SHOPIFY (ECOMMERCE CLASS) NOTE

SCHEDULE & TOPICS

1. What is E-commerce?

2. Types of E-commerce platforms & their differences

3. Brief History about Shopify

4. Shopify plans and features

5. Business Models In Shopify

6. Shopify Terminologies

7. Shopify Marketing

8. Shopify Store Design Practical

9. Test & Project Submission

E-commerce is known as electronic commerce. Commerce is any event that occurs

with buying and selling or exchange of goods and services. So with this, we can

explain E-commerce as buying and selling or exchange of goods and services online

without any physical between the seller and the buyer.

E-commerce has become the norm of getting goods and services recently but E-

commerce came to its peak during Covid-19 where there was lockdown so people

had no choice than to get what they want from online spaces such as Amazon &

Aliexpress. As the customer base increased, people saw the potential in owning an E-

commerce store and decided to get involved in it making the industry worth billions

of US dollars.

So next we look at various types of E-commerce platforms. ANY QUESTIONS?

There are two main types of E-commerce platforms, which are

1. E-commerce Marketplace

2. Online Store

Now let’s talk about the two,

ECOMMERCE MARKETPLACE

E-commerce marketplace is a platform where you have multiple sellers selling same

or different products. From the word market, we all know in a market there are a lot

of sellers selling same or different products under one name of the market e.g Bodija

Market so where you bring such system to the online space hence you get the name

E-commerce marketplace. Examples of E-commerce marketplace platforms are

Amazon, Aliexpress, Alibaba, Etsy(Biggest digital product Marketplace), Jumia,

Konga, Jiji and so many others

ONLINE STORE PLATFORMS

Online store platforms are platforms that provide a seller an online space to sell

his/her products at their chosen price without competing for customers but rather

market its products to reach its target customers. From the word store, it’s relatable

to all this standalone shops we see in our streets such Benka shop at our office

junction. Examples of online store platforms are Shopify, Woocommerce, Wix

ecommerce, Bigcommerce, Weebly, and So on.

MARKETPLACE ONLINE STORE

Multiple Sellers of same products on the Only one seller to his store

platform

Delivery is ran by the company that owns Delivery is ran by the seller

the platform

Products are kept in the company’s Products are kept by the seller and in

warehouse some cases, seller has no products

physically

You pay monthly fee on renting and also Seller only pay monthly rent or fee for

pay on space provided in the warehouse store usage

Less marketing, more ranking More marketing, more ranking on Search

engines

ANY QUESTIONS?
 BRIEF HISTORY ABOUT SHOPIFY

Shopify is founded in 2006 and was not known as the Shopify it is now. Shopify was a

snowboard company that sells snowboards. Later, it was converted into an E-

commerce platform for people who would like to sell online. Shopify HQ is in Ottawa,

Canada.

SHOPIFY PLANS AND FEATURES

Shopify offers 3 plans for businesses based on size of their businesses and the 3

plans are

Basic Shopify Advanced

24 USD per month 69 USD per month 299 USD per month

No staff Accounts 5 staff accounts 15 staff accounts

5% transaction fees 1% transaction fees 0.6% transaction fees

3 global markets 3 global markets 3 global markets + add

markets

1$ for first month 1$ for first month 1$ for first month

Shopify offers 3 business models to its sellers. These are business models under

which various stores fall under. The business models are

1. Dropshipping

2. Print on demand

3. Personalized brand or Lean E-commerce

DROPSHIPPING

Dropshipping is selling products without having it with you. You use

websites/platforms (Aliexpress, Bitget, etc) to get products and you can import the

products into your Shopify store. While importing, you can edit features of the

products such as name, price, images and so on. In dropshipping, you don’t

inventory or physical storage of the products and also you don’t control delivery

PRINT ON DEMAND

This business model offers you the chance to sell products that can be printed on

without owning inventory nor delivering the products. Products have no design from

the supplier so you subscribe on these platforms and upload your design on these

products. When such a product is bought, you don’t handle the delivery but rather

the supplier prints on the product and sends to the customer. Examples of platforms

that offer POD are Printify, Printiful, Gelato etc

Personalized brand or Lean E-commerce is the business model whereby you are the

manufacturer of the products, you handle the storage of the products and also

delivery of the products. In the case of Lean E-commerce, mostly work for sellers in

dropshipping looking to brand the products they are selling, so they contact the

supplier and have an agreement with the supplier to brand the products in their

name and sell the products as a brand.

1. Store: This is space or shop provided by Shopify for you to sell your products.

2. Theme: This is a template provided by Shopify to determine the layout and look of

your store when designed. There are two types of themes which are;

I. FREE THEME: This is a theme made free for new sellers to design and get

ready for sales. The free theme has less features to offer but can be used to

get started

II. PREMIUM THEME: These are paid themes which you have to get from

Shopify at a price and offer a lot of features that make the store stand out.

3. Products/Listings: These are the items to be sold either physical or digital

4. Product Importation/Product Uploading: This is the process of importing

products from platforms using third party apps when drosphipping or uploading the

products onto Shopify if it’s a personalized brand

5. Collections: These are products that are grouped together based on similar

features which may or may not fall under the same niche

6. Sub-collections: These are products that are grouped together based on having

the same features and fall under same niche

7. Store setup: This is the step by step process of getting the store ready in terms of

importing/uploading of products, designing store and others to start making sales

8. Order: This is when a product is bought on the store

9. Fulfillment: This is the process of delivering the products bought to the customer

10. Store URL/Domain: This is the link or address that take visitors to the store
11. Pages: They contain information about your store and related to the Shopify look

e.g Home page, Contact Us page, etc

12. Navigation: This is how you want store to be used by your visitors

13. Favicon: This is a 16 by 16 pixel image that shows on the tab of the browser used

to reach your store

14. Staff Accounts: This is an account created by the store owner to grant access to

an expert or an individual to perform some tasks on the store.

15. Shopify Collaborator: This is an account owned by an expert through Shopify

Partner to have access to a store through collaboration request which the store

owner accepts. The expert in this case picks the areas he wants access to.

16. Collaborator Code: This is a code needed by the expert to be able to send the

collaboration request for the store owner to accept and gain access to the store.
 SHOPIFY MARKETING

1. STORE BRANDING: This is the process of branding the store in simple terms

making the store look like a brand. The processes involved include

a) Store Authentication Approval

b) Site Navigability

c) Favicon Integration

d) Trusted Badge Authentication

e) Customers & product Review Importation

2. Social Media Page Integration: This is the integration of social media pages such

as Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and so on to your Shopify store and get your visitors

to move from your store to these pages

3. Meta Sales Channel Integration: This is the integration of your Meta apps,

Facebook & Instagram, through Shop option provided by them to sell your products

from your store

4. Google Sales Channel Integration & Google Merchant Setup: This is the setup and

integration of Google Shopping option for your products to be sold on Google.

5. Ads Setup: This is setting up of advertisements, Ads, on various social media

platforms to reach the target audience which would buy the products. These Ads

include

a) Meta Ads

b) Tiktok Ads

c) Google Ads

d) Pinterest Ads
6. Email Marketing & SMS Marketing: This is the process of reaching one’s

customers through the use emails and SMS once they’ve either subscribed to one’s

store or made a purchase on one’s store. The processes involved include

a) Pop Up Form Design, Setup and Optimization

b) Email Campaigns Setup

c) Newsletter Setup

d) Flows

7. SEO IMPLEMENTATION: SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, this is the

process of optimizing one’s website to rank on Search Engine Result Pages (SERPs)

and generate organic traffic which gets visitors to come into the store and turn into

customers which leads to sales. In Shopify, there are two forms of SEO which are

listed below. SEO is done for the store in general and also for the products to ensure

a good ranking of the store as a whole

a) Store SEO

i. SEO app Setup

ii. Encoding Google Search Console into Theme Liquid File

iii. Encoding Google Analytics into Theme Liquid File

iv. Encoding and Submission of Store Site Map

v. Indexing Store on Google

b) Product SEO

i. Installation and Setup of SEO app

ii. Integration of SEO ranking product details