Are you thinking of adding an online shop to your Showit website and increase your revenue streams? In this post, I go over ways to add an e-commerce store to Showit. Whether you’re planning to sell digital products, courses, or physical products – I’ve got you!
Showit is by far the best website platform I’ve worked with, from a designer’s perspective. But will I say it’s great for every type of business? The main downfall is Showit does not have any built-in e-commerce stores, but they still allow you to add Buy Buttons from third-party platforms (Shopify, ThriveCart, etc) very easily through embed code.
Now you might be wondering what’s the point of doing this when you can just build your shop on Shopify? Shopify has some great templates – but if you’re looking for an easy-to-use and unique website, this is when Showit is preferred. To have a unique design on Shopify, you will need to hire a professional designer & developer to bring your vision to life through coding. But with Showit, there is no coding required!
I personally only recommend Showit for service-based businesses or smaller online stores that have 20 products or less. Showit is not an e-commerce platform, and I don’t recommend it if you plan to have a larger inventory or your main goal is to grow an e-commerce business (Shopify itself is better suited for this).
However, if you’re a photographer selling presets, or a life coach selling courses as an example – this is when I recommend Showit all the way! I recommend building your shop using a Showit website template, or getting one professionally designed – as it can be a bit tricky to build. View my website template shop right here!
In order to have a payment/checkout system on your Showit website, you’ll need a third-party platform. You have the flexibility of choosing any cart system that works for your business. Your shop will be fully designed on Showit & then you simply add your Buy Buttons on the website through an embed code (very easy to place!)
Shopify Starter Plan is the most popular option for Showit users due to its affordable plan & ability to use Shopify’s powerful platform. You’ll need a Shopify Starter account to set up your products, payments, shipping/delivery, etc. After all your products are ready to go, you’re able to place Buy Buttons on your website.
Shopify Lite Pros:
Shopify Lite Cons:
I personally use ThriveCart for my template shop and I LOVE it. But I understand it’s not everyone’s choice due to the bigger one-time investment. If you’re constantly creating sale funnels, and also looking for built-in payment plan options – ThriveCart might be worth it for you.
ThriveCart Pros:
ThriveCart Cons:
There’s many other options that may be best suited for your business! Here are more cart systems to explore:
Designing the pages can be tedious if you’re not familiar with the process. This is why I recommend starting off with a Showit template or hiring a designer (like myself!) to help make the process stress-free. However, here’s an overview of how to add a shop on Showit.
I’m using my Palm Beach Showit template as an example for the design. Designing your shop pages is the same process as any other Showit page! First, you’ll design the main shop area where you can display all of your products.
In the example below, you can see I designed 3 images per row with titles understand. To make it easier for my customers and clients, I recommend designing one row & duplicating the design for the number of products. This makes it easier for adding products in the future.
You’ll design only one design that will be duplicated for each product. In this example, I placed an image on the left-hand side and product information on the right. You can get really creative with this! Some people create separate canvas views to have a product tab menu (for description, ingredients, disclaimers, etc).
Once you’ve finished designing the main product page, you’ll want to duplicate this for however many products you have. This is why I don’t recommend larger stores, as this step is the most time-consuming part. For each duplicated page – you’ll rename the page for that specific product, change the images, titles and descriptions. On this page, you’ll add an embed code with the buy button that links to this specific product.
Once all product pages have been created, you’ll have to set click actions for each product on the main online shop. They should all be clicking to their specific product page. Once it’s all set up, I recommend testing everything out before launching it to the public. Check that all products on the main shop are being redirected to the proper product page and that all buy buttons work properly.
Once everything is linked correctly, you’re ready to launch!