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Shop Local and Shopify
Compare Shop Local's Online Store to Shopify's Online Store
Jeffrey Bannon, a gift shop in Charleston, SC, changed e-commerce providers from Shopify to Shop Local. The business made this choice after comparing the two providers. Below please find a comparison of the business's Shopify Store and Shop Local Store.
Jeffrey Bannon's Home Page
BEFORE
Shopify Home Page
AFTER
Shop Local Home Page
- Easier to search for products.
- Easier to start a registry.
- Easier to see news.
- Displays a dynamic slideshow.
- Easier for the store to update slides and banners.
- Easier for the store to update products.
- More inviting design.
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Jeffrey Bannon Shopify Store |
Jeffrey Bannon Shop Local Store |
| Shopify | Shop Local Store |
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Slow setup. Start with an empty online store. You have to enter all brands manually, find their logos, and more. You spend massive amounts of time and money adding brands and products. Tedious process.
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Quick setup. Choose from 3,520 brands to add to your store. Of these brands, Shop Local has partnerships with 113 brands (Product Syncing). If approved, your store can instantly offer up to 73,077 products from these partner brands.
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Not easy to manage many products. Interface makes it hard to manage more than 100 products. Since most businesses need thousands of products to compete online, Shopify may not scale well.
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Easy to manage many products. Allows your business to easily manage 1,000s of products.
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No built-in gift registry software. Registry software is an add-on from a 3rd-party developer and costs an additional monthly fee. Not seamless.
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Powerful gift registry software. Immediately offer your registrants best-in-class gift & bridal registry software. The software is built-in and works seamlessly.
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Old-fashioned home page. The site structure consists of a traditional slideshow and static content.
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Dynamic home page. Shop Local's dynamic home page keeps shoppers engaged, keeps them on your Store page longer, and boosts your Google ranking.
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No built-in review software. Reviews are very important for customer satisfaction and ranking well in Google. Review software is an add-on from a 3rd-party developer and costs an additional monthly fee.
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Reviews. Your Shop Local Store comes with built-in review software. Shop Local helps your store collect and share reviews on social media.
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Not affordable. No free plan and most features are paid add-ons.
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Affordable. Offers your business a free plan. There is no time limit. Shop Local offers a true free plan and not just a free trial.
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Flawed software design. Shopify's software has a separate ‘front’ and ‘back’ end. The front end is consumer-facing, and the back end is what account owners use. Administering two separate interfaces produces confusion and takes more time. Generally accepted software rule: there should not be 'modes' in software. Shopify uses modes.
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Unified front and back end software. Viewing and editing content go hand in hand. There are no 'modes.' Administering the software is intuitive and fast.
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Complicated business model. Does not include basic features with software. It makes you sign up with third-party apps for basic features (reason: it makes a commission on what you pay these third-party app developers). Your monthly charges grow, and you are forced to deal with many third-party app developers.
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Simple business model. Basic features are free and created by Shop Local. They work seamlessly. Your service fees and the number of parties you deal with are manageable and easy to understand.
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Issues with Google. Shopify's service often relies on apps, and the apps don't work well with Google's indexing. The apps result in page content that Google may not deem notable or unique. Therefore, stores using the apps may receive a lower Google ranking and less traffic than they would using other software.
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Rank higher in Google. Shop Local's software is designed to be indexed by Google and search engines. The software, including the gift registry software, often helps stores rank highly in Google. For some searches, Shop Local software helps businesses appear on page 1 of Google.
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