Creating an online store has been hot in recent years. Cross-border sellers are increasingly participating in the channel. They have been affected by the epidemic and the policies and rules of the e-commerce platform are changing, many platform sellers have also started to choose the option of opening another window of “independent stations”.
At first everything is difficult. Unlike retail platforms, building an online store requires sellers to build their own websites, which has been a headache for sellers. Basically, sellers will go for one of the following three solutions to build their websites.
First, Software as a Solution. Sellers build their online shopping sites on an e-commerce platform that integrates with social networking, product placement, shopping cart, and checkout functions. Sellers are allowed to design the site interface with templates. In other words, these software/solutions serve as a host for sellers’ stores, supporting sellers to set up and run their stores. You may know some of these platforms. ShopBase, Shopify, XShoppy, Shoplazza, etc.
Some solution providers provide code that vendors can build on. Woocommerce, Magento, WordPress, and OpenCart are these providers that give more flexibility in design and features.
The last solution is to start from scratch, which requires full knowledge of coding or HTML.
For most cross-border sellers, SaaS website building is the most preferred because it saves time and effort and allows them to focus on operations. While the interface is an important part of building your stores, you’ll want to put some effort into it. Here is a list of the best Shopify stores that you can use as inspiration for building your own:
New York Times Store
The New York Times store is one of the most prestigious stores in the United States, and almost everyone in the United States knows about the Times. They use Shopify, which is a clear proof that Shopify is endorsed by big brands and is a one-stop solution for building an e-commerce store. The New York Times Store features items designed specifically for Times fans, such as apparel, books, puzzles, personalized items, gifts, photos, and much more.
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Rindeep.
Rindip is one of the most creative types of stores available on the internet, starting with a unified animated logo that looks beautiful and gives an attractive look to the site. There is also a video on the front page of the store. If we look at the navigation, it is also minimalistic and clean.
It looks like summer.
It looks like summer is a Portugal-based store built on the Shopify platform. The store is about women’s summer collection collection. The feminine design of the store adds to its appeal. One of the great features they use with their Shopify store is the use of email marketing, as you can see in the image below their email. newsletter flyer. Email marketing is one of the main points of promoting an online business and Shopify definitely helps with that.
Puravida.
Puravida is another great store built on Shopify. Founded by two friends from Southern California, Griffin Talley and Paul Goodman, the business was created to appreciate crafts created by artisans. If we look at the design and appearance of the store, it attracts the eyes. Another great thing the store features are clickable icons for all their social media platforms right on the home page, which is a great way to convert visitors into fans.
Fashion Nova:
Fashion Nova is one of the best brands related to fashion. The brand was named the most searched fashion brand on Google in 2018. In addition to its attractive layout, the store offers a great way to attract leads with the help of a pop-up window at the entrance that offers discounts.
If you’re thinking about opening an online fashion store, you can definitely check it out.
Color pop.
Beauty products certainly need a great storefront, and Shopify offers all the functionality to create great online product showcases. Color Pop is a store that specializes in a variety of beauty products, and the store’s design reflects that. If you look at the footer, there is a privacy request page where users can ask the store owner not to use their data for advertising or any type of marketing. This is a great way to build trust with your customers.
Tools to help you improve your Shopify store.
In the past, we’ve discussed why Shopify is a great platform for building an eCommerce website. We’ve also looked at inspiring Shopify stores to get an idea of design and features. From designing images to developing a custom theme, it’s a tedious job, which is why we’re bringing you some tools you can use to make the process easier.
FindNiche:
FindNiche is one of the most amazing tools in the eCommerce industry with a huge database of over six million Aliexpress products, 27k+ niches and over 700k Shopify stores. All this data is available for free. Let’s discuss some of the benefits that we can get by using this tool.
FindNiche’s database contains hundreds of thousands of Shopify stores, which is a great way to find inspiration for building a Shopify store based on your chosen Niche. Enter your desired search query, select the country and category, and boom. Thousands of highly relevant stores await your visit.
If you are yet to start an e-commerce business and are confused about the perfect niche for a profitable store, FindNiche can help you here as well. Based on a powerful database with powerful searches and filters, you can certainly find a great place to start.
In addition to providing inspiration for stores and finding niches, the tool can also help you find winning products if you’re looking to start a dropshipping business. All you need to do is enter your keyword and the tool will help you find the best products for your dropshipping store. Filters are available to narrow search results, such as category, top countries, order quantity, selling price, shipping country, top brands, containing videos, or availability of PayPal payment method.
To glorify.
Glorify is a tool that can help you create amazingly cool images for your products. You must have heard about that all-in-one design creation tool Canva, which is undoubtedly one of the best tools in the industry, but when it comes to eCommerce, Glorify is definitely on top and for the very obvious reason that the tool was created for design purposes only for e-commerce businesses.
When it comes to product design, background matters a lot. With Glorify, you can remove the background in a few clicks as the app uses artificial intelligence to detect the background based on the markers you define. You can then add effects (shadows, etc.) to your object with a transparent background.
The tool also contains a built-in logo creator that can help create your desired logo in just a few clicks thanks to artificial intelligence. While you won’t end up with a creatively designed professional logo, this one can get you started. The tool also offers brand colors.
You can add annotations to products, use templates to create product images, intelligently resize products, and do many other design-related things with the tool. Why not give it a try?
Theme forest.
In the above examples of the best Shopify stores, we have seen that design plays a vital role in an eCommerce business. Obviously, people are more likely to buy from a store that has an attractive layout. Considering this, we can say that Shopify store theme plays a vital role in converting visitors to customers.
There are thousands of Shopify themes on the market, some are pretty awesome and some are just average. In order to find the best theme that performs the conversions, we definitely need to do a thorough research and listen to the opinions of other people who have already used the template. Theme Forest is one such marketplace where you can find tons of themes.
You can search for the keyword you want, for example “Fashion” to find out the topics created for that purpose. After you get the search results, you can click on each of them one by one and see their preview and reviews from past buyers. You will surely have an idea of which theme will work best for your store. Themes are also very affordable, making Theme Forest one of the most convenient marketplaces to find a good theme at a reasonable price.
We hope this article helps you clear your mind about choosing a design and building your new Shopify store. If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to ask in the comments section.