Why I Chose Storenvy

I’ve been with Storenvy since 2009. When I opened my shop many people were already the proud owners of an Etsy shop. I knew that I had already made a large investment in fabric and time to create the products for my shop and I knew I wanted to be apart of the future of e-commerce, so Storenvy seemed like a great option. Storenvy has grown by leaps and bounds since I joined them and I’ve really enjoyed the benefits of having my store front there.

Now 2 years later many of you, my wonderful friends, are opening Storenvy store fronts or thinking about opening one and so I thought this would be a great time to share with you why I love Storenvy. Here are 12 reasons why I choose to have a Storenvy Store Front.

1. Free online store front and Social Market Place – No other e-commerce offers both 
When deciding to open an online store front, cost can be an issue. When you’ve already invested time and money into creating your products, being able to open a Free online store front to list those products is always a plus. Storenvy allows you to create a store front absolutely free. Free store front, free listings. There’s no catch, that’s just how great they are!

When you create your store front you are joining Storenvy’s Social Market Place. The market place serves as a way for you to meet new customers and other shop owners. People can follow your shop, like your store, as well as tweet and Facebook about new your products. Storenvy is the only e-commerce that offers both the free online store front and social market place in one. This serves to provide more traffic to your new shop.

2. The ability to fully customize your shop CCS 
Unlike Etsy and Big Cartel where you are only able to change your shop banner, Storenvy allows you to fully customize your store front. I am able to choose how large or small I want my banner to be and upload an image to use as my backdrop.

Now I know you are probably going to be concerned that it’s going to be too difficult or complicated to customize your storefront by yourself. Let me put your mind to ease. Yes you can, if you want to, pay someone to design it for you, or you can use great programs like Picnik or Photoshop to create your own banner and simple upload it as a JPEG into your shop. You can do the same thing for your background.

For example, as you can see from the picture below you are able to “Edit Styles” to pick your background colors, then click on “Banner & Background Image” to upload both your banner and background images. You can do all this while the Design Mode Bar is ON so no one can see your shop till it’s complete. Trust me when I say that when I opened my shop in 2009 I didn’t know even a fraction of what I know now about designing, customizing or coding and I found the whole process to be a lot easier than I expected.

3. New Extras: A Custom URL and Super Discounts
There are a couple of Extra’s that Storenvy does offer for a minimum extra cost a month, but they are OPTIONAL. You are not required to pay them. One is that you can create a Custom Domain for your Storenvy shop for only $4.99/mo. I will be honest I personally don’t use this feature (I’m only saying this because this is a screenshot from my back office) because I use my domain name www.ragstostitchesboutique.com for my blog. Since I’m able to link to my shop in my tabs above and through my Facebook page, I find that I’m able to get a good amount of traffic that way. Also if people search Rags to Stitches Boutique via Google, my shop pops up. In fact it’s the 7th search result that pops up AND it pops up before my Etsy shop! But if you are not a blogger and just a shop owner, this is a fantastic feature!!

The other new extra Storenvy is offering is Super Discounts for $2.99/mo. Storenvy does allow shop owners to offer their customers a percentage discount, what Super Discounts allows you to offer other discounts such as $-off, Buy X, Get X Free and Free Shipping. Keep reading for more on that below.

4. No listing fees
Unlike other store fronts, such as Etsy or Big Cartel, there are no fee’s for listing products in your Storenvy shop. You are also able to list as many products as you choose without paying any additional fees. There are also no transaction fee’s, meaning that when someone makes a purchase you don’t pay a percentage of the purchase to Storenvy. The only percentage you pay is to PayPal. This puts more money back into your pocket. Isn’t that how it should be?

5. Easy to connect shop to PayPal to take credit/debit
Storenvy allows you to connect to your PayPal account with ease once you’ve set up your shop. They are able to quickly verify your account so you can begin accepting payments right away. Also, Storenvy allows your customers to check out using PayPal or a Credit/Debit card.

Check out is quick and painless. The customer simply adds your item to their cart, and heads to the checkout. During checkout they can add a Promo code, if you’ve offered one, and continue to pay for their item. You will then receive an email notification of the sale. Storenvy gives all their shop owners the option to print a packing slip and to make note in the “Orders” tab of their back office that the item has shipped.

6. Ability to offer discounts to customers 
Storenvy offers every shop owner the option to offer percentage discounts to their customers. I’m able to offer discounts via my Facebook Storenvy Shop tab, or I can enter a promotion code that I can promote through my blog and other blogs. I love being able to offer my customers a great discount every once in a while and so I love that Storenvy allows me to do that.

This month, just in time for Black Friday weekend, Storenvy launched their Super Discounts option. For $2.99/mo I’m able to offer my customers more than just a percentage discount. With Super Discounts you are able to offer Free Shipping, a Buy X, Get X Free option, a Dollar Amount off in addition to the Percentage off option. Isn’t that great?! They are one of the only, if not the only e-commerce that gives you all those options. What’s even better is that you can turn the Super Discounts “switch” on and off depending on the months you’d like to use it. For example, I turned it on so I could take advantage of the Super Discounts for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Then after Christmas, I am able to turn the option off until I’m ready to use it again. I love this!!!

See how easy their Create a Promotion page is to use!

7. Store Admin page allows you to track page views, most viewed items, past sales, countries people are viewing your store from, online searches, etc. 
Every Storenvy store front has a detailed back office. I love that from my back office I’m able to see my Sales, Recent Orders, Most Viewed Products, Best Sellers, Top Buyer Countries, Number of Visitors per Week/Month, Top Referring URL’s, Top Search Engine Terms, and Top Visitor Countries. Whew! Isn’t that a great amount of information to have to figure out the best ways to market your shop to new customers.

From this information I’m able to track where my customers are visiting from so I know if my advertising dollars are working for me. Great right?!

8. Easy to search within market place for specific shops or products 
Storenvy has a search box at the top of each screen that allows you to search from their products and stores. I love how next to the search box it tells you how many products and shops you are searching from. So if you’re worried about having to drive your own traffic to your shop, don’t. Storenvy has a great search engine to help.

From the Storenvy home page you can also see New & Interesting Products, Best Selling Products, and Best Selling Stores.

9. In the social marketplace, shoppers can shop across all Storenvy stores at once. They can Like products and Follow favorite stores and shoppers, and each product has a short URL for easy sharing on social networks. 
Just like Facebook and Twitter can a utilized in a powerful way to draw business to your shop, so can Storenvy’s social marketplace. Both shoppers and other shop owners can follow you, like your products, and become a fan of your shop. Your user home page is set up similar to Twitter and Facebook with a picture, short profile and a short bio.

We all know the benefit a social network can have, imagine how great it could be to have one connected to your shop.

10. Almost 15% of sales on Storenvy come through the marketplace rather than through direct store traffic, meaning that stores are more likely to make sales on Storenvy than through a standalone storefront.
I think this statistic speaks for itself as being a great perk when having a Storenvy Market Place. Most often business owners, especially newer business owners, who are looking for a great place to open their first shop are most often worried about how their shop will get traffic. The biggest concern is finding other avenues to drive traffic to their shop other than the promotion they are doing on their own. With Storenvy shoppers are able to search for a product and shops with those items pop up in the search. I’ve actually found some great, new shops through a Storenvy search. This search option combined with the ability to tweet products, and put your store front on Facebook all will help to increase your traffic as well.

11. Ability to put your store front on Facebook. 
Facebook is such a valuable asset to the promotion of your shop and being able to have a Storevny shop tab linked to my Facebook page helps drive business to my shop. I’m also able to create Facebook Fan discount codes through Storenvy that people can take advantage of when they “like” my business page.
This is another great way to build more traffic to your shop and Facebook page.

12. Responsive Team
Having a responsive team is so important so that you, as a shop owner, want to continue using that store front. I once had an issue with an Etsy customer and it took their customer service 5 days to email me a response. By that time, I had already dealt with the situation myself. It left a really sour taste in my mouth.

One of the things I love about Storenvy is how accessible their team is. When I have a problem, I can email or tweet them and they will get back to me quicker than even I sometimes expect. They are friendly, helpful and always willing to help you find a way to solve your problem, or help by answering any of your questions. There have even been times where people have asked me Storenvy questions on Twitter and their team will jump in and help me answer them. It’s really great!

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