A cradling eCommerce store or a manufacturing multi-million dollar giant, the right platform is all that makes a difference and sets you apart from your competitors. What fuels up your success is the right platform couple with the slick and innovative integrations. And that is just what we’re going to walk you through.
To begin with, let’s talk about how Shopify is the one name that every eCommerce entrepreneur has on his mind when it comes down to launching a new website. The power of this platform is such that even established giants are switching their outdated eCommerce framework for Shopify.
And why not?
Shopify does come packed with some of the best features.
Here are a few to name.
What Makes Shopify the Best eCommerce Platform Till Date
We could go on and go with this list but for now, let’s take a look at the 3 most important reasons that make Shopify the big fish.
1. Interactive Themes:
Shopify offers several interactive and beautiful themes developed by professional web designers. Whether you are selling a hiking gear or a crucial BMW spare part, you can find a theme or two related to you industry very easily on Shopify. So, when a user lands on to your website the first thing that is noticed is the design feel of the store. This is why it is always importance to have a design and theme that retain users and push them to clicking that “Buy Now” button.
2. Ease of Use:
As easy as a cakewalk – yes! The website dashboard can make your life a breeze with the entire orderly layout that it uses. No thing leads to the other, making it a seamless, most-managed and advanced eCommerce builder today.
3. Customer Support:
Shopify makes sure all customer queries are dealt with professionally and swiftly. They have a well-trained and adept team of customer support agents that provide round the clock customer support via live chat, email, and phone, so when you need the support you can get it right there!
While all of these reasons sound interesting on the paper, the most important feature that makes Shopify what it is today is its Inventory Management.
Let’s dig a bit deeper.
Why is Inventory Management so Important
Poorly managed inventory can be a store owner’s worst nightmare. A well-managed inventory has the following benefits:
- You don’t end up over-manufacturing or over-ordering the products
- Reduces the predicaments of all the paperwork
- Eliminates chances of losing money on slow moving products
- Boosts the productivity and efficiency by implementing gadgets such as barcode scanners
- No scope of error-ridden entries
Now that we know how important inventory management is, taking a peek at how Shopify can simplify the process for you falls next:
So how do you manage a product that comes in 3 different sizes and 6 funky colors? Shopify’s inventory management system is what helps you put things in order.
Adding and Organizing Your Products
The first step to managing your inventory is to set up and organize all products. That does not just mean assigning an SKU or give your product name. It goes beyond that. The products should be classified and grouped together based on the material, category, sale, price, colors so on and so forth. Shopify does it for you. It gives you the ability to organize and group your products under collections. So, your store has a seamless feel and is easy to use.
This process can also be automated as Shopify has the smart collections feature to sort products based on the vendor, price, and inventory level.
Adding Barcodes/SKUs
Depending on amount of products and the size of your inventory, assigning SKU codes or barcodes may be on your mind. Shopify allows to assign current barcodes to the products. It also helps you generate new ones, if needed.
Barcodes and SKUs can help you track the product easily.
Tracking Inventory Levels
Failing to track inventory levels can be a huge miss for any online business. Many store owners often run after their customers about a product that was out of stock but was ordered as there was no management going on behind the scenes. It burns time and causes inconvenience to the customers. You can bypass such situations with Shopify as it lets you track stock level, set up reminders to manufacture or order a product when it reaches a certain number in your inventory.
Offers an Insight into Your Inventory and Sales
Shopify gives you the ability to manage inventory systems, you can visualize the pace at which your inventory is progressing so you can forecast sales, plan future orders, create marketing campaigns and design promotions based on the inventory numbers.
Also, Shopify offers a Professional plan to store owners who want to see a full report of sales by product along with the reports.
Allows Apps to Provide Additional Functionality
Shopify has this super solid App store that make your eCommerce really competitive by offering apps that offer additional functionality. These apps can help you sell across multiple channels, request product reviews and set up reminders.
And not just for retail stores, there are several apps like Katana that helps manufacturers to manage their inventories like a pro. Katana in specific helps managing the sales, manufacturing and purchasing with our visual dashboards. Also, it plays a role in informing about the stock availability and fulfillment status for every order and production process so that miss a delivery deadline ever again.
Katana MRP software is built to suit all types of businesses. It fits very well for the small and growing business. User experience and features that this MRP system comes docked with can escalate the growth of almost any business chasing success.
Overall, using inventory management integration such as Katana can help you sort all those inventory to-dos that may otherwise rob you off a night’s sleep.
If you have any tips up your sleeve for staying afloat when it comes to inventory management, feel free to share with us.
Chris Mcdonald has been the lead news writer at complete connection. His passion for helping people in all aspects of online marketing flows through in the expert industry coverage he provides. Chris is also an author of tech blog Area19delegate. He likes spending his time with family, studying martial arts and plucking fat bass guitar strings.