Can You Sell Services On Shopify?


can you sell services on shopify

Can you sell services on Shopify? Yes! You absolutely can and it is really easy to set up and use – especially if you are familiar with Shopify.

One important question to ask yourself is whether Shopify is the “best” platform for selling services. To be honest, its probably not.

Shopify is built to be a shopping platform and its main focus is to allow you to sell physical products. In many ways Shopify will be overkill for selling services.

There are many super simple platforms online that allow you to sell services and some are even free to use or have very low fees.

Shopify is not really cheap with its cheapest plan starting at $29 per month. Many people use Clickfunnels to sell services because it is an easy to use landing page builder and allows you to customize much of your checkout process (that you can’t with Shopify).

In the end, it is a matter of preference whether you use Shopify to sell services or not. Shopify offers a lot that Clickfunnels or other funnel builders do not.

The most powerful way to use Shopify to sell services is if you already sell physical products through your Shopify store and offer a service as an additional “product” or upsell.

Selling Services on Shopify To Increase Your AOV

Selling services on your Shopify store is a massive missed opportunity by many stores. Average order value (AOV) is the name of the game right now in eCommerce.

With rising ad costs it is becoming more important than ever to squeeze as much out of your customers as possible.

Upselling and cross-selling them with more products work and it is a proven way to do it. However, selling services adds another dimension to your business and your store.

I will be the first to admit that this strategy is not suitable for many types of stores. It is something that is very common in the software space.

You sell an application or a piece of software and offer the installation or customization as a service and an upsell.

This makes total sense because most people who buy applications are not technically inclined.

So, what then if you sell T-shirts? It probably won’t make sense to attach a service to your T-shirt store.

You will need to get creative and think really creatively to come up with good services that you can relate to the physical products you sell.

A service is typically something that you provide for your customer individually. A great example of a service that could be related to almost any physical product is one-on-one coaching or mentoring.

People buy products all the time but often they don’t know how to use it fully or to its full potential. Here are some examples:

  • Sell fitness equipment >> offer a 1-hour coaching call on Zoom
  • Sell a make-up product >> offer a 1 hour coaching call on Zoom
  • Sell a dog behaviour product >> offer a 1 hour coaching call on Zoom

This works really well for products where the results from using the product require some sort of skill or experience.

Many stores already use this concept to some extent by offering free instructional videos and guides ass an additional element to make the offers/products more appealing.

This leads me to another important concept you can use to increase your AOV

Selling Digital Products With Shopify

While selling services via Shopify will only be suitable to a select few stores and/or product types there is something else that can work for almost any product.

That is to attach digital products to your product line up. Unlike a service, this does not require any one-on-one work. You can create an eBook or Video course and simply add that as an upsell or as a stand-alone product.

Some store selling fitness gear use their physical products as “trip wire” products and then make their money by upselling their $249+ fitness courses.

This is a strategy that works incredibly well in fitness niches where you can source home workout products for cheap from China. Sell them as the front-end product and aim to only break even.

Then, upsell your customers the courses on how to use the products to get (spectacular) results by using the product(s) they bought.

This idea can be extended to almost any physical product and or niche.

You don’t have to sell the digital product as an upsell either. You could offer it as part of the product and in doing that you can separate yourself from the competition.

The options for selling services and digital products in Shopify are endless.

How To Sell Services on Shopify

To sell services on Shopify is a very simple setup. In fact, if you want to use Shopify only to sell your services then you will find it very easy to use and set up.

If you don’t already have a Shopify account then you can start your free trial here. Use the time on your free trial to get everything set up. Before you can start accepting payments you will need to choose a plan.

A basic $29 per month plan is all you need to start selling services on Shopify.

Here’s How To Set Up A Service On Shopify:

Step #1:

Click >> Products >> All Products >> Add Product

Set up the name of your service under the Title and add a product description and images as you would for a physical product.

Assign a product type to this – especially of you are already selling other product types.

Step #2:

Scroll down and set your base price (the cheapest of your services or if you sell just one service you set your price here).

If your country or state requires you charge taxes then make sure the check box is ticked.

Step #3:

Scroll down and under Inventory make sure you Uncheck the “Track quantity” since our service we are selling has no inventory.

Step #4:

Scroll down and under Shipping make sure you Uncheck the “This is a physical product” since we are selling a service and not a physical product.

Step #5:

If you want to sell variations of your service like basic, intermediate or advanced then you can set it in the variants and set the appropriate price points you want to sell them for.

This will give your customers the option to choose different levels of a service at different prices for instance.

How To Sell Digital Products on Shopify

Selling digital products on Shopify is very similar to selling services on Shopify. One important difference is that you will need to provide customers access to the digital product once they’ve completed their purchase.

This is not a function that comes with Shopify and you will need an app to help you do that.

There are a number of free and paid apps that allow you to offer digital downloads or access to digital products after the purchase has been completed.

The FetchApp is a really solid option for offering digital products including PDF’s and videos.

Selling Services and Digital Products On Shopify Is Different

Selling digital products or services on Shopify is quite different from selling physical products and there are a number of import things you need to set up and put in place to protect yourself and your business.

The first is to make sure your customers know exactly what they are buying. You need to make sure that they know that they are buying a service or a digital product – especially if you already sell physical products elsewhere on your store.

You will also need to have a very robust refund policy in place. A lot of people like to buy digital products, download it and then claim a refund.

The current trend online is to not offer refunds for downloadable content but you can make up your own policy.

You also want to make sure that people can easily access their purchase or at least access information about their purchase. The best way to do that is with your purchase confirmation email.

Shopify automatically sends a confirmation email after every purchase.

You can easily edit this to include information about their purchase, what they can expect, and how they can access their purchase.

Taxes and VAT is another important consideration. In most states and countries, services and digital good as taxed differently from physical products.

Make sure you know what laws apply to you and set up your taxes appropriately in your Shopify store.

Shopify Themes and Layouts for Selling Services and Digital Products

Shopify offers a few really good free themes. Themes determine how your shop and product pages are laid out and it largely determines how it looks.

The vast majority of Shopify themes are designed in a specific format that has become the “standard” look for selling physical products.

These free themes offer very little flexibility and may require a lot of editing to get the format you want.

Selling digital products could work with a standard Shopify layout but for selling a service you may want something different. The easiest option is to use a paid theme where you can easily change the format and layout of your store.

I recommend themes from OutOfTheSandbox as they are widely considered to be the fastest and the most flexible and easy to edit.

If you want something custom you can use a page builder like Gempages (Shopify App). It has a simple drag-and-drop functionality which makes it really easy to create custom pages from scratch.

Can You Sell Services On Shopify – Conculsion

You can sell services on Shopify either as an exclusive “store” that sells only services or you can attach services or digital products to your store if you already sell physical products.

Shopify is designed to sell physical products and that is still the focus of Shopify as a platform.

Is it the best option for selling services? Probably not but it is easy to use and set up. In very basic terms, you could sell your services with only a Paypal account.

If you want to have a website and some sort of sales copy then you will need Shopify or Clickfunnels or some sort of website where you can accept payments.

Shopify will cost you about $30 per month (plus fees) and offers a very easy to use interface and a robust payment gateway.

Selling services on Shopify is easy and Shopify has a huge app store with thousands of apps that allow you to do some pretty ninja stuff with zero technical knowledge.

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