Shopify: Why choose it as your ecommerce platform?
Estimated reading time: 12 Min
A few years ago, ecommerce in Mexico did not exist, thinking about having your own online store was a reality only in countries with more developed economies. It was there where professionals like Alejandro Moreno began to work to see what we have today: an explosion of ecommerce that day after day allows thousands of brands and entrepreneurs to venture into this sales channel, which is currently in the purchasing preferences of millions of users.
Alejandro Moreno is passionate about e-commerce, he was one of the pioneers in Mexico, today he is a consultant and expert in Shopify at Getmore. Below, we share his interview conducted on our Ecommerce channel Al Cubbo, find the full podcast at Spotify.
Don't miss this article! We will talk about the different sales channels, the transfer of demand from the Marketplace to DTC, Shopify and other platforms for the creation of ecommerce, advantages, disadvantages and more.
What Is the most curious thing what has happened to you in the world of ecommerce?
“Everything has happened to me. As a supplier, for example, we have received leads for the sale of clandestine weapons or very strange leads for the sale of fayuca. Currently, we have a client in the United States who sells bows and air guns for entertainment purposes, nothing that hurts, but it is something that in Mexico It is not seen, which is why the issue of weapons seemed very strange to us.”
For you, what is ecommerce?
“The ecommerce is not an online store, it is not a website with a shopping cart, it is an entire business model for selling products and services, which has four pillars fundamentals:
1. The product: how good a product you have in terms of quality, price and exclusivity.
2. The technology: what tools you use and what benefits it offers you; This is where Shopify comes in as one of the best platforms.
3. The logistics operation: efficient shipments, at a competitive price and that arrive as quickly as possible, this is where suppliers such as "It is very important that the four pillars are aligned and improving." in a balanced way, because it is useless to have a super marketing campaign that generates traffic to our ecommerce, if when the visitors arrive the platform crashes, payments are not processed correctly, shipments do not leave on time or the product arrives incorrectly. “There are different sales channels, however, the strongest are 3, their level of importance depends on each brand and the level of relevance that it gives them:
· Marketplace: here come Amazon, Mercado Libre, Linio, eBay, etc., highly recognized channels where brands offer their products. Millions of people come to these to make their purchases in the different categories. or WhatsApp, for example, we find success stories of different brands that use these channels to encourage their sales, one of them is Net A Porter, an English company where 25% of its sales are made through WhatsApp.
· Online store: is the Direct to Consumer or the website with the shopping cart, where brands directly offer their products to the final consumer and take on the issue of the payment gateway, shipping, product promotion, inventory management, the customer service, etc.”.
Read also: Ecommerce: 10 highly effective tactics to increase your sales
“Which one to focus on will depend a lot on the type of product and industry to which it belongs, for example, if I have a fairly popular, larger-volume product, a good option would be the online store at Shopify, the Mercado Libre Marketplace, the WhatsApp and Facebook networks. If, on the other hand, it is an exclusive product, the alternatives regarding Marketplace and networks may be other. Depending on the industry and sector, there are different channels that best adapt to each need.”
“It is better to focus on the channel where the best results are obtained and where you have the most knowledge and access. If you already have experience selling on Marketplace, for example, deploying your efforts on this channel can be much more profitable than building your own online store, or the opposite; The above is closely linked to the objectives that we want to achieve in the medium and long term and to the business strategies. own?
“The migration of demand from the Marketplace to Direct To Consumer or to social networks is a trend. Because? In the Marketplace you sell, but your client is Amazon or Mercado Libre, not the end client, for whom you do not have the data or feedback, and this, in the medium and long term, is a deficiency for the ecommerce”.
“One of the three main metrics in the commerce email is the recurrence rate. It is estimated that, in the first two orders of each client, money is lost, and from the third purchase onwards, profit begins to be generated. Starting from this, it is important to look for how the customer's lifetime value can be increased over time, and this is where we require data to deploy different retention strategies, which shows why more and more companies migrate their demand from the Marketplace to DTC”. “There are many options, to name a few, we have Shopify, Vtex, Magento, Woocommerce, Tiendanube, among others, your choice depends on several factors such as the type of seller, whether they are entrepreneurs, small, medium or large companies, let's see why.”
“Entrepreneurs and small businesses hardly have an administration system, an ERP for managing accounting, inventories, payroll, or a technical team for the platform administration, unlike medium and large companies, this is the first point to consider.”
“When talking about ecommerce platforms, on the one hand, we have the famous SAS such as Shopify, where you acquire a license and You continue to pay for the infrastructure and technological maintenance of the store, on the other hand, there are open source platforms such as Magento, which are more flexible, but create dependence on a technical team.”
“Based on the above, the recommendation for SMEs is undoubtedly Shopify, because they do not need to have a technical team that is maintaining the platform, your design or marketing areas can upload products, add discount codes, view metrics and statistics in real time. Furthermore, if on a Buen Fin or Black Friday the store is saturated or slow, Shopify is responsible for solving these types of incidents.”
“On the side of medium and large companies, what is probably best for them is a platform like Magento, since they have to connect with N number of warehouses, with your accounting system and with many more systems, which requires a much more open technological stack; It does not mean that Shopify cannot do it, however, many of the old ERPs do not have the knowledge of EPI, nor the type of information consumption that can be done through Shopify, which is very simple. that sell millions of dollars a week and their entire technological infrastructure is mounted on Shopify, they do not need more, in general the companies with a longer history have older and inflexible systems. no?
“When the technological team adds value to your product or service, it makes sense to have it in house and for it to be one of the verticals of your business, of your core business, when this is not the case, this resource is not required. We are very transparent, when we receive prospects with whom Shopify is not going to be a customized solution, we direct them towards another option such as Vtex or Magento, it is a reality, not everything applies to everyone."
27% of ecommerce worldwide they are with Woocommerce and 20% with Shopify, which will predominate in the future?
“In a very short time Shopify will predominate. This company was born in 2006 and it took 13 years to reach one million stores, however, from 2019 to the end of 2020, it reached two million stores, in a year and a half it achieved what had taken it 13 years; This speaks of the accelerated growth that the company is experiencing, which will soon tip the balance. We as implementers and Shopify experts, are increasingly making migrations from Woocommerce to Shopify”.
“The truth is that there is no point of comparison. What do you need with Woocommerce to have an online store? You need to select a good server: Amazon Web Service, GoDaddy, Google Cloud, etc., you need to choose the correct certificates and security protocols, you need to build integrations with other systems, etc.”
“Now, if we are talking about an entrepreneur who does not have technical knowledge, he will have to delegate those types of decisions to a programmer or an agency external to his business, to make those decisions for him, which may later require changes or new developments, aspects in which You should not be busy, since your only role should be to sell.”
“With Shopify, customers do not have to worry about anything technologically at all. We do not develop software, we have a very solid team in front-end development; We don't build iron, we use it. We can do any type of design, but if the client needs, for example, to make a subscription model, we look for which of the players are the best for this development, who have a direct integration and we make it a reality."
“An added value that Shopify has is that behind the platform there is an App Store, which opens a window of possibilities with more than 8,000 applications, which allow business verticals without having to code absolutely nothing. For example, there is an application that we really like, which generates intelligent searches, predictive searches within the ecommerce, so, if you have hundreds or thousands of SKUs, as you type words, the search engine returns potential results, it also has an advanced filtering system and is self-manageable; to install it, place or remove filters and edit, you do not need a programmer.”
“With Shopify you have agility, zero dependence on a technical team and speed of execution, which becomes a competitive advantage in a field as dynamic as e-commerce”.
“When talking about Shopify and Getmore, we like a lot of the shopping center analogy. Imagine that you sell shirts, you go to a shopping center and rent a store, you make a contract with the tenant, where you pay monthly rent in exchange for security and surveillance, in addition, you don't have to worry if the foundations are well built or if the escalators work, that is not your responsibility, your duty is to make the store very nice, create a good experience so that customers enter, draw their attention and buy.
“Following this analogy, Shopify is the shopping center, and the store is a space on the server that you already rented. When you open, you have two options: you prepare the premises on your own, or you hire an architectural firm, the latter would be Getmore, who, based on their experience and knowledge, advises you and gives you the best options to get the most out of your premises.” End?
“Yes, in 2020 a prospect came to us, this client had two options: PrestaShop vs. Shopify did not choose Shopify because of the sales commission cost, which was 1% at the time. For him, in his financial model, it was an interesting amount, so he went with PrestaShop."
"During Buen Fin he talks to me and tells me: "My store is down, it's the weekend, the programmer doesn't answer me and I'm losing sales! What can I do?" The programmer never answered him and he lost all the Good End. So, it is the opportunity cost, I wish I had paid that 1%. Today he is in Shopify, we made the migration and he is very happy.”
“At Getmore, as an agency, we are super calm, no matter if it is Buen Fin, Black Friday or any other date, the ecommerce is not going to fall, which is very important for the loyalty of our clients' buyers, because If a user has a bad shopping experience, the probability of recurrence is very low.”
As for costs, how does Shopify compare to others? platforms?
“Shopify is the cheapest. When considering the costs of one or another platform, it is necessary to consider two scenarios: one, the lost sale, that is, what you lose due to failures in payment processing or server crashes during a peak sale, and two, the maintenance cost, if each failure in the system or change on the site requires that the ecommerce hire the services of a programmer, how much will each thing cost? Or if you have an internal technical team, how much does each payroll cost?”
“With Shopify you do not have these associated costs and they charge you a commission only for what you sell, it is variable, which makes it a much more economical platform. It is very important not to make the mistake of omitting these scenarios in the financial model. when making a decision. We are sure and very calm that the value we offer to our clients is the best that exists to meet their needs.”
“At the technology level, Shopify is the best there is. At the company level, it is a beauty, the people who work here are always willing to help.”
What are the most important aspects to start selling online?
“One of the things most important is to build community. Many entrepreneurs start by opening the ecommerce and then their social media accounts to publish, disseminate and attract traffic; It doesn't necessarily have to be that way, several of the best clients we have started with communities on social networks and when it became a necessity, they opened their online stores for reasons of scalability and growth."
“One of the biggest mistakes that arise is wanting to do everything at the same time, not knowing that the growth of the ecommerce is much slower when you don't yet have a community. My recommendation is to start building it through Facebook or Instagram, or both, without immediately needing the construction of an ecommerce”.
Read also: De0 to Ecommerce, everything you need to know to create your store online
What are those top practices that contribute to generating a high impact on the ecommerce?
· “First. Have your store on Shopify, you will not have to worry about the operation of the platform.
· Segundo. Have WhatsApp for Business integrated into your Shopify store, so you can respond as quickly as possible to your customers. We have seen online stores where 80 or 90% of their first purchases first go through a WhatsApp message with the sales team.
· Tres. Maintain constant communication with all your clients.”
3 things that will happen in the future?
1. “Not having technical dependence on a team, thanks to the use of different tools.
2. Increasingly there will be many more automations in the ecommerce with different technologies.
3. In the future, we will have 100% confidence in e-commerce. Just between 2019, 2020 and 2021, this factor has increased significantly.”
Challenges that you see in ecommerce?
“A topic of competition. Every day it becomes easier to start a business and undertake; There are many people manufacturing the same shirt, the same shoes, buying from the same supplier. This is where the issue of specialization becomes important, the more niche your product is, the probability of sales and growth will be much greater.”
Read also: 4 challenges for the adoption of ecommerce in LATAM
“If you are a generalist and you sell cosmetics, people will first search on Amazon, in Liverpool, at Walmart, in the large Marketplaces, but if you sell differential products, for example, cosmetics for places with hot climates that do not fall off with sweat, you will differentiate yourself and have more chances of being buy”
.
Are you looking for an ally to help you improve your delivery process, enhance your compliance and satisfaction of your customers? Do not hesitate to contact us, we are the best fulfillment center for ecommerce in Mexico and Colombia, you just have to click here.
