The concept of there being multiple generations working side by side in the workplace isn’t anything new. It’s always been that way ever since the ancient farmer brought his son out to the fields to teach him how to harvest their food. However, a good case can be made for the fact that we’ve never had a more diverse group of generations working in the same space together than we do right now.
If you’re a business owner or a manager who is trying to accommodate and communicate with two, three, or even four generations at the same time, here are some suggestions for how to give everyone a fair shake as you go about coordinating activities and working together on a daily basis.
The Generational Differences of the Modern Workplace
Much of the diversity that can be seen in the modern workplace can be directly attributed to the technological age that we live in. While ancient farmer Joe and his son may have had identical career arcs a thousand years ago, the four generations currently occupying the workforce each have dramatically different stories.
Baby Boomers grew up in an industrial, post-World War II world where microwaves were incredible earth-shaking tools and businesses still stuck to long-held rules and guidelines.
Generation X followed in their wake as ground-breaking technology like computers and the fledgling internet began to have an early effect on how businesses worked.
Millennials came next, threading their way through a corporate landscape that was reacting to things like the smartphone, social media, and a Great Recession, to boot.
Finally, there’s Generation Z, a group of digital natives that are just starting to come into their own. They know no life outside of the internet, and they are already championing causes like corporate social responsibility and remote work.
This multi-generational workplace amalgamation has run circles around many managers who have struggled to accommodate such a historically unique mixture of beliefs and experiences. If you can relate to this struggle, here are some suggestions for ways to accommodate all four of these generations and still manage to meet those quotas, make your deadlines, and generally get your work done on a daily basis.
Study Everyone’s Values
It all starts with understanding. More often than not, discomfort and hostility arise from the fact that the parties in conflict simply misunderstand one another. As a manager, it’s important that you take the time to actually, genuinely understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of a Baby Bommer, a Millennial, and so on.
If you take the time to understand the motivations, beliefs, and experiences of your workforce, you’ll be able to serve as a communicator and mediator as you oversee your staff’s daily interactions.
Listen Actively
Active listening is a critical leadership skill, regardless of the situation. When it comes to the multi-generational question, though, it’s absolutely imperative.
If your employees feel genuinely heard by you and you are able to reflect empathetic understanding back at them, it will open up communication channels. Particularly when you’re mediating disagreements or trying to communicate inter-organizational changes, take the time to hear your employees, listen to their feedback, and strive to understand what each person is going through.
Is a Baby Boomer uncomfortable with a shift to remote work? Is a Millennial feeling upset that they have to report to work even though their job can be done remotely? Take the time to hear each person from their own generation’s perspective.
What about the fact that Millennials crave feedback and mentorship opportunities and Baby Boomers prefer less feedback? While these may sound diametrically opposed, the two generations can be teamed up, the one as a mentor and the other as a disciple, in order to accommodate the preferences of both groups.
Remember to Look to the Future
Finally, always remember that no matter who you’re talking to, everyone is going to be here when tomorrow rolls around. Whether you’re talking about a Baby Boomer preparing for retirement, a Gen Xer trying to step into a leadership capacity, a Millennial striving to buy their first house, or a Gen Zer getting comfortable at their next job, every generation is interested in helping to create a brighter future for both themselves and those around them.
This is reinforced by the fact that, regardless of the manmade generational grouping assigned to a particular individual, everyone is connected simply through the fact that we are all human. As a manager, you can take advantage of this connection by focusing your team’s efforts on building towards a happy, healthy world to bestow on the fifth-generation that will follow — and the sixth and seventh generations after that and so on.
After all, building a better world is a rallying cry that everyone can get behind together.
If you’ve been searching online how to start an online store, you might have heard two services i.e. Shopify and Clickfunnels come up quite a bit.
And frankly, with all the dropshipping and ecommerce guides out there, it can get quite confusing to decide which ecommerce platform is the best place for you to sell your products.
In this article, we’ll explain to you exactly ecommerce platform you should run your online business on.
But here’s the thing:
None of these tools are perfect by themselves. Both have their own strengths and weaknesses. Ultimately, the platform you choose to run your business on depends on what kind of business you’re starting and what kind of products you’re going to sell.
Main Differences Between Clickfunnels vs Shopify
The main differences between Clickfunnels vs Shopify are:
Clickfunnels has two plan options with a basic plan that is more expensive, whereas Shopify has three option plans.
Clickfunnels doesn’t have a mobile app, whereas Shopify does have an app that is available on Android and iPhone.
Clickfunnels offers several features including ready-made sales funnels, whereas Shopify does a better job at helping you manage your inventory and customers.
Now, let’s start with an overview of both these awesome services:
Shopify: The Ultimate Online Store Builder
If you’re thinking of creating a fully fledged online store with lots of products, Shopify is a great choice.
You’ll get lots of themes to build your website, an inventory management system to manage your physical products, payments integration and exclusive shipping rates from DHL, UPS and USPS.
Basically, you’ll get all the tools you need to set up and run your new online store without having to write a single line of code. Plus the Shopify developer community is awesome – meaning you’ll find solutions to any technical or non-technical issues you run into almost immediately with a few quick Google searches.
And if that wasn’t enough, you’ll also get access to a budding App Store full of plugins and integrations you can add to further enhance the functionality of your Shopify website.
Clickfunnels: The All-In-One Sales Funnel Software
If you’ve never marketed or sold a product in your life, then Clickfunnels is the software we recommend you use to sell your first product.
Why?
Because Clickfunnels comes with pre-built, scientifically proven to convert sales funnels. There are sales funnels especially made to sell products, memberships, courses, ebooks, webinars and even your services.
And not only can you create an online store to sell your products and services, you can also use Clickfunnels to build your email list and run automated email marketing campaigns.
Granted, the stores you create with Clickfunnels aren’t going to be as feature rich as the ones in Shopify, but it’s more than enough to get you started. And with Clickfunnels, you won’t need to pay for another marketing software ever again.
Clickfunnels Vs Shopify: Features Comparison
From the above overview, you might have gotten the impression that both these tools are for two dramatically different audiences. And if you have, you’re right.
Shopify Feature Rundown
Shopify is made for expert entrepreneurs who know how to integrate different marketing software with their stores, have advanced knowledge how to create funnels and turn visitors into customers and only need a robust tool to create and manage their online store.
That being said, here are the nine best features of Shopify:
Online Store Builder: Shopify has an excellent collection of themes (free and paid) you can use to build your online store. The drag-and-drop website builder lets you customize every element of the theme. You can add your own text, color, and images to make your website truly your own. And if you’re tech savvy, you can add your own custom CSS and HTML code as well. In addition, you can also create blog posts with Shopify’s content management system. And every single website is mobile responsive so your customers can shop on your website even when they are on the go.
Inventory Management System: In Shopify, you can easily keep track of current and new inventory. Add new products, create different variants of it and post a few good-looking images of them and finally assign the number of items you have in store. Then Shopify will automatically track how many items you’ve sold so you know at once when to order more. Plus, you can also choose to sell (or not sell) a product even when it’s out of inventory and being restocked.
Analytics Dashboard: Shopify provides beautiful graphs of data that matter to you. You can see your traffic, orders, and sales at a glance. In addition, you can see where your customers are coming from, what they do and how much time they spend on your store thanks to Google Analytics integration. Plus, you can see the performance of each individual product i.e what’s selling and what’s not – and use this information to order new inventory accordingly.
Customer Management System: Shopify lets you see the shopping behavior and info of customers who’ve purchased from your store. Plus, you can create membership sites to encourage repeat purchase and send these customers marketing emails (or give them the option to purchase as a guest). You can also organize customers in groups based on their country, product purchases and money spent. In addition, you can set up refunds for customers as well.
Sales Channels: You can use Shopify to set up stores inside social media networks like Facebook and Pinterest, Amazon, Ebay, your existing website and even your brick and mortar stores. This means customers can browse and purchases products right inside these websites and apps as well without leaving them.
App Store: The Shopify app store is full of amazing plugins and integrations you can use to enhance the functionality of your shopify website. You can use the many apps available to create landing pages, opt-in forms, get additional analytics, run email marketing campaigns and more.
Payment Integration: With Shopify, you can accept payments from Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express, plus from 50+ online payment gateways like Paypal and 2Checkout. In addition, Shopify will handle city and state taxes of your country for you and gives the ability to offer customers free shipping.
Shipping and Delivery: Shopify has partnered will three major couriers i.e. DHL, USPS, and UPS to offer low shipping rates to your customers. Plus, because of their partnership with Oberlo, you can buy, ship and sell products to your customers without stocking inventory yourself.
Mobile App: The Shopify mobile app is available both on Android and iPhone. You can use it to track your sales and orders, manage your inventory and email / call your customers on the go.
Clickfunnels Feature Rundown
Clickfunnels, on the other hand, is made for beginners and non-experts who want to start an online business, and need a simple and powerful tool that helps them set up not just a store, but their whole marketing funnel as well.
That’s why Clickfunnels offers extremely robust tools like these:
Ready-made Sales Funnels: With Clickfunnels, you get ‘funnels’ i.e full sets of web pages that guide your customers toward a checkout page – ready made for you. You’ll get funnels to sell every kind of product imaginable. There are funnels for physical products, digital products, courses, ebooks, memberships, subscriptions, webinars and more. In addition, there are templates for sales pages, opt-in pages, thank you pages and checkout pages as well. All you have to do is add in your own copy and images and your sales funnel will be ready.
Website Building Tool: You don’t have to use the sales funnel templates. You can build your sales funnel from scratch with the website building tool. You can add text, images, checkout carts, payment integration, an opt-in form and anything else you need to build any kind of web page for your sales funnel.
Payment Integrations: With Clickfunnels, you can add payment integration to your sales pages and collect payments at once. Clickfunnels integrates with Paypal, Stripe and other payment processors.
Affiliate Marketing System: This is a cool feature not many offers. Clickfunnels lets you create your own affiliate programs for products and services. This means you can give a link to other people to sell your product. And whenever someone sells your product for you, you can give them a commission. This way, you can create your own personal team of salespeople who will help you increase your sales.
CRM System: Clickfunnels has a cool CRM system that lets you see in detail information about your customers. You can see where your customers are from, their email and social profiles, what they’ve bought from you etc. You can also group different customers based on their location, the products they’ve purchased, the money they spent etc. and put them in different email marketing campaigns.
Email Marketing Tool: You can create your whole email marketing campaign with Clickfunnels. You can write beautiful emails, arrange them in a series and automate the process so that anyone who opts in to receive your emails get them automatically. You can also send email campaigns to different segmented email lists.
Action Funnels: The action funnel is the Clickfunnels automation tool. Using this, you can combine your funnels with your email campaigns to create the ultimate automated marketing machine. You can set up which ‘list’ a user should be added in after they opt-in (or opt-out) to your funnel and what emails they receive. You can also set up actions based on different triggers. For example, if someone purchases your product, you can auto add them to a new email list and put them inside a new campaign.
ClickFunnels vs Shopify: Pros and Cons
Based on the features, here are the top three pros and cons of Shopify and Clickfunnels.
Shopify Pros
Shopify is the best platform to create and sell hundreds of products thanks to its inventory management system.
You get super low shipping rates from delivery partners such as DHL, USPS and UPS.
You get a mobile app to run your online store on the go.
Shopify Cons
Shopify only provides a platform to sell your products. You have to learn how to market your website to get sales.
You’ll have to integrate with other services for email marketing, building landing pages, creating affiliate programs etc which adds in cost.
You’ll need a lot of time to set up your store, create funnels and will need technical marketing knowledge to do it right.
Clickfunnels Pros
You don’t need to have any marketing knowledge to sell products. You’ll get prebuilt funnels tested for max conversions.
You get a CRM system, email marketing tool and automation tool within Clickfunnels. No need to pay for another service.
Building a funnel and selling your product takes only a few hours, not a few weeks.
Clickfunnels Cons
The subscription is more expensive.
Isn’t ideal for selling hundreds of products and running a full online store.
No mobile app for on the go usage
Frequently Asked Questions
Can you dropship with Clickfunnels?
Yes! With Clickfunnels you can create landing pages for your dropshipping business and integrate with third-party shipping applications.
Is Shopify safe and legit?
Also phrased as, “Can I trust Shopify?”. The answer? Yes, you can! This is a renown company with great customer service. If you have any questions about how Shopify works and its features, check out our complete Shopify review!
Can you really make money with Shopify?
Of course, but it’s important to have a great marketing strategy. Also, consider integrating Shopify with marketplaces such as Etsy or Amazon to be able to reach a larger market.
Verdict
Shopify is a good choice if you’re a marketing pro and want to go full-time running and managing your online store. Its product management and delivery features are unmatched. But you need to know how to set up different integrations for building landing pages, running email campaigns and automating your online business.
That’s why Clickfunnels is the better choice if you’re just starting out selling products. You won’t need a lot of marketing experience to build your funnels and you’ll get all the services you need to run your online business – including hosting to get you started.
If you are going to choose, Shopify – you might want to invest in landing page editor app right from the start, such as Shogun.
You can learn more about Shogun in our full Shogun review.
What if you have a skill and expertise that could help a lot of people?
How do you scale that into a thriving business today?
We spoke to the founder of Retail Ready, Alli Ball, to find out.
Alli is a former wholesale buyer turned consultant who helps CPG brands understand how to get on the retail shelf and have high sales once they’re there.
She works with clients through her online course, Retail Ready®, and connects with emerging brands through her podcast, Food Biz Wiz™.
Alli has a lot of knowledge to offer based on her experience and great success growing her digital business.
You don’t need to be in the food space to benefit from her process for going from knowledge to digital business.
Prior to launching her business, Alli worked for the Bi-Rite Family of Businesses, sourcing product and developing grocery staff for years at Bi-Rite Market on 18th Street, and then in the position of Head of Grocery and Store Manager at Bi-Rite Divisadero, building and managing a team and operations to support over half of the products in the store.
She saw that really fantastic product – really delicious product – would make it to the shelves and just sit there. Sales just wouldn’t come. There was something that the producer didn’t know about wholesale, yet she did.
She knew that the best way that she could help the sustainable food industry was to share those secrets on how to create a brand that WORKS on the shelf.
Since Bi-Rite Market, she has spent the past five years working with producers of packaged products – CPG brands – to build, launch, and scale the wholesale side of their businesses through her one-on-one consulting, and in her online course, Retail Ready™.
Transcription of Interview (Transcribed by Otter.ca; there may be errors.)
Adam G. Force 0:01
Seems to change.
Adam G. Force 0:11
Hey, what’s going on everybody? Welcome back to the Change Creator podcast show. This is your host, Adam force. Excited to be here today. I know there’s a lot going on around the world at the moment with this Corona virus. So let’s all just stay calm and think from a place of leadership and not fear. We are moving forward and just helping people and joining different communities and conversations and doing what we can to support each other as we adapt to what’s happening here. Right. We are problem solvers as entrepreneurs, this is what we do. We have a really great talk today. And so before we get into that, though, if you missed the last episode is with jB kromm. He is a podcasting guru business expert. He reaches about 12 million people a month. And so we talk about what it takes to scale a seven
Adam G. Force 1:00
Figure podcasts. So if you missed that, and you want to get those insights, just jump back there and make sure you listen to that episode. Today, we’re gonna be talking with Allie ball. She is an entrepreneurship Rockstar, and she’s been crushing it, she went from, you know, consulting, in the food, retail space to supporting people with group initiatives, all the way to now running an incredible evergreen business with online education. Alright, so this is a good good example. So of how to go and take your intellectual property and turn it into a thriving multi six figure business. So Allie is going to share some of her insights around how that all happened and things that you need to be aware of and organizational structures and systems and things like that. And I think you’re gonna get a lot of gold out of this conversation. Allie is actually in one of the masterminds that we’re in together. And so I’ve had a lot of good conversation with her. And I’m excited to have her on here to share her expertise and insights. So guys, just hang on for a minute.
Adam G. Force 2:00
We’re going to jump into that conversation. If you’re following us on Facebook, that’s our main social media channel at the moment. So you would probably have noticed that we put out a note to everybody about this Coronavirus, and we’re going to be having a conversation. So Amy and I are co founder here, my co founder here at Change Creator will be jumping on Facebook Live. We just did one on yesterday, which was the 18th of March. And we’ll be continuing to jump on to talk more about different things but how we’re managing the business and helping provide support for you guys running your businesses and things like that. So catch us on Facebook. If you haven’t joined our Facebook group yet. It is the profitable impact.
Adam G. Force 2:43
It is the profitable digital impact entrepreneurs you can find us there. Join us get involved in the conversation and connect with everybody. All right, guys. Last but not least, jump over to Change creator.com Don’t forget we have lots of fresh content out there and lots of good updates to
Adam G. Force 3:00
help you along your way. If you guys have ever have any questions, don’t hesitate to reach out. We appreciate all your ongoing support. And we’re going to dive into this conversation right now with Allie and see what she has to say. Okay, show me that he
Adam G. Force 3:16
Hey, Allie, welcome to the Change Creator podcast show. How’s everything going today? I’m doing great. Thank you for having me. Yeah. So you know, everybody listening. We are in the midst. This conversation is in the middle of this whole Coronavirus situation. So lots of stuff going on around the world. And we’re going to dive into a conversation here with Ali. It is not focused on the Coronavirus, but we are going to be talking about very important business insights for you.
Adam G. Force 3:42
But I know everybody’s got a lot on their mind right now. So we’ll just kind of see where this goes. And Allie, if you can kick us off. I just like to always give people a sense of what you’re working on today what’s going on in your world and just give a little bit of background for people and where you’re at. Yeah, absolutely. So I
Alli Ball 4:00
am a former grocery buyer turned wholesale consultant. So I help producers of packaged product in the food and beverage industry understand how to get on grocery store shelves, and how to have high sales once they’re there. So I do this all through a digital course called retail ready, and I educate consumers through my podcast, food biz Wiz. And so, Adam, you can imagine that we are in a really interesting time of this week and the past few weeks with producers a packaged product, especially in grocery stores with COVID-19. We’re seeing obviously a run
Alli Ball 4:42
on grocery products, particularly pantry products. So that’s really what we’re focusing on both in my facebook group and on our group coaching calls right now. How can these entrepreneurs navigate this time of an uncertainty and how they can how they can stay focused in there.
Alli Ball 5:00
And not respond in a panicked way. Yeah, so important to just to have that kind of mindset. We make bad decisions out of anxiety and doubt and fear and those totally, totally. And I think it’s, it’s my role as the leader in retail ready to show up as someone who is level headed and calm and providing creative solutions without being like, you know, on edge and panicked myself. And so often, you know, I’m actually very proud of my retail ready students. I think that we’ve got a lot of great energy in the group. And I love seeing I love I don’t know if you see this too in your group, Adam, but like seeing students, almost self coaching and coaching each other through these challenging situations. Yeah, yeah. Those conversations tend to kind of just naturally pop up as everybody has the same thing on their mind, right? Yeah, yeah, absolutely. And just everybody listening you know, alley is a business. Kind of
Adam G. Force 6:00
She’s a beast when it comes to entrepreneurship. So that’s why I was so excited to have her on here. She’s crushing it with her program. And, you know, she did a lot of consulting before that, and then flipped it into this digital environment to really start scaling. So, Allie, tell us a little bit just from a business standpoint about the transition of taking your intellectual property from a consulting standpoint, and converting it into an online business through coursework and things like that.
Alli Ball 6:32
Oh, yeah, I’m, I’m so happy to talk about this topic. It’s one that I get really excited about. So I have been in business for six years. And I gotta tell you, I’m like six years ago, I would have never predicted that I would be a digital course creator. Like that is not where I saw my business going at all. But I left my job as a grocery buyer and I saw this hole in the marketplace. I saw so many producers Really, really great producers not understand how to get on grocery store shelves and not understand how to connect with those buyers and not understand, you know, similar to what you work on, like not understand how to tell their story and get consumers to care about their product. Yeah. And I knew that I had this unique perspective of being on the other side of the grocery shelves. And I could offer that to package food producers. So I left like I said, I left my business or my corporate job six years ago, and I started doing all one on one consulting, and I, I loved it. I loved working so closely with producers and helping them understand how to find success with their products. But I’ll tell you like, I am not someone who takes work lightly. And I was finding that I just didn’t have the capacity to serve all of the clients who needed my help, and I would see all All of these emerging brands struggling with the same exact challenges, and I knew that if I could get them in a room together, and I could, you know, systematize my offering for them, I could impact more businesses. So about four years ago, I took my my years of one on one consulting and I bundled it up and I was like, I have this theory but like, I can offer group coaching at a lower price point and you know, help more food entrepreneurs. And so I got out of like, my first my first retail reading was eight brands. And we did everything over conference calls like not even zoom it was like everybody dialed in.
Alli Ball 8:47
I like presented information, you know, over the phone. They got a Google Drive link with you know, a shareable workbook like, not very secure. Back then, but like, you know, that’s how it That’s how I tested it out. And I validated that this was a good idea. And so for the first few years of teaching retail ready, I taught it as a live course. And I would teach it about four times a year. And I would have about 15 brands at a time who would come in and we would go fast and furious, like six weeks of hard, hardcore, like heads down working on their food businesses, and then I would send them on their way. And I saw Adam, you probably know where I’m going with this. Like I saw a few holes in this logic. Yeah, first off, I when brands would come to me, and they would say, like, Ollie, like, I’m ready to work with you. I’ve got XYZ problems like no, you’re my solution. So often, I would say like, oh, sorry, I’m sorry. Like I’m in week two of teaching retail ready, you know, like you can’t join at this. At this point. Like get on the waitlist. I think I’m going to run it again in the spring like you don’t Hang in there. Which is like the worst advice that you want to give or like a worst message you want to give to someone who is coming to you with an open wallet, right? So it wasn’t good for me. It wasn’t good for these businesses who needed my help. And I knew that I had to somehow change the system. But again, like, I didn’t really consider myself a digital course creator and I didn’t. This was this was four years ago. I mean, this I first ran retail ready in 2015. So Gosh, like over four years ago now, and like the whole digital learning economy was not as robust as it is now. And so I didn’t know what an evergreen course was. I didn’t know that there was this thing that I could do to make it a not live course. And I feel very fortunate. I don’t know if you know this story, Adam, that Courtney foster Donahue of FB, everything and the course course Yeah. was a friend of mine. And and I was essentially complaining to her about this struggle with my live courses. And she said, you know, Allie, you just got to turn it evergreen, like, I know just the lady to help you. And so sure enough, she she introduced me to the world of evergreen. Yeah, yeah, that changed my business model entirely. So that was in 2018. And I changed retail ready into an evergreen course. Which you know, I’m sure most of your listeners know but that essentially means that the course content lives on my course platform and my students go self paced through that core course content while they still get live coaching month in and month out on on coaching calls and then in our Facebook community and things like that. But I turned that evergreen in 2018 and now we are enrolling about 30 brands a month into retail ready. We’ve grown to a team of two Five here at food biz whiz. And we’re really cranking it’s cool. That’s exciting. Yeah,
Adam G. Force 12:06
yeah, you guys are doing really great work. And it’s, it’s great to see. And I want to emphasize for everybody listening that the steps Allie took what she naturally did, which was, I’m a consultant, I’m helping people. But I need to scale more. How do I make this digital, going through the process that you went through to teach over conference calls, keep it low cost, just really simple with Google Docs and PowerPoint, whatever it is, they get in at a better price, potentially, you learn a ton from their feedback, you see where the holes are, and then you turn that into your course once it gets buttoned up. Don’t miss out on those steps like so. I think so many people want to get an idea come up with like, oh, here’s my four part course or five part course whatever it is, but they miss that part of like, Oh, you never were consultant for this, this information, and you never did a beta.
Alli Ball 12:57
Exactly. Adam I’m sure you, you’re the same, same. Same as me. Yeah, I get emails every single week from other entrepreneurs who want to start an online course. And they see me and they see my success. And I’m so grateful that they think I can help them. But then once we get on the phone, I realized that they don’t have a product. They’ve never served people through a consulting model. Like they, they just think that it’s an easy industry to get into. Which as we both know, is is really, really far from the truth.
Alli Ball 13:35
Yeah, it is. Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 13:36
it sounds like
Alli Ball 13:38
yeah, and you know this to that. Just because you’re an expert in something, doesn’t mean you’re a great teacher. And doesn’t mean that you’re a great online teacher. And I think that that is so important to think about as well like I know a woman who wants to start an online course she is truly an expert in what she does. But she doesn’t want to show up on video. She doesn’t use social media and she doesn’t want to. She doesn’t want to she doesn’t want to have an online presence. And you know, I I know that what she has to offer is really valuable. But I also know it’s going to be really hard for her to build a market and sell a course if she doesn’t want to use those those basic tools.
Adam G. Force 14:25
Yeah, exactly. You mentioned not everybody’s a great teacher and right in my mind, I go off forget that not everybody’s great at selling and marketing and they all like we mentioned this is a common mistake that entrepreneurs make which is you think that you can just delegate the sales and marketing for your business and that’s like the biggest misconception because you need to be the number one sales rep especially in the first year or two of getting that thing off the ground.
Alli Ball 14:52
Yeah, Adam, I’ll tell you the the reason why I’ve had so much success with retail ready is because I love The sales and marketing side. I absolutely adore it. And I think one of the things that we talk about a lot in retail ready is that like, that classic phrase, like, if you build it, they will come is the worst business advice that I’ve ever heard that as a whole does not work. So often I see people, you know, either creating products, whether they’re physical products or digital products, they’re trying even to get into consulting, like whatever it is, whatever they’re selling, they build it and it’s a good thing. But if they aren’t out there, marketing their product and showing the world that they have a solution to people’s problems. No one’s going to buy it. Exactly, exactly. Yeah. Yeah, I like to. I I like to remind myself that it took me a while to realize this as well. You know, the first, the first two years of my business when I was doing consulting only I have my my income really abdun flowed. And you know, there were some months where I was making 1000 bucks. And there were other months where I was making 10,000 bucks. And you know, it was when I look back at it, you know, because everything’s hindsight here. Like, when I look back on it, I realize it’s because I didn’t, I didn’t have a strong marketing plan. And I wasn’t I wasn’t promoting my my services.
Adam G. Force 16:29
Yeah, and there’s just so many variables and decisions to be made that I see a lot of our students especially ones that sometimes earlier, they go off on tangents and they have so many ideas that it’s hard for them to keep their focus even even going through the program and stuff. It’s like, yeah, I’m like, will like go through and like, you just see like, weeks later this especially when we were running our beta and stuff, they’d come to each next call and I’d be like, no, like, we’re supposed
Alli Ball 16:58
to focus on this next two weeks. Adam, I couldn’t agree with you more. And I’ll give this example. So when I, when I first left my buyer role, I, you know, like I said, I was doing consulting and I was consulting for two different audiences. I did a lot of consulting with retail stores with grocery stores, helping them dial in their grocery operations. So understanding ordering and receiving an inventory management, understanding merchandising, you know, all of all of that, like how to run a successful grocery store, which was exactly what I was doing in my corporate role. I also then started doing that producer consulting, but I was so fired up about that I was so you know, that’s really where my passion was. But the retail consultant was really paying the bills at the beginning, of course, yeah, of course, right. Like, a grocery store has more money than a granola maker. So but I realized and You know, I’m embarrassed to admit this, but like, it probably took me a good 18 months to realize this, that the reason why my marketing was failing was because I was trying to speak to both audiences. At the same time, I was trying to speak to that grocery store manager, that grocery store owner, and that granola producer. And because my messaging was, you know, really focused on I can do this, or I could do this, or I could do this for you or like, I can also solve this problem. I wasn’t narrowed enough. I wasn’t, I wasn’t clear enough in what value I was providing for my clients. And therefore, people didn’t know if I was the solution to their problems.
Adam G. Force 18:42
Right, they’re not sure then you leave a little uncertainty because you’re like there’s not one group of people that is speaks very, very clearly, specifically. And I think a lot of people have Nish phobia because we don’t want to miss out
Alli Ball 19:00
Did Yeah, I totally did. I was like, my leash is producers of packaged product in the specialty food industry like that is so narrow. And you know, we even beyond that, like we focus on people who want to improve and increase their wholesale accounts. So like, not even talking about e commerce which is so trendy nowadays, like not even talking about direct to consumer, like we are solely focused on wholesale. And I was really nervous about that. And I gotta say, Adam, like, once I leaned into that, and once I put those nerves aside, everything clicked in place, all of my marketing became so much more focused. And I’ll tell you, like, I’ve shared my numbers with you, Adam, like when people find me, they know beyond a doubt that I can help them with such a particular problem. And that’s why they that’s why they convert to, you know, to, to a sale so easy. Yeah, because they they know, I think can help them
Adam G. Force 20:01
that’s the key, that is the key. And then all of a sudden, it’s easier for you to write because all of a sudden now your your messaging for yourself is more clear because you’re like, I’m just talking to this one group so all of a sudden you’re going deeper and deeper with more clarity on a very specific area, that’s easier for the marketer as well.
Alli Ball 20:21
Oh 100% You know, when I when So, you said like speaking to a narrow group and yes, of course, it is a group but I go so far as to have my ideal target audience that is a singular person, so I speak to every single time and so whenever I’m thinking about a marketing strategy or making business decisions, I can say to myself, like would Sylvie like this course Yeah, bonus would Sylvia be able to come to an 11am group coaching call, you know, everything is run through this altar of my ideal target audience, and I gotta say, like, it makes, it makes everything easier.
Adam G. Force 21:07
Yeah, it’s true. I mean, even for our own program at the captivate method, we are thinking about taking it even further. Like we go to social entrepreneurs, we, we focus on supercharging marketing with storytelling. And it could be for anybody ecommerce, it could be for, you know, coaches, agencies, and I’ve been with Amy and I have been discussing, like, maybe we do need to just narrow down to just working with coaches, you know, yeah. Because, I mean, just I’m saying this to people now on who are listening because you can, you can always go deeper on your focus, and it will only help you more, especially in earlier years. If you have a new offer that usually is way better to go very specific rock and roll and then you can always expand later.
Alli Ball 21:57
Yeah, absolutely. I think about that too. And like when I first started Doing my course. So I had two courses, I had retail ready. And I also had one that was called staff stuff. And that was all about hiring, motivating and retaining staff in the food industry. And I, you know, when I first launched it, I was like, why am I narrow? Why am I keeping this to the food industry like these, like, team building fundamentals and best like these hiring and like leadership skills are are essential in any business like why am I Why am I narrowing it to the food industry? And I, again, like I’m so grateful that I did because when that restaurant owner or when that retail store manager found me, they knew that I was specifically speaking to their industry, even if I know deep down that it can apply to any industry.
Adam G. Force 22:55
That’s that’s the that’s the part that tears at people is you know, deep down It can apply anywhere. But yeah, yeah, you just gotta buckle down sometimes and go after that very narrow focus, you know, and listen, like you could focus on that. And then after two years, if you’re making seven figures on that funnel, you then can expand the product to be for the next group of people.
Alli Ball 23:16
Right? Totally, like what we’re experimenting here with retail ready is thinking about, as the cannabis industry is getting larger and larger and the United States, they, they need these brand foundations and the wholesale strategy that we have put in place for, you know, non infused products. And so we could very easily replicate, you know, 90% of retail ready course content and market it to the cannabis industry. And, you know, I think that that is a really smart way to do it, or like a very, I don’t wanna say it’s an easy way to do it, but that that, to me is so much more thoughtful and strategic than just saying, I’m going to open this course up to anyone who you know who is an entrepreneur. Who wants to like think about business? Like that is so broad.
Adam G. Force 24:04
It’s so broad makes a big difference. It makes a big difference. And I’m wondering if you have remembered anything that like when you were doing your beta course. And you went from consulting to beta? Did the process you use for your consulting? Right? Yeah. Did that apply directly to the course? Or were there changes to the flow based on the fact that it’s now of course?
Alli Ball 24:33
Oh, that’s a great question. So what I did is when I started consulting, I, so I’m a systems person, I will tell you that like I love Yeah, organization systems. And one of the things that I did with my consulting clients pretty early on, is I developed a 12 step outline on how we were going to take them from, you know, business idea to getting there. wholesale account. And I would go through the same exact process, tweaking it slightly for my one on one clients. And you know that it took a little while to develop that process. But, you know, once I had, I mean, gosh, it was probably as fast as like, three or four clients, realizing that they, they all had similar challenges. So once I was able to have that, you know, that rough like 12 step process, I knew that that was something that I could replicate with, with my one on one clients. You know, at the end of the day, Adam, like, I didn’t want to reinvent the wheel with every single client. And I would find that I would write No, I would write these custom proposals, and I would, you know, a client would convince me that they didn’t need a foundational aspect. And then we would get into meeting two or meeting three and I was like, Oh, God, like you really just, you know, you really needed homework assignment number two that I get to almost everybody, right? Yeah. And so once I, once I started, like documenting that system of how I, how I achieved a transformation in my one on one clients that so clearly created the curriculum for retail ready, you know, I was like, I’m already following these steps. So. So I would say like, as much as you can, if you find yourself replicating the same thing over and over with clients, that’s a really great indicator that it potentially could turn it into a course. Yeah,
Adam G. Force 26:33
yeah, exactly. Exactly. Yeah. So let’s dive into some of your organizational obsessions. Yeah, and the reason I bring that up is because I think so many people, especially early on, you know, things can get out of hand and you think you’re organized but you’re really not you’re not creating the systems you need because you’re busy working on your, you know, your business and in your business, whatever. And so tell me, I guess a little bit about has maybe some organizational ideas that you’ve had along the way.
Alli Ball 27:10
Yeah, so I can talk about a couple things. And I’ve got like two to like very tangible or not not tangible, but to like very concrete things that people can put in place. And then I just have like a general philosophy that I’d love to share with your listeners. So first off, I will say that I am a huge planner user, like a huge physical planner user. My high school actually required us to use a physical planner and they gave it to every student when you know, I don’t know first day of school or something. And we had to use this physical planner. And you know, when I was 14, I thought it was a drag like I I you know, I was like, why is my school requiring me to do this but I will tell you, it has like, laid the foundation for My time management and my organizational skills. So I have been using a physical planner for about two decades now. I actually add him I don’t know if you know this, I have a physical planner called the food biz Wiz planner that we give to retail ready students and we sell on my website. And it’s specifically again, I say it’s specifically made for the food industry. But like, as we were just discussing, you know, these are organizational skills that like anybody. Exactly, yeah, so let me talk, let me talk about like my two favorite parts of the food biz was planner that anybody can put into place, and they’re like, really my foundations for achieving all that I do in my business. The first one is realizing that I can achieve three big things every week, and that’s it. And so, what I do is, I’ll either do it on Friday afternoons or on Sunday evenings, kind of depending on How my week ends. But what I will do is I will sit down for about 10 minutes before before Monday morning. And I will plan out three things that I’m going to accomplish in the week that are going to hit move me closer to my quarterly goals. Yeah. And that, to me is so fundamental. Because no matter how, no matter how a week goes, I know that daily, I can turn back to those three things and know exactly what I need to be making progress on that’s aligned with where I want my business to go. And so, you know, it takes me 10 minutes every week. At the end of the week. I’ll then like sit down and review how far along I got with those three things. And that like that simple thing, like it sounds almost too simple, Adam, but that that like practice alone has has really influenced how much you I can get done in my business, and how quickly my business moves forward.
Unknown Speaker 30:06
Absolutely.
Alli Ball 30:07
So I love that. Yeah, that’s a, that’s a really big one for me. And then the second one is that I have a morning routine, and an evening routine that takes about half hour at the start of each day and the end of each day. And I do the same exact routine in the same exact order every day. Okay, and so now this is I mean, I’m gonna let you in on the secret I it seems a little bit like obsessive compulsive to do this. But it allows me as someone who primarily works from home, to have bookends to my day, and that’s really important because I don’t know if you’re like me, Adam, but like, I could work until 10pm every night like, I love what I do. I love working, like so easy for me to just work into the evening, however, like for my own like mental health For the health of my relationships for like, frankly, my physical health to like, I wouldn’t go to the gym if I worked all night long. I’ve got to have a way to end the day. So what I do is every single day, you know, Monday through Friday, I get up, you know, I have my coffee, I like to hang out with my husband for a bed and walk the dog, whatever. You know, that’s not part of my morning routine. But once once I sit down to work, I skim my email and just see you know, what’s on on deck for the day. I check in in my retail ready student group. I check my slack channels. And I check Instagram. Yeah, and that’s it. I do those four things in that order every day. And then this is the key Adam. I don’t do them again throughout the day. You know, like okay, I’m not in my inbox 15 times a day. I’m not On Instagram, every time I have a five minute break, like I’m not checking slack all day long and that to me has made all the difference because I am able to then you know do the opposite of multitasking. I focus on one task at hand at at a time and it really allows me to like almost like autopilot start and end my day.
Adam G. Force 32:23
Yep, I mean so important to have boundaries for yourself in a sense, right? Because little distractions can really interrupt the day quite a bit. So you know only looking at your phone in the morning at lunch and an evening like that kind of thing makes a huge difference. Your morning routines a little different than mine, especially your evening routine. My evening routine is have a bourbon by 334 o’clock so I’m late for my verb. In my morning is more along the lines have run a mile go to the gym for like 20 minutes and then I do a shower. And then a meditation and I’m like ready to rock and roll.
Alli Ball 33:03
Yeah. And that’s, I love that you bring that up, Adam because everyone’s routine can be different, right? Like, just because that’s my routine doesn’t need it. mean it has to be your listeners routine. It’s whatever works for you. And so for me, like, I usually do that from about 830 to nine o’clock, and then I do a gym class at 930 Oh, okay, there you go. Yeah. So like, it works best for me if I start my day by just checking in on my systems and you know, checking in with my team. And then I go do something for myself.
Adam G. Force 33:34
Yeah. So that when I come back at 11, I know exactly what I’m working on. And I can be heads down for like my most productive hours of the day, which are like 11 to two. And that’s a key statement, your most productive hours because some people are morning people, some people are night owls and all whatever it is, you know, so we have to work during our best hours and do the things that are best for us. And I think you know, it’s important to just be To follow that, right kind of follow what’s best for you, but I don’t want to rationalize and say, Oh, well then I better just get up at noon. It is so funny because my husband and I both work from home. Yeah. And sometimes, you know, we’ll like do our morning routines are dog is walked like, we, we come back from the gym at like 11 shower, whatever and then I’m like, oh like it’s noon. I’m just getting to work. Yeah, it feels so luxurious and so silly to have that be our schedule. You know, not every day but like often, but then I will tell you I will sit down and I am one of the most productive people you will ever meet. So I am sitting down and cranking it out until 4pm. And like achieving so much stuff, because I’m so focused again on like, my ultimate priorities every week and every day. I mean, it totally makes sense. I love it because tracking what you need to do and staying on top of it, giving yourself the time like going to the gym exercising, like I will say, as entrepreneurs that work out of the house, if we don’t make time for that one, we won’t be as focused. We won’t be as sharp but to your body will start to physically like fall apart. And you’re gonna be at the doctor saying I have neck pain. I have shoulder pain. Yeah, I have been there and I was like, holy crap, I stopped like exercising for I think, I don’t know, nine to 12 months, I was just like in the zone working every day from like, 5am till freakin seven at night. And I ran into real physical health issues.
Alli Ball 35:39
Yeah, absolutely. And it’s astonishing, right? Like, we I feel like we don’t recognize that Intel it becomes a problem. But I and this goes back to like, my general philosophy that I wanted to touch on is that Adam, I say no to most things that come across my plate. I swear to you that I have been able to have the business success that I have, because I do because I’m very picky about what I say yes to. And I have I’ve really narrowed and limited the amount of things on my plate. So I say yes to going to the gym like I say yes to having a healthy lunch every day. Like I say yes to making time to, you know, read at night and things like that so that I can become and stay that healthy entrepreneur that I that I strive to be
Adam G. Force 36:35
100% Yeah, I love that. It’s good. Ask it. This is good insights. Folks. Pay Thank
Unknown Speaker 36:41
you.
Alli Ball 36:43
Gosh, I could talk about this all day long. I
Unknown Speaker 36:44
know. I know. We’re good.
Adam G. Force 36:46
They’re good. They’re good. conversations that have to resurface regularly to remind us remind people listening about these key points because once you start having success as an entrepreneur, you’ll realize that The more you do take care of yourself that inner world, whether it’s meditation, running, whatever, that will help develop your outer world more in line with what you want. Right? So like, this is huge, and I think people neglect it.
Alli Ball 37:16
Well, yeah. And you know, it sounds so cheesy, but like, there’s a reason why we say like, put on your own oxygen mask first, right? You have to
Alli Ball 37:24
take care of yourself first, so that you can show up for others. And I think that is, you know, that’s our ultimate responsibility as course creators and entrepreneurs. Like if we are truly meant to be the leader that we want to be, we have to take care of ourselves first. Exactly.
Adam G. Force 37:42
I love it. Now. That’s a good note to end on here. We hit our 34 minutes, so I’m asked to wrap up. So let’s just um, there’s, I know there’s people in the food space and our audience, and I want to give a shout out how do they find you learn more about what you’re doing for Retail ready to see if maybe it’s something that could help them where do they go?
Alli Ball 38:03
Great. Thank you for asking. I’ve got two really great resources for them. The first one is my own podcast. Again, it’s called food biz Wiz. And that can be found at food biz whiz.com. And actually, Adam, I’ve got a couple episodes on how to get organized as a food entrepreneur. Why saying no is the most important thing you can do in your business, lots of topics like that. So if your listeners have enjoyed this style of conversation today, I think that they’ll enjoy some of those episodes. And then also I’ve got a really awesome nine step roadmap on how to get your products on the retail shelf. So if you are a food producer, beverage producer like wellness or supplement producer that is going to be great for you. So that’s at Alibaba comm slash roadmap
Unknown Speaker 38:55
how they bought calm
Adam G. Force 38:57
yeah slash roadmap. Okay, just writing it down. Alright, great awesome So guys, you could check out Ali’s podcast check out her roadmap and other information she has available at those resources. You know, I made a note to myself here Allie. I was like, Huh when to say no and I for potential Facebook Live video.
Alli Ball 39:21
Yeah, yeah. You know what? Adam all sent you that? That podcast episode. I feel so wholeheartedly that it is applicable to anyone, not even you know, not just food but just life in general.
Adam G. Force 39:36
It’s not Oh, yeah. Isn’t this like focused? Honestly, it’s just applies everywhere. It’s such a great kind of philosophy to dig into and think about. Yeah, you know, like you. You’ve been doing your your quarterly planner and things. Yeah. And we have been doing journaling, with different insights but more about nurturing the inside. Psychology. And I got to tell you, man, like we’re starting to apply this as a strategy for all of our new students. Because as you go through it, what I’ve learned in doing it myself for a while now is you get into these thoughts about your own journey. And they become great talking points for your live videos and everything else that you’re doing in the business because you’re actually digging into how you feel who you need to become challenges, what kind of conversations you have with your customers and all these types of things. It’s pretty powerful, just this process of writing things down.
Unknown Speaker 40:33
So yeah, I am.
Alli Ball 40:35
I know and I know that like we’ve, and I think it’s ironic because you and I are digital course creators, right? So like, obviously, we love all things digital, but I will tell you that experience of pen to paper is so so powerful. Yeah, yeah,
Adam G. Force 40:51
yeah. And there’s a number of ways that people do it. And so, you know, it just depends, I guess what’s best for you or what you’re trying to accomplish, but I love what you mentioned about the planner. I kind of want to combine that where I have two notebooks one is for like to dues thoughts and all that stuff. The other one is more for like journaling, you know, I keep them very separate.
Alli Ball 41:09
Same exact same. I’ve got like, I’ve got three
Alli Ball 41:16
high, you know, we didn’t really get into this But yeah, I, I have a daily journal, practice as well. That is so, so valuable to me.
Adam G. Force 41:25
Good. Good stuff, man. Really appreciate your time today, Allie, great as always talking with you. And I appreciate you sharing all your insights. And I love the success that you’ve had. So guys, check out Ali’s information, you got the podcasts, got the roadmap, all that good stuff, and maybe she can help you get on those retail shelves.
Alli Ball 41:44 Awesome. Thanks for having me, Adam. That’s all for this episode. Your next step is to join the Change Creator revolution by downloading our interactive digital magazine app for premium content, exclusive interviews, and more ways to stay on top of your game available now on iTunes and Google Play. or visit Change Creator mag comm we’ll see you next time where money and meaning intersect right here at the Change Creator podcast.
Magento was launched in 2008 and is used by big brands across the globe. In our Magento review, we’ll consider if it is the right choice for your business.
If you run an eCommerce business and you’re thinking of switching to a new platform, you may have considered Magento. It has a lot of great features, including powerful marketing and shopping cart tools, and in-depth inventory management which will save you time on repetitive tasks. However, it’s not that well suited for beginners, as it has quite a steep learning curve – but it does offer a free community edition, so you might be tempted to give it a shot.
In our review, we’ll have a look at the key features of Magento, before looking at the platform in detail. We’ll look at pricing and pros and cons, before giving our opinion on who Magento is best suited for – so you can decide whether it’s right for you.
Key Features of Magento
Two versions available – Community Edition (free to download) and Enterprise Edition
Secure cart with automatic tax and sales calculations
In-depth inventory management, including management of stock in various locations
Order management and customer account management
Secure cart with multiple payment options, including Google Checkout, debit or credit card, and PayPal
If you’re a newbie looking to enter the world of eCommerce for the first time, with no technical experience and no money to hire a developer – Magento is not going to be the best choice for you. It has a steep learning curve, so if you’re looking for an eCommerce platform that will allow you to get going quickly and easily, you’re better off looking at another service like Shopify.
If you are a developer, or you have one on your team, you should find navigating Magento quite simple. The interface is pretty easy to use once you’re up and running, but as we said, it won’t be suitable for total beginners. Set up can take quite a bit of time, however, and installing extensions can sometimes be a laborious process depending on the extension itself.
Inventory and Order Management
Magento has a range of inventory management tools – it’s a real strength of this platform.
Uploading products is a simple process – it’s very quick to upload photos, videos, and descriptions of products. You can offer virtual or downloadable/digital products. You can also allow personalization of products (like monogramming).
It’s simple to keep your inventory organised, even if your stock is stored in different locations. Magento also helps to speed up certain processes when it comes to managing stock – for example, you can mass-assign a value to multiple products, create product templates to quickly upload new items, and automatically assign products to certain categories. You can also choose to automatically resize images and batch-import and export catalog information at set times. These processes, although seemingly small, can drastically reduce the amount of time you may otherwise spend doing repetitive tasks.
If you do want more control, though, the admin area has a lot to offer. You can moderate reviews and product tags manually, create or edit orders, and even assign customer service reps to create customer accounts or place orders manually if necessary.
The admin area allows you to control multiple websites and one stores from one account, but you can also create multiple user accounts with permissions depending on the roles of your team members. You can also review all users’ admin activities, if you like.
Storefront
Magneto has a blank base theme, or a free theme called Luma. These can be customized using a drag-and-drop editor – this does make things easier if you don’t have any experience coding. You can buy themes from the official Magento extension store or go for a theme from a third-party website (these vary a lot in price – from $80 right through to $500, as you can see in the example above). Theme Forest has a lot of great Magento themes:
For $83 at the time of writing, this is a pretty dynamic theme from Theme Forest. So, if you’re willing to shop around, you can find one to suit your business.
There are a lot of options within Magento, if you can learn how to use the platform. You can create and edit content blocks, combine text with videos and images, blend content (like a blog post) and commerce by adding products to content pages, organize content with menus and page hierarchy, and use stock photos from Adobe Stock.
There are many companies using Magento to create attractive websites. This example from Graze (a snack company based in the UK) shows how your website could look:
You may want to consider a page builder extension, however – these can offer a bit more flexibility than Magento on its own can give and make page building and content creation really simple.
Magento also has a built-in blogging platform – this is great for creating ongoing content to keep potential customers coming back again and again.
You can show multiple images for each product page and allow customers to zoom in on product images. You can include color and fabric swatches, too. Products can be viewed individually or grouped together – for example, you can set related products, up-sells, or cross-sells, so that customers can see recommended products. You can add social media sharing buttons to each product, and customers can set up a wishlist or even a gift registry. There are a lot of features here to utilize.
Shopping Cart
Magento offers a secure shopping cart with a ton of features. We could talk about them all day, so here’s a quick list of the features included:
Customers can pay using credit or debit card, authorize.net, PayPal, BACS, or payment on collection
Can include mini cart on store pages
Tax and shipping estimates are estimated in shopping cart
Order summary includes product images during checkout
Instant Purchase option allows your customers to checkout time, thus boosting conversion rates
Customers can create accounts, wish lists, and save shopping carts for later
Gift wrapping and gift messages can be included
There is a lot here to unpack, but essentially, Magento offers a ton of features to make the shopping experience as simple as possible for your customers – a quick and easy checkout process will improve conversion rates, so this is important. Plus, having customer accounts means that they’re more likely to come back again – especially if you draw them in with vouchers or coupons.
Marketing/SEO Tools
Magento’s stores are mobile optimized, so they should perform well on different devices. SEO is taken care of, with Magento automatically generating sitemaps for Google, and creating search-engine friendly URLs without you having to lift a finger.
When it comes to marketing, there’s quite a lot to offer without having to rely on extensions. Integration with Amazon means you can sync your inventory easily, opening up more options for customers. Google Smart Shopping campaigns and Google Ads are integrated, meaning you can manage ads easily. Plus, the upsells and cross-sells that we mentioned earlier, along with promotions, sales, and coupons, adds up to a lot of options when it comes to inviting customers to make a purchase.
You can set up special flash sale pages, for a limited time – or you can set up private sales for select customers. This is a great way to reward customer loyalty, by offering exclusive products or discounts.
Extensions
There are a lot of extensions available for Magento – at the time of writing, almost 6,000 of them. They’re organised into the following categories:
Customer support
Marketing
Payment and security
Accounting and finance
Site optimization
Shipping and fulfilment
With the right extensions, you can really enhance your experience using Magento – and they will allow you to manage everything in one place.
Reporting
Magento has an easy to use dashboard, which will allow you to see at a quick glance the key information that you need, including best-selling products, total sales, website traffic, and more. The integration with Google Analytics allows you to create visually appealing in-depth reports – therefore giving you access to easy-to-understand data. You do have to sync up Google Analytics before you can get going.
Support
Magento does have a steep learning curve, but their Knowledge Base is packed with documentation to help. Like the rest of the platform, this can appear (at least initially) quite overwhelming – they don’t have an easy to access section for beginners, for example. If you need support, they have a helpline and an online chat function. Plus, they have a busy chat forum if you want to connect with other users.
Thankfully, as we’ve mentioned already, there are plenty of free resources on other websites that you can use to get going with Magento.
Pricing
Magento has two basic plans.
Community Edition/Magento Open Source
This is a free-to-download version of Magento. Anyone can go online and get the software – completely free.
This does require technical knowledge. You have to upload it to your own server, which obviously requires a bit of previous experience (or you can follow a tutorial online to help – YouTube is a good place to look for a visual guide on how to do it). If you have experience or you can afford to hire a developer – this is a great choice. However, for most small businesses or eCommerce stores run by individuals, it’s a mammoth task to get going, and therefore may be out of reach.
Although the software itself is free, there are costs involved – including hosting, your own domain, and possibly paying for themes and extensions. This can vary, so we can’t give you an approximate cost.
Enterprise Edition/Magento Commerce
This is a package individually designed for bigger companies. This can be very expensive – we’re talking potentially thousands, or even tens of thousands, of dollars per year. You have to call and request a quote from Magento, and they will come up with a package for you based on the scale of your business and which features you require.
Obviously, this will be way out of the price range of many smaller companies. But some big brands – including Ford, Coca Cola, Olympus, and Christian Louboutin – use Magento with great success.
You can request a free demo of Magento – click here to find out more.
The Pros of Magento
Free edition available – perfect for developers
Used by big brands across the globe
Inventory management is excellent
Comes with a variety of marketing tools
Themes can be customized
SEO is automatically taken care of
Range of extensions to choose from
The Cons of Magento
Free edition requires you to host it on your own server
Steep learning curve – not suitable for beginners
Can take some time to get going
Some extensions and themes are expensive
Knowledge Base isn’t that suited for beginners – you may need to look further afield for tutorials and support
Frequently Asked Questions
If you’ve still got questions regarding Magento, we may have the answer for you.
What’s the difference between Magento 1 and Magento 2?
Magento 2 has improved loading times, a better dashboard, and more SEO tools including meta tags – so a lot of improvements.
How can I learn how to use Magento?
The knowledge base does have documentation, but if you want a complete beginners guide, YouTube is a good source for beginner tutorials. There are also some great blogs out there with free tutorials.
Are Magento extensions expensive?
They can be – they range in price from being totally free, all the way up to $500. Some of them work on a monthly subscription basis rather than a one-off cost.
How long does it take to install a Magento extension?
Depending on the extension and your level of experience, it can take up to three hours to download and install a new extension.
Are there email marketing extensions available?
Yes! There are many integrations available with popular email marketing platforms, including MailChimp and Drip.
Does Magento offer marketing tips?
Yes – if you sign up to their emails, you can receive free marketing tips.
Does Magento have a mobile app?
No, Magento doesn’t have an official mobile app, although there are third-party apps available.
Does Magento sync up with eBay?
Yes – it syncs with eBay and Amazon, allowing you to sell products in multiple places at once.
It has a range of admin tools. From detailed inventory management, to built-in marketing and shopping cart tools, to powerful reporting using Google Analytics, there is a lot to like about Magento. Several processes are made simple – being able to perform certain actions in batches and having SEO tools built-in, for example.
You may have a lot of ‘threads’ in your business – for example, if you’re selling on multiple platforms and you keep stock in different places – and Magento ties everything together, allowing you to manage everything in one place. It’s designed with larger companies in mind, with the ability to create admin accounts and monitor user activity.
It’s also very customizable. Using extensions and the built-in drag-and-drop tools, you’ll have the ability to build a dynamic, fast-loading store with Magento. If you go for a page building extension, you’ll have even more options available to you when it comes to store design and content.
The downside is – unless you’ve got experience as a developer, or you’re in the position to hire a developer, it won’t be suitable for you. (Unless you want to learn an entirely new skill, which is always a good thing, but can be very time-consuming.) Beginners to eCommerce will find Magento overwhelming, and there are other platforms out there that allow you to get up and running really quickly, with plenty of useful features.
When it comes down to it, we think that Magento is an excellent platform – if you’re a larger, established business with specific knowledge and expertise. If you’re a bigger brand, then you’ll have access to the Enterprise Edition/Magento Commerce, which could be the perfect solution – at a high price tag, of course.
So, whether you should go for it depends on your situation. If you’ve got a developer on board who can dedicate a lot of time to get your store up and running, then yes – absolutely go for it, and enjoy Magento’s powerful tools and features (and the fact that the software itself is free). If you’re a beginner, we’d suggest looking elsewhere.
Looking for solutions to create the best Shopify landing page on the world’s best e-commerce website platform? Great! I’m here to help! I also recommend 6 powerful landing page apps that can help you get started immediately (no coding required!).
Creating a Shopify landing page is a smart sales funnel move that can increase your online store sales fast. Landing pages are gradually taking over the role of the traditional website or e-commerce homepage. More online visitors now arrive on a dedicated landing page than on a homepage.
The top purpose of a landing page is to encourage a target audience to take a specific action. It provides a specific product’s purchase details and removes buying distractions. That means it can help reduce cart abandonment and increase your conversion rate.
As the most popular e-commerce website builder right now, knowing how to create Shopify landing pages for your e-commerce business is critical.
How do you create custom Shopify landing pages?
How do you create a beautiful custom Shopify landing page that’ll boost your online store conversion rate?
If you are like most people, coding may not be your best skill. Not even with Shopify’s e-commerce store Liquid programming language.
So for your conversion optimization plan, you can use good Shopify landing page templates or create from scratch. Later we’ll talk about some great tools to help make this process easy, such as Shogun.
Shopify Landing Page vs Product Detail Page
If you use a product detail page (PDP) as a landing page, you are not alone.
A 2018 Monetate study found nearly 1 in 4 potential customers landed on a PDP online. The study involved about 2 billion global online shopping sessions.
Here’s what Monetate found about product pages vs other landing pages in 2018:
As far as conversion rate goes, visitors that landed on a different landing page converted at nearly 2X (2.9%) those that landed on a PDP (1.5%)
Landing pages also generate 2X more revenue per session that product pages (3.43% vs 1.72%)
Visitors on other landing pages also view 42% more pages than those that land on PDPs (12.5 pages/session vs 8.8 pages/session)
One more thing:
Visitors than land on a landing page other than the product detail page are less likely to bounce. That means fewer cart abandonment and more e-commerce sales for you.
Search-referred visitors bounced 20% on a different landing page compared to a whopping 52% on a PDP
Visitors landing from social media marketing campaigns are 29% more likely to bounce when they find a product detail page compared to finding a different one.
So, if you are considering starting a paid traffic ad campaign on Facebook. You know the smart, profitable thing to do. Create a dedicated landing page on Shopify.
Don’t waste those hard-won clicks and ad dollars on a regular product page.
3 Easy Ways to Create an Amazing Shopify Landing Page
In this post, we are going to show you three ways to do it fast and easy, so you can get to the most important part—selling your stuff on Shopify.
1 – How to Create Shopify Landing Pages Using Collections
Perhaps the easiest way to build a landing page for your Shopify is to use the Collections feature on Shopify’s platform. You can do that by visiting the Collection page when logged on to your Shopify admin area.
What are Shopify Collections?
Here’s a quick video by Shopify explaining what product collections are on Shopify:
Collections empower you to create product groups that make it easier for your customers to discover your stuff by category.
For example:
You can group things like women clothes and women jewelry together. That means if your online store is targeting women when they land from your ad campaign, they can find all these items that go well together on one page.
Doing that is a conversion optimization best practice. You’d be making it super easy for potential customers to find what they want, closely related items such as accessories, and even empower them to explore more purchase items.
You can also create a custom product category on Shopify such as “Gifts for Under $50”, which may even be easier than creating a Shopify page.
In fact, Collections can help you upsell your customers on products related to what they initially came in to purchase—which is a technique Amazon successfully implements likes this:
You can also batch related items together…
Using Shopify Collections to show frequently bought together items such as on Amazon can boost your conversion rate.
So how do you get started with Shopify Collections?
How to Create Shopify Landing Pages Using Product Collections (Step-by-Step Guide)
Whichever Shopify theme you choose, they all support Collections.
Something to note before the step-by-step guide:
You’ll choose between creating a manual or automated Shopify collection.
A manual collection is ideal if you have inconsistent flash sales, a few products, or a specialist collection. It involves curating your items personally. You get to choose the items to add to a collection individually.
For that last reason, it can be too much work if you have multiple products and a constantly changing inventory to update.
With Shopify’s automated collections, you get to set a condition or a set of conditions an item must meet to be automatically added to a collection. Once you select the conditions, up to 60 items will be added.
In the future, items will just need to match the conditions you set for them to be automatically added to your collection, which is massively time-saving as well as ideal for multiple products and rotating inventories.
So how do you actually create a Shopify Collection?
On Menu, click on Products
Select Collections
Choose between adding products automatically or manually
Choose and fill in your page’s title and URL. Match it to your ad copy for SEO, boosting instant recognition, and boosting conversion
There you go.
#Pro Tip: If you want to target pop-ups, web notifications, widgets, and dynamic text to a particular campaign, do make a note of tracking parameters you use for paid ad campaigns.
The good news is all products in the Shopify product collection you create will display together.
The not so good news is using collections can limit how much you can customize your Shopify landing page design and the elements you can use.
Elements such as e-commerce product images, for example, are super crucial to increasing your conversion rate—the more high-quality images you use, the better. People want to know exactly what they are buying by seeing it first.
So consider using a top Shopify add-on such as Pixc to make your product images pop if you feel this method limits you.
Feel like turning product collections into Shopify landing pages is a bit bland or limiting?
Consider using a Shopify landing page app. There are several options in the market today such as Shogun.
2. How to Create Landing Pages for Shopify: Using these 6 Best Shopify Landing Page Apps
New to ecommerce website templates? Or, you just don’t have time or money to hire a Shopify expert to create a custom Shopify landing page with Liquid?
Choose the best Shopify landing page template builder.
You can create landing pages for Shopify stores with dedicated third-party templates like Shogun. These are landing page management tools that integrate directly with the ecommerce website platform.
Note that the apps usually have their own file structures for JavaScript, images, CSS, and so on. So, you’ll want to look around to choose the best setup for your needs.
The best landing page builders for Shopify feature powerful tools such as drag-n-drop functionality, video support, MailChimp compatibility (great for building your ecommerce email list), and use mobile-friendly design.
Here are some of the best Shopify landing page apps to help you create converting e-commerce landing pages hassle-free:
Here’s a simple yet easily the most comprehensive ecommerce landing page app to build, measure, and optimize your Shopify pages. No coding required.
First, Shogun is renowned for its exemplary customer service.
That feels like knowledgeable customer service, doesn’t it?
And then there’s the Shogun Visual Editor PLUS supporting analytics.
Shogun Page Builder
Shogun Analytics
Expect an easy-to-use, drag-n-drop landing page builder. You can use it to design coming soon, FAQ, and donations pages as well as contact us forms.
The builder works with any Shopify theme.
You can also import existing pages to edit them in the Shogun editor.
Over 30 landing page templates await, including on the base plan (Build). You can even use the theme editor to customize thank you, collections, and terms & conditions pages, as well as click funnels and to add custom fields.
For SEO optimization, Shogun is mobile responsive and will let you edit meta titles and descriptions to match your keyword strategy like Yoast.
To boost your landing page speed, it comes with an image compressor tool. Plus, you can resize images to offer excellent fits that grab attention.
Have multiple accounts? Shogun allows users to duplicate store elements across multiple accounts.
The Shopify page builder is especially big on conversion optimization tools. They include:
Personalized recommendations
Free shipping bars
Frequently bought together
Countdown timer
Add to cart button
Size charts and product image slides
Product video catalog
It also packs over 20 elements. Take the Section elements, for example. Use it to structure any landing page with vertical segments in any format you prefer—media, content, you name it. From testimonials/reviews to benefits content to hero image, you’ll be able to visually segment information as you like.
Shogun also supports most social media platform integrations and offers a 10-day free trial. You can even schedule when new landing pages get to publish.
Shogun offers a lot and if you’re ready to step up your game more they offer functions like A/B testing for your Shopify landing pages, or the ability to collaborate with a team of 6 or more, for example, but you’d need to upgrade to the $149/month Optimize plan.
Shogun A/B Testing
Want to see Shogun Landing Page Builder for Shopify in action?
GemPages is an affordable, feature-rich, and drag-and-drop landing page builder for Shopify stores. No coding experience required here, either.
Right off the bat, you’ll have a selection of over 50 landing page templates to choose from. More choice can mean you have more design freedom to make your online store truly yours.
Like Shogun, GemPages is also mobile responsive and adapts your online store to your potential customers’ screen sizes.
That way, your customers won’t miss all the important conversion optimization tools such as the buy now button.
And yes, GemPages’ Shopify elements include the crucial add to cart, quantity, image, price, countdown, and related product buttons.
Expect to sync Google Shopping catalog and Facebook Pixel, keep pages even after you uninstall GemPages, and use with any Shopify theme.
It does support MailChimp, Klaviyo, Reviews Importer App, Google Analytics, and Facebook Ad.
See GemPages in action before taking up their 10-day free trial:
PageFly
This Shopify app looks to outdo GemPages and could be your preferred Shogun alternative for building top-notch Shopify landing pages.
PageFly allows you to use a drag-and-drop landing page builder to create and customize elements of your landing page no matter your niche and viewing devices.
You’ll get at least 30 design elements you can use to customize your landing page—and go on to personalize other Shopify pages such as the homepage and thank you pages, if you wish.
However, you might find your most preferred template is locked to the PageFly PRO version which you get 14 days to try out before you need to purchase the full version to continue enjoying the full-featured app version.
They take care of CSS and JavaScript stuff if you do not wish to ache your brains out with programming technicalities. And their customer support is easily one of the best around.
If you are a customization junkie, PageFly could be for you.
Zipify Pages
Zipify may not be the most affordable of the Shopify landing page builder bunch but it packs a bag of features to back up their pricing. They bring what they have learned from their own successful online store for other Shopify merchants to use.
Some of the best Zipify features you will discover include how well it integrates with the Shopify platform, Zipify’s custom Google Analytics dash, and Facebook pixel.
That means you can easily link your leads to your sales messages from many sources including from email clicks and see how many are landing and converting, so you can take the right steps to further boost conversions.
You can also integrate it with one of the seven most powerful CRM and/or market automation software: Ontraport, ActiveCampaign, Infusionsoft, GetResponse, Klaviyo, MailChimp, and Aweber. You will not need any subdomains or plugins to set up your landing page.
That combination makes Zipify a solid mobile-responsive, templates-loaded, drag-and-drop landing page builder for ecommerce on the Shopify apps marketplace. You can see if it works for you by grabbing the 14-day trial they offer to test it.
Hypervisual
Aptly named, Hypervisual is big on making beautiful pages that make your landing page stand out. For example, you can implement different design elements for each page or product you have.
You can even remove your Shopify theme’s header and footer to make fullscreen landing pages to reduce distractions for your visitors—a definite plus in landing page conversion best practices.
To help you add Shopify leads to your email list, Hypervisual integrates with MailChimp and Klaviyo, which is not as resourceful as Zipify but helps.
Like other Shopify landing page builders, you’ll get a responsive design for all device users, Google Analytics and Facebook pixel integrations, and SEO optimization for SERPs visibility.
Also great is their pricing model. After their 14-day trial expires, you have three Hypervisual pricing options to choose from as shown here:
That’s interesting, and you can actually scale up or down depending on your needs.
LeadSlide
LeadSlide is also geared towards helping with your marketing automation campaign with the lowest plan support up to 10,000 emails.
Like Zipify, you’ll get ecommerce-optimized features such as fully customizable video and product landing pages, Klaviyo and MailChimp integrations, Giveaways and discounts functions, and a wholly editable countdown timer to ramp up conversions.
If you want to track important analytics such as abandoned carts, repeat customers and run holiday promotions landing pages, LeadSlide will help you with that as well.
Like the others here, LeadSlide also integrates with Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, WordPress, Google Analytics and LinkedIn. You also get a Soundest integration here.
You’ll get a cool 30 days to try out their app before deciding whether to buy their full version or not. And they also include phone support on top of email support if you need their help.
#Landed Shopify app by Lucid used to be a great landing page builder that integrated seamlessly with Shopify. But it is no longer available on the Shopify marketplace for some reason.
3. How to Create Landing Pages on Shopify on Third-Party Websites and Tools
There are other routes to take to create the perfect landing page for your Shopify website.
For instance, Leighton Taylor does a great job of explaining how to set up a landing page for your Shopify site using MailChimp to collect email addresses of your leads and customers.
Considering many people do not buy from you the very first time they land on your product page, the video tutorial is great for helping you set up a Shopify landing page to kickstart your purchase funnel.
You can also use Shopify’s Buy Button feature to easily embed a buy link, shopping cart or collections or a product directly into a third-party website you are using. You will be able to use any tool and create any landing page you want while seamlessly managing your inventory and purchasing funnel directly through Shopify.
The ecommerce store builder offers instructions on how to set this up on WordPress, Squarespace, Tumblr, and Wix.
Still, you can use a third-party landing page builder that integrates with Shopify such as Leadpages or Unbounce.
Let’s take Leadpages, for example:
You can choose from a selection of three Leadpages templates that are optimized for Shopify—works with Shopify carts and Buy Button
Shopify One-Item Landing Page
Shopify Multi-Item Landing Page
Shopify Thank You Page
All three are drag-and-drop landing page builders, so you’ll likely have an easy time setting them up. They explain it all here.
Tips to Increase Your Shopify Landing Page Conversion Rate?
Whichever way you choose to create a landing page on Shopify, here are conversion tips to help you make more ecommerce sales.
Make your landing page design cues appear consistent with your ads or other traffic sources, so potential customers know it’s you
Moreover, ensure your Shopify landing page colors, tone, images, video content, and copy mirror your overall branding. That way, potential customers can recognize and trust the page immediately
Build even more trust by adding customer reviews, partner logos, and security badges. Testimonials provide the proof of value and perception of reduced risk a potential customer needs to complete the purchase—not increase your cart abandonment rate
If you can create video testimonials, even better. Motion pictures not only grab and retain attention on the page but also connect with customers that can relate to the customer’s story emotionally
To further reduce cart abandonment, use Free Delivery, Free Returns, Moneyback Guarantees, and guarantee bars close to the buy button
Use Meta Titles that clearly and concisely state the value you are offering right away
Use only high-quality images and videos in addition to brief text. Avoid fluff, including unnecessary call-to-action buttons and marketing content at this point
Remember to make the landing pages as attractive as possible, with vibrant colors and high-quality images. Blurry images and dull branding reduce customer trust and increase bounce rates.
If you want some inspiration to create a highly-converting Shopify landing page for your e-commerce store, check out some of the best landing page examples.
Feel free to use the modern landing page designs to inspires yours for 2020.
FAQs: Frequently Asked Questions
Can I make a landing page on Shopify?
Yes, you can make a landing page directly on Shopify, but keep in mind there are limitations to what you can do and if you have more than one store or want to scale your online store to a new market, you’ll want to invest in a landing page app or builders, such as Shogun, or Pagefly.
What is a Shopify landing page?
Shopify landing pages are key to the success of your store, they spark interest, let you build know, like, and trust factor and can give you a lot of data on your customers. While most people might come to you to buy your product, the data says that most people will not buy. That’s why having a compelling landing page with a ‘hook’ and your story (with key visuals) is so important to have.
From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Pages. Click Add page. You will be taken to a new webpage editor. In the webpage editor, enter a Title and Content in the text boxes provided.
Be descriptive and clear when choosing your webpage title. The webpage title is displayed in the tab or title bar of browsers. It is also used as the title in search engine results. Learn more about website SEO.
In the Visibility field, you can choose whether you want your webpage to be published or not. By default, your new webpage will be visible when you click Save. Select the Hidden option if you want your new webpage to be hidden from your online store, or click Set a specific publish date to control when your webpage is published:
Click Save. Optional: To make a published webpage appear in your online store navigation, add a link to it in a navigation menu.
Of course, if you use a landing page builder app, such as Shogun, switching out landing pages is much easier and you have a range of templates to choose from that Shopify does not have.
Conclusion: What’s the Best Way to Create a Stunning Landing Page for Shopify?
A highly targeted landing page for your Shopify store will help you increase sales and reduce churn. And there are more ways than one to create beautiful, conversion-focused Shopify landing pages right now with premium tools such as Shogun or Pagefly.
You can choose the best method among the three discussed here for your Shopify needs and convenience to boost sales: using the Shopify Collection page, turning to easy-to-use Shopify landing page apps, and using third-party tools that integrate well with Shopify’s Buy Button and Cart features.
From there, you can decide whether using a Shopify designer and Liquid to create custom landing pages on Shopify stores is worth the HTML code it is written on. Or you are just fine using ready-to-use Shopify page builders without learning to code.
Over to you.
Do you have another way to create a landing page on Shopify you’d love to share?
If you want to set up an eCommerce business, you need to choose a good platform – our Magento vs Shopify comparison will show you the features of two of the most popular ones out there.
A decent eCommerce platform does more than host a storefront. It gives you an array of marketing tools that will make the customer experience as smooth as possible (which will encourage them to come back again and again). It will also help you to clearly and simply upload products and run your business, with clear analytics and support if needed.
Magento and Shopify are two well-loved eCommerce platforms. In this article, we’ll show you the main differences between the two platforms, before going into each one in detail. Then we’ll compare them directly to see which one comes out on top.
Main Differences between Magento vs Shopify
In a nutshell, here are the main differences between Magento vs Shopify:
Magento offers a free plan in the form of their community edition, whereas Shopify doesn’t
Magento requires more technical experience, whereas Shopify doesn’t
Magento offers a personalized service on their Enterprise edition, whereas Shopify doesn’t
Magento offers a free demo, whereas Shopify offers a full 90-day trial
Magento’s themes are mostly paid, whereas Shopify has more of a range of free themes
Magento
Magento was launched in 2008. They have over 250,000 users worldwide, so it’s a popular platform, used by big businesses worldwide.
Let’s check out the main features of Magento:
Inventory management, with multiple images for products and user reviews
Batch import products
Automatic tax calculations
Integration with Google analytics
Create customer accounts
Order management
Secure cart with the option to pay by credit card, PayPal, authorize.net, Google Checkout, and more
Two versions of Magento available – Community Edition, which is free to download (to install on your own server) or a hosted service called Enterprise Edition
Product Management
Magento allows users to manage inventory even in multiple locations. You can assign products to multiple sources and track inventory at each individual location – great for larger businesses that may have stock in different places.
You can also have full control over your orders – you can view, edit, fulfil, and create new orders in the admin area. They enable you to offer great customer service, too, by allowing representatives to create orders and customer accounts, to update individual customer’s carts, and update wish lists.
They also offer some advanced indexing methods, which will allow you to update your catalog quickly and easily.
Although the initial setup (if you’re going for the community version of Magento) is a little tricky, once you’ve got it up and running, entering product information is pretty intuitive.
Storefront
Magento comes with a blank base theme, or a free theme from the store (Luma). If you want more choice, they have some for sale on their own Marketplace, or you can buy them from separate websites.
Magento does offer a ton of flexibility. If you have the skills, you can build a theme from scratch. You can also customize your storefront to your heart’s content, but it’s not as straightforward as Shopify. (Again, page-builder extensions are a good call here, as they allow you to build your pages in a much simpler way).
They offer some powerful tools for merchandising. You can organize product category pages, either using their drag-and-drop interface, or by setting rules that sort products into a certain order (for example, you could have them ordered by best seller, or newest products).
You have lots of options when it comes to presenting product pages to customers – you can zoom in on product images, display product videos, show color swatches, show multiple products, and more.
Shopping Cart
Magento offers a secure shopping cart with a ton of extra features. Customers can see tax and shipping estimates automatically, and they are automatically recognized when they enter their email address – making their shopping experience super convenient. Customers can create wish lists and save their shopping cart for later.
Like the rest of the platform, there’s a lot to offer here, but it takes a little time to learn Magento’s full potential.
Marketing/SEO Tools
As you might expect, there’s tons to offer here, too. You can encourage customers to shop again by offering reward points for certain actions (like leaving reviews, for instance). You can enable gift registries and allow customers to purchase gift cards (both physical and virtual). You can even set up private sale sites or flash sale sites – a great way to reward loyal customers.
It automatically generates a sitemap for Google, creates search-engine-friendly URLs, and allows you to take control of URLs using rewrites – so they’ve thought about SEO too, with Magento 2 improving their SEO tools.
Analytics
Magento has an intuitive interface, with a dashboard that allows you to quickly see data, including total sales, best-selling products, and more. It syncs with Google Analytics, giving you a wide range of data to work with. This includes insights on website traffic and visitor data. It does involve setting up a Google Analytics account and syncing it, but there are tutorials online that go through this step-by-step.
Integrations
Magento has a huge amount of extensions available on their Marketplace. Some are free and some are paid, and there’s plenty to choose from, including:
Customer Support
Payment and Security
Marketing
Accounting and Finance
Shipping and Fulfilment
Site Optimization
Well-chosen extensions can make your life a lot easier when it comes to using Magento – check out our guide to some of the best ones here for some ideas.
Support
There’s a steep learning curve when it comes to using Magento, but they do offer a lot of support and guidance – but it can feel a bit overwhelming for beginners, as the user guides are quite technical.
It has a variety of tech resources, how-to guides, and troubleshooting solutions. There’s also a forum of users.
You can call their helpline if you need further support or start an online chat.
Pricing
Magento has two basic plans, as we mentioned earlier:
Community Edition
This is completely free and allows you access to tons of interesting and useful features. You will have to download and install Magento on your own server – this is a bit tricky and has several steps to follow (but there are plenty of online tutorials to walk you through it. The process is a lot easier if you have a person on your team that has some technical experience).
The real cost lies in buying themes and extensions, which vary in price.
Enterprise Edition
This is a hosted service, set up by Magento themselves. It’s expensive – they don’t advertise the price as you have to get a quote depending on the size of your company and what you want to achieve.
Frequently Asked Questions about Magento
Is Magento good for dropshippers?
It can be using the right extension – there are several Magento extensions aimed at dropshippers.
How many sites use Magento?
Magento has over 250,000 users – including Coca Cola and Ford, and many other big businesses.
How can I learn how Magento works?
There are many free resources out there to help you learn how to use Magento’s community edition – YouTube has tons of video tutorials. They do require a bit of time and patience though!
What’s the difference between Magento 1 and 2?
Essentially, Magento 2 offers a much faster experience, improving load times for both you and your customers. Magento 2 has an improved dashboard and user interface and meta tags for better SEO.
We Think Magento is Suited for …
Larger businesses who require a customized, and perhaps more complex, eCommerce solution, or those with a lot of technical experience already.
Shopify was launched in 2004. It’s one of the biggest eCommerce platforms out there – coming in at over 1.2 million users, many people are using it to build and run eCommerce stores.
Here’s a quick look at the main features of Shopify:
70+ storefront themes
Mobile-commerce ready
Full blogging platform
Customize stores with logos and branding
Cloud-based website builder
Secure shopping cart
Take payments from most credit cards, PayPal, and Stripe
Create customer profiles and customer accounts
Manage inventory
Manage order fulfillment
Offer refunds
Compatible with drop shipping
Send customizable emails to customers
In-built marketing and SEO tools
Detailed analytics dashboard
Product Management
The product management system is well-organized on Shopify. Adding a product is straightforward – you can easily add a title, description, images, videos, set product availability, set the pricing, add an SKU, and assign tags to each product.
Shopify doesn’t set a limit on products, so you can have as many as you want. Plus, you can add SEO product tags at this stage, which is useful.
You can also organize products into collections. This allows your customers to search for items by category, and will appear on your website as a gallery of products – this is a great way to encourage customers to browse, and depending on the theme you choose, it showcases your products beautifully.
Storefront
There are a handful of free templates for your storefront – they’re all customizable to a certain extent, and they’re well-designed.
There’s also a collection of paid themes. These vary in price but tend to be around the $160-$180 mark.
You can play around with each page on your website – you can add images with text, text columns, collections, testimonials, and galleries. You can also edit the theme settings, including altering the color scheme and typography. It’s not as highly customizable as other platforms, but there’s a decent amount to work with, and if you want, there are a range of page building apps for Shopify (like Shogun) that can help.
Shopping Cart
Shopify has a secure shopping cart, with a free 256-bit SSL certificate (the same level of security used by banks). Customers can pay using Visa, Mastercard, Discover, and American Express. It also partners with over 100 payment gateways, including Bitcoin and PayPal.
Shopify automatically calculates shipping rates from some shipping carriers – notably UPS, USPS, and FedEx. It also deals with tax automatically, saving users time and effort.
Users on all price plans have access to abandoned cart recovery – customers who abandon their cart will be automatically sent an email reminder to complete the purchase.
Marketing/SEO Tools
Shopify offer some SEO tools. You can easily customize H1, title, and meta tags, for example.
You can also encourage customers to make a purchase by offering discounts and gift cards.
In terms of advertising, there are a few options: social media integration is included, so you can run ads on Pinterest, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr, and you will receive a $100 credit for Google Adwords if you spend $25.
Facebook integration allows you to sell products directly on Facebook, too, so users won’t have to leave the platform to make a purchase.
Analytics
Shopify offers a decent amount of data to work with, including an overview of sales, orders and traffic.
You can create product reports, which allow you to analyse the growth of your store. These reports can be exported to send to other team members. Shopify offers integration with Google Analytics, too.
Integrations
Shopify has a huge Appstore, which is a great bonus. The categories include:
Shopify’s Help Centre is a good resource, with articles and videos on how to make the most of the platform – they’ve created some very detailed guides, with specific guidance for dropshippers. They also offer online chat, email, phone, and Twitter support.
Pricing
There are three price plans:
Basic Shopify – $29 per month
This allows you two staff accounts and a good range of basic features.
Shopify – $79 per month
This gives you access to 5 staff accounts, and most of Shopify’s features.
Advanced Shopify – $299 per month
If you want to scale up your business, this plan allows you to have 15 staff accounts, and all the features Shopify has to offer.
Frequently Asked Questions about Shopify
Which languages does Shopify support?
The customer-facing parts of your store can be in any language that the theme supports. The admin area is available in over twenty languages: English, Chinese (Simplified and Traditional), Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, German, Hindi, Italian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Norwegian, Portuguese (Brazil), Portuguese (Portugal), Spanish, Swedish, Thai, and Turkish.
How do I get a domain name on Shopify?
You can buy one through Shopify or use one from a third-party provider.
Do I have to ship the items myself?
No, you don’t have to – you can use a third-party fulfilment service.
Do I need a lot of technical knowledge to use Shopify?
No. It’s pretty user-friendly in its interface, plus extensions can help make it easier.
We Think Shopify is Suited for …
Small-to-medium sized businesses who want a simple platform that can be used even by beginners. It’s also great for dropshippers.
You can try a free 90-day trial of Shopify by clicking here.
Magento vs Shopify – Which is Better?
This is a really difficult one to call as the platforms are actually very different.
Product Management
Both platforms offer great product management and make it simple to upload products. Magento has a few more features in terms of catalogue organisation, so we think it wins this category.
Storefront
The possibilities of both platforms are endless when it comes to store themes and content, but we have chosen Shopify, because it’s a much easier platform to learn, and it has a range of free themes.
Shopping Cart
We’ll call this one a draw – both offer a secure shopping cart with tons of features.
Marketing/SEO Tools
We’ll give this one to Shopify, too, as it’s easier to access and use marketing features like abandoned cart recovery, and creating ads is really simple. They both have a lot to offer in terms of marketing, however.
Analytics
Again, Shopify has to win this one, purely because it’s a lot easier to access analytics straight away.
Integrations
Both have a huge amount to offer here, but we’ll give this one to Magento – the catalog of extensions is huge, and they make a big difference to your user experience.
Support
Shopify wins this one again – the tutorials are in-depth and very useful. They both offer a lot in terms of support though, which is great.
In Conclusion …
Which platform is the best depends on your individual requirements.
Magento is a very powerful platform. The option to use it for free is generous and allows developers to create customized eCommerce stores with a wide array of features. The built-in tools are excellent, including the marketing and product catalog tools. It’s used and enjoyed by some very big companies, which is a great endorsement. If you’re a larger business and you have tech support, it could be the best choice. (If you have a big budget, their Enterprise edition is fantastic, too.)
However, it does have a learning curve. It’s not particularly suited for beginners – even navigating their features can be difficult if you’re not technically-minded – and it requires a bit of setup to use the Community version. If you want something that’s simple to use right from the start, it’s not going to be the choice for you.
Shopify, meanwhile, is better suited for small-to-medium businesses, dropshippers, and beginners. The process of setting up a Shopify store is simple – it just takes a few moments to get going. Plus, you have 90 days to test out the platform fully before committing to a plan, which is generous. With extensions and paid themes, you can create a store that looks and runs exactly the way you want it to, even if you don’t have a lot of experience.
For that reason, we’ve chosen Shopify as our winner today – but they’re both excellent platforms for eCommerce depending on your needs.
Our WooCommerce vs Magento comparison will show you the similarities and differences between these two popular eCommerce platforms, so if you’re trying to decide between them, we may be able to help.
What you look for in an eCommerce platform depends upon the scale of your business, the features you want, and the technical support you require. On the face of it, WooCommerce and Magento are similar: both are technically free to use, both allow you to create an online store, both have a range of extensions available. However, they’re quite different in terms of features and learning curves.
In this article, we’ll take a quick look at the main differences between the two platforms, and then focus on each one in turn, looking at their features in-depth. Then we’ll compare them at the end in each category, to see which one is best.
The Main Differences between WooCommerce vs Magento
Here are the main differences between the WooCommerce and Magento:
WooCommerce is built for WordPress, whereas Magento isn’t
WooCommerce is fairly simple to use for beginners, whereas Magento requires more work
WooCommerce requires extensions for marketing tools, whereas Magento has some built-in
WooCommerce has an easy-to-understand knowledge base, whereas Magento is a bit more difficult
WooCommerce has a mobile app, whereas Magento doesn’t
WooCommerce has basic inventory management, whereas Magento is more powerful
WooCommerce – In Depth
WooCommerce is an eCommerce platform designed for WordPress. It was launched in 2011 and is very popular among WordPress users.
Let’s take a look at the main features of WooCommerce:
Secure cart with a variety of payment methods (including PayPal and Stripe)
Uses custom theme for WordPress (Storefront) designed to create an easy-to-navigate store
Tax automatically calculated
Easy stock management
Includes mobile app for on-the-go store management
Many extensions available
Inventory Management
Uploading a product to WooCommerce is a simple process – it feels a little like creating a blog post. You can add text, images, and adjust the formatting. It’s very simple to add the price, manage stock levels, and add shipping information.
Products are sorted into categories, like Simple (single products that are shipped), Grouped (products that are related to each other), Virtual, Downloadable, External (listed on your website but sold somewhere else), Variable (products with variations, and Subscriptions. This distinction helps to keep products organised.
You can organise products further by placing them into categories. You can also add upsells or cross-sells easily, which is useful – with an upsell, your customer will see ‘You may also like …’ with a range of items underneath the product they’re interested in, whereas a cross-sell will allow you to link products that specifically go together (like items that are part of a set).
Order management is also made simple. You can see a list of all orders, clicking on each one to see order information or to complete an action. Orders are color coded so you can check their status quickly.
Storefront
Installing Storefront to your WordPress account allows you access to a variety of paid or free themes. The free themes are not particularly exciting, but they are clear and easy to navigate. There is a wide range of paid themes which are well-designed. This is a live demo of one of the paid themes available:
WooCommerce pages are built using blocks, which can then be edited (you can change the images, titles, and content). It’s very customizable, but you do need to have a bit of technical knowledge if you want to do anything other than basic customizing.
Shopping Cart
WooCommerce offers a safe, secure shopping cart with a variety of payment methods, including:
Debit and credit cards
payPal
Check Payments
BACS
Stripe
Cash on Delivery
Klarna
PayPal Pro
One great feature of WooCommerce is how easy it is to offer different types of payments, like subscriptions.
Marketing/SEO Tools
WooCommerce does not have much in terms of SEO and marketing tools straight away. Instead, you have to rely on the huge amount of plugins available for WordPress. This is great as it allows you to customize your user experience depending on your own needs, but it can potentially push the costs up. There are a lot of marketing tools available, including:
WooCommerce offers good reporting – you can see orders, customers, stock, and taxes at a quick glance. You can also view your best-selling products, total number of coupons used, and stock levels quickly and easily. It’s not the most in-depth reporting out there, but it gives you enough information to get going. Plus, there are plugins that can offer more detailed reporting.
Integrations
If you want to customize your WooCommerce experience, extensions are the way to go. There are a variety to choose from, including extensions developed by WooCommerce, as well as third-party extensions. The categories include:
Product Type
Store Management
Marketing
Payments
Enhancements
Shipping
Subscriptions
You can also view all the free extensions together, which is helpful. They offer integration with some social media platforms, including Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
We also need to mention the mobile app here. Having a mobile app is useful, and the WooCommerce app allows you to check orders and track your store’s performance on the go – the app itself is free, but obviously requires a WooCommerce account to use it.
Support
WooCommerce has a very clear, easy-to-navigate knowledge base, full of tutorials, how-to guides, and tips. They also have a support request form, and a busy user forum if you need extra help.
Pricing
WooCommerce is free to use. On the surface of it, this is obviously a big bonus. But you do have to pay to have a WordPress account (including a domain), plus you’ll probably want to splash out on a Storefront theme, as well as a few extensions to give you access to extra marketing platforms.
This makes it tricky to compare to other platforms – it’s hard to estimate the cost, because it will depend on your individual requirements.
Frequently Asked Questions
What’s the difference between a WordPress plugin and a WooCommerce extension?
Plugins can be used by anyone with a WordPress account. Extensions require a base plugin in order to work. WooCommerce extensions have been designed for eCommerce businesses, making it easier and simpler to find the features they need quickly.
Is there a limit to how many products I can upload to WooCommerce?
No – there’s no limit to the number of products you can upload.
Does WooCommerce charge fees per transaction?
No – there is no fee per transaction on WooCommerce.
Can I trial a WooCommerce extension?
No – they don’t offer free trials for extensions or plugins.
We Think WooCommerce is Suited For …
eCommerce businesses who like the functionality of WordPress, and those who want to be able to customize their user experience using plugins and extensions.
One strength of Magento is the inventory management tools. It offers advanced indexing methods, including mass import of products. You can manage inventory even if it is stored in different locations.
You also have a lot of control over orders – the admin area allows you to edit or even create new orders. You can assign representatives to create customer accounts and place orders manually, which is good for customer service.
Storefront
Magento has a blank base theme, or a theme from the store (called Luma). There are more choices available, either through their Marketplace, or from a third-party website. These vary in price from around $80 right through to $500.
If you have a bit of technical knowledge, you can build a theme from scratch. If that goes beyond your skill set, you could go for a page-builder extension instead, which will open up much more customization without requiring any coding skills.
You can organise products into category pages, allowing your customers to browse similar products. This is done using a drag-and-drop interface. Customers can see color swatches, zoom in on product images, and watch product videos.
Shopping Cart
Magento’s shopping cart is secure. It comes with a range of extra features – like automatic tax and shipping calculations for customers, wish lists, and the ability to save shopping carts to checkout later.
Payment options include:
Credit or debit card
PayPal
BACS
Cash on delivery
Authorize.net
Marketing/SEO Tools
Magento has a range of powerful tools for marketing. You can offer customers reward points for leaving reviews or creating accounts. Customers can create gift registries, and they can buy gift cards. You can set up separate sites for flash sales, or even private sales for select customers.
There’s also a range of options to improve SEO. Magento automatically generates a sitemap for Google and creates URLs that are search-engine friendly.
Analytics
Magento’s dashboard allows you to see data at a quick glance, including best-selling products and total sales. It uses Google Analytics, giving you access to in-depth reporting, which is great. You can track website traffic, access visitor data, and more. However, it does require a bit of work to sync up with Google Analytics.
Integrations
Magento’s Extension Marketplace has a wide variety of extensions, in the following categories:
Customer support
Marketing
Payment and security
Accounting and finance
Site optimization
Shipping and fulfilment
There are a lot of extensions to choose from – in the above screenshot you can see there are nearly 800 marketing extensions alone.
Support
Magento has a pretty steep learning curve if you’re new. The Knowledge Base has a lot of documentation, but it can be overwhelming if you’ve had no previous experience. If you need further assistance, they have a helpline or online chat function.
Pricing
Magneto has two plans.
Community Edition
The community edition is free to download, but you must upload it onto your own server. This involves several steps (there are tutorials online to walk you through this process). If you go for the Community Edition, you have to be prepared to put a bit of effort into installing it. However, this combined with extensions will allow you to build a great eCommerce store.
Enterprise Edition
If you want Magento to host your store, you’ll have to pay for the Enterprise edition. Unfortunately, we can’t tell you how much this is, because potential users must get a quote from Magento depending on the size of the business and the features they want.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much do Magento extensions cost?
They range from being free, all the way up to $500.
Is it worth choosing Magento 2 over Magento 1?
In our opinion, yes. Magento 2 is a lot faster and adds more SEO features including meta tags. It’s also a bit easier to navigate using the dashboard.
Where is the best place to learn how Magento works?
Magento’s knowledge base has a lot of information, but if you’re a complete beginner, we’d recommend following a tutorial on YouTube.
How long does it take to install a Magento extension?
It can take around 3 hours to download and install a new Magento extension.
We Think Magento is Suited For …
Larger businesses, or businesses wanting a personalized eCommerce solution with more complex features.
We’ll take a look at each category to see how they stack up against each other.
Inventory Management
Magento has this one – advanced inventory management makes it simple to manage a lot of stock, even if it’s in different locations.
Storefront
They’re about even, we think – with the right themes and extensions, you can create beautiful storefronts on both platforms.
Shopping Cart
Magento wins this one, as they offer a lot of payment options, with built-in tools to make the customer’s shopping experience as quick and smooth as possible.
Marketing/SEO Tools
Magento wins this one again, as it has some tools built into the platform. While WooCommerce has a lot of great marketing tools, you’ll have to download extensions to get to them.
Analytics
Both platforms offer a decent analytics dashboard, however, it’s easier to use the analytics provided by WooCommerce.
Integrations
Again, they’re both about the same here – there are so many extensions available for both platforms, which is great.
Support
We’ll give this one to WooCommerce, as their knowledge base is a bit easier to navigate.
Our Verdict: WooCommerce vs Magento
So which platform is best?
We don’t think there is a clear winner here. WooCommerce is more suited for beginners. It has enough features for any sized business, especially with the use of extensions. It’s simple to use, with lots of support for beginners, and the free themes, although basic, can be customized further using extensions. The mobile app is great too. Ultimately, WooCommerce may be the better choice if you’re looking to start an eCommerce business from scratch with no prior experience. It’s also great if you have some experience with blogging, as the WordPress platform is built for that.
However, Magento is the more powerful of the two. If you have in-house tech support or a team member who specialises in web development, you may find that it’s the better choice for your business. Although it takes a bit of effort to learn, the possibilities with Magento are endless. It has the advantage of having built in shopping cart and marketing tools, and the range of extensions available make the user experience highly customizable. Extensions can make the experience easier (especially when it comes to page building, for example), but you still need that initial setup before you can begin installing extensions (and extensions can take a long time to install, too). Of course, if you have the budget for it, you can go for the Enterprise Edition – but this is prohibitively expensive for most people.
The long and the short of it? If you want something that is user-friendly, go for WooCommerce. If you’re willing to go through more of a learning curve in order to access powerful features, pick Magento.
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