Shopify Academy has been around for a while, with a mission to help entrepreneurs build and grow profitable businesses. However, since eCommerce is a goliath industry that’s thriving, ever-changing and highly competitive, can Shopify Academy still benefit anyone who wishes to start an online store in 2022? And if so, how does Shopify Academy keep their training relevant despite all the changes in the industry?
- Shopify Academy overview
- Shopify Academy teaching concept
- Shopify Academy review
- Conclusion
Shopify Academy overview
What is Shopify Academy?
In case you don’t know, Shopify Academy is a platform for access to Shopify training and business courses taught by industry leaders and real-world entrepreneurs. These courses help you deal with various challenges like setting up your first online store and even cover product photography and marketing. There are also courses covering hot topics in the industry like dropshipping and print-on-demand.
Who it’s for
Shopify Academy can be beneficial to anyone, whether they’re on day 1 of starting their new business, trying to turn a part-time project into their full-time business, or even someone who is ready to scale.
Why Shopify Academy?
While there are many courses that can help you establish and grow your online business, Shopify Academy still deserves special attention. Here’s why:
Shopify Academy gives you guidance from legitimate experienced entrepreneurs. The struggle is real for anyone who has ever tried to set up a business. There may be thousands of questions in your mind and there’s always something new to learn. It can be terrifying and confusing when you’re your own boss. Fortunately, you can skip all the guesswork when starting your business on Shopify by listening to what other entrepreneurs have to share on Shopify Academy. They’ve been there too, so they know the challenges, and have learned what works and what doesn’t.
It’s always better to learn from the best. On Shopify Academy, experts are sharing their knowledge and experience from the field. For example, Ezra Firestone, CEO of Smart Marketer Inc., will show you how to use Facebook advertisements at both beginners and more advanced levels. Gretta van Riel, who is leading five multi-million dollar startups, will guide you through steps to make your online business successful with Instagram. Since Instagram has been a powerful marketing tool today and is expected to even grow bigger in the future, it’s worth spending some time on Gretta’s course (and I actually did!). You also can’t miss the Shopify Academy Dropshipping course from Corey Ferreira and Print-On-Demand course from Adrian Morrison.
Shopify Academy courses are on-demand, so you can schedule your learning according to your needs and time. The academy also has suggested numerous business tools, templates, and tutorials to help you grow your business. But Shopify Academy isn’t just providing one-way courses. If you have any questions and want to get professional opinions and insights, you can consider joining Live Workshop.
Shopify Academy is even more powerful with a community where learners can get feedback, give advice and learn from other entrepreneurs who are also giving their best shot to build an online business.
Need more good news? You don’t need to have a Shopify store to start learning, but it is recommended to start one and build it along the way. Also, you don’t need to be technically savvy as Shopify Academy courses are built with the assumption that learners don’t have prior technical knowledge.
So, you might be wondering “Is Shopify Academy free?”. Well, it is. Shopify Academy is designed to help entrepreneurs, who are either new or experienced in eCommerce to be able to create comprehensive strategies and plans.
With all the great features Shopify Academy has to offer, it’s definitely recommended for anyone who is investing their time and money into eCommerce.
Related article: What Do Business Owners Say About Starting Up Online?
Shopify Academy teaching concept
Right now on Shopify Academy, there are courses dedicated to specific niches of eCommerce. For example, Facebook Ads for Beginner or SEO Training for Beginner. The courses are, in turn, broken down into lessons that are presented in short videos. It’s super easy for learners to understand and can even go back when they needed. Shopify Academy also provides a neat tracking feature, so you can track your progress.
One of the best things about Shopify Academy is that after each lesson, there is a summary of key points, making it much easier to follow and understand the lesson. Each lesson also ends with useful resources, so you can learn more or get the necessary tools.
The video lessons are made with high quality, both visually and audibly. “Closed Captions” feature (CC) - subtitles in English are available in most courses. This feature is especially helpful for audiences of people who don’t know English at a native level. However, you need to have at least basic-intermediate English skills to understand.
The “Search Video” feature in the video lesson really wowed me. You can conduct a search with the transcript on screen. This can be really convenient when you want to quickly go back to what the expert said previously.
The academy webpage doesn’t have any unnecessary elements, which helps learners navigate more easily and the pages actually load pretty fast.
Other than on-demand courses, Shopify Academy offers live and recorded workshops. You can register for an upcoming workshop or if you miss it, you can totally find it from Workshop recording.
Shopify Academy review
Shopify Academy Instagram course from Gretta
Now let’s take a look at the course Grow your business with Instagram from Gretta van Riel, one of Australian’s top young serial entrepreneurs. Gretta has 16 million combined followers on Instagram and hit $1M in eCommerce sales in a day (How fascinating she is!). I personally really like the course because it starts with a very basic intro in to Instagram then continues with more complex concepts.
The course is divided into four modules. Each module is dedicated to a specific step in understanding Instagram with a business mindset.
When you start the course, don’t miss the hamburger button in the top left corner for the course’s navigation. From there, you can understand the course’s structure better.
Before diving into the modules, Gretta has prepared an overview and some instructions to set up your Instagram business account as well as how to audit your Instagram Page. For example, in the lesson about auditing your Instagram page, there are examples of SEO friendly accounts, which are Gretta’s business: SkinnyMe Tea, Skintox and Dropbottle. There are also recommended tools such as Coming Soon app and Clk.im
Module 1: How to build an engaged following on Instagram
The course starts with foundation knowledge of how the Instagram algorithm works. It’s a must to understand how your audience can discover your post. Since the Instagram algorithm is always evolving, Gretta has listed factors that affect the algorithm: engagement, relevancy, relationships, timeliness, profile searches, direct shares and time spent. Gretta even provides ways to keep up to date with the algorithm changes!
Module 4: How to make more sales with influencer marketing
This module really caught my attention because influencer marketing has exploded recently. Working with influencers on Instagram will open up huge opportunities to increase your brand awareness and even boost your sales.
In lesson 2: How to find the right influencers for your business, Gretta brings up the concept of macro and micro-influencers and how they’re different. Because micro-influencers have become a new powerful movement, I would love to dig more into the topic.
But the most exciting part for me is watching the workshop at the end of each module where Gretta sits down with entrepreneurs (with different businesses and business models) and provides advice and strategies to grow their business with Instagram! Nothing is more engaging than real stories from real entrepreneurs.
Conclusion
Since the eCommerce world is changing, you can totally rely on materials across the internet for the most up to date information related to trends and movements. And it’s certainly what I recommend you do too.
However, Shopify Academy is not to be missed if you want professional knowledge and advice. Basic knowledge provided by Shopify experts like Gretta is indeed valuable when you just embark on your eCommerce journey. As your business grows, you can proceed with more advanced courses.
There are also upcoming courses covering topics like what to sell online branding, marketing strategy, shipping & fulfillment that you won’t want to miss.
Shopify Academy workshop is a feature that you can always take advantage of. There are workshops almost every month, which really keeps Shopify Academy engaging and relevant to everyone who might benefit from it.
If you’re ready to start learning, you can log in to Shopify Academy or get started by registering for a new account. Good luck!
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