If you are an artist, craftsperson, or a creative small business owner Shopify is an excellent platform choice to focus on running an ecommerce store to sell your art, handmade crafts, and other creative products and services.

Having your own ecommerce store beyond online marketplaces like Etsy is really beneficial for your creative business growth and branding. You have full control over your store from design to branding which is very limited on Etsy to just your shop banner, profile image, and style of product images.  On Shopify you have full control over your store’s design, layout, fonts, and colors. Shopify can be highly customized depending on your needs with available free and paid themes allowing you to create a shop that authentically reflects your creative work and branding. You also will have your own custom domain name for your Shopify shop which is important for brand recognition. Shopify is highly scalable with an all-in-one platform with apps that can be purchased and integrated with your store website and also many third-party integrations. You have the ability to really grow your store over time on your own terms with Shopify and there is also no limit to how many products you can sell as your business grows.

While you have to do a lot more marketing with your own store, your hard work drives traffic only to your shop, and you can create long-term relationships with customers including building an email list and sending a regular newsletter. In my experience on Etsy, you still need to do your own marketing on the now very saturated marketplace. You can’t just rely on the organic traffic and the often very changeable and unpredictable algorithms of Etsy searches. So, when you drive traffic to your Etsy shop with your own marketing customers can leave your store and go buy from another store based on other product suggestions. This means you do not retain all the possible customers directly on your own store plus you are not able to build a loyal repeat customer base with an email list. Etsy does not allow you to collect customer data for a business email list. Also, in my experience my Etsy shop success fluctuated based on the changing Etsy algorithm and how my products showed up in searches or not over time. You are always in control with your own Shopify store where with an Etsy store you can end up working for Etsy’s benefit more than your own business. On Shopify you drive customers directly to your own shop alone and are not competing with many other creatives in a vast, saturated marketplace.

I have heard many stories of successful Etsy shops getting shut down with no warning or explanation. This can be very hard to resolve with Etsy, and you can lose all the hard work you have done with your shop as well as suddenly losing all your sales overnight. With Etsy you also you have a lot of restrictions with how and what you sell in the handmade category. Shopify also has some limits to what can be sold based on their guidelines, but you can sell a combination of handmade and non-handmade items with no issue for example. You can sell handmade items, custom made products, original art, art prints, craft supplies, printables, and print on demand products all in one shop. Unlike Etsy you can also sell creative digital courses and services like live online workshops or coaching services on Shopify including integrated scheduling and zoom.

Another great benefit of having a Shopify store is more control over not having your creative work copied as an artist and then sold by someone else. This is unfortunately a big issue more and more on Etsy, and it is hard to control when your creative work is in such a huge marketplace with other creative sellers. Whether you want to sell original art and crafts or art prints or your art on print on demand products, you have less to worry about your work being stolen and resold with your own store. Of course, this can still happen anytime you have your creative work online and you should still protect your creative work on your Shopify store the best way you can legally and seek legal help in this area based on your offerings.

Shopify costs are more predictable with the monthly plan you choose and cost of any apps you choose to integrate. Etsy fees per each product sold can really add up over time especially as your shop grows and you sell more. If you make $10,000 or more on Etsy, you cannot opt out of offsite ads which takes an extra percentage off each sale besides the regular Etsy fees if your product is bought from an offsite Etsy ad. What Etsy will choose to advertise offsite is beyond your control and it is very unpredictable in my experience. If you only use Shopify payments, you will not have any transaction fees. You will only have a payment processing fee per transaction which is standard. On Etsy you always pay listing per item fees, transaction fees, and payment processing fees. If you want to grow your shop online you retain more of your profits after your sales with more predictability in your fees with Shopify especially the more your sales grow.

Shopify is an excellent platform to choose if your main goal is to have an online shop that can grow with you over time without being limited to how much customization you want, what products and services you can sell, and how large you want your store inventory to be. If you want to transition from Etsy or just want to start your first online store Shopify is a choice I would highly recommend. I chose to transition from an Etsy shop to a Shopify shop with my creative business partner for many of the reasons I mention here. We kept our Etsy shop for possible organic traffic and sales, but we mainly focus on marketing our Shopify store and creating ongoing relationships with our customers through email marketing. You can choose to do the same. You can connect all your current Etsy products to your Shopify listings also which saves a lot of time in setting up your Shopify store.

From one central Shopify dashboard you can manage and sell your products across various platforms including on your Shopify store website, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Etsy if you choose. You also have the option to sell products in person if you participate in art and craft fairs or run a physical store on Shopify’s Point of Sale App. This keeps your inventory, customer information, and payment processing all in one place.

Print on Demand can also be integrated into your Shopify store including Printify, Printful, and Gelato if this is part of your business model. You can sell print on demand and physical products in one store.

As far as setting up your store online the Shopify platform has a bit of a learning curve but not as large of a learning curve as the WooCommerce plugin on WordPress.org websites. Shopify handles hosting, security, and software updates and offers 24-hour customer service support via live chat. You can also receive an email response to a question. With Shopify you also have integrated payment processing with Shopify Payments. Also shipping processes are streamlined, including calculated rates and labels for printing. This may include purchasing an app to customize your shipping even more like the Boxify App. You can set up your shop by yourself, but you can also hire a Shopify web designer like me to assist you and ease the process giving you more time to focus on your creative work. This also depends on how simple or complex the store you want to create is to start.

As for SEO you can optimize your Shopify store to show up in search results including the ability to create a blog on your store. You can use tools and methods to consistently improve your SEO within Shopify using SEO apps and integrating other third-party tools like Google Analytics. There are also many integrations you can use for marketing within Shopify including email marketing and newsletter creation.

To summarize the benefits of a Shopify store for a creative small business are:

• Highly scalable and can grow with your business overtime.
• You drive traffic directly to your own shop with your online marketing.
• Connect directly with your customers and grow your email list for marketing. This builds customer loyalty who become repeat buyers.
• Customize your shop without limits to represent your brand including your own domain, design, colors, and fonts.
• Not a very steep learning curve to set up a store.
• You can sell a variety of products and services online and in person.
• More control over your store and less concern over competition and stolen designs with other creatives on the Etsy marketplace.
• Predictable fees with more profit kept by you with each sale.
• Handles hosting, security, and software updates.
• Integrated payment processing with Shopify Payments.
• Shipping processes are streamlined, including calculated rates and labels for printing.
• Great SEO and marketing integrations within Shopify.
• From one central Shopify dashboard you can manage and sell your products across various platforms including on your Shopify store website, Instagram, Facebook, Amazon, and Etsy as well as print on demand and in person sales.
• Keeps inventory, customer information, and payment processing all in one place.
• You own your online store instead of renting space like the Etsy marketplace.
• 24 Hour customer service support via live chat.

For artists, craftspeople, and creative small business owners who are ready to start a highly scalable and customizable store and grow a brand long term Shopify is an excellent platform to choose.