The idea of purchasing a Prebuilt Shopify store might come over your mind several times if you are an aspiring entrepreneur seeking to break into the ecommerce market. Building a Shopify store from scratch might be difficult, no matter it is a dropshipping store or one- product store. For this reason, a lot of ecommerce business owners choose to purchase pre-built Shopify stores.
In this article, we will provide you with a comprehensive overview of prebuilt Shopify store types and their leading providers, along with powerful checklists to carry the research out all on your own!
An In-depth Look Into Prebuilt Shopify Store
What Is A Prebuilt Shopify Store?
A prebuilt Shopify store is a ready-to-go store, which just needs a little setup and configuration to be operational.
A pre-designed website, product listings, payment gateways, and other necessary e-commerce features are typically included.
Different Types Of Prebuilt Shopify Stores
In this article, we cover three types of prebuilt Shopify stores that you can purchase: a turnkey store, a custom store, and an existing store
- Turnkey Shopify stores
A turnkey store is one that you can purchase and begin marketing straight away without needing to learn how to conduct your research, design, and construction.
The majority of those stores have winning products that are already loaded with photos, product descriptions, Shopify apps, and other features that are ready to use.
No prior design or coding knowledge is required; purchase the ecommerce business and get going. However, you will have limited control in that online business: the supplier, product to sell, and fulfillment process.
Below is a real example of a Turnkey Shopify store created by the adsellr store.
(source: The Urban Pet Store website)
- Custom Shopify Stores
A custom Shopify store is when you hire an expert to tailor design and build an online business.
Depending on your needs, the expert offers different levels of services, from a basic setup to a completely coded online store. They are often able to build both a Shopify dropshipping store and a one product store.
With this kind of online store, you are in charge of product research, suppliers, fulfillment, and any other marketing activities. The expert is only responsible for designing and coding as the shop owner requires.
For instance, Snipes is an ecommerce store that has a freelancer on Upwork curated.
(source: Snipes online store)
- Existing Shopify Stores
An existing ecommerce store or an established store is one with actual sales and profit data. This is the huge difference between this kind of store from the 2 others above.
After the purchase, you not only possess the product and supplier relationship but also the customer base, social media, email, and anything that has been done in the past.
However, this does require your ability to make adjustments based on, for example, financial reports and performance reviews. This will help to find out the underlying issues of that online store.
Below is Nanshy, a cosmetic ecommerce store looking for a buyer. You can seek their information on Flippa website.
(source: Nanshy online store)
Is It Worth Buying a Prebuilt Shopify Store?
Buying a prebuilt Shopify store comes with a lot of benefits and drawbacks when put in comparison with building a Shopify store. Below we will try to analyze and specify as much as possible so that you can see what is the loss and gain of both sides.
Benefits of buying pre-built Shopify stores over building from scratch
- Less effort in the store setup process:
The process of designing an online store requires a certain knowledge of basic principles and an aesthetic sense that not everyone can have. Similarly, if you want to go further with custom code on Shopify, coding skills are needed. Buying a premade Shopify store reduces much of the hard work.
- Save more time for other activities:
Since the majority of online prebuilt stores’ components are already in place, you can optimize the time you've saved. For example, you can explore the technical and creative tactics for thriving sales. It is always essential to get ahead of your competitors in a fierce market.
Read more: Done-For-You Shopify Store: Ecommerce Website Without a Sweat
- Quick market entry and faster revenue generation:
We all know that some markets will soon become saturated. Thus, it’s important to run your ecommerce business when there is still less competition in the market. Timing is everything and prebuilt Shopify stores can help entrepreneurs to meet that.
Challenges of Buying A Prebuilt Shopify Store Over Building From Scratch
(source: Unsplash)
- Miss the chance to learn Ecommerce knowledge: The process of store development covers a lot of experience in the online shopping environment. Some excellent examples are web design, understanding user experience, and customer shopping journey. Purchasing a premade Shopify store will take that precious experience from you.
- Hard to create customization: in the case of turnkey stores, your store will be similarly designed as other stores. Whereas, with an established Shopify store, they already have a branded identification which is difficult to change.
Which Prebuilt Shopify Store Is The Best Choice?
Besides the pros and cons of buying a prebuilt Shopify store, it is crucial to understand your own online business’s resources and goals. In general, below is the suggestion we have for aspiring entrepreneurs:
Consider buying a turnkey store if you have limited resources on time, finance, and human resources.
You want to cover those constraints by trending products, and good sales and marketing skills. Your wish is to have a quick return and there is not yet a plan for the long term.
Consider buying a custom Shopify store if you have adequate resources.
It means you can afford the time to do product research and money to hire online store experts. The goal is to find profitable niches and brand identity in the long run.
Consider buying an existing Shopify store if you have both a good budget and skills in business acquisition.
Your goal is to generate a stable revenue stream in a tested and proven market. Might not think of a long-term plan, instead thinking of more new acquisitions.
Actionable Checklist For You To Find The Best Choice
Our actionable checklist below will help you more with that. Basically, just give it a tick when you agree with the content. A higher score in one column suggests a preference for that option:
(Download the Checklist Template here)
Review Leading Providers To Buy A Prebuilt Shopify store
Best Places To Buy Turnkey Stores
Adsellr
(source: Adsellr’s Product Page)
Overall
Adsellr is offering 3 Shopify turnkey store options: the one-product, 25-product, and 100-product store.
Along with that are the 5 product niches you can choose from. You can choose beauty, pets, luxury jewelry, furniture niches, and kitchen tools for your prebuilt Shopify stores.
Price: Their price range flexibly from $389 to $2.250
Services Included
The higher price you go, you not only have more products in your prebuilt stores but you also have more features.
With the minimum price paid, the one-product package covers optimized product pages, a seven-page website, a ready-to-use sale funnel, a mobile adaptive store, a premium Shopify theme, basic SEO, reliable suppliers, premium branding, and Dsers integration.
Delivery time: 5 business days
Quick read: Shopify vs Your Own Website: Which One to Invest in 2024?
Dropship For Sale
(source: Dropship For Sale’s Product Page)
Overall
The store is more built for a dropshipping business, yet it comes with 7 product store options to choose from including men's grooming, men’s fashion, women’s fashion, outdoors & camping, babies, pet accessories, and starting your coffee brand. They offer 2 packages: Shopify dropshipping store start-up and Pre-made stores.
Price: The store start-up package is now for sale at only $20 (previously $499). Whereas the premade stores package is sold at $1.250 per store.
Services Included
The start-up package includes a custom domain with an SSL certificate, personalized logo and graphics, premium Shopify themes & apps, plus marketing for a Shopify dropshipping store.
The premade stores package is in the format of a marketplace. The site claims that each store is uniquely customized. Thus, once a store is purchased successfully, it will also be sold out.
Delivery time: 48 hours for the start-up package and purchase instantly for the premade store package.
Best Places To Buy Custom Stores
Freelance Marketplaces: Fiverr and Upwork
(source: Fiverr’s website)
Overall
The freelancers on both platforms have a portfolio of their prior work, a description of their skills, and testimonials and ratings from past assignments.
You can choose the best freelancer for your premade Shopify store with the aid of all this information. There is no need to choose between a one-product store or multiple, or a Shopify dropshipping store, you can go with whatever you want.
Price: Depending on your requirements, price can vary from $100 to $1000+ per store
Services Included
Every project on Upwork is unique, and freelancers list their rates on an hourly basis. On the other hand, freelancers on Fiverr offer gigs or projects.
Nonetheless, you can get in touch with the freelancers on both platforms to go over your custom store in detail and establish your goals, budget, and timeline.
(source: Upwork’s website)
Review: Unlike on other websites, reviews on Fiverr and Upwork are far more difficult to manipulate. Looking at the top-rated sellers will help you locate the best prebuilt Shopify stores for sale.
Best Places To Buy Existing Shopify Stores
Flippa
(source: Flippa’s website)
Overall
Flippa allows you to search for Shopify stores. They currently have more than 5000 sites up for grabs.
You may choose dropshipping as the monetization method in the filter choices, which makes it quite simple to identify a dropshipping Shopify store that you might find interesting.
Services Included
To make sure the sale goes well, Flippa provides a great deal of additional services. You can choose one of their suggested brokers or collaborate with the internal team. To guarantee that sellers and buyers obtain a reasonable price and safe payment, Flippa has a full team of experts.
Prices: Range from $400 to $1 million+
Trustability: You may check the age, one or multiple-product store, profit margin, monthly profit, and number of pages viewed for each site.
Additionally, you can check if the dropshipping store has been confirmed. A validated listing indicates that the site's functionality has been examined by a broker or the Flippa verification team.
Empire Flippers
(source: Empire Flippers’ website)
Overall
They only accept companies that are making a profit, thus they reject a lot of online businesses that apply to post on their marketplace. This implies that any website you purchase will begin generating revenue right away.
Prices: range from $100k to $3 million+
Services Included
You may view the asking price, monthly net profit, revenue, monetization strategy, monthly multiple, margin, date of business inception, and other business details for each company.
A chart that displays the income and profit over time is also included. The charts provide a simple means of observing the company's performance, including seasonal variations, earnings growth or decrease, and projections for the future.
Trustability: To obtain the site's URL, and earnings verification, and to ask any queries you may have of the vendor, get in touch with Empire Flippers.
A group of M&A brokers at Empire Flippers assists in the transfer of ownership and management of companies. This eases, secures, and guarantees the purchase of a business.
Made-easy Guidelines: How to Build Shopify Stores From Scratch
Buying a prebuilt Shopify store can be worth your investment, but no one can completely guarantee its success. In the long term, a basic knowledge of how to build Shopify stores from scratch is still needed when running an ecommerce business.
1. Create Your Shopify Account
Visit Shopify to begin your free trial. A working email address and a basic idea of your website development goals are necessary. You can later on build a custom domain if necessary.
2. Fill In Store Details
As soon as you enter the store builder, connections to different tools and features are displayed in a menu on the left.
To change the name, time zone, and currency of your website, click Settings. You may also add content to your website by following the setup instructions.
3. Select And Customize Theme
Shopify stores are given a theme by default. To switch up your appearance, select Online Store from the column on the left and look for free themes. Select a free theme from the website builder.
In this step, you already can make some customization by uploading your logo and changing the color scheme and font type.
Alternatively, there are many third-party apps that powerfully enable you to create customization and smooth editing to your Shopify stores - PageFly is one of them. As a Shopify partner, we have a benefit package exclusively for new Shopify merchants here.
4. Add Pages And Content
You can add pages, content, and a navigation menu to your website by either going back to the setup guide or staying in the live builder screen.
You need to navigate to your Online Store's "Pages." We only need to develop "About" and "Contact" for the beginning.
Simply include a paragraph or two on the "about" page outlining the history of your company, your commitment to offering excellent customer service, and other details.
Once you have determined the business direction, you can go over this again later. Just construct a new page called "Contact".
5. Add Products And Payment Method
After your store design is complete, select Products from the menu and start entering the details about your products.
To add titles, descriptions, prices, pictures, and videos, proceed as directed. Make collections and categories to help you keep your products organized.
You need to connect a payment method with your website before clients can use your checkout.
Go to Payments in the Settings or Setup guide and turn on PayPal, Shopify Payments, or another payment processor. All popular payment options are automatically enabled if you select Shopify Payments.
6. Finalize Your Store
After placing a test to ensure proper operation, select a launch plan for your website. Use the Settings menu to explore shipping, marketing, analytics, and other essential site functionalities as you get more experience with the store builder.
Last Step: Shopify Checklist Before Launch
So now you have your product and operational system ready to go, your store design is also completed. Yet it’s better not to jump right up to the grand opening and launch your store.
Though your store might look perfect on the surface, there could be risk underlying.
To best steer clear of any possible failure, we suggest going through our detailed checklist video specially made for you here:
For those who are in a bit of a rush, below is our shortened list of key things to test out your Shopify stores.
1. Store Responsiveness
Responsiveness basically means making sure your store looks good and works well in all devices: phone, desktop, and tablet. To do this, simply check out the different device modes in your live store view.
2. Click Actions
It is clearly of great importance that essential buttons on your store work properly such as “Subscribe Email” or “Add to Cart” buttons. So just act as if you are a customer and try clicking on those buttons.
You should be able to check right in the Shopify pages. For example, after hitting the “Add to Cart” button, you can go to the checkout page to see if it is there.
3. Live Chat Function
The live chat function is apparently one of the most important features to test. It reflects badly on your brand and revenue if the customer’s messages are left un-replied.
To avoid that, let’s try sending a mocked message and see if you get notifications via all these places:
- The email used in signing up your Shopify account
- The inbox section in your Shopify dashboard
- The Shopify Inbox app on your phone
(Source: Shopify Inbox App)
Conclusion
In the end, buying a prebuilt Shopify store can reduce your effort; but, there are drawbacks as well. Hopefully, the checklist tool we provide will make it easy for you to understand each type of prebuilt Shopify store along with evaluating your own business situation. To better save your time, just consider our top list of leading Shopify store providers for each type of store.
It is also important to keep in mind that you always have another option of creating your own Shopify stores. Yes, there might be a learning curve to go through but it is worth putting effort in the long term. All the knowledge you learn will serve you along the whole journey with ecommerce business on Shopify.
Explore more, check out: Shopify Theme Customization: How to Create a Unique and Professional Online Store
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