Shopify Reviews 2018 – How Shopify works in Nigeria (Pros & Cons)

In this Shopify reviews, I will cover most of the frequently asked questions in Nigeria by potential Shopify Users. If you have no clue about eCommerce website or building one and you want to start an online store – or bring your business online, make sure you read this review to the end before you start. At the end, you should be able to decide what is best for you.

 

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Table of Content

1. What is Shopify?
2. Shopify review overview in Nigeria
3. How does Shopify work in Nigeria?
4. Who can use Shopify in Nigeria?
5. Shopify Pricing – How much does Shopify Cost per Month in Nigeria?
6. Shopify Payment gateway in Nigeria
7. Is web Hosting included in Shopify?
8. Shopify Theme and designs
9. How to add product inventory on Shopify
10. How to launch your Shopify store to the world
11. Pros of Shopify E-commerce platform
12. Cons of Shopify E-commerce Platform
13. Shopify Review Conclusion

What is Shopify?

Shopify is an eCommerce platform that helps you build your online store – or offer an easy to use e-commerce tool to build a successful online store. They are one the best eCommerce platform with the mission to create a hassle-free tool in Starting an eCommerce business.

Shopify Review Overview in Nigeria

To a layman or in the simplest form, Shopify is an online platform that helps to create or start any form of eCommerce business. It allows you to create your website within few minutes and sell whatsoever it is you want to sell. This could be goods or services, be it digital or physical products, giving you the total control of your store.

It gives you the freedom to organize your products and customize your products and store looks. Additionally, you could also accept payments through online and credit card and also track and respond to your store order.

Shopify offers a fully integrated eCommerce solution with ready-made stores you can tweak and customize to your heart desires. The cost of running a Shopify store is based on monthly billing. It comes with a different plan; I will talk about that later in the review.

Most of the frequent questions asked in Nigeria about Shopify platform include:

1. What is Shopify payment gateway in Nigeria or How do I receive payment after selling my products on Shopify?

Answer:  Paystack, Cashenvoy, and PayPal works perfectly fine in Nigeria. 

2. Can Shopify work in Nigeria?

Answer: Shopify works perfectly fine in Nigeria. 

3. Can I sell from Nigeria to international countries using Shopify?

Answer: Merchant in Nigeria can sell to any country using Shopify store. However, Payment gateway for USD can be PayPal or Shopify Payments or any other.

4. Will I pay a commission fee on my sold products to Shopify?

Answer: No commissions are paid to Shopify. Merchants are in full control of their store.

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How does Shopify work in Nigeria?

Shopify is specifically good for newbies, those that are just getting started with eCommerce business. You don’t have to know the specifics of the eCommerce world to get started. All you have to do is Sign up for a Free Account – and the Shopify wizard will take you by hand throughout the whole process.

The good thing about Shopify is you get to use the free account to familiarize yourself with the platform.

To get started with Shopify, assuming you’ve had your store set up. You have to upload your product descriptions, the shipping order and as well the product quantity. This has to be a good quality product image with various other specific data about your products.

Shopify support two popular ways of selling online. The first which is the above – having your product inventory yourself. And the other which is through dropshipping.

The next thing after you’ve uploaded your product details online is to choose a marketing channel for your products. Your marketing channel goes a long way with how you going to be successful with your business.

Shopify also works in ways where you can create a marketplace account just like the popular Jumia and Konga. This means other merchants can register with your website, upload and sell their own products.

Who can Use Shopify

Shopify cut across a broad range of industries, such as:

• Clothing and fashion
• Art and Photography
• Jewelry and Accessories
• Electronics
• Food and Beverages
• Home and Garden
• Furniture and Household
• Sport and Recreation
• Toys and Games
• Craft and Books
• Digital Products etc

Basically, any sort of product can be sold on Shopify and this makes them stand out among other eCommerce solutions mainly because of their vast and multipurpose nature.

1. Shopify can be used by beginners newly introduced into the eCommerce world. This is because it’s extremely easy to set up and run.
2. It can also be used by small business owners that are just starting out and want to minimize the cost of starting a brand new eCommerce website.
3. Shopify is best for those that have no skills as regarding web development. They have several template designs for you to take advantage of. So in the actual sense, you don’t need to pay extra cost hiring a freelancer to create your store for you.
4. Shopify also offers offline solutions. It allows you to integrate your brick and mortar traditional store with Shopify.

Finally, to narrow it down and specify who can really use Shopify, the best fit is going to be beginners. These are people just starting out with eCommerce and at the same time want the best solution as possible.

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Shopify Pricing – How much does Shopify Cost Per Month in Nigeria

You should know before choosing any plan, that you have a 14days free trial to test the platform. You can do this just to get your hands on water and see how it’s done.

After you feel you’ve known all you need to know. You can then proceed to choose the plan that best suits your business.

Another thing you should know about the plan is that – you get 10% discount on any plan you choose if you pay straight for a year. And 20% discount if you pay straight up for two years.

MONTHLY PLANS	PRICE
Shopify Lite	$9  (N3,285)
Shopify Basic	$29  (N10,585)
Shopify Pro	$79  (N28,835)
Shopify Unlimited	$179 (N65,335)

Note – The Dollar Price is the actual price but the Naira price is subject to change due to the dollar fluctuation.

Shopify Payment gateway in Nigeria

When it comes to payment gateways and payment processing Shopify has got you covered.

With Shopify you can receive payment or process your payment in two different ways:

• Shopify Payment or using
• An external Payment gateway like (Paystack or Cashenvoy). Other than this Shopify has over 70 other different payment gateways

If you want to sell internationally and receive payment in dollar equivalent you can either use Shopify Payment or PayPal. Shopify Payment is the company payment processor.

The Shopify Payment processor only charges credit card fees, which is basically for collecting your money for you from your customers. Their charges rate is more similar to the popular PayPal. The charges start from 2.9% + $0.30 per transaction and it goes lower as your sales go up.

Secondly, if you are selling within Nigeria and which you are most likely to receive payment in Naira equivalent. You have to use a third party payment processor like Paystack or CashEnvoy.

Paystack is a Nigeria based Fintech company that makes online payments process seamless for both parties. That is the customer and business owner. They make it easier to accept payment from via credit and debit card online from customers.

Paystack charge 1.5% + N100 per transaction on local cards (card issued by Nigeria banks). However, the N100 is waved on every transaction below N2500.

The best way to tackle the charges is to pass it along to your customer. The 1.5% +N100 on a N10000 transaction are N250. Passing the charges across to your customer should be you – making your price N10250. In the actual sense, you receive N10000 and Paystack collect their own share of N250.

Note – Paystack only works for Naira currency. What this means is that you can’t receive payment with Paystack for dollar/pound/Euro Payment. Just Naira at least for now.

 

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Is web Hosting included in Shopify

Unlike creating your own eCommerce website you have to pay for your monthly web hosting to back up your files.

Shopify is a cloud-hosted e-commerce platform. As part of your monthly plan, Shopify will host your website with unlimited bandwidth at no extra cost. This means if you are receiving 20million visitor per month you won’t be charge aside your monthly plan.

The good thing about Shopify is that they handle the entire process of the web hosting for you. While you, on the other hand, focus on the most important thing, like marketing your products and having fun.

Shopify also backs up your data for you automatically every day. Additionally, they also take care of the security upgrades for their servers and ensure your website is up and running without getting hacked.

Finally, they include Top notch security to ensure your customer data is secured. With Shopify, your online shop will be level 1 PCI compliant. While your shopping cart also includes an SSL certificate of industry standard 128-bit encryption technology. This is the same level of encryption used by the top banks.  Having all these in your store make it convenient and safe to buy stuff from your online store. Mind you they are all included in your monthly plan with no extra cost.

Shopify Theme and Designs

One thing Shopify is known for is their beauty and elegant looks, thanks to their theme. They offer sophisticated designs – over hundreds of them! (both free and premium theme) – So, I bet you will find your store taste.

Additionally, you should know that all the theme are optimised for desktop, mobile and tablets views.

Furthermore, after choosing the theme you will like to go with, you can easily tweak it to look exactly the way you want it.

The following are worth customizing:

• The colour
• Adding your company logo
• Homepage appearance

To change your theme, simply head over to the theme page browse the theme and upload your theme choice.

How to add product inventory in Shopify

Your product images give life to your online store. It let your customer see what your product looks like. It’s very important to upload good quality product. The recommended file type for product image is ‘jpg’. 

Adding a product image: 

This is very simple you just have to go over it some couple of times. what you have to have to do is head over to the dashboard and click the product tag.

This is going to allow you set all related details to your product.

The next step will give you an editor page where you can easily add the product details.

Filling the title and description will show your customer what the product is all about.

Furthermore, Under the above icon is a place to upload your image which can also be done through drag and drop.

The next thing to do is to add your pricing details to your product. From the image below you can see the several options.

Finally, as you can see from the below screenshot. You can set if you want the product to be online immediately for your customer to see.

After this, click the save Button and your product will be online.

How to launch your Shopify store to the world

Finally, bringing your store to the world is the next thing to do. And to do this, you need to unlock it.

Additionally, a plan has to be chosen before your store can be launched.

In other to unlock your store and make it available to the world, you have to head over to your dashboard. While in your dashboard scroll down and click >> “Online store” after that scroll down again to click >> “Preference” finally, scroll down to the “Password page” once you are there choose a plan and enter your credit card details, but mind you won’t be charged until your 14days trials elapse.

My suggestion here is to make sure you are ready for you to lift the password lock.

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Pros of Shopify E-commerce platform

1. Over 100 beautiful and professional themes: Shopify is all about beauty you should know that about them. Using Shopify will give you access to several templates, both paid and free that will leave your site astonishing beautiful.
2. 24/7 Shopify support: Shopify offers all-time support. You can reach them anytime by phone, email, live chat. When it comes to support Shopify has got you covered.
3. Security: Another thing Shopify takes seriously is their security. You don’t have to worry about your sensitive data and payment processing.
4. Speed: One of the criteria for building a successful website is its speed. Even Google take a website speed seriously.
5. App Store: Shopify offers you a large App store where you can choose from over 1200 different App to plug into your store. These apps can help automate lots of your business processes.

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Cons of Shopify E-commerce Platform

1. Payment gateways: Shopify is still lacking in terms of payment gateways for developing country. Although merchant in Nigeria can use Paystack or Cashenvoy, while Merchant in Ghana can use Ravepay.
2. Cost: The cost Per month and the cost of the transaction using an external payment gateway.
3. If you want to edit your theme extensively, then you need to know coding.

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Shopify review conclusion

A complete beginner or professional shouldn’t have a problem using Shopify. To add to that, it’s a complete hassle-free platform, where you can have your store set up within minutes.

Interestingly, they also have a full 24/7 customer support regardless of your plan. Another thing is their knowledge base platform, with answers to most frequently asked questions by Shopify user.

To round it up, Shopify offers everything you might need to run a succeful online store. Your eCommerce store completely optimized for search engines.

If you are uncertain about shopify at least try the 14days trial just to see how the platform works. And if you are not satisfied you can cancel your account. No pain no gain.

And as usual, let me hear your thought and suggestion on this Shopify review in Nigeria. If you think its worth it and if not lets here it in the comment box.