Revealing Shopify's power

Shopify offers a comprehensive e-commerce solution designed to meet the needs of a typical storeowner who wants to sell products online. The theme gallery, extensive wiki, and active forum provide an excellent end-to-end experience even for the most inexperienced computer user. For customers who need more personalized support, there is the Shopify Experts directory, which is a great place to find a designer, programmer, or setup expert.

Two features, the robust API (http://docs.shopify.com/api) and the App Store (http://apps.shopify.com), put Shopify ahead of the curve compared to its competitors. Rather than trying to include every imaginable feature for every possible line of business, Shopify focuses on the common needs of every storeowner and leaves the rest to the theme customization and apps.

A third feature called webhooks (http://docs.shopify.com/api/webhook) allows apps to receive near real-time notifications of events that take place in a shop. These events range from order creation, product updates, customer signup, to account cancellation. The notifications come in both XML and JSON formats and typical mirror the schema of the API which makes integration a breeze.