accounts are all potential sales channels. Sales channels can be used to find and target different customer audiences, so most businesses consider multichannel selling a good idea.

Direct sales channels

Your business works directly with consumers under a direct sales channel strategy. For example, Apple sells its products through its own stores and website.

Indirect sales channels

Indirect sales channels use third parties, like distributors and retailers, to sell products to consumers. Olipop, for instance, sells its healthy soda pop through Whole Foods. Indirect sales channels can also include marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, and Alibaba.

Distribution channels

Distribution channels are how products move from the manufacturer to the consumer. Many companies use third-parties like dropshipping, print on demand, or 3PLs to manage fulfillment and keep costs low.

The 10 most important sales channels

1. Online store (direct to consumer)
2. Modern marketplaces
3. Traditional marketplaces
4. Retail
5. Wholesale
6. Resellers
7. White label
8. Mobile apps
9. B2B sales
10. Partnerships

1. Online store (direct to consumer)

An online store is the first sales channel many new entrepreneurs create—and for good reason.

When you design your own store, you get to decide how products are displayed. You also get a complete view of customer data and sell directly to consumers (DTC), meaning you keep all the profits. 

That direct relationship can be beneficial for your brand. Research shows that DTC ecommerce is growing across locations and industries, with most customers preferring to buy from independent stores over multi-brand retailers.

With Shopify, you can set up multiple sales channels and direct those customers back to your store.

Pros:

• Low startup costs. Build a store for free with Shopify’s free trial
• Use your store as a sales channel hub
• Use customer data to improve sales lead generation
• No third-party branding or product rules
• Take all the profits from your sales

Cons:

• Generating traffic can be difficult without a large marketing budget
• It’s up to you to manage orders (Shopify can help)

2. Modern marketplaces 

Modern marketplaces are content-driven platforms that enable commerce. This includes social media channels like Instagram, TikTok, Facebook, and Pinterest. Increasingly, it also covers streaming sites like Spotify.

One of the reasons modern marketplaces are so successful as online sales channels is that buyers are already spending time there. Customers see products immediately, in a context they’re familiar with. Adding a Buy button to a social media post is often a natural next step.

On Instagram, for example, you can make posts and Stories shoppable. If a customer sees an item they like, all they need to do is tap the shopping bag symbol and they’ll be directed to a page where they can see more details, visit your store, and check out.

Spotify, the music streaming service, is another modern marketplace built for selling. Listeners can scroll a band’s profile to preorder albums or purchase vinyl records and merch. 

Data suggests customers increasingly prefer to make purchases on social media platforms. In 2023, global social commerce revenues were estimated at $570 billion and could reach $1.1 trillion by 2028.

Pros:

• Apps can help you track performance and optimize your posts
• You can collaborate with other brands and influencers to cross-sell and cross-promote
• Most social media platforms have useful templates for ads and post creation

Cons:

• Continuous content creation is required to stay visible
• It can be difficult to create content that caters to social media algorithms

3. Traditional marketplaces 

Amazon, Etsy, eBay, and Google Shopping are examples of traditional marketplaces. These channels feature a wide range of product offerings, and customers generally search by the product they’d like to buy rather than the brand they’d like to purchase it from.

While traditional marketplaces come with a preexisting customer base, these platforms require you to give up control of customer service and fulfillment, and force competition on margins.

Pros:

• Put your products in front of a large existing customer base
• Use established distributors and marketing channels

Cons:

• Pay commission on sales made within traditional marketplaces
• Strict terms and conditions for brand and product promotion
• Fierce competition, including from international sellers with lower prices

4. Retail 

The retail sales channel includes both permanent and pop-up shops, like a short-term rental in a mall, a booth at a craft fair, or a stall at a local market. Retail channels provide the opportunity to build relationships with your customers in-person and get live feedback. Retail is a powerful piece in the modern commerce playbook. 

Pros:

• Face-to-face contact with customers
• Direct-to-customer sales

Cons:

• Many added costs and a potential need for employees
• Expensive brick-and-mortar overheads

5. Wholesale 

Wholesale involves selling your products to other businesses who then retail them. Some businesses choose to make wholesale their only sales channel, others use wholesaling as one arm of an omnichannel sales strategy.

Pros:

• Move lots of inventory at once
• Retailers engage in marketing and sales for your products

Cons:

• Capital inventory funding required
• It can be expensive to store inventory that doesn’t sell
• No interaction with your customers 

6. Resellers

A reseller is anyone who increases the value of a product and sells it for a higher margin. Adding value to a product can mean affiliation with an established retailer, repackaging it, or even improving the product itself. 

Pros:

• Low overheads
• Upselling opportunities

Cons:

• Fluctuating price and availability depending on the items you’re reselling
• Inconsistent margins
• Required compliance with the original manufacturer’s reselling terms

7. White label

White-label products are generic products that can be customized with a brand’s logo or name. An example of this is the branded reusable bags that grocery stores sell at checkout counters. Trader Joe’s doesn’t manufacture its bags themselves, it simply buys generic ones and has its name printed on them.

Pros:

• Reduced cost of production 
• Ability to jump on trends, like the stainless steel water bottle trend
• Market-tested products

Cons:

• Lots of competition
• Prices dependent on the suppliers’ prices for pre-printed items

8. Mobile apps

By 2025, mobile commerce sales are expected to make up more than 10% of all retail sales in the US.

With consumers turning to apps to do their shopping, brands are responding by building out more capable apps. Brands offer filterable catalogs, gamified experiences, coupons, and special deals to people who download and shop through their apps. 

Pros:

• Users spend longer on apps than on websites
• Use your app to deliver special offers

Cons:

• Apps can be expensive to build
• Apps require constant updating as technology advances

9. B2B Sales

Business-to-business sales are when one business sells products or services to another.

Pros:

• Companies have more spending power than consumers
• Once you develop a good relationship with a company or business, you’ll have a repeat customer
• Sales agents can leverage their networks and expertise to find clients and close deals

Cons:

• Companies can take a long time to make a purchase
• Possible higher costs to create products or services for businesses

10. Partnerships

A sales channel partnership is when you employ a company or individual to act as an extension of your sales team. For example, when a company uses social media influencers to promote their products through influencer marketing, that is a sales channel partnership. The influencer gets a discount on those products or a commission of all the sales their posts generate, and the company gets the benefit of the influencer’s reach and audience trust.

Pros:

• Built-in consumer trust 
• Reach new customers
• Save on marketing campaign costs

Cons:

• Your partners can misrepresent you
• You won’t get as much customer data as direct sales
• You may have to sacrifice some of your own profits to make the relationship profitable for your partners

Examples of brands using multiple sales channels 

These sales channels each provide valuable ways to access customers. But if you only use a single channel, your business is limited by that channel’s reach and growth.

Harness several channels and you can distribute your resources to whichever channel is performing the best. Here are some examples of how Shopify merchants benefit from multichannel selling.

The Poster List—Ecommerce, retail, wholesale

Adam Luedicke, owner and founder of Long Beach poster store The Poster List, uses wholesale, in-person shows, and online sales as the main three channels for his business. 

Since starting the business in 2006, Adam found that some channels boom while others dip, often in response to unpredictable external factors like interest rate hikes and the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“Starting out, shows were definitely the majority of where the money was coming from, and then, 2010 through 2015, it flipped and it became more wholesale,” says Adam. “In 2017, the apparel space got soft at retail, and so we started doing shows again.”

By building out multiple sales channels, The Poster List was able to adapt quickly to the changes happening in the larger market. Meeting your customers at the channels relevant to your brand helps you build a more resilient business.

Abracadana—Marketplaces, ecommerce

Mary Helt is co-founder and owner of Abracadana, a store that sells screen-printed bandanas. 

“It’s good to have a couple of venues for selling,” she says. “Sometimes I feel like one is pulling me—like Etsy is pulling me away from Shopify. Or if I’m working on updating Shopify, I’m not paying attention to Etsy. And I think that’s OK. You can cycle it. But try a couple of channels to see what works. You can’t have all of your eggs in one basket, that’s for sure.” 

How to build a multichannel sales strategy

Your sales channels should work together and support your core product line.

For example, you might do the bulk of your business on your ecommerce website but then run flash sales on excess inventory via Instagram Stories.

When you started your business, you likely prioritized a single sales channel. Scaling by exploring new sales avenues can seem daunting—but it’s rarely as difficult as store owners think.

Here are five tips for managing multichannel selling:

1. Prioritize your channels based on profitability

Effective multichannel selling is about pinpointing the right channels for your business. To do this, think about:

• Where your target audience spends their time
• Which channels will have the lowest running costs
• Where your competitors are active 

For example, selling your products on a traditional marketplace like Amazon, Etsy, or eBay might be the best next step for your ecommerce business.

Once you see profitability through one sales channel, you can then prioritize other channels accordingly, moving to each new channel as you see success on the previous channel.

2. Create a different strategy for each sales channel

Each sales channel you add to your business will require a different strategy for success. For example, you’d take a different approach to sending customers to your online store than you would creating foot traffic in a brick-and-mortar retail shop.

Furthermore, you’ll need to tweak your product descriptions and marketing messaging on different sites. Your Shopify site might tout how quickly products ship, but Amazon shoppers are used to the speed, so you’ll need to find a different way to entice customers to make a purchase.

3. Manage inventory and fulfillment

As you expand to different sales channels, you need to have the proper processes in place for inventory management and order fulfillment. Increasing the number of ways you can make sales will—hopefully—increase your total number of sales. And you need to have the inventory to accommodate that increase.

More than that, you need to make sure you have the capacity to fulfill all of those orders—otherwise, you may look into hiring an assistant to help with fulfilling orders to help you keep up as you expand your business to even more sales channels.

4. Ensure quality customer service across sales channels

Growing your business means you might have more customer issues to deal with, so you need to keep up the quality of your customer service. Consider hiring customer service reps or checking out some of the customer service apps in the Shopify app store. 

Adding live chat to your Shopify website can be a manageable way to deal with customer service questions and complaints as you start to scale your business. Keep the app on your phone or your computer so you can quickly respond to anything that comes in.

5. Keep an eye on your sales and analytics

Pay attention to how many sales each channel is driving. It will likely take some time to build up a new channel, but you need to keep an eye on your sales to make sure the channel eventually starts paying for itself—and then generating extra profits.

If you discover a certain channel isn’t making enough sales, put together a marketing campaign aimed at that channel to help boost it. Perhaps all you need is a bit more brand awareness so your customers can discover your additional sales channels.

Why an online store should be your sales channels hub

You can think of each sales channel as a bolt with a different type of head. As you build your business, you might be tempted to craft one type of screwdriver to unlock one specific sales channel. But that’s only going to get you so far. 

Do you want to build a screwdriver or do you want to build a universal screwdriver? An ecommerce site like Shopify is the universal option, where you can remove and put in whatever kind of bit you need to unlock each channel individually. 

Starting out with an ecommerce site first allows you to establish your brand, find footing as you develop your products, and set up a mission control center before you accelerate your success through other indirect and direct sales channels.

If you’re already using another type of sales channel to sell, like a traditional marketplace or social media, here’s why it might benefit you to set up an online store as well. 

Ease of use

As you get started, especially if you’re still developing your product, it can be easier to build your business on an ecommerce site first and plug into different sales channels once you’re ready to grow your business. 

The biggest barrier to entry for traditional marketplaces in particular is that they require high-quality and accurate product information upfront, even if you’re still developing and iterating on your product. For example, to even be approved to sell on a marketplace, you need to provide detailed information about your products. This includes unique product identifiers like SKU or ISBN numbers.

Building within a siloed ecosystem 

Customers follow trends, both in regards to what products they buy and which platforms they purchase from. Third-party platforms are susceptible to these shifts: policies change, algorithms shift, and users move on. Because you can’t control these changes, it’s best not to over-rely on one platform to make sales.

Shopify lets you set up different entry points to your business via sales channels, but all roads lead to your Shopify headquarters. You maintain reach and ownership, which means you can sell to your target audience on whatever platform, channel, or marketplace they’re on. 

Seller restrictions 

When you sell through traditional marketplaces, those channels control branding and how you upload products, and they own the customer and your interactions with them. Customers will associate more with the product and the marketplace rather than with your brand, so it can be difficult to differentiate yourself from other shops that sell similar or the same products as you.

These marketplaces are built with buyers and sellers in mind. As a seller, you get a destination that buyers naturally want to visit, but you give up ownership over a lot of decisions. A marketplace might make decisions based on their average seller, or to improve the experience for buyers (at the expense of sellers), and you’re signing up for that in exchange for access to their audience.

Overall, your relationship with a traditional marketplace is one of tradeoffs. You might acquire a built-in customer base, but risk losing your identity as a brand if you don’t build your own online presence before diving in. 

Building a brand story 

While you can build a compelling brand on a social media platform or at a retail location, it’s not something you can do effectively on a traditional marketplace.

Mary built a separate Shopify store in order to differentiate her new brand from her pre-existing business, Maryink. “I wanted to break out of Maryink and develop a new brand that’s still associated with Maryink, but that brings about the imagery of a bandana,” Mary says. “So we came up with Abracadana, because we think bandanas are magical. They’re so simple and you can do so many things with them. We broke off and started our Shopify site, because you can do a lot more with the design, and that was important to us.” 

Your owned website is a blank canvas to help fully realize your brand. In a marketplace, your brand has to fit within the provided requirements. You’re limited in how you can express your brand—which makes it significantly harder to leave a lasting impression.

Building a resilient business

By creating a headquarters for your business with an online store, you set yourself up for success in a few ways. You’ll be able to develop a unique brand and maintain ownership of your customers and your data.

Your sales channels help your brand reach customers in the places where they already spend their time and focus their attention. With Shopify, commerce on these platforms can be more seamless, which is good for your customers. Plus, they’re integrated with your online store, so you maintain access to order data, customer relationships, and your brand identity. 

Customer needs, marketplaces, social media, and the greater commerce market are constantly changing. Building a centralized ecommerce shop will allow you to be a more resilient sales process and overall business.

Illustration by Mitch Blunt

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Shopify is known for helping businesses get up and running with incredible ease and speed. And now, Shopify is going to help you grow and expand your business just as easily and just as fast.

Markets has been reimagined as a new, dedicated surface in Shopify admin that aggregates all of a business’s expansion activity into one central location, coming soon to all Shopify customers over the next few months.

What is Markets?

Markets, formerly known as Shopify’s cross-border selling solution, has evolved to become a one-stop shop for expansion on Shopify. Markets enables growth not only via international expansion, but also through retail and B2B (B2B is available on Plus plans only). 

What’s more, businesses will be able to customize everything from their catalog to their store’s theme, currency, and domains—all within a single shop—in order to create customized buyer experiences for each of their markets.  

What are the benefits of using Markets?

Markets is for businesses in every stage of growth, able to accommodate any expansion journey, whether you’re a brand new customer on Shopify looking to expand internationally, a scaling business selling B2B, or an enterprise already operating a network of retail stores.

Think of Markets as your command center for growth: the place to see all the markets you operate in, to compare their performance, and to expand your business to new countries or experiment with new business models. 

In a few months, if you’re already selling cross-border, B2B, or retail with Shopify, you’ll automatically start seeing your existing markets within the new Markets interface. And if you haven’t yet expanded your business and you’re not sure where to start, you’ll be able to jump into Markets and get started. 

Grow your business from one central place on Shopify

Previously, cross-border, B2B, and Shopify POS were spread out across Shopify’s platform. Markets aggregates all your growth into one location in Shopify admin. If you want to start selling to a new country, expand to a new B2B market, or set up a retail market, the process stays consistent: simply create a new market, make your customizations, and you’re ready to go.

Offer extremely customized buyer experiences

One of the best things about Markets is the customization it enables for your buyer experiences, all possible from one single shop. 

Markets lets you customize your catalog (the list of products and their associated prices), your store’s theme, currency, languages, content, domains and business entity,  to curate the exact shopping experience you want to provide for a specific buyer in a specific market.

This allows you to set up customized buyer experiences, ensuring, for example:

• Your D2C buyers in Japan see a specific list of products and associated prices, all in Japanese yen
• Your B2B buyers based in the UK see a version of your store theme especially customized with a special banner, just for them
• That you’ve stocked only your bestsellers at your New York flagship retail store

See a holistic picture of all your expansion

With Markets, you’ll be able to see all the expansion activity of your business at any given time, from the highest level of detail to the most granular.

From the Markets index, you can easily view all the markets you’re operating in, and compare their performance. Shopify pins your key markets at the top of the page for your convenience.

Markets also offers you a detailed summary of all the customizations you’ve made for each market—a great tool for bringing new employees up to speed.

The work you do to customize your buyer experience in Markets will also be reflected in the Products section of Shopify admin, enabling you to preview the exact list of products and prices, or the exact version of your PDP that a specific buyer in a specific market would see.

Simple, rapid growth

Expanding your business with Markets is easy: no long integration times, no repetitive processes, and no need to split inventory or keep data in sync between multiple stores. 

Markets also lets you quickly create new markets by tweaking to any of your existing ones, so you won’t have to waste any time creating each market from scratch.

How Markets works 

Let’s say you’re hoping to expand to the UK. To start, you’d create a new market and add the UK as a region.

You can then customize your catalog for your UK market, making sure that the products, pricing, and availability are what you want to surface to your UK buyers.

You can also customize your store’s theme to be tailored to your UK audience. 

Let’s say you start getting traction in the UK, and, because you are on a Plus plan, you decide to start selling wholesale in the region. Simply create a new market, and add your UK region and your UK B2B buyer company locations. 

Markets automatically inherits all your customizations from your UK market, and you can tweak your catalog and theme to be just right for your B2B buyers.

How Markets makes international, B2B, and retail selling easier

Already selling cross-border, retail, or B2B on Shopify? Once Markets rolls out in a few months, you won’t need to opt in—you’ll simply be able to access all your existing markets from the Markets interface.

Outside of this convenient aggregation for all your expansion activity, Markets will also add new features and capabilities to Shopify’s cross-border, retail and B2B selling solutions. You can check out more details in the section below.

Selling cross-border with Markets

Markets has now moved to the main Shopify navigation, and the experience has been redesigned to make it easier to see the customizations you’ve made for a specific market. 

It’s also now possible to create submarkets from an existing market. For example, if you have a market for Europe but you want to customize your online store specifically for Germany, you can quickly create a Germany submarket (automatically inheriting all the customizations you had already made for your European market) and then just customize your theme specifically for your German buyers.

For store owners based in the US, Shopify also offers Managed Markets—an evolution of the product formerly known as Markets Pro—which is fully integrated with the new Markets. Managed Markets simplifies international selling with an integrated merchant-of-record model that manages all the complexities of cross-border selling, including international payments, customs regulations, duties, shipping, and more.

Selling retail with Markets

Markets will enable store owners using Shopify POS to set specific catalogs to manage pricing and publishing for your retail locations, all from one shop. You can also customize the POS smart grid per market to adjust the in-store experience for different retail locations.

This would allow you, for example, to run all your POS locations in different countries, all from a single Shopify store. For example, you can have all your locations in your US retail market mapped to your US business entity and Shopify Payments account with a customized catalog and smart grid, while your Australia retail market can remain connected to your Australian entity and Shopify Payments account.

Selling B2B with Markets

When Markets launches, store owners on Plus plans will be able to customize their store theme for different B2B markets from a single store. Additionally, it will be possible to create unique versions of their catalog for multiple B2B markets, all from the Markets interface, enabling easy geographic expansion for wholesale businesses.

Getting started with Markets

Look out for Markets, becoming available to all Shopify customers over the next few months. 

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Early access to store credit on Shopify is here! Gone are the days of using gift cards and discount codes as workarounds—you can now issue store credit directly in your Shopify admin. Store credit early access is available with a limited feature set and accessible to all Shopify businesses globally.

Use new store credit features to help you create more flexibility in customer interactions, improve operational efficiency, and help prevent lost sales.

What is store credit?

Store credit is monetary value given to your customer or potential customer to spend in your store. Unlike gift cards or discount codes, store credit is not transferable and is linked directly to the customer to whom it’s issued, either with or without an expiration date.

In Shopify’s early access release, store credit can be viewed, credited, and debited directly from a customer profile, and logged in customers can choose to spend their store credit at checkout.

What are the benefits of using store credit?

Utilizing store credit helps create loyal customers, which is key to the long-term growth of your business. While repeat customers account for only 21% of customers, they generate 44% of revenue and 46% of orders. And they cost less to acquire too: acquiring new customers costs five times as much as it costs to retain existing customers. 

Offering store credit to customers creates more flexibility in your customer interactions, improves operational efficiency, and helps drive customer retention, loyalty, and sales. 

Encourage customer retention and increase sales

Store credit incentivizes customers to come back to your shop. If included as a part of a rewards or loyalty program, store credit can be used as a tool to express your appreciation to customers for their repeat business.

Customers often end up spending more money than the balance of store credit issued. For example, if a customer is issued $20 in store credit, they’re likely to spend more than $20 when redeeming that credit in their next purchase. Increasing average order value among returning customers is a simple yet effective strategy to help drive customer lifetime value in the long term.

Create greater flexibility in customer interactions

Every interaction you have with a customer is an opportunity to turn a one-time exchange or visit into a lifelong customer and loyal advocate for your brand. Offering store credit in your loyalty and customer support workflows, whether pre- or post-purchase, can help build a positive rapport and reputation that leads to returning business. And because store credit is not transferable, you can be sure that store credit issued is being used by its intended recipient.

Store credit can be offered as compensation for a poor experience, to reward customers for their previous purchases, and as a part of a marketing incentive or campaign that helps drive sales.

Build a source of truth for store credit balances, orders and customers 

Unlike some of the popular workarounds to store credit, such as gift cards and discount codes, store credit balances and transaction history are recorded and referenceable directly in a customer’s profile. Early access also includes store credit as a payment method type in analytics and reporting within the Shopify admin.

Opting to introduce store credit into your workflows in place of workarounds helps increase transparency and accuracy when analyzing your customers, their behaviors, and their orders.

How store credit works 

Store credit is available to all Shopify businesses globally, with a feature set that will grow throughout the year. 

Apply store credit at checkout

Enabling store credit at checkout gives your customers a way to spend the store credit that you issue. When a customer is checking out, the option to apply store credit to their order will appear after the customer logs in to their customer account. A customer can log in directly from the checkout page using a one-time six-digit verification code that’s sent to their email address. 

Store credit can only be accessed by customers when they are logged into new customer accounts. Before issuing store credit to customers, you should make sure the login experience version is set to new customer accounts in your Shopify admin, or that you have provided the customer with a URL that gives access to new customer accounts. This URL can be found in your customer accounts settings, even if the version of login experience is set to classic customer accounts or if you have no logged in experience at all.

Issue store credit directly from your Shopify admin

Store credit can be credited and debited directly from a customer’s profile, where you can also see store credit balances that a customer is currently holding in one or more currencies. 

When issuing store credit, you can enter the amount to credit, and whether or not the credit expires on a specified date. Store credit can be manually deducted from a customer profile by debiting the balance. Any spend by the customer, or any manual debit, will be applied to the soonest expiring credits first. After a credit or debit is actioned, the change in the customer’s store credit balance will appear as a timeline event on the customer’s profile. When a customer spends store credit at checkout, it is reflected in the order timeline.

Track and analyze store credit

Understanding how much outstanding store credit you have issued to customers as well as being able to understand how and when store credit is redeemed can help you strategize for the long term.

By selecting a store credit balance on a customer’s profile in a specified currency, you are able to view all the transactions that have taken place in relation to that store credit balance. This includes the existing balance, detailed transaction history, and the amounts that are due to expire.

More on the horizon

Store credit on Shopify is currently in early access. By the end of this year, we’ll introduce new functionality, including:

• The ability to issue store credit in lieu of a refund, to reduce the volume of returns your team has to handle, keep cash flowing to your business, and improve customer retention 
• Improved analysis for store credit, the ability to assign reason codes for reporting purposes, and shop-level reports for balance and liability
• Segments, triggers, and automated workflows that help you target customers with store credit, automatically issue store credit as incentives, notify customers of expiring store credit, and more

Tips to get the most out of store credit

Get creative with store credit

Store credit isn’t just for rectifying customer support issues or driving customer loyalty; it can also be used to help acquire new customers and increase your brand’s awareness. From referral programs that incentivize previous customers to recommend your products to their family and friends to offering store credit to your employees as a perk of the job, store credit is a versatile tool for your business.

Cross-sell and upsell using the Customer API

Looking to improve and diversify your marketing campaigns? Using the Customer Accounts API, you can identify a customer’s store credit balance, making it easy to send engaging and personalized marketing communications to customers who hold store credit. 

Get started with store credit today

Start winning back customers and building brand loyalty. Issue store credit using Shopify’s early access features, directly from your Shopify admin. To learn more about how to start issuing store credit today, visit our Help Center.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Living in residential housing without a lot of space as an undergraduate inspired Frédéric Aubé to launch Cozey, a direct-to-consumer modular furniture brand, in 2020. The Cozey concept became so beloved by consumers that, within five years, it was generating millions in annual revenue. Now, to fulfill even bigger ambitions, Frédéric and his team are heading into retail. In this limited podcast series, Road to Retail, we follow the Cozey team as they open their first-ever store, in Toronto, Canada.

Why open a retail store? 

Most founders with digital-first brands arrive at this crossroads at some point in their business journey. For Frédéric and his team at Cozey, moving into retail wasn’t a necessity.

After all, the Canadian furniture-in-a-box company generates tens of millions in annual sales solely online. But Cozey doesn’t want to be just a direct-to-consumer brand.

“Our long-term vision is nothing less than to become the world’s leading furniture retailer. We have lots of room to catch IKEA,” says Frédéric. “And if we want to be really good at it in 20 years, 25 years, 30 years, then let’s start learning today.” 

Expanding into retail was something the team wanted to do for a long time, and the approvals of permits as well as construction of the space took Cozey longer than anticipated. 

“It’s been a long journey. We’ve been thinking about it and working on the store concept and actual construction for over, like, a year and a half now,” shares Felix Robitaille, Cozey’s marketing director and one of Frédéric’s childhood friends.

Felix and Frédéric grew up in Sherbrooke, Québec, where they played hockey and explored old abandoned buildings. Now, bringing things full circle, Cozey’s first store is located in a historic century-old building. 

Listen to the first full episode of the series to hear more of Cozey’s founding story and how the team prepared for opening day. 

 

An environment to experience the brand

Coey’s store is situated in Toronto’s West Queen West neighborhood, an area dotted with boutique businesses, renowned restaurants, and craft cafés, and an ideal location for the city’s dwellers to stroll by and shop.

But Cozey’s goal isn’t about making in-store sales.

“We don’t want to force them to close a sale here in the store. That’s not the point,” explains Felix. “We want to focus on the experience. If you provide a great experience and a great product, then sales are going to follow naturally.”

A big part of that is the store design, which focuses on bringing Cozey’s online experience to life, from cloud-like window displays to mock living rooms.

“You’ll see inside the store, there are several rings, which are rounded rectangles that frame every setup of the store. And those are meant to sort of simulate what you would see in [our] ecommerce photography,” creative director Christine McPhee explains. “This symbolizes the fact that we’re a product-focused company, but we also tried to create these really warm, welcoming living room environments.” 

Because Cozey’s store is set up to feel like a living room, instead of having a cash register, sales associates are equipped with iPads loaded with Shopify POS, allowing them to lounge with customers on different sofas while chatting or completing a purchase.

For more on how the Cozey team managed their first day running the retail store and how they provided the Cozey experience to customers, listen to the second episode of Road To Retail.

 

Testing and learning with Shopify POS 

Before opening Cozey’s first brick-and-mortar, the brand’s team tested out retail with a pop-up.

In the summer of 2023, Cozey set up a small showroom in STACKT Market, an industrial complex near Toronto’s lakeshore. The area is filled with businesses and restaurants operating out of repurposed shipping containers.

“It [was] just experiential. We didn’t expect to make any sales, but it’s one sofa [on display] that you can come and try and discover Cozey,” recalls Frédéric. 

The pop-up was a marketing opportunity. And, when the team initially launched it, they didn’t provide a way for customers to purchase pieces onsite. However, the consistent demand had store manager Taurean Scotland implement Shopify POS.

Cozey used Shopify POS to capture information from those who stopped by its pop-up, and was able to use that info for continued marketing and future sales, since one of the biggest advantages of Shopify POS is its ability to build out customer profiles and capture emails. 

“I think in two days, not even, we were set up, capturing transactions, and ended up making hundreds of thousands of dollars per month in that container,” says Frédéric. 

Taurean shares, “We use it as a source of email capture. So if customers wanted to order a swatch, we were able to use the POS as a way to track. And from there, you’re able to create a customer profile.” 

Customer profiles, emails, and transaction data—from online to pop-up to brick-and-mortar—Shopify POS’s streamlined system brought simplicity to Cozey’s team.

As Frédéric says,“It’s simple for the customer, and it’s simple for our team. And it’s really the backbone of Cozey.” 

For more on what Cozey learned from its pop-up and retail experience, check out the final episode of this limited series. 

 

Every step on this road to retail journey, Cozey has leaned on Shopify to bring its experiences to customers. To learn more about how different tools and services from Shopify can help you on your own road to retail, check out Shopify POS.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Buy now, pay later companies are being used with increasing frequency in ecommerce. Also known as BNPL companies, these plans allow customers to divide payments into specified installments rather than pay the full amount when purchasing the item.

BNPL apps are easy to use, and have low interest rates and fees as well as credit limits that allow customers to make most common purchases. This makes them an attractive alternative to credit cards.

As a business owner, BNPL makes things easier for your customers, and can increase your bottom line. With BNPL, you can offer your customers a simple way to make payments on purchases, while ensuring you receive the full amount immediately. Once you know the benefits popular BNPL companies offer, you can decide on the best one for your needs.

What are buy now, pay later (BNPL) companies?

BNPL companies create and support an app-based form of payment you can find both online and in stores. In many ways, the BNPL model is similar to a credit card: When a consumer buys products and services using the app, the business receives the payment immediately, and the consumer pays equal payments over a set period of time (often without being charged interest).

For consumers, there are a number of advantages to using BNPL for payment. The repayment structure is simple and straightforward, and BNPL companies usually don’t charge interest or fees for users who pay on time. Additionally, most BNPL apps are easy to opt in to, and the approval process is straightforward. A BNPL company might conduct a soft credit check on new users, which won’t affect a customer’s credit score. Due to its ease of use, BNPL accounted for 5% of global ecommerce transaction volume in 2023 and is expected to reach $452 million in transaction value by 2027.

BNPL apps can be a winning situation for all involved. Consumers can finance purchases they might not otherwise have been able to afford, it reduces abandoned online shopping carts on merchant sites, and BNPL companies earn fees from the merchant for processing the transaction.

The buy now, pay later fine print

Unlike with credit cards, a buy now, pay later payment plan usually doesn’t require users to pay interest. And, consumers find they are generally easier to get approved for than credit cards, allowing them to make large purchases with interest free payments over time.

Taking advantage of a BNPL payment plan won’t affect a consumer’s credit score unless they miss a payment. Missing payments may also result in late fees, and result in a report with credit bureaus.

For businesses, risk is minimal, as chargebacks are often the responsibility of the buy now, pay later provider. As with any online payment method, BNPL loans can be at risk for fraud. Again, usually the buy now, pay later provider will be on the hook. However, good customer service practice dictates that you should take measures to prevent and detect fraud, and engage with customers who fall victim.

⚠️ Note: As with any contract, read the terms and conditions of any BNPL platforms you integrate with your website.

8 popular buy now, pay later companies

Using BNPL apps that have established reputations will remove some of the uncertainty for you and your customers. Here are the eight most popular.

1. Shop Pay Installments

Launched in 2021, Shop Pay Installments by Shopify is a convenient option for businesses already running their stores on the platform. 

The facts

• Shop Pay Installments are offered by Affirm.
• Consumers pay back their BNPL loan in four equal payments or monthly installments up to 12 months.
• Businesses will be subject to an eligibility check and must have Shopify Payments and Shop Pay activated.

Pros

• Increase average order value by up to 50%.
• Provide a 30% faster checkout experience to returning payment installments users.
• Up to 28% fewer abandoned carts.
• Tap into Shop Pay’s 100 million+ user base.
• Consumers have flexible payment options: four installment payments or monthly financing plans up to 12 months.
• Zero late fees for customers.

Cons

• Shop Pay Installments is currently only available in the United States.

2. Affirm

Founded in 2012, Affirm is available in the US at more than 245,000 merchants, and has financed over 17 million purchases.

The facts

• Interest: 0%–30%, depending on the payment plan and user eligibility.
• Loan term: Six weeks, six months, or one year.
• Fees: None.
• Credit line: Up to $17,500.

Pros

• Available both online and in-store.
• Multiple repayment structures offer a wider range of options.
• Merchants set their rates and repayment timelines.
• Performs a soft consumer credit check.

Cons

• Missed payments may affect users’ credit scores.
• Most transactions require a credit check.
• Some transactions charge interest.

3. Afterpay

Afterpay launched in Australia in 2014, before expanding to the US, New Zealand, and the UK. Some 122,000 brands use Afterpay to reach more than 19 million customers.

The facts

• Interest: None.
• Loan term: Six weeks.
• Fees: Late or missed-payment fees can reach up to 25% of the purchase price.
• Credit line: Starts at $500.

Pros

• Encourages responsible spending for students and those who haven’t built up credit, bringing new consumers into the market.
• App includes a virtual credit card for in-store purchases at any store—even if that store isn’t an Afterpay partner.
• A reminder feature helps users stay on track with payments.
• Late payments won’t affect users’ credit scores.

Cons

• Only one payment structure.
• Each purchase must be approved by Afterpay.
• Not all purchases will be approved.
• Late fees can be as high as 25% of the purchase amount .

4. Sezzle

Founded in 2016, Sezzle has 10 million active customers and 48,000 active merchants on the platform. As a certified B Corporation (nonprofit), it offers customers the ability to reschedule payments for up to two weeks of additional time.

The facts

• Interest: None.
• Loan term: Six weeks.
• Fees: Missed payments result in account deactivation; $10 reactivation fee.
• Credit line: Varies depending on the user.

Pros

• Proven commitment to social and environmental standards. 
• Allows users to reschedule payments three times for up to two additional weeks.
• Users can build credit with the Sezzle Up option, which reports on-time payments to credit bureaus.
• Virtual credit card allows for in-store payments at select retailers.
• Excellent customer service.
• Performs a soft credit check on users.
• Three payment structures

Cons

• Fees apply for additional reschedules.

5. PayPal Pay In 4

PayPal is one of the most popular online payment processing platforms. As of August 2020, it also offers BNPL with millions of online merchants. 

The facts

• Interest: None.
• Loan term: Six weeks.
• Fees: None.
• Credit line: $1,500 per transaction.

Pros

• Familiar brand name.
• Easy to add for merchants and customers with existing PayPal accounts.
• Integrated with the existing PayPal payment setup.
• Covered by PayPal’s Purchase Protection, offering users an additional level of security on purchases.
• Performs a soft user credit check.

Cons

• Not available for in-store use.
• Limited to Australian and US buyers and sellers, excluding those in Missouri and Nevada. Note: the product is also available under a different name in Spain, Italy, UK, and France.
• Purchases must be approved by PayPal.
• Missed payments may affect users’ credit scores.

6. Klarna

Klarna is one of the most well-known BNPL companies. It was founded in 2005 by students from the Stockholm School of Economics and is now available in more countries than its competitors.

The facts

• Interest: None for the Pay Later in 30 Days and Pay in 4 plans; 0% to 19.99% for monthly financing.
• Loan term: 30 days, six weeks, and up to 36 months (monthly financing).
• Fees: $7 late fees for missed payments for Pay in 4 plan, and up to $27 for returned payments on the Pay Later in 30 Days plan.
• Credit line: $1,000 for Pay Later in 30 Days and Pay in 4 plans; $10,000 for monthly financing options.

Pros

• Available both online and in-store.
• Multiple repayment structures offer a wider range of options, allowing customers to finance medium and large purchases.
• Available in several countries in Asia, Australia, Europe, and North America.
• Performs a soft credit check on users for Pay Later in 30 Days and Pay in 4 plans.
• Mobile app users can join Vibe, a free rewards program with exclusive sales.
• Users can generate a single-use virtual gift card, which can be used in any online store—even in stores that aren’t Klarna partners.
• Promotes partners through app, social media, and newsletters.

Cons

• Each purchase must be approved by Klarna.
• Monthly financing users will undergo a hard credit inquiry.
• Some fees for late payments.

7. Zip

Formerly known as Quadpay, Zip is an Australian BNPL company launched in 2013 with a simple concept: Make a purchase today and split the payment into four equal, interest-free installments. Unlike other BNPL companies, customers can use Zip for both online and in-person shopping.

The facts

• Interest: None.
• Loan term: Six weeks.
• Fees: $1 convenience fee for each payment—a total of $4 per order; late fees of up to $7.
• Credit line: Varies by user.

Pros

• Available both online and in-store.
• Virtual credit card allows for in-store purchases, even if the store does not partner with Zip.
• Notifications help users stay on track with monthly payments.
• May perform a soft credit check on users.

Cons

• The $1 per payment convenience fee means that every purchase costs an extra $4.
• Only one payment structure.

• Each purchase must be approved by Zip.

8. Splitit

Splitit was founded in 2012 and is a unique competitor in the BNPL service space. Unlike other BNPL companies, Splitit works through users’ existing credit cards, charging the full purchase amount to the card over time in small increments.

The facts

• Interest: None.
• Loan term: Varies.
• Fees: None.
• Credit line: Uses customers’ existing credit card limits.

Pros

• Available both online and in-store.
• No applications, registration, or credit checks required.
• Uses customers’ existing credit cards, allowing them to earn rewards on purchases and build credit without accruing interest.
• Users can make larger purchases without worrying about interest.
• Partnerships with Visa, Mastercard, and Stripe.
• Merchants are able to set their own qualifying purchase amounts and select between two different business plans.

Cons

• Users must have a credit card with sufficient credit to cover the cost of purchases.
• Not available with Amex cards.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

As a business owner, you know revenue is the amount you earn when you sell your product or service. 

But what happens if a customer pays you in advance? You get the cash but have done nothing to earn it. This is where deferred revenue comes in. 

Ahead, you’ll learn the basics of deferred revenue and how it works in accounting for your business.

What is deferred revenue?

In business, a customer sometimes pays for a service they will receive six or even 24 months later. So, you have the cash, but you haven’t performed the service or delivered any product yet. 

Deferred revenue is the money a business receives from a customer for future services or products. Think of purchasing a gift card.

Imagine you purchase a $100 gift card from your favorite bookstore. The store collects your $100, but hasn’t sold you any books. The bookstore will record the $100 as deferred revenue until you redeem the gift card.

Accounting rulesdon’t allow the store to recognize the entire $100 as revenue because it has done nothing to give it a legitimate claim to that money.Even if not explicitly stated, business transactions are contractual with duties and rights for each party. 

In the above example, the store has a duty to sell books to you and then has a right to the cash in on your gift card after giving you the books. The cash you receive before providing a service or delivering a product is called deferred revenue. You can also think of it as postponed revenue or unearned revenue.

How deferred revenue works in accounting

A set of accounting principles define how transactions are recorded in a company’s books of accounts. There are ten accounting principles and the revenue recognition principle is the most relevant for deferred revenue.

According to the revenue recognition principle, revenue is recorded when it’s earned, regardless of when the cash payment is received. For example, assume a SaaS company sells a two-year software license and receives $100,000 as full payment. The company can’t immediately recognize $100,000 upfront as revenue because it hasn’t earned it. 

Instead, it recognizes revenue bit by bit as it delivers the software service over the two-year period.The company will record $4,166 in revenue ($100,000 ÷ 24 months) each month for the two-year licensing period. 

Businesses must record any advance cash payments as deferred revenue until they earn them by providing the service or delivering the product. Take a look at Amazon’s December 31, 2023 Balance Sheet.

Ignore all the words and numbers and only look at the items surrounded by red boxes.

On December 31, 2023, Amazon had $15.2 billion in unearned (deferred) revenue. As you read further through Amazon’s annual financial report, you learn that its unearned revenue is the following:

Deferred revenue vs. accrued revenue

There is a subtle difference between deferred revenue and accrued revenue. Remember that deferred revenue occurs when a business receives cash, but hasn’t provided a service or delivered a product. 

Accrued revenue is the opposite of deferred revenue. It’s when a business hasn’t received payment for goods or services already provided. Another one of the 10 fundamental accounting principles is the accrual principle. 

According to the accrual principle, transactions are recorded in the books of accounts when expenses are incurred or revenue earned, regardless of when cash exchanges hands. For example, you record salary expenses when you have an obligation to pay, not when you direct deposit paychecks to your employees’ bank accounts. 

Similarly, you record revenue when you give a customer a product as agreed, not when you receive the cash. Accrued revenue is the same thing as accounts receivable. It’s when a customer owes you money. You shouldn’t omit these amounts from your financial books.

The same holds for expenses. Don’t leave them out of your financial statements. Assume, for example, that a business hasn’t paid salaries for a month. When the business closes its books at the end of the month, it needs to recognize the unpaid salaries as an expense and a liability. 

How deferred revenue affects financial statements

Revenue is an income item and shows on the income statement. How about deferred revenue? In accounting, deferred revenue affects the financial statement differently because it is a liability, not income. 

Here’s the reasoning.

The cash you receive for a service you haven’t provided is technically not yours. You’re keeping it in trust. It will pass to you only when you earn it. And circumstances can change, especially before you perform the agreed-upon service. 

For example, let’s say a customer paid you$10,000 for a two-year SaaS software license. What happens when the next morning the customer changes their mind or experiences a significant business disruption and requests a refund?

Of course, you can flash a no-refund policy and keep the cash. But you did nothing to deserve the cash and therefore, should be obligated to pay it back. 

Somehow, accounting captures this sense of natural justice by stating that deferred revenue should be recognized as a liability, not income. Once you’ve delivered the service or product paid for in advance, the deferred revenue liability disappears. You then record that amount as revenue.

How to manage and track deferred revenue

The best way to manage and track deferred revenue is with a revenue recognition schedule. This schedule captures the total initial advance payment, and then gradually reduces the amount as the business performs the agreed-upon service.

Suppose you have a customer who signs a 12-month contract for $12,000 on January 1. The contract has a recurring quarterly fee of $3,000. 

Your revenue recognition schedule will look like this:

Knowing the deferred revenue portion can help prevent overspending because it represents future service delivery commitments and potential refunds. Plus, tracking deferred revenue can help businesses create more accurate and realistic cash flow predictions to plan for things like staffing needs and marketing initiatives.

Tracking deferred revenue means more accurate financial statements. Imagine in the above example that the company signed the 12-month contract in December, and the company recorded the entire $12,000 as revenue in December. 

That means December revenue is inflated, and the company will show no revenue for the following year. Today, technology has made managing and tracking deferred revenue a lot easier. 

Most accounting software has revenue recognition features that update deferred revenue in real time. These accounting systems provide charts, graphs, and tables breaking down revenue by month, showing what the company has earned and what’s still deferred.

Risks with deferred revenue

It may look simple, but deferred revenue comes with a set of risks businesses should be prepared to navigate. How you manage some of these risks can improve the financial health of your business or make a customer somewhere happy and satisfied.

The following are some common risks associated with deferred revenue.

Cash flow management challenges

One of the most common risks with deferred revenue is cash flow management. Consider a company that receives a large sum of cash from a customer at the start of the year for a one year software implementation project. 

But the company uses all of that cash to finance growth and expansion with new marketing initiatives. And that leaves no cash to pay the consultants’ salaries doing the implementation throughout the year. 

Without careful planning, the company might find itself cash-strapped midway through the project, potentially jeopardizing the project’s success and the company’s financial solvency.

Incorrect financial statements

Recording deferred revenue and keeping track of it can be complex, requiring strong accounting processes. Errors in tracking deferred revenue can lead to financial statement errors. 

This, in turn, can mislead investors, creditors, and even regulatory bodies. In some cases, non-compliance with accounting standards and regulations can result in penalties, fines, and legal repercussions.

Customer service risks

Failure to record deferred revenue can easily cause a business to lose track of its commitments. This can lead to delays or failures in fulfilling customer orders, which is frustrating for them. 

Customers expect businesses to honor their commitments. When a company fails to deliver on its promises due to poor management of deferred revenue, it erodes customer trust.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Olajuwon Ajanuku and Earl Cooper are injecting street style elements into apparel and accessories while meeting traditional guidelines for golf dress. Their brand, Eastside Golf, is often worn on—and off—the fairway. 

Olajuwon and Earl’s fresh take on an established industry has caught the attention of partners like Michael Jordan and Mercedes Benz. Through Eastside Golf, the duo is bringing more people to the game, while making the sport more inclusive and welcoming.

 

A logo that represents the brand and beyond 

Olajuwon and Earl met at Morehouse College, where they both played golf and won the Annual PGA Minority Collegiate Golf Championship together. While Olajuwon went on to a finance career, his love of golf stayed constant in his life. Wanting to see himself represented in the sport, Olajuwon merged two photos of himself into a logo for Eastside Golf. “It’s a photo of him as a child swinging a golf club,” explains Earl, “Then there’s another photo of him with a gold chain. … So, in combination, it represents being your true, authentic self [and] the freedom [of] just getting up there and crushing it.” 

It’s a logo that had people stopping him in the streets.

Before launching the brand, Olajuwon showed Earl the logo mockup. Earl suggested Olajuwon put it on a shirt and start wearing it. This led to the duo accidentally getting validation for the brand. “[I] put it on a t- shirt, ironed it on, and went [to] downtown Detroit for a couple of hours. I maybe got stopped, like, 120, 130 times,” recalls Olajuwon. “From there, I was like, damn, I got something.” 

Belief, grind, and grit to get the brand off the ground 

Being stopped in the streets just for wearing a sample logo was validating. Still, it didn’t lead to launch capital or logistical know-how.

“When I started this business, I had an eviction notice on my apartment door,” says Olajuwon. “I maxed out the credit cards, maxed out the 401(k), sold all my cryptocurrencies.”

At the same time, Olajuwon was also dealing with logistical issues. “I was literally packing the first 3,000 orders, and I filled up all the blue canisters at all USPSs two hours out from my apartment,” he says. “So I gotta find the next USPS post office. And I’m traveling from Detroit, two hours out to Indiana, just trying to find somewhere to ship out the packages. At the end of the day, it takes belief, grind, [and] grit. Sometimes there is no plan B.” 

Seeing how dedicated Olajuwon was to the brand, Earl was convinced to join him on his journey. Together, they made Eastside Golf their plan A and caught the eye of one legendary athlete. 

Building a golf brand for everyone 

Golf courses and country clubs often are ladened with rules and guidelines, and clothing is no exception. Olajuwon and Earl created pieces of attire and accessories that met these guidelines, while injecting contemporary design elements. Their insider knowledge of golf and preference for streetwear meant Eastside Golf became the outfit of choice both on and off the golf course.

“Whether you’re a miniature golfer, a putt-putt golfer, we [also] have guys like Wyatt Worthington competing in the PGA championship, we make apparel for you,” says Earl. “We often like to say you don’t [even] have to play golf in order to wear Eastside golf.” 

Having this sense of approachability built into the brand allows Olajuwon and Earl to instill their value of inclusivity in each decision they make for Eastside Golf. 

It’s also the reason why Michael Jordan noticed the brand. 

“He called us pioneers of the game. And he said that because we’re doing something that he’s tried to do within Jordan Golf. He knows exactly how hard it is,” says Olajuwon. “We’re trying to take golf to culture—culture is for everybody. When I say culture, culture is just non-traditional. If you’re into non-tradition, I don’t care what color you are, then you’re into Eastside Golf.” 

For more on how Eastside Golf scaled, listen to the full episode of Shopify Masters.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

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Launching an ecommerce business doesn’t have to drain your wallet. 

Many budget-friendly ecommerce platforms allow small business owners to set up their online store upfront investments. However, it’s important to note not all platforms are created equal in terms of features and pricing.

In this guide, you’ll learn how the best cheap ecommerce platforms stack up in terms of price and features.

What is an ecommerce platform?

An ecommerce platform is a software application that lets you create a website for selling products and services online. These platforms, also known as ecommerce website builders, are designed to streamline their ecommerce process for various types of users—from individual entrepreneurs and large companies to brick-and-mortar stores transitioning online.

Why use an ecommerce platform?

Ecommerce platforms are comprehensive applications catering to both sellers and buyers. They allow sellers to manage inventory, sales, marketing, and customer service while providing a platform for buyers to explore and purchase products. By serving sellers and buyers, ecommerce platforms streamline the entire online selling process, making it easier for businesses to reach their customers and grow their sales.

Ecommerce platforms simplify the process of setting up a store and making sales. They are user-friendly and require no advanced technical skills, making them accessible even to those without programming experience. 

Using an ecommerce website builder, you can create a professional-looking site with customizable templates and integrated ecommerce tools such as payment processing and website hosting. This setup lets you focus more on developing your products and services and less time worrying about how to get them to your customers. 

9 cheap ecommerce platforms

There are several ecommerce platforms available, many of which offer affordable plans. Here are nine popular options currently on the market:

1. Shopify
2. WooCommerce
3. BigCommerce
4. Wix Stores
5. Volusion
6. BigCartel
7. Ecwid
8. PrestaShop
9. Spree Commerce

1. Shopify

Shopify is the most popular ecommerce platform in the world. With more than 600 website templates, easy-to-use tools, inventory management capabilities, and 24/7 customer support, you’ll be equipped to launch your online store. All Shopify plans include a free trial.

Benefits: 

• Integrated payment processing: Shopify offers an integrated payment gateway, Shopify Payments
• Extensive app store: Access to the Shopify App Store with a wide range of add-ons and integrations
• Shopify POS: Integration with physical retail through Shopify POS, blending online and offline sales channels
• Abandoned cart recovery: Automated tools for recovering abandoned shopping carts and boosting sales
• Advanced analytics: Analytics and reporting features to track sales, customer behavior, and other essential metrics
• Secure and optimized checkout with Shop Pay: All Shopify stores come with a one-click checkout process that’s four times faster than standard checkout and results in a 91% higher mobile conversion rate 

Price:

• Shopify Starter: $5 per month
• Basic Shopify: $29/month (paid annually)
• Shopify: $79/month (paid annually)
• Advanced Shopify: $299/month (paid annually)

📚Learn more: What Is Shopify and How Does It Work? (2024)

2. WooCommerce

A free plug-in for WordPress sites, WooCommerce is a good option for those already familiar with WordPress. WooCommerce is free to use and offers a range of features, including product management, order tracking, and payment processing.

Benefits: 

• Integrates seamlessly with WordPress
• Customizable open-source platform
• Many plug-in and theme options

Price: 

• Cost varies depending on hosting, design, and add-ons

3. BigCommerce

Known for its wide-ranging support network and built-in features suitable for B2C and B2B commerce, BigCommerce offers personalized coaching and technical assistance to get store owners up and running. Standard features include unlimited products and built-in SEO tools.

Benefits: 

• No extra transaction fees
• Supports multichannel sales
• Tailored features for B2B commerce

Price:

• Plans start at $39 per month

4. Wix Stores

Wix Stores is a free ecommerce platform for businesses already using Wix for their website. Wix Stores offer unlimited products, sales across multiple platforms, automated emails, SEO services, Google Analytics integration, and design assistance through artificial intelligence.

Benefits: 

• User-friendly for beginners
• Drag-and-drop site-building
• AI for personalized design assistance

Price:

• Basic ecommerce plans start at $29 per month

5. Volusion

Volusion’s features include support for unlimited products and bandwidth, email marketing tools, SEO tools, and fraud protection. It also has an in-house ecommerce design team if you need help with the look and functionality of your site.

Benefits: 

• Comprehensive built-in SEO tools
• Simplified one-page checkout
• Easy data import/export

Price:

• Plans start at $29 per month

6. BigCartel

Tailored for artists and makers, BigCartel offers a range of plans for those on a budget. Its most expensive plan is $19.99 per month and includes up to 500 products with five images per product, real-time stats, inventory tracking, and a custom domain. 

Benefits: 

• Designed for artists and makers
• Simple, straightforward pricing
• Easy setup and management

Price:

• Free; paid plans start at $15 per month

7. Ecwid

Ecwid is an option for small business owners who want to sell products on multiple social media platforms, on their site, and in person. Ecwid offers free plans with limited features, while paid plans include ecommerce features like social commerce and a mobile store management app.

Benefits: 

• Adds to any existing website
• Strong social media integration
• Supports multiple languages

Price:

• Free; paid plans start at $25 per month

8. PrestaShop 

PrestaShop is an open-source ecommerce platform that offers free plans with limited features. You can choose which features to integrate into your online store, including unlimited product listings, social media integration, Google Analytics, and order tracking. 

Benefits: 

• Free, open-source platform
• Supports multiple languages/currencies
• Strong community support

Price:

• Free with paid add-ons

9. Spree Commerce

Spree Commerce is a headless ecommerce platform that allows you or your developer to attach any front end to Spree’s back-end software. It’s a free ecommerce platform and includes options for one or multiple brands, various languages and currencies, single- or multi-vendor, and storefront customization.

Benefits: 

• Scalable Ruby on Rails framework
• Customizable and scalable
• Active community-driven development

Price:

Choose the best value ecommerce platform for your business

Selecting the right ecommerce platform involves balancing cost with the features and tools you need. Consider what tools will support your business effectively, such as payment providers, website builders, and POS systems, if you plan to sell in person.

Shopify makes selling online easy and affordable. Try it out for free and see how easy it is to create an ecommerce site that reaches customers anywhere in the world.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Ecommerce sales have increased every year for the past decade, with consumers now spending more than $5.7 trillion online. It’s no wonder more and more businesses want a piece of that revenue. To join in, it’s important to know which product categories are in demand.

Here are the top online shopping categories by revenue, worldwide and within the US. Use this data to help grow your ecommerce business.

Understanding the top online shopping categories

To understand the top online shopping categories, it’s important to look at two data points: how much money a category makes, and how popular it is.

An ecommerce category that’s growing in popularity could be a smart investment, even if it doesn’t yet drive the most revenue. On the other hand, a category’s high revenue could mask its fading popularity, presenting a business risk.

Keeping an eye on individual trending products is also crucial for businesses. Breakout items can boost revenue for an entire product category, causing a surge in interest for similar items.

Next, let’s delve into the top online shopping categories by revenue, both worldwide and in the US—as well as the categories that have seen big revenue changes in the past year.

Top online shopping categories by revenue: Worldwide

Electronics

With a forecasted spend of $922.5 billion, electronics represent a significant portion of global ecommerce sales. This category’s strength lies in its broad product range, from smartphones and other essential devices to niche items like drones and smart home gadgets.

Fashion and apparel

Fashion and apparel ranks second among the top online shopping categories. This year, consumers are expected to spend $760 billion on fashion-related products. The rise of fashion dropshipping has made it easier for entrepreneurs to launch online clothing stores, while established clothing brands are finding new opportunities for collaboration.

Food

Food, with expected sales reaching $460.1 billion, is a consistently popular ecommerce shopping category. The convenience of online grocery shopping, coupled with the rise of delivery apps, has transformed the way consumers shop for food.

Beverages

Beverages rank fourth on the list of top shopping categories online, with expected revenues of $248.7 billion. The popularity of craft beer, tea, and premium coffee shows a consumer trend toward unique and high-quality drinks.

DIY and hardware

DIY and hardware products are also popular online purchases. Consumers are forecast to spend $220.2 billion on home-improvement items. The convenience of comparing products, reading reviews, and having heavy items delivered is a significant advantage of online shopping in this category.

Furniture

Furniture ranks closely behind DIY and hardware, with a projected revenue of $220.1 billion. The rise of direct-to-consumer brands continues to disrupt the industry. By cutting out the middleman, mattress companies, home furnishing suppliers, and luxury designers can offer high-quality products at lower prices, making online furniture shopping an increasingly attractive option for consumers.

Media

Media ranks seventh on the list, with a projected revenue of $193.9 billion.

Beauty and personal care

Beauty and personal care items are expected to generate $169.6 billion in revenue. Brands that can offer a new ingredient, price point, or niche skin care product often thrive in this category.

Tobacco products

Tobacco products are projected to bring in $116.6 billion over this year. The availability of cigarette alternatives like e-cigarettes and vapes shows how this traditional industry is evolving in response to online consumer preferences and regulatory challenges.

Toys and hobbies

Toys and hobby items round out the list, with a projected revenue of $89.8 billion. The demand for toys and hobby items online is sustained by educational toys, collector’s items, and craft activities.

Top online shopping categories by revenue: US

Top ecommerce shopping categories in the US show a similar picture to worldwide trends. Across the US:

• Fashion is the top-earning category among US shoppers, with an expected annual revenue of $162.9 billion.
• Food comes second, with projected revenue of $125.6 billion.
• Electronics follow closely in third, with revenue forecast to hit $120.1 billion.
• Beverages are expected to generate $111.6 billion in revenue.
• DIY and hardware store items rank fifth, with projected revenues of $108.6 billion.
• Furniture revenue is projected to be $74.5 billion.
• Media is projected at $37.7 billion.
• Beauty and personal care items are expected to generate $28.4 billion in revenue.
• Toys and hobby items are projected to bring in $21.2 billion.
• Luxury goods round out the list with projected revenues of $14.9 billion.

Most popular online shopping categories

Looking at online shopping categories in terms of their popularity reveals slightly different results. When ranked by annual revenue change instead of total revenue, the top five global shopping categories are as follows:

Food

The food category saw huge growth of 51.6% in 2020, likely driven by the shift to online grocery shopping during the COVID-19 pandemic. Although its growth rate has slowed down in subsequent years, food remains a popular category, with current growth projected at 24.1%.

Household essentials

Household essentials also saw significant growth in 2020, at 39.6%, reflecting the increased demand for essential items during the pandemic. The growth rate is expected to remain steady, with a projected increase of 22.2%.

Beverages

Online beverage sales are expected to grow by 18.9%.

Electronics

After a revenue decline in 2022, online electronics revenue has since grown year over year. In 2024, projected growth is 18.1%.

Furniture

The furniture category is expected to grow by 17% this year, indicating a continued interest in buying furniture online.

How to use online shopping trends for your business

Online businesses can stay relevant by keeping up with the top trends. By adjusting your product catalog based on consumer demand, you may save money and build stronger brand recognition.

Here’s how to make the most of product popularity data:

Experiment with growing sectors

Many businesses find success by optimizing their online store for a particular product category. This allows them to offer an expert service to a target audience. At the same time, businesses can be limited by the size of their niche audience.

One way to expand beyond a product niche is to offer trending products through an additional sales channel, such as online selling sites. Marketplaces like Etsy and eBay can be particularly useful when a business wants to experiment with a growing sector without compromising its brand or website optimization.

For instance, a business known for its curated selection of craft products may want to expand by offering a range of handmade items created by the local community. By first listing these products on a platform like Etsy, the business can test a new market without having to overhaul its website.

Understanding market demands through product research is likewise crucial for businesses to align their product offerings. For example, a business might use tools such as Google Trends to identify popular home fitness products, then source or create similar products to meet the demand in this growing sector.

Personalize the shopping experience

Personalization is another way to attract attention when competing within a top product category. Businesses can use consumer data to understand shopper preferences, then personalize the shopping experience.

Personalized marketing and store design can be achieved through targeted email campaigns or personalized product recommendations based on a customer’s browsing and purchase history. Loyalty programs also encourage repeat purchases.

Even addressing a customer by their name can enhance the shopping experience and build stronger customer relationships.

Social media shapes online shopping trends

Social media doesn’t just influence the top online shopping categories; it’s a significant sales channel in its own right. From 2025, sales made via social media are expected to represent at least 20% of total ecommerce sales.

As Gen Z and Gen Alpha increase their buying power, businesses are adapting their strategies to reach these consumers on social media—where they spend as much as four hours per day. This involves embracing social selling, which includes publishing posts about products and setting up storefronts on social media platforms.

💡 Shopify makes it easy to connect your store to social media and sell on social media platforms.

Know what sells

Knowing which online shopping categories are currently trending is a good way to understand more about your ecommerce consumers. Whether you’re planning to expand your product range, enter a new market, or enhance your online shopping experience, use these insights to guide your ecommerce marketing strategy and decision-making.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

There’s no one right way to build an online store. It’s easy to think that hiring a web development professional is the best route, but here’s something you may need to hear right now:

You are capable of learning how to design a Shopify website on your own.

Once you get into a DIY mindset and learn the basics, you’re empowered to bring your own ecommerce business to life. Instead of outsourcing costs and figuring out how to communicate your vision to another person, doing it yourself means less overhead, more confidence boosts, and an online store that reflects your entrepreneurial spirit in more ways than one.

Shopify’s ecommerce platform makes it simple to become your own web-building pro. Read on to learn how to design a Shopify website for your online store—without the help of any seasoned professionals.

Why DIY your Shopify store?

When you DIY your Shopify store, it can help you:

You can build a version of your store yourself, even if you’ve never built a website before, much less an online store. “My business partner has a business and marketing background. I have a theater degree,” says Kiersten Hanly, co-founder of skincare brand, Scrub Inspired.

“We are the perfect example of people who have no idea what they’re doing regarding technology, but we could do pretty much anything with the resources that were made available to us.”

Those resources included everything they could get their hands on, from Google searches to forums to help docs and more. After trying to tackle problems, Kiersten mentioned that chatting with Shopify’s support team was also a great way to find answers and help when needed.

Know when to get expert assistance

Just because you’ve chosen to DIY your ecommerce website doesn’t mean you’re out on a limb by yourself forever. It’s exactly the opposite: Since you haven’t committed a huge chunk of your business budget, you have more flexibility to hire experts for specific sections of your store or your project.

It’s how Scrub Inspired worked with a branding design pro when the team wanted to rebrand.

“When the business was growing, our next step was a rebrand. We wanted to figure out what our product looks like and who we’re selling this to, and use that information to inform all of our visuals,” says Kiersten.

“That’s the first time we discussed with a designer, who worked with us on our brand. Building out our entire branding guide meant that when we used a website builder to design a website, we knew what colors we should focus on. We knew who our target market was. We knew our buyers’ paths to go down on the site.”

Building a website yourself might involve learning, whether from Google or your friendly neighborhood Shopify Partner. 

A good approach is to do it yourself to start with. Hiring a pro can feel reassuring, because you know they know what they’re doing. But you’ll still do some work, since you’ll spend time with them so they understand what you want, and afterward you’ll need to rely on them for any changes. 

If you don’t know how to change products in your store, you’ll have to call your web development team whenever you need a tweak. Getting clear on the basics of how your store works is a good investment for a small business, whether you DIY forever or bring in pros later in the process.

Shopify website design: 5 easy steps to make a professional store

1. Plan your store
2. Choose the perfect theme
3. Add your products
4. Set up your plug-ins and preferences
5. Add your own personal touches

1. Plan your store

Designing any experience can be a never-ending circle of ideas and tasks. Without structure, designing your online store can feel like you’re stuck in the most complicated maze, with no exit signs in sight. 

That’s why it’s important to design your MVP first.

If you’re unfamiliar with the term, MVP stands for “minimal viable product.” To break that down further, it is the least amount of work needed to launch your store, collect feedback, and then iterate to improve your online store based on that feedback.

Don’t feel discouraged about launching your first store with the bare minimum. For example, if you look at a store like Nike.com, Nike had a very bare-bones store and slowly kept making improvements based on customer feedback, resulting in what is now an industry-leading brand and shopping experience.

Here’s Nike’s website in 2003:

…and here it is in 2024:

Now that you’re familiar with the concept of an MVP site, let’s go over a few principles of modern ecommerce design you’ll need to plan for.

Trust

Trust is hard to earn, but adding elements like a Contact page for support inquiries, or a visible return policy, will help heavily reduce purchase hesitation.

Also, leaving the “Powered By Shopify” link at the bottom of your footer can help build trust with customers familiar with Shopify’s purchasing products or services as a reputable platform.

Visual appeal

Your customers can’t physically hold or feel the products they’re interested in buying, so they rely heavily on a strong visual appeal to persuade their purchasing decisions. Having impactful ecommerce photography that easily portrays and communicates the product’s or service’s value is a must.

You’ll notice a company like Apple does this very well with its products, like in this example with the Apple Watch.

You can see how Apple features different Watch users in various demographics and quickly portrays how the product provides its customers value.

If you can’t find what you’re looking for, try Unsplash, another great library of royalty-free images uploaded by incredible photographers worldwide.

Color scheme

A simple yet effective color scheme can help persuade an action you want a customer to take.

For example, if you put a green button beside a red button, you’ll typically find that users tend to click the green button more because the color green is associated with the action “Go” while red usually symbolizes “Stop.”

When choosing a color scheme for your online store, try to keep the color palette minimal when starting off. Great ways to find color schemes for your online stores are:

Dribbble: You can search “ecommerce blue” and get served amazing ecommerce sites that incorporate the color blue. 

Canva color palette generator: This tool can easily search color palettes via keywords.

Typography

Keep your body font style simple and easy to read. And when it comes to headings, you can be a bit more adventurous with your font style. As a beginner, it’s easier to manage two different font styles.

Form

Merchants at times forget their online store has a higher chance of being viewed on mobile than desktop.

In the modern day of social media, it’s common to find brands pushing content on Instagram or TiKToK, primarily mobile apps. Luckily, with the Shopify theme customizer, you can preview your store on both desktop and mobile. 

Collections

Make it easy for customers to find products by grouping them into collections. Collections help customers browse your offerings by what they’re interested in, without having to look through multiple pages of products to find what they want. 

For example, if you’re a jewelry brand, you may break your collections down into categories like rings, bracelets, earrings, and necklaces. You can see how Pura Vida organizes its products so people can find them on the homepage.

A clothing brand may break down products into categories like pants, shirts, blazers, shorts, and shoes.

These principles will be the foundation as you start to build inspiration before designing your store. The last part of planning your store will be choosing the right Shopify plan. 

Shopify offers several plans to help your business grow at each stage:

• Basic: offers everything you need to create a store, ship orders, and process payments.

• Shopify: for businesses that require professional reporting and more staff accounts. 

• Advanced: for veteran stores that require custom reporting and lower transaction fees. 

• Shopify Plus: for enterprise stores that do high-volume sales. 

2. Choose the perfect theme

Now we’re going to choose the “bones” of our online store by selecting a Shopify theme. Luckily, with Shopify, there are a ton of amazing themes (both free and paid) you can find on the Shopify Themes Store. 

If you haven’t already, you’ll want to sign up for a free trial with Shopify. There’s no credit card required. This will let you follow this tutorial and give you a full two weeks to build your online store. 

Before choosing a theme, there are a few things to review first that will help you choose the best theme to get started with:

What’s your budget?

Prices for themes vary from free to $200. 

If you’re just starting with a small budget, you still have many great free options. Paid premium themes tend to have more features and functionality, such as collection filtering and mega menus that can save you a lot of time instead of hiring a Shopify development team down the road to build it out.

How many products do you plan on selling?

Some themes cater well to a catalog of one item, 50 items, and even 1,000 or more items. When navigating the Themes Store you can choose under the header “Catalog size”:

• 1 to 9 products
• 10 to 199 products
• 200 or more products

What industry are you a part of?

Some themes are designed specifically based on industry. For example, the Streamline theme works well for active lifestyle brands with features like video heroes and large image calls to action to boldly communicate a brand’s message.

You’re not married to your first theme. Scrub Inspired has had three website versions so far, and Kiersten shared that it was the second theme that hit the mark.

“When choosing a second theme, we went with Shopify’s simplest, most basic, long-term theme, which is Minimal. We chose it because it’s a Shopify theme, so when updates happen to Shopify, they’ll update their own themes. Also, we knew we could make it look like anything.”

If flexibility is important to you, as it was to Kiersten and Scrub Inspired, steal a page from their book and see how real businesses use the theme you’re considering before committing.

“We did some research into other sites that had Minimal,” Kiersten says. “For some of them, you could tell that that was the theme, but for most of them, you could adjust it enough that it just didn’t look like a Shopify template. The goal for us was finding something simple that we could stamp our brand onto.”

If you want to dig in to find examples of how other stores use a theme, many theme pages will feature examples of the theme in action.

3. Add your products

Now that you have your theme, it’s time to add products to your store. Go to Products > Add product in your new Shopify store to create your first product listing. 

There are several decisions to make on this page. Let’s break them down. 

• Write your product title. Your product title makes clear what the product is. Customers will see it when browsing your store. Keep titles short, between 20 and 70 characters, if possible.
• Add a description. Describe and sell your product. Highlight incentives, address common questions and objections, and help customers envision themselves using your product. 
• Upload product photos. Add high-quality photos that show your products in their best light. Help shoppers imagine using your product by including action shots. 
• Set your price. Add the price customers will pay to purchase the product. Several variables influence how you price your products, such as shipping costs, raw materials, and the product’s perceived value. 

Read more: Product Description Examples: Effective Tips to Persuade

4. Set up your plug-ins and preferences

Another way to make your Shopify store successful is by adding Shopify apps to your store. These plug-in programs provide additional functionality to your store, which helps you create better shopping experiences and earn more sales. 

The Shopify App Store offers more than 8,000 apps for you to choose from. You can find apps to help you look for products to sell, bring in customers, deliver products, master search engine optimization (SEO), customize your store, and scale your business.

Your options are endless. Installing a Shopify app is incredibly easy. Most apps also offer free trials, so you don’t have to worry about spending money upfront. 

Learn more: The 20+ Best Free Shopify Apps for Your Shopify Store

You can also customize various settings in your Shopify store, including:

• Checkout
• Email notifications
• Taxes
• Shipping
• Language

Checkout

The Checkout template can’t be heavily modified; however, that doesn’t mean it can’t be customized to match the look and feel of your store.

In the Theme Customizer, you can locate the checkout template design options under the dropdown in the header. Click Checkout and you’ll notice that the editable options on the left side of your screen will also change. 

To keep things simple and effective, make sure to do the following:

• Upload your logo in a size that’s legible, yet doesn’t take up too much space.
• Update your heading and body fonts to match your existing site.

Ensure your background and button colors are consistent with your other general settings. Addressing these simple updates will make your checkout look effective and remain consistent.

Email notifications

It’s normal to think a purchase journey finishes with the checkout, but that’s not always the case.

Email notifications are a powerful built-in feature that communicates crucial information to customers, like when an order has been confirmed or when their items are being shipped.

Luckily with Shopify, those notification email templates can be customized to match the brand guidelines of your online store. To do so, we’ll jump into our Admin dashboard and navigate to Settings in the bottom left corner, then click Notifications.

Similar to the checkout, you’ll have a few options to customize your email notifications, which includes uploading your logo and customizing the color of the buttons.

It’s great to keep these notifications as simple as possible, but if you want to supercharge them, I’d strongly recommend using an app like UpOrder. UpOrder allows you to choose different email notification layouts and do some pretty neat things, like embed a customized discount code for repeat purchases or upsell a complementary product.

Taxes

Turn on sales tax collection simply by going to Settings > Taxes and duties. Shopify applies default tax rates, which are updated regularly. But you can override for your particular circumstances.

Use the Shopify tax manual to quickly and thoroughly walk through how to up your store to collect sales tax.

Read more: How to File Small Business Taxes: A Guide

Shipping

Shipping can be one of the most complicated parts of an ecommerce business. There are a lot of factors to consider, such as product weights, packaging costs, shipping destinations, and carrier rates. You can edit your shipping settings under Settings > Shipping and delivery in your admin. 

You can edit preferences like: 

• Shipping zones
• Conditional shipping rates
• Real-time calculated shipping rates 
• Local delivery and pick-up options
• Shipping labels
• Connecting carrier accounts

Language

You can also present your store in multiple languages. When adding languages to your store, you must provide translations. If you are adding a new language, make sure you have your translations ready, or that you have installed a translation app from the Shopify App store.

From your Shopify admin, go to Settings > Languages and click Add language to set up language preferences. 

5. Add your own personal touches

Once you’ve chosen a theme, you can start customizing the look and feel of your store.Once we’re in the customizer you’ll notice Theme Settings below your homepage options. When you click on it, you’ll notice you can start updating your color scheme based on your chosen color palette, and updating your heading and body typography based on your chosen font choices.

Homepage

Your homepage is the first web page your customers will interact with. You have about three seconds to make a strong impression on your target audience and capture their attention so they want to learn more about your brand and explore your product catalog. 

Here are three impactful tactics to ensure your homepage design is effective:

Ensure you’ve entered clear messaging

Give your audience the best idea of what they’re getting into, as well as a visible call to action to entice customers to visit a specific page, collection, or product that prioritizes your online store. Ensure your call to action (CTA) is above the fold, meaning a user doesn’t have to scroll down the page to find it.

Short and simple copy that inspires action works best. A great example of this is Chubbies.

Its homepage communicates that it sells swimwear and entices its customers to purchase an item with a “Buy Two Save $10,” which not only gets customers excited to shop but also increases the value of a single purchase.

Ensure your navigation is simplified

With the highest priority items in the navigation, you’ll usually see items like specific collections, an About page or history of the brand, and an easy way for customers to contact you in case they need support regarding a purchase-related enquiry, questions about return policy, or shipping.

One good example of this is BrightLand. 

Display your bestselling products on your homepage

This will give customers an idea of the popular products being purchased, which helps reduce their purchase hesitation.

Product page

Arguably the most important template on your homepage is your product template. This is where your customers will learn the most about an item and the closest they will get to interacting with your product before they click Add to Cart or Buy Now.

Customers tend to hesitate when making a purchase, so here are a few design-related elements that can help heavily reduce hesitation, along with some examples:

Strong description and imagery

A great tactic for writing a strong product description is ensuring you share what the benefits are of purchasing your product. 

That way your customer can understand what they’ll be getting from purchasing your product. Identifying the “why” eliminates any questions the buyer might have before adding it to their cart.

Along with your product description, your product photography is the easiest way to communicate trust. Buyers want to see what the product looks like and how it can be used. 

If you’re a beginner, have at least one photo for each of your products, but make sure it’s featured on a white background, and try to keep that consistent for all of your product photos.

If your theme design allows it, try adding a video featuring your products in a lifestyle environment. This will help communicate the value of your product and increase the likelihood of a purchase. It evokes the emotional attachment a customer can have with your product, where they can start visualizing themselves with the product they’re considering purchasing.

The beauty brand Glossier does a fantastic job of explaining the benefit of using its Brow Gel, with a great before-and-after image that visually explains the product’s positive impact.

Reviews

Collecting and displaying reviews is almost as important as money itself. Not only is it a wonderful way to build instant trust with new customers, but it’s also a great way to allow customers to share personal photos and videos of them using your product, which you can later use for marketable content.

Trust badges

Adding trust badges is a great visual way to reduce hesitation for new customers who have never purchased from you or may not be overly familiarized with your brand.

A trust symbol is used to communicate your return and shipping policies. For example, you can advertise a 30-day money-back guarantee, a 100-day trial policy, or an offer of free shipping and returns.

Improve your Shopify store design, get more sales

It’s natural to want your store to be a picture-perfect reflection of your brand identity, product, and vision. It’s your business, after all, and for many ecommerce entrepreneurs, it’s the only storefront they have.

That said, the perfect store you have in your head can’t accept orders until it’s live in the world. You can’t get feedback and make improvements to something that doesn’t exist.

So as you’re working to build your online presence, and launch it, keep in mind that you can always make changes once your store is out there—including major ones, like rebranding or working with professionals on a redesign when you have the budget for it.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Building a new website can be both exciting and challenging. Whether it’s designing the perfect layout or creating engaging content, there’s lots to do. It’s also important to ensure a secure and reliable browsing experience, with easy navigation and safe ecommerce features.

The good news is that a variety of affordable, accessible website builders are available—many designed for specific needs. Whether you want to sell products, publish writing, promote a business, or showcase your portfolio, there’s a web builder to help you achieve your goals.

9 best website builders

1. Shopify: Best for ecommerce websites
2. WordPress: Best for blog websites
3. Wix: Best for portfolios
4. Squarespace: Best for business websites
5. GoDaddy: Best for simple websites
6. Duda: Best for website agencies
7. Webflow: Best for website developers
8. Weebly: Best for quick, free websites
9. Big Cartel: Best for artists

1. Shopify

Best for

eCommerce websites.

Shopify is the best website builder for creating an online store and managing an ecommerce business.

Why?

Use Shopify to create a beautiful, functional ecommerce website with pre-built templates or custom code. Each website comes with hosting, a free subdomain, SSL encryption, and selling tools. Create product listings and sell through the world’s best-converting checkout that lets customers buy with one click. Connect your website to sales channels like Instagram, TikTok, and Google, or talk to customers directly via the built-in email tool.

Plans and pricing

Full plans start at $29 per month for Shopify Basic, which includes access to the website builder. Try it out with a free trial.

Features

Pros and cons

• It’s easy to start a website using a free myshopify.com subdomain, then upgrade to a custom domain when you’re ready.
• Enjoy unlimited product listings and website bandwidth.
• Learn about your site traffic with simple reporting and analytics tools.
• Shopify has fewer non-ecommerce features than other website builders.

2. WordPress

Best for

Blog websites.

WordPress is a website builder for writers to publish blogs, newsletters, and other text-focused websites.

Why?

Much of WordPress’s power as a website builder comes from the level of creative control it gives users. Those looking for a guided experience with built-in features can start a hosted site on wordpress.com. If you’re tech-savvy, you can download WordPress as open-source software to create a flexible self-hosted website.

Plans and pricing

WordPress’s free plan includes 1 GB of storage space and dozens of website templates with drag-and-drop layouts. Upgrade to a paid plan to access extra features and plugins.

Features

• Create a free, hosted wordpress.com subdomain.
• Use WordPress as web-building software for your self-hosted website.
• Add a Buy Button to your WordPress website to sell products. 
• Browse more than 50,000 plug-ins, including shipping, marketing, and SEO tools.

Pros and cons

• WordPress is a popular and trusted platform for bloggers and other types of writers.
• Start a basic website quickly, then add features as you grow.
• Costs and complexity can quickly increase as you add third-party plug-ins.

3. Wix

Best for

Portfolios.

Wix is a website builder for personal and business websites, including professional portfolios to showcase your work.

Why?

Create a portfolio containing images, videos, text, and data using Wix’s simple drag-and-drop website builder. The platform has more than 75 pre-made portfolio and CV website templates, making it easy to find a foundation for your site, then customize it with your branding and content.

Plans and pricing

Wix’s free plan includes a website builder and a wixsite.com subdomain. Upgrade to a paid plan to remove Wix branding, add a custom domain, and access ecommerce features.

Features

• A simple and intuitive website builder.
• Free plans come with 500 MB storage and 1 GB bandwidth.
• Choose from various price plans to suit different website uses.

Pros and cons

• Browse a large library of website templates.
• Access to most features requires upgrading your plan.
• Other website builders such as Squarespace and Webflow may be better suited to creative portfolios.

4. Squarespace

Best for

Business websites.

Squarespace is a multipurpose website builder for personal, business, and ecommerce websites.

Why?

Businesses can choose from Squarespace’s library of more than 100 website templates to promote their services and brands. All templates are customizable via the Squarespace editor—and if you have the skills, you can also dive into the code. Put your twist on themes designed for restaurants, agencies, online courses, and other types of businesses. Add additional features such as an online store checkout or appointment booking app.

Plans and pricing

Build a website using the Personal plan for $16 per month. Upgrade to access website analytics and additional features.

Features

• Create responsive websites with image scaling.
• Get a free custom domain for the first year.
• Upgrade to convert your website to an online store and accept payments through Stripe and PayPal.

Pros and cons

• Stylish and contemporary website templates.
• Access a range of features with the Personal plan.
• Limited support for ecommerce and multichannel sales.

5. GoDaddy

Best for

Simple websites.

GoDaddy is a basic website builder for creating simple personal and professional sites.

Why?

GoDaddy’s drag-and-drop builder uses artificial intelligence to create a website in minutes, based on the information you provide. However, some may find GoDaddy website templates basic. Customization options can be limited, and if you want to run an online store, you’ll need to use the separate, more expensive store builder. 

Plans and pricing

GoDaddy’s Basic plan includes access to the website builder for $10.99 per month.

Features

• Browse more than 100 mobile-friendly templates.
• Connect a custom domain to Basic plan websites.
• Use the store builder to integrate Square POS for physical sales.

Pros and cons

• Easy website editing for beginners without coding experience.
• Limited features and customization options.

6. Duda

Best for

Website agencies.

Duda is a website builder designed to help agencies offer web design services to multiple clients.

Why?

For website development businesses, Duda offers a white-label website builder. This allows agencies to offer clients a branded website builder on a custom domain as part of their services. Clients can log into the platform from a custom-branded login screen. Duda’s website builder comes with all the standard tools and features for creating responsive websites, with the freedom to place elements anywhere on the page. 

Plans and pricing

Plans start at $19 per month. Most white label features require the White Label plan for $149 per month.

Features

• Unlimited website storage and bandwidth.
• Hosting via Amazon Cloud.
• Access a large library of stock images.

Pros and cons

• Expand your business’s services with a branded version of the website builder.
• Other website builders may be better suited to individuals and small businesses.

7. Webflow

Best for

Developers.

Webflow is a website builder for advanced website developers.

Why?

Webflow is a powerful DIY website builder with professional-grade customization options. Often cited as a superior WordPress alternative, Webflow offers complex functionality to developers and designers who want to create without limitations.

Plans and pricing

Create a two-page site with a webflow.io subdomain for free. Full website design plans start at $14 per month. 

Features

• Website hosting is included.
• Build advanced website interactions, page transitions, and animations.
• Workspace features for collaborating with team members.

Pros and cons

• Less focus on templates and tools can be a pro or con, depending on user need.
• Many find Webflow has a steeper learning curve than other website builders.

8. Weebly

Best for

Creating quick, free websites.

Weebly is a website builder for creating a quick, free personal website or online store.

Why?

Now part of Square’s suite of business tools, Weebly is a site builder with a free plan that comes with a range of tools. Free features include a shopping cart, Instagram feed, and free subdomain to host your site. In return, Weebly will add its branding to your website, which can be removed by upgrading to a paid plan.

Plans and pricing

It’s free to access most of Weebly’s website builder features. Paid plans start at $10 per month, allowing you to connect a custom domain and access extra features.

Features

• Free hosting and weebly.com subdomain.
• Add animation to your site with parallax effects and video backgrounds.
• Customize all HTML and CSS code.

Pros and cons

• Many features are available on the Free plan.
• Paid plans offer fewer features than other website builders.

9. Big Cartel

Best for

Artist websites.

Big Cartel is a website builder for makers to display and sell art, crafts, and other creative work.

Why?

Big Cartel was founded by artists to help creators sell work independently, without needing to rely on galleries or marketplaces. Websites are easy to set up, with basic features available for free, making the platform a worthy alternative to Etsy.

Plans and pricing

The free Gold plan includes website templates and limited selling features.

Features

• Designed for artists and creatives.
• Sell up to five products using the free website builder plan.
• Includes website hosting.

Pros and cons

• Product listings can only contain five images.
• Few payment gateways are supported.

How does a website builder work?

Website builders are designed to remove the technical barriers that used to be part of website development. Today’s online platforms make it easy for anyone to create and run a website, even if you don’t know how to code.

Online site builder platforms provide user-friendly interfaces to guide you through website setup, layout design, content creation, publishing, and site management.

Most website builders are designed to function in a similar way. Here’s how they work:

Set up hosting and domain services

One of the first things you’ll encounter with website builders is the option to choose a domain and set up hosting. A domain name is your site’s unique address on the internet, while hosting is where your site data is stored so it can be accessed at any time.

Many website builders offer hosting and a free subdomain that allows you to create a website without purchasing a custom domain. Subdomains usually include the platform’s name, like yoursitename.myshopify.com.

When you’re ready to grow your brand, you can register a new domain through your website builder. As your website’s needs become more complex, you may also decide to self-host your site.

Pick a template

After securing your domain and hosting, most website builders will encourage you to select a template for your website. Templates are pre-designed site layouts tailored to various website uses, such as businesses, blogs, or ecommerce stores.

Depending on the flexibility of the website builder, you’ll be able to customize your chosen template. This might mean altering elements like fonts, colors, and images using a drag-and-drop interface. If you’re experienced with tech, some platforms allow you to edit the template’s code to create a completely original website design.

Add features

Once you’ve built a basic site, you can add features to meet your visitor’s needs. If you made your website to sell products, include a shopping cart and secure checkout. If you’re setting up a blog, add an archive, search bar, or social media feed.

Most website builders specialize in features for a particular type of website, so it’s important to find the right fit. For example, Shopify’s website builder comes with everything you need to create an online store and run a retail business.

Publish and manage your site

Once you’re satisfied with your site’s appearance and functionality, go live by hitting the Publish button. This makes your site accessible to anyone on the internet.

Depending on your website builder and subscription plan, you’ll be able to track visitors and manage your site using automated reports and analytics dashboards.

What to look for in a website builder

Choosing the right website builder can be as crucial as selecting your business location. Each platform offers unique features, benefits, and limitations.

Consider these elements to find a website builder that will scale with your needs and won’t hinder your site’s potential.

Price plans

Balancing website costs and functionality is essential for managing your initial business finances. While free website builders are enticing, they often come with limitations like platform ads or restricted features.

On the other hand, paid platforms offer valuable extras such as web hosting and professionally designed templates, which can be more cost-effective in the long run.

A good compromise is to look for website builders with tiered subscription plans, so you can begin with a basic website and expand its features in the future.

Ease of use

Whether you’re a coding expert or prefer a drag-and-drop editor, platform usability is a critical factor. The ideal website builder should help you refine your site’s design effortlessly, not just in the initial stages, but as your site grows and your skills improve.

Features

Website builders vary in the features they offer. It’s vital to assess the features available in each subscription plan and think about how these align with both your current needs and future ambitions.

Ecommerce website builders should provide tools to help your store grow, such as POS hardware, social media sales integration, and access to funding.

Level of customization

While most website builders offer some level of customization, many are limited in the creative flexibility they offer. This can pose a challenge for businesses looking to build a distinctive brand.

Review how flexible each platform is with design choices and how much creative freedom you’ll have to ensure your website stands out. 

Find a home for your website

Choosing a home for your website is a lot like finding the right place to live. You need somewhere that’s easy to make your own, simple to maintain, and capable of accommodating changes down the line.

If your goal is to build a simple landing page displaying contact information or business hours, a free website builder should meet your needs. But, for those dreaming of a bustling online store or a dynamic space to interact with visitors, starting with a scalable website builder is key to avoiding the hassle of moving later on. 

Build your online store today.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Twitch offers a unique way to build a business. Viewers can watch their favorite content creators play video games or create other forms of entertainment—from the relaxing sensory experiences of ASMR audio to “just chatting” streams. The more viewers your livestreams capture, the more money you can earn, with some streamers making thousands of dollars each month from monetizing their Twitch channels.

In this article, discover ways streamers make money on Twitch and how you could do the same.

What is Twitch?

Twitch is a livestreaming platform for content creators to play video games, esports, music, and more in real time, often simultaneously talking to an audience. Video gaming is the most popular content category on the platform—at any given time of day, more than 3,000 unique games are streamed simultaneously.

Twitch shows viewers live channels they can watch and categories they might enjoy.

Viewers can scroll down the home feed, browse the Twitch directory, and search for specific types of videos they want to watch. They also can subscribe to their favorite Twitch streamers for a small monthly fee.

Many Twitch streams also exist purely for people to chat with one another, and users can browse chat rooms to find a topic they’re interested in. While there are countless uses for this livestreaming platform, finding a popular niche for your channel is key to bringing in a solid income.

What is the Twitch Affiliate Program?

The Twitch Affiliate Program is one of two official programs Twitch offers creators to monetize their channels. Twitch will automatically reach out to accounts that meet certain eligibility criteria to become affiliates.

You may be prompted to join the Twitch Affiliate Program if you meet the following four requirements:

• Reach 50 followers
• Stream for eight hours
• Stream on seven different days
• Reach an average of three viewers

Ways to make money as a Twitch Affiliate

Once your channel becomes eligible for affiliate status, Twitch will alert you in your user dashboard and you’ll have the opportunity to get started with the additional affiliate features. Being a Twitch Affiliate unlocks two ways to monetize your channel:

Twitch subscriptions

Once you get accepted into the Twitch Affiliate Program, you can start offering your own subscription tiers right inside Twitch. The Subscribe button appears below the bottom right corner of your stream, and followers can click to learn more about the perks they get through subscribing.

With Twitch, you can also set up three different subscription levels: $4.99, $9.99, and $24.99 per month.

Look at how top streamer Ninja has his tiers set up:

Some of the perks you can offer subscribers are custom emotes to use in chat, subscriber badges that appear beside a follower’s name in chat, ad-free viewing, and subscriber-only streams.

Twitch Bits

Another Twitch Affiliate perk is Twitch Bits, a form of virtual currency viewers can purchase to send streamers “cheers” while they’re streaming. Streamers typically receive one cent for each Bit they receive during a stream. Streamers can set limits for the minimum number of Bits a follower must send to cheer for them.

Twitch streamers can also create custom Cheermotes (emotes that are unique to a channel) that viewers can use when cheering—the more Bits they spend, the more exciting the Cheermote.

Stream chats show the weekly top Cheerers. For instance, this streamer received 41,700 Bits, roughly equivalent to $417, just from their top 10 cheerers:

What is the Twitch Partner Program?

The Twitch Partner Program is a more exclusive program for Twitch creators with established audiences. It’s considered a level up from the Affiliate Program, and you have to apply to join.

The eligibility guidelines aren’t quite as clear cut for this program, but you need to have an established and engaged audience, stream regularly, and be a role model in your community. 

In the Path to Partner achievement dashboard, you also need to complete these milestones:

• Stream for 25 hours
• Stream on 12 different days
• Reach an average of 75 viewers

Ways to make money as a Twitch Partner

Once you become a Twitch Partner, you’re able to run ads during your streams. By doing this, you can bring in even more income. However, this monetization strategy is most effective if your viewership is high, as you’ll get paid for the number of impressions on each ad.

According to a Quora answer from a Twitch streamer, you’ll receive $3.50 for every 1,000 ad viewers. So if you have less than 1,000 viewers on a stream, you’re making pennies per ad.

However, if you have a big stream with thousands of viewers, running a quick ad or two every 30 minutes to an hour can be a great way to bring in some additional revenue.

7 best ways to make money on Twitch

1. Accept donations
2. Include affiliate links in your profile
3. Set up a Patreon
4. Seek brand sponsorships and partnerships
5. Sell merchandise
6. Create a YouTube channel
7. Offer coaching

Outside of Twitch’s official programs, there are numerous ways to make money on the platform. If you’re just getting your start as a streamer on Twitch, keep in mind that it can take time for your channel to pick up viewers. To kickstart your channel, consistently go live and stream popular games (or your chosen type of content) that viewers want to see. Here are a few ways to start making money.

1. Accept donations

As a beginner, you aren’t able to set up subscription tiers yet, but you can still receive donations from people watching your video streams. Set up a Donate button through a third-party company such as PayPal, or use a service like Streamlabs to set up a tip page and start getting extra money through tips and donations on your Twitch channel.

For example, take a look at how MuTeX set up his profile. He’s created several panels with links to other social media, their subscription options, and a Donate button for Twitch followers who want to support the channel:

2. Include affiliate links in your profile

To earn money from affiliate marketing on Twitch, you can simply put links to some of your favorite products in your Twitch profile so anyone can browse and buy the items that interest them. This is the method that streamer Alixxa used on her profile:

Each of the above images uses an affiliate link, so Alixxa can get a percentage of any purchase her followers might make, further boosting her monthly revenue.

You can also put your affiliate link in the chat for viewers to make a purchase when you mention a product in your Twitch stream.

To add affiliate links to your profile or to a chat, first sign up for your favorite companies’ affiliate programs and get approved. Or, you might join platform-specific affiliate programs like Amazon Associates. With this program, you can mention Amazon products and include affiliate links to them on your channel. Any time a viewer uses your link to buy that product on Amazon, you’ll earn a commission.

3. Set up a Patreon

Since new streamers on Twitch can’t immediately create Twitch-based subscription programs, Patreon is an option to start making money directly from subscribers. Patreon is a monetization platform that allows content creators to offer subscriptions at a range of price points, with each tier typically including perks. With Patreon, streamers can set their subscription tiers and list what perks come with each level. For example, you might offer a personalized shout-out to subscribers at a certain tier.

4. Seek brand sponsorships and partnerships

Brand sponsorships and partnerships with aligned companies can be a powerful monetization strategy for large channels. While some brands benefit greatly from partnering with micro-influencers (content creators with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers), brands still want to make sure that the streamers they sponsor have a large enough viewership for the partnership to be worthwhile.

Brand sponsorships and partnerships can take different forms. One way a streamer might promote a brand is by mentioning their product or service within a stream. These ads can feel organic—a content creator simply tells their audience about a product or service they love during a regular stream.

However, as a streamer, you need to alert viewers that you’ve been paid to promote that product or service. Additionally, according to Twitch’s Terms of Service, you also need to indicate that Twitch is not behind this promotion, using a disclaimer like, “This is a promotion by [Your Name]. Twitch does not sponsor or endorse this promotion and is not responsible for it.”

Another way to work with brands is to have them sponsor an entire stream. Twitch streamers who partner with brands can display the name of their sponsors within their stream title. This sponsored content stream strategy gets even more eyes on the brand and its offerings, even if viewers miss the exact moments that you actually mention them.

5. Sell merchandise

Offering your own merchandise can be a profitable revenue generator. You might sell items like t-shirts, blankets, hoodies, pens, and hats that have your logo or design on them. Setting up a shop on an ecommerce platform like Shopify allows you to sell merch and generate revenue—while also strengthening your brand.

6. Create a YouTube channel

Consider creating a YouTube channel so your audience can consume and share your content outside of the Twitch platform. From there, you can monetize your YouTube channel, giving yourself an entirely new outlet for generating income.

Learn more: Free video editing software

7. Offer coaching

Consider leveraging your audience to offer services for up-and-coming Twitch streamers. For instance, you can provide coaching services to share your expertise on building an audience on Twitch.

Other services you might consider offering are:

• Profile customization
• Graphic design for panels and banners
• Merch design and store setup
• Building a strong brand as a streamer

Anything you’ve learned how to do through your Twitch channel can become a valuable service for emerging streamers.

How much money can you make on Twitch?

Once you start bringing in revenue, Twitch pays out every 15 days, via methods like direct deposit and PayPal—typically, as long as there is more than $50 in your account. If you want to be paid by wire transfer, you’ll have to wait until you’ve earned $100 to receive a payout.

The amount of money you can make on Twitch depends heavily on how many viewers consistently tune in and the frequency of your livestreams. While a larger audience usually is considered the key to increasing your income, other factors—such as higher-tier subscribers and donors—can impact the amount of money you earn.

To provide an estimate of how much streamers at various viewership levels can earn each month on Twitch, Streamer Facts compiled this analysis:

Getting just five to 10 average viewers per stream can take time, so keep in mind that Twitch may not be the best way to make fast money. However, if your goal is to earn monthly income as a professional gamer, getting started on Twitch is a first step.

How to build an audience on Twitch

1. Find your niche
2. Engage your viewers
3. Build your network
4. Hone your personal brand and online presence

There are multiple steps you can take to build your Twitch audience. They include:

1. Find your niche

Finding your niche helps to build an audience interested in the specific content you’re creating and streaming. If your channel is unfocused—streaming a Fortnite game one day and sharing live music the next—it’s more difficult to attract and retain a dedicated audience interested in your content.

Instead, choose one focus area. For example, if you dedicate your channel to Minecraft streaming, sticking with that game enables you to build up an audience of like-minded gamers.

2. Engage your viewers

While a popular streamer might look like they’re just playing a game or talking to their audience, they have monetized the art of Twitch streaming by becoming must-watch creators. Best practices for engaging your audience include:

• Watching other streamers for ideas about strategies
• Being a skilled gamer
• Talking to viewers during streams
• Interacting with viewers through chats
• Hosting special events for channel subscribers
• Holding regular Twitch livestreams

Making these types of efforts can help attract a loyal audience that stays engaged with your content.

3. Build your network

A key aspect of becoming a Twitch streamer is watching and interacting with other streamers. This can help you connect with other content creators and build a community. Plus, if you become friends with other streamers, you can start streaming together as a way to share—and potentially grow—audiences to reach even more fans.

Building your network also includes being active in live chats whenever you’re watching a streamer. This is another effective way to promote your name and channel, increasing the chances that viewers click on your profile and start following you.

4. Hone your personal brand and online presence

Twitch can’t be the only place you promote your streams. Consider creating a website (or at least a merch site), as well as accounts on YouTube, X (formerly Twitter), Instagram, and other social media sites.

By building up a personal brand and being active on multiple social media platforms, you increase your overall reach, helping even more viewers discover your Twitch channel.

Create your own Twitch account and start making money

If you want to make money streaming, joining Twitch and creating your own channel is a great way to get started. By following this guide to making money on Twitch, you can begin building your audience and start monetizing your channel.

Looking for other ways to make money online? Consider checking out this guide with more than 20 different ideas for generating income.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

Starting a business is hard work. It can feel like there’s a never-ending to-do list, from building a website and hiring employees to managing inventory and producing products.

But what if you could outsource that last step to a supplier that’s already set up to create your products? In fact, this is what many retailers do—in a type of supplier relationship called private labeling.

Private-label products are produced by a third-party manufacturer based on specifications provided by the retailer, who then markets and sells those products under their own brand.

Read on to to learn what private labeling is and how to create a private-label line of products for your own store.

What is private label?

Private label refers to a product manufactured by one company and sold under another company’s brand name. Retailers often use private-labeling to offer exclusive items, expand their catalogs, and undercut competitor pricing.

Private-label products can be similar to items that already exist on store shelves, but the exact manufacturing formula of the product must be original. For example, if a private-label business sells a box of chocolate chip cookies, the precise recipe won’t be found under any other label. The same applies to private-label brands selling electronics, jewelry, clothing, pet foods, etc.

How does private labeling work?

The private-label business model involves two types of companies:

1. Private-label manufacturers, which work with businesses to design and produce a product.
2. Private-label retailers, which brand, market, and sell private-label products to customers.

A reliable private-label manufacturer will ensure profitable pricing model.

Private labels vs. white-label products

Private-label goods are often confused with white-label goods. White-labeling also involves a third-party manufacturer making a product on behalf of a retailer. However, white-label products are not custom-designed for a seller.

A white-label manufacturer makes large amounts of generic product, then sells it to individual retailers. Each retailer sells those products to consumers under a brand name.

In other words, private-label product lines are unique and sold exclusively through a single retailer (think: Costco’s Kirkland Signature or Amazon’s Basics range). White-label products are generic and sold under the brands of multiple retailers.

5 benefits of private labeling

The private-label business model offers advantages to both manufacturers and retailers. These benefits include increased profit margins and control over branding, as well as:

1. A unique value proposition
2. High profit margins
3. Customized pricing control
4. Customized marketing control
5. Adaptability

1. A unique value proposition

Private labelers get to design and sell their own products that are distinct from established brands, store brands, or other private-label brands. As a private-label entrepreneur, you can develop original product ideas and become known for a signature item.

Some (often larger) retailers use private labeling to create value product ranges and undercut competitor pricing. However, smaller businesses may choose private labeling to develop premium products that they wouldn’t be able to produce alone.

2. High profit margins

Private-label products often have higher profit margins than resale products. Retailers may choose to set a high price point for their unique private-label products—or leverage their existing brand power to cut marketing costs for private-label product lines.

Depending on the type and quantity of items produced, as well as the level of customization, manufacturers may be able to offer private-label products for less than resale products.

3. Customized pricing control

Private-label sellers and producers can tweak manufacturing costs and price points on their product lines. They can experiment with different pricing strategies to maximize profit margins.

4. Customized marketing control

As a private-label retailer, you can choose the marketing campaigns used to promote your branded products. You don’t have to adhere to the sometimes stiff, outdated campaigns run by national brands.

5. Adaptability

It can take months or years for an established brand to change its product formula, pricing, or marketing strategy. Private-label sellers, on the other hand, can pivot quickly. They can respond to negative reviews or low sales and adjust to make the best product for the best price.

Private label drawbacks

Despite the benefits, private labeling also has its drawbacks. These include the risk of inconsistent products and the challenge of building a brand from scratch.

1. Dependence on third-party manufacturers

One of the main drawbacks of private labeling is the dependence on third-party manufacturers. If the manufacturer runs into problems, such as production delays or quality issues, it can directly impact the private-label seller. This can lead to stock shortages, customer dissatisfaction, and potential damage to the brand’s reputation.

2. Less flexibility for innovation

When you’re working with private-labeling services, there may be limits to the level of product customization available. Depending on suppliers and product categories, retailers won’t always have as much control over the product design process as they may want.

However, issues with product design can be mitigated by developing a close working relationship with your manufacturer, opening the possibility for bespoke research and development.

6 examples of private-label products

You may be surprised to discover how many consumer products and national brands are made by private-label manufacturers. In fact, the private label model exists across most product categories, both in online and brick-and-mortar stores.

Private-label products

1. Coffee
2. Pet food
3. LED lights
4. Phone accessories
5. Apparel
6. Personal care products

1. Coffee

Private-label coffee has exploded on the internet. Many of these coffee brands use coffee dropshippers that send out batches to customers as soon as they’re ordered.

2. Pet food

Many pet stores, particularly online pet stores, sell private-label food made by big manufacturers that serve many clients.

3. LED lights

Online marketplaces are filled with private-label LED lights, each with a slightly different design but sourced from a few manufacturers.

4. Phone accessories

Chances are the third-party accessories you buy for your phone—chargers, phone cases, etc.—were made by a private-label manufacturer and sold under another company’s brand name.

5. Apparel

Many online clothing retailers use private-label garment manufacturers for shirts, dresses, skirts, shoes, handbags, and more. These clothing manufacturers can print custom designs on apparel. They may also offer custom tailoring and leatherworking.

6. Personal care products

Lots of personal care products, from mouthwash to makeup, come from manufacturers that serve private-label sellers. The formulas for these products will be customized for specific clients, but they’re produced on the same assembly lines.

3 examples of private-label brands

Here are three examples of large retailers that have launched successful private-label brands.

(It’s worth noting that you don’t necessarily need to offer private labels under a separate brand. Smaller businesses may choose to incorporate private-label products as part of their existing product line.)

1. Kirkland Signature

Launched in 1995, Kirkland Signature is Costco’s private-label brand. It includes a wide range of products produced by various national manufacturers, and is known for offering impressive value for money to customers.

Take Kirkland Signature vodka, for example, which has been compared favorably to high-end brands like Grey Goose. Or Kirkland Signature extra virgin olive oil, which is USDA-certified organic.

Kirkland is an example of a private-label product line that has grown to national status and become synonymous with its retailer. Sales of Kirkland products now account for approximately a quarter of Costco’s total revenue.

2. Amazon Basics

Amazon Basics launched in 2009 and allows Amazon to compete for sales with other retailers on its own marketplace.

The private-label line under its own brand name offers electronics, home goods, pet supplies, and other affordable items—often at the lowest price points in a product category.

Some of the most popular Amazon Basics products are device charging cables. These cables are praised for affordability compared to those from official manufacturers such as Apple, which place high profit margins on their accessories.

Another well-known Amazon Basics private-label product is the Microfiber Sheet Set, which has been reviewed by customers more than 380,000 times.

3. Harrods Own Label

Unlike Amazon Basics and Kirkland Signature, which harness private labeling to lower consumer prices, luxury UK department store Harrods uses its private-label brand to offer a range of premium goods.

Harrods’ own brand covers a range of products, including gourmet food and beverages, plus high-end fashion, accessories, and home goods.

Its selection of teas, for example, is sourced from around the world, packaged in distinctive Harrods-branded tins, and sold for higher prices than similar products from other retailers.

Key points: What is private label?

• Private-label products are produced for brands by third-party manufacturers.
• The business model is popular among large retailers, who use private labeling to create in-store brands with value-for-money products.
• Increasingly, private-label manufacturers are also working with smaller businesses to produce unique products and premium branded items.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.

Our view at Stack - Shopify has just about everything you need if you're looking to sell online. It excels with unlimited products, user-friendly setup, and 24/7 support. It offers 6,000+ app integrations, abandoned cart recovery, and shipping discounts up to 88%. Plus, it allows selling both online and in-person, scaling as your business grows.

If Shopify is of interest and you'd like more information, please do make contact or take a look in more detail here.

Credit: Original article published here.