How to succeed in the Shopify platform?
Lesther Mairena
7 January, 2021
The eCommerce space has seen a lot of changes in less than a decade. It has developed to a considerable extent. Today, retailers and brands use various tools to provide a seamless online shopping experience to the customers.
These tools also help retailers to stay competitive in this fast-growing industry. Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms used by retailers today to sell their products and services.
Today, the Shopify platform is growing rapidly, with the number of online merchants associated with it expanding across 175 countries. It has already crossed the figure of 1 million retailers worldwide in 2019, October. It received more than a billion orders and processed them as per the customer’s satisfaction.
The principal reason behind its popularity is the sophisticated software used by the platform designed keeping online retailers in mind. Shopify made $135 billion in total sales as of October 2019.
This powerful and robust platform has changed the face of online selling and shopping, helping eCommerce businesses worldwide. It has helped them reach a wider target audience using the most sophisticated technology and supporting the eCommerce niche’s end-to-end requirements.
If you are an entrepreneur and wish to use the Shopify platform to succeed in the business, read this post, and understand how it can give your business wings. Here, we bring you some Shopify success tips that can help you a lot.
What is Shopify?
Shopify is a popular and commonly used cloud-based software as a service or SaaS shopping cart solution. It allows entrepreneurs to set up an online business store and sell their products online with utmost efficiency and ease. This platform brings multiple pricing plans.
The platform also has features that are businesses across different sizes. Whether it is enterprise-sized businesses or startups, they can benefit a lot from the Shopify platform. Several integrations are available to help the platform scale along with the growth of the business.
Why Should You Use Shopify over other eCommerce platforms?
Shopify has emerged as one platform for comprehensive business needs. The platform is packed with interesting features that make it an ideal choice over other eCommerce platforms.
Here are some of the features
- Hosted Solution- Entrepreneurs planning to launch their online business can use the Shopify platform and overcome the challenges of web hosting. Shopping carts demand technical support, and startups lack spare time to get this support. Shopify is a cloud-based platform; it provides a hosted solution that can be accessed from any place with an internet connection and admin login details. It also provides seamless and easy handling of payment gateway.
- Built-in Marketing Tools- This platform also comes with certain in-built marketing tools like adding meta titles, page titles, meta description, unique URLs, redirecting pages, making pages visible or hidden, and lowering the startup costs.
- Robust Technical Support- The platform also provides robust technical assistance to the online retailers helping them run an online store.
- Security and Speed- A lot depends on the speed of an eCommerce store’s functioning as it helps in stimulating sales. Shopify ensures fast page loading, which helps in retaining users. It also employs security levels with payment providers ensuring the safety of data and information.
- Reduces Data Duplicity issues- It reduces errors with manual data entry and reduces data duplication chances. The Shopify platform provides automated solutions that remove data duplicity and simplify the data entry process.
All these features and advanced functionality, free trial, and more make the Shopify platform stand apart from other eCommerce platforms.
10 Tips to succeed in the Shopify platform
Shopify platform helps online retailers to manage a lot of things. Here are a few tips that can help to make you successful on the Shopify platform.
Tip#1- Be Ready for Mobile Commerce
When running an eCommerce store, it is important to ensure it is mobile friendly. It should be optimized for mobile devices. With the growing use of smartphones, people buy from their laptop or PC and the mini gadget they have in their hands, the mobile phones.
Customers must find it easy to browse an online or eCommerce store using their smartphones, make a purchase, and pay for the products bought.
1. Be Mobile Responsive from the beginning
Online retailers must ensure their store site is mobile responsive from the beginning. The same content available on their website is reformatted to fit any screen size. Try to embrace mobile-first design.
2. Create Apps for mobile platforms
You can turn your Shopify platform into a mobile app. Use mobile app builders to create an app and link it with your Shopify store.
Tip#2 – Try to have More Products in the store
Extending your product line is one way to succeed on the Shopify platform. It gives online retailers more options to sell to their trusted buyers or reach a broader and new target market.
It is very easy to expand the product line. The retailer can either sell wholesale products or engage in the dropship. Both are great ways of broadening the product catalog.
1. Have huge collections
Go for huge collections. Keep adding more, latest products to different product lines, giving many choices to loyal customers who wish to purchase high-quality products from the clients.
Tip#3 -Have a Customer Retention plan
The statistics reveal 65 percent of total sales coming from the existing customers. It translates into a simple fact that retaining these current customers is more cost-effective than acquiring new ones.
Thus, to make a business successful, it is important to retain customers as it can turn out to be dramatically powerful.
In simple words, if you wish to grow your Shopify store, it is important to retain customers. You will also need to acquire a lot of new customers to make up for losing existing customers.
For this, you may have to work harder than ever to maintain current revenue levels. To avoid getting into such a situation, a pristine needs to take active steps to retain current customers.
1. Use Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective ways to retain existing customers. It helps keep users engaged and makes them think of your store as the first thing they plan to make a purchase.
The best way to do this is by sending out regular emails. There can be several reasons to send an email to the customers. It can be sending them a birthday message, notification for new products, announcing special offers or a sale, specific holiday wishes, or seasonal emails.
2. Delight customers
It is important to walk the extra mile and go above and beyond one customer to surprise or delight them. A little thought goes a long way to help the business. Send handwritten notes to them to delight them and make them feel special.
3. Have unique packaging
Invest your time in ensuring unique packaging because no one likes to get products in shabby or poor packaging. Use packaging as a tool to an advantage. You can send them to a relevant YouTube channel and ask them if they will create an unboxing video of your product.
Do not forget to place handwritten notes in the packaging. You can also place vouchers or coupons for discounts on their next order. These days, rendering a friend voucher works well, which can be handed to the friends easily.
Provide manuals about using the product, and never forget to put efforts into being quirky, funny, or unique with your packaging to bring a smile to your customer’s face.
4. Use Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads are the best way to get in touch with the online visitors who have already visited your store or social media profile. Retargeting emails are sent to them to remind them if they have left a few products in the cart or explored your website without making a purchase, or made a purchase, etc.
It is a robust marketing channel that helps convert online visitors into customers after they have already left the store.
5. Use Giveaways
Using giveaways is one of several businesses’ best promotional tools to improve brand awareness, drive sales, and improve their image. This giveaway ranges immensely in terms of value and size.
Many businesses use these giveaways as a marketing strategy to roll the giveaway price in their services or products. It also helps in maximizing your ROI.
6. Give Coupons for Repeat buyers
Online retailers regularly add discounts and coupons to their well-curated marketing strategies to increase customer loyalty and improve brand awareness. It also boosts sales conversion rates.
These days, digital coupons are predominantly used as a successful way of growing social media following. Savvy online shoppers understand these coupons’ significance and use them to their advantage and enjoy amazing products at slashed prices.
They can also use these coupons in conjunction with cashback accounts and other offers to maximize savings. Although for retailers, it translates into a less profitable sale.
Still, the number of online retailers using these coupons to keep their customers engaged is ever increasing. They strive hard to meet the customer’s demands.
7. Have a Loyalty Program
Online retailers also rely on the marketing strategy of using loyalty programs. It is designed so that online customers are attracted to continue using the services or buying the products offered by the business associated with the program.
This loyalty program helps the customers to enjoy points allotment for future purchases or discount on the current purchase. These loyalty programs are intuitive, easy to launch, and robust, maximizing the retailer’s business potential.
Tip#4 – Build A huge email list
Another marketing strategy that helps online retailers to grow their business is building a huge email list. The bigger is the list; the greater is the money earned.
Here are a few steps that help in building a huge email list.
- Understand your audience’s wants and needs and create a persona.
- Retailers can also start with a blog post and start building up an email list from there.
- It is important to continue delivering consistently high-quality content, ensuring posting fresh, unique, and relevant content.
- Optimize the contents before publishing. This way, the chances of the website getting high rankings and web presence increases.
- Continue upgrading content, focus on content assets that help to get signups.
- Build your list from the start and cultivate a relationship with them. Share information with your subscribers on exactly what they wish to know.
Tip#5 -Have a Content marketing strategy in place
It is important to plan a proper content marketing strategy. Always keep looking for interesting opportunities and use them whenever the audience interacts with the store. It is important to use a similar image, style, or message across social media profiles, shipping and order notifications, checkout, product descriptions, and more.
1. Product Images
Product images are one of the most important elements of product page design. The featured image must be such that it excites and attracts online visitors and creates a first impression.
The image must be perfectly centered, polished, with a white or black background and no shadows. Good quality product images encourage visitors to check the image gallery on your website.
2. Product videos
The significance of product videos is quite high as it helps keep the customers engaged. It provides a very compelling way to create high-quality videos and support a brand to compete against other market players. Product videos also help in increasing AOVs and conversions.
3. Product Descriptions
Product descriptions are written from the target audience’s point of view. It must include the benefits and features of the product. Share the advantages and give a solution to the customer looking for the product.
4. Product Pages
Product pages or websites help customers decide what and why they should buy. It must include several features and specifications that provide reviews, help answer questions, facilitate the buying process, and allow product comparison.
5. Product Reviews & Recommendations
With buyers increasingly becoming tech-savvy, they check the product reviews and recommendations before making the buying decision. In an eCommerce-driven business, online customers have only the reviews and recommendations to check before buying a product.
Tip#6 – Have a Storytelling Marketing Strategy in place
Another marketing strategy that every eCommerce retailer must know about is storytelling marketing, where a brand narrative is created in story form. The store must be weaved in such a way that it resonates with the audience.
It boosts brand engagement, motivates people to know more, and make a buying decision.
Use Images and Visuals whenever needed – When putting a storytelling marketing strategy in place, ensure adding a lot of visuals and images to make it more interesting and engaging.
Tip#7 -Create Interactive Contents
Using interactive content is the best way to tweak an eCommerce marketing strategy—interactive content helps to spark action from the customers. In interactive content, people share experiences that engage the customers and motivate them to take action.
It triggers emotions and helps the website stand apart from the crowd. It leads to higher engagement, makes data collection easy, and helps customers enjoy personalized shopping experiences.
1. Using Quizzes
Quizzes are one of the ways to create interactive content. It is the most effective and easiest way to fire up sales. Brands use quizzes to recommend the best products to their potential customers. Get creative with the quiz for better engagement.
2. Using Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality
Immersive technologies like Virtual Reality & Augmented Reality help make inroads in sales process efficiency, brand awareness, and customer satisfaction.
These technologies help prospective buyers by delivering intuitive, satisfying, and friendly shopping experiences. VR and AR have a massive potential to reshape the retail industry.
Tip#8 – Use Paid Ads effectively
Paid ads must be used to their utmost efficiency. These ads help retailers get an instant result. As soon as the ad starts playing, a noticeable spike in the number of online visitors is seen.
Here are the best ways and platforms that help in increased traffic.
1. Google Shopping Ads
Google shopping ads are among the best ways to engage customers and share information about the product they are looking for. These ads have gained quite a lot of popularity these days, and more and more online shoppers are relying on these ads to shop.
2. Facebook Ads
These are targeted ads to users based on demographic, location, and profile information. Set a budget after ad creation and bid for each click received. It is a pretty profitable campaign.
Image source
3. Instagram Ads
Instagram ads attract a lot of big brands. Thus relying on the ads on this platform is very profitable.
Tip#9 – Always be supportive
Give instant support to the customers to give them a good shopping experience.
1. Using Chatbots
These days, chatbots have become a great tool to provide unwavering support to potential customers.
2. Using Help Articles
Many help articles can also be created to help the customers gain relevant information about the product they plan to buy.
Tip# 10 – Keep Security an important thing from the beginning
It is important to pay a lot of attention to the business’s security part. The data and information shared by the customers must be safe against malware, hacking, etc.
1. Especially in the payments part & customer details
The details of the customers and their payment information must not be passed on to third-party agencies. Add more security levels to keep this information safe. Ensure the store site is secure against hackers and virus threats. It also helps customers to develop trust in the store.
Conclusion
If you wish to succeed in the Shopify platform, check the above-mentioned ideas to succeed with Shopify. More information is available at Shopify & AdNabu websites where you can get some interesting tips, ideas, strategies, and hacks that help you succeed on this fast-growing eCommerce platform.
Guest Post Contribution from AdNabu
AdNabu helps improve sales in Google Ads for shopify stores. If you are running google search, google shopping, or display campaigns in Google Ads, Their apps help to increase your sales.
