The Pros and Cons of Selling Hair Extensions Using Shopify

With advancements in technology and the advent of digital media, most of the companies selling hair extensions are attempting to promote their business online. Marketing campaigns are the most sought-after tactics to target audience looking forward to buying human hair extensions.

However, for bringing more traffic to your business, it is crucial to create an intuitive website terminal. Given the variety of web designing platforms online, most new-age business owners feel confused about which one to choose in order to avail the desired results.

Easy distribution and management of raw Indian hair extensions and all other types is crucial for any drop-shipping hair extension business. Shopify is one of the most preferred options for e-commerce set-up for both small and big online businesses. 

What Is Shopify?

Shopify is an online platform that allows the creation of your own e-commerce store. Since it’s a hosted solution, you as a business owner don’t necessarily require any advanced technical skills for creating or managing the online store. There are dozens of easy-to-use, customizable templates that can be applied to match your brand. However, like any other platform, Shopify too has its own pros and cons. Let’s have a look:

Simplicity of Usage:

Pros:

The aim of every business is to increase sales and revenue without being pushed down by technology or other administrative tasks. Shopify stands out from other e-commerce platforms by not being complicated in terms of store’s technological needs. With a clear interface, Shopify is a powerfully hosted platform that takes care of your transaction processing time when selling lace frontals for instance.

Cons:

Shopify is an ideal platform for people that are less tech-savvy. However, if you are more into technology and looking to add more functionality to your store, you might be compelled to check out Shopify’s competitors which are Magento and WordPress. Since these are self-hosted platforms, they are more challenging to work with but offer enhanced flexibility in terms of theme customization and large store management.

Great Choice In Terms Of Storefront Themes:

Pros:

Shopify has a host of beautiful storefront themes that you can apply for your hair extension website. They make the website appear professional and beautiful and thus helps retain customers. These theme options are divided into categories depending on the industry. It also gives you an option to go for paid themes.

Cons:

Free themes templates are only ten. If you don’t like any of the free templates, you will have to spend some money to avail other themes. For extensive customization, you will have to understand Shopify’s Liquid code or get the help of an expert.

Marketing and Discounts:

Pros:

Shopify offers tools that will help increase SEO rankings of your hair extension business, increase social media engagement and automate some other tasks. Shopify allows you to do the following:

• Generation of discount codes
• Improvement in SEO with the help of keywords and description addition
• Selling of products on Pinterest, Shopify and other social media
• Creation of blogs
• Usage of accelerated mobile pages for increasing the speed of content delivery to mobile shoppers.
• Getting an automatically generated sitemap.

Cons:

• The AMP feature can only be used with an installation that is paid. Most of the extended SEO features can also only be used when you pay for additional plugins.
• Blog posts can’t be exported too easily.
• Multiple discounts cannot be used by customers. Only one discount per order can be availed by default. An extension such as Script Editor needs to be installed which can be used only with Shopify Plus plan for availing multiple discounts.

24/7 Support

Pros:

Shopify has an excellent customer support team which is available only via live chat and email. The team can also be contacted round the clock via four different numbers, depending on your region.

Cons:

In case of technical issues, direct help isn’t always available from the general support. You would have to post a question to a forum for getting an answer from the developer.  Only four countries’ support service phone numbers are listed i.e UK, US, Australia and New Zealand.

Pricing:

Costing is one of the key determinants when choosing an e-commerce platform. When it comes to hair extension business selling front lace wigs and other hair accessories - the cost of platform, apps along with the cost of maintaining or customizing the platform matters!

Pro:

You don’t need to shell out huge sums of money to manage Shopify. Although Shopify can appear expensive than WordPress, its easy-to-use features enables to run it on a budget. With Shopify’s basic $29 plan per month, the shop owners don’t need to tie themselves with long hosting plans as done with other platforms.  The pricing is put in a very clear manner to enable you to plan ahead.

Con:

Advanced plans might appear too costly for beginners. Extension businesses earning $10k a month aren’t much bothered about the fees accumulated. However, advanced plans and Shopify Plus can be very expensive for a new store owner.

Whether you specialize in lace closures, raw human hair or any other type, one of the biggest benefits of Shopify is the flexibility it offers to grow your hair extension business. Now that you know all the pros and cons, making a choice becomes easier depending on your individual requirements.