Starting an e-commerce store is exciting and challenging at the same time. You’ve researched the available options and chosen a Shopify store to showcase your products.
Maybe you even have a few regular customers, but you want to grow your shop and take it to the next level. Fortunately, there are a lot of things you can do to increase sales.
There are around 5.6 million online retailers in the world and about 1.1 million in the United States. All those companies clamor from dusk to dawn — and late into the night — trying to grab the attention of a limited consumer pool. If you want to stand above the noise, you have to figure out how to capture your target audience and keep their interest.
Here are the best Shopify tips on how to increase sales and grow your platform in the next year. Use a few of them or implement them all for maximum results.
1. Know Your Target Audience
No promotion or advertisement can be successful without having a targeted audience. From the planning stage to the execution of ideas, there’s a need to pre-determine who you would be reaching out to.
Who should be your target audience?
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Those that have bought from you before: these should be the most important people to you. They are the reason for the present successes you celebrate. Moreover, their reviews of your products trigger higher conversions because prospective buyers believe them more. It’s normal. It is more of a “tested and trusted” thing.
Those who do not know your brand: this is the sole aim of promoting your Shopify store – reaching out to those who do not know your brand. Social media and technology have now made It easy and possible to reach out to ALMOST everyone, if not all.
Those that know your brand but prefer your competitors: no matter how well you market your brand or products, some people will still prefer your competitors. Nevertheless, these people are still targeted audiences because it is confirmed that they already like your product type; they just do not buy from you. With consistency in your promotion techniques, you become their first alternative should anything occur between them and your competitors.
2. Run giveaways and social promotions
As much as many of us like to work for what we have, we still do not say no to free things. Like, who does not like gifts or promos?
That’s the basis for giveaway promotions. Running giveaways and social promotions are one guaranteed way to promote your Shopify store instantly.
With the right amount of planning and the best approach, giveaways can boost your sales, increase traffic to your website or product pages, and even increase your number of followers.
We have compiled some of the best ways you can organize your next social promotions and giveaway.
Make a referral Giveaway
This is one of the most converting forms of a giveaway, and it is very easy to set-up using any of the referral marketing tools. All you have to do is launch a new product, an online course, or an affiliate program and request people to get it for a reward.
You could even make it more interesting by changing the criteria to the number of people each customer refers. It increases your audience and makes more people aware of your brand.
Make an Order Giveaway
Ask people to make an order for a specific product or any of your products within a specified time frame. It might be two days or more. Let them know you will randomly select as they buy to win a specified prize.
The timeframe is to put urgency into play, and the reward could be anything. Just make it something worth challenging for. One side benefit of this method is that it reduces the number of abandoned carts.
Organize a photo contest
Hosting a photo contest whereby your customers upload pictures of them using your product on your media page is a great way to promote your Shopify store.
Thus, the idea of photo contest/giveaway is to encourage those that have been using your product and to motivate those that have not started.
Product Naming
This is an effective way of promoting your Shopify brand and keeping your customers active and engaged. The mode of Promotion is that you ask your active customers and audience to suggest names for a new product you’re about to launch.
Doing this goes a long way in making them feel like a part of your brand. Such customers usually turn out to be loyal ones.
3. Add Brick-and-Mortar Locations
Although e-commerce has prospered in the last decade, it is still only about 10% of sales. If you want to reach more customers, you need a brick-and-mortar location. Even if you started online, you could move to an offline location, as many other e-commerce retailers have done in recent years. Amazon now has storefronts where people can go and physically purchase items.
4. Integrate Social Media with Shopify
If there is one thing you had love about Shopify stores, it’s how it integrates with social media platforms. The benefits are numerous both on the side of you as the seller and your customers as well.
As a seller, catching up with massive inflows of social media traffic can be very tiresome. That’s why social media management is now considered a top 10 e-commerce job. Imagine you already entered a contract with an influencer marketing account; you would want to follow up with their progress.
Hence, it would be best to integrate your Shopify store with a social media automation tool to easily promote your Shopify store.
For instance, integrating with Instagram will allow your customers and visitors to make purchases swiftly to your brand or advert page. All they have to do is click on the shop now icon, and they will be linked right to your brand website.
However, Facebook also boasts of a high sales rate. So, it would be best if you did not forget to integrate with Facebook as well.
The advantage of these social media platforms for marketing is that you’re making it easier for customers to reach you right from their comfort zone. That is why 77% of people will likely buy from brands they follow on social media. Coming online to Facebook or Instagram to check out your page is like a routine to such customers.
5. Seek Out Lookalikes
Facebook offers a feature called “lookalike audience” for targeting segments similar to customers you already serve. If you’ve had a lot of success with other Facebook campaigns, a lookalike audience can help target even more audience members in that persona profile. This social media site is a great place to showcase new or unusual products and introduce people to your Shopify store.
6. Retarget Browsers
When people visit your shop but don’t make a purchase, make it a point to retarget them. If they spent time on your site, added something to the cart but didn’t complete the order, send them an email with an invitation for free shipping or a small discount if they purchase. Retargeted consumers are three times more likely to click an ad than those who’ve had no previous experience with your brand.
7. Work on Customer Retention
When you’re first building your business, your focus is on gaining new customers. However, lifelong patrons are worth far more both in terms of the number of times they re-order and the dollar amount of their purchases. You can increase your revenue by merely focusing efforts on your current consumers and creating a personalized experience for those already on your mailing list.
8. Build Trust
A person visiting your Shopify store for the first time has no reason to trust you with their hard-earned money. You could take their coins and never deliver the goods. You have to show you’re trustworthy. One of the best ways to do this is with clear contact information, badges of any memberships — such as Better Business Bureau or industry organizations — and endorsements from well-respected sites.
You could also accept PayPal payments as an option. Many consumers will take a chance and buy with PayPal because they refund the customer if the seller never delivers the item.
9. Use Relevant Keywords
Asides from those that will hear about you from friends or adverts, potential customers will only discover your online Shopify store if it pops up in search results. Therefore, your Shopify page rank is vital in getting more leads.
The way to improve this search engine optimization (SEO) rank of your Shopify store is to use relevant keywords and interactive content. Think like a potential customer. Think of the likely words that a potential buyer will input into the search bar.
Search engine optimization is the process of enhancing your website’s visibility for relevant search results. That is the process of making your site appear more in searches.
One of the best SEO tools that are free and easy to use is the Yoast SEO. There is a paid version too. The software does SEO analysis for all your pages and provides recommendations for improvement.
Keywords are those search tags that potential buyers will use when searching online. Proper usage of keywords is one of the white hat SEO strategies to practice. Using the right set of keywords increases your Shopify store’s chances of being located during a search.
The Yoast SEO also checks out for the keyword density and related details, as you can see below.
Recommended places to insert keywords are product descriptions, product headers, image tags, and crucial parts of the Shopify page.
Is that all you need to do?
Definitely NO!
As we said, search engine optimization is a process. That’s what many people who complain often forget. It’s not a one-day thing. Therefore, it is a set of activities you keep doing while making modifications as time goes on.
These activities include putting up informative content that simply relates to the type of products you have.
For instance, if you run a Shopify clothing store, content on clothing styles and clothing fashion trends will be relevant and help promote your Shopify store. You can even make it more interactive by occasionally featuring active customers on the posts. It generates engagement and makes them look forward to your Shopify page even when they are not ready to buy.
Make frequent posts too. The idea is to get noticed. When done well, your website will begin to generate higher traffic as people see you as an informative plug for your product niche.
10. Embed Videos
Video marketing has grown in popularity in recent years. Wyzowl’s State of Video Marketing 2019 report surveyed marketers and discovered the average person watches at least 90 minutes of video each day. Video is easy to digest and conveys a stronger message than text alone. One of the most powerful marketing methods you can add to your site this year is videos highlighting products or information on your company. Embed those clips on your Web pages and use them on social media.
11. Utilize the Best Shopify Apps
Shopify features multiple apps you can integrate with your operations. Many of these platforms offer features meant to increase e-commerce sales. Some apps track social proof, automate upsells and offer incentives if people tell their friends about you. Browse through the recommended apps for Shopify stores and automate some of your marketing efforts to boost your Shopify sales figures.
12. Leverage Faceted Search to Improve User Experience
If your online store contains hundreds or thousands of products, especially similar ones (car parts for example), it’s easy for shoppers to get lost and potentially abandon your site. In order to help them find the products they’re looking to buy, it’s important to give shoppers a frame of reference – exactly what you can do with faceted search.
Faceted Search, or Guided Navigation, helps prevent shoppers from getting lost on your site by enabling them to easily filter results to refine their queries. This might seem similar to filters, but they aren’t the same thing.
Faceted Search allows you to create filters based on keywords – ultimately, it enables you to create a structure in which shoppers are presented with a smart, logical interface that makes it easier for them to get to the desired products.
Making the path-to-purchase easier and faster, Faceted Search helps enforce purchase decisions and lower site abandonment rates, leading to higher conversion rates and overall profit.
13. Pay for Ads
Well-known internet guru Neil Patel points out that paying for ads can be effective. However, you should first test your ads with small buys to make sure they’re successful. Paid marketing is available on Google and social media sites such as Facebook. You could also pay for an ad in a newsletter that your niche audience reads.
14. Invest in Influencer Marketing
Many potential buyers are more likely to purchase from a company based on other customers’ recommendations (families, friends, role models, etc.) than one from the company itself. This fact is the driving force behind the influencer marketing method.
Influencers on social media are those accounts that have amassed a huge number of followers and are expected to get high engagements on posts.
By influencer marketing, you are expected to approach these accounts/ people to advertise your brand for you. The logic is taking them (influencers) to be the first customer that has tried out your product or service you have to offer and recommends to others (followers).
However, there are some essential factors to consider when trying out influencer marketing. Top of the list is deciding the social media platform that will suit your brand the most. For instance, lifestyle, fashion, and beauty brands thrive better on Instagram. The informative and education industry works best on LinkedIn instead.
By the way, 89% of people believe that Instagram is the most important influencer marketing tool on social media.
After picking a social media platform to use, the next thing is to search for an influencer. You can use influencer marketing platforms like Grin to search for influencers.
One of the other things to note is their engagement ratio before considering a vast number of following. I mean the number of following compared to the activity on the influencer’s post by engagement ratio.
For example, here is Karen/@karenncamargo_ who makes money on Instagram by advertising for brands. She has about 53.1k followers on Instagram. While the followers’ count is not that high compared to some that rack millions of followers, she manages to produce a very decent engagement from her posts.
As a micro-influencer, it will be easier to reach out to her, and by coming to a suitable agreement of fees and conditions, she can start promoting your Shopify store to her followers.
Taking a look at her post below, you can see her promoting the gade cosmetics brand. That’s what they (influencers) do. Her loyal following will trust her recommendation and check out the cosmetics. It’s as simple as that.
Rather than social media posts alone, influencers can also produce short content on your product or a short video showing them using your product. It is all about branding and promoting awareness of your brand.
In case you plan to try Facebook or other social media platforms, we advise that you use the same hashtag for every one of your promotions. This consistency is needed for proper branding.
If properly motivated, the influencers will put in their best because a win for you is another crown to their achievements.
15. Work on Your Sales Funnel
Consider the process the buyer experiences to get from the landing page to the order form. This path is your buyer’s journey and the way you funnel people from general browsers to more specific offers. Go through your store like you are a customer and look for issues at each point in the funnel. Are you fully answering questions in the first stages? Is your call to action (CTA) direct in the final step? How easy is the checkout process?
Once you have an idea of how well your sales funnel works, look for ways to tweak it and then run some A/B tests to ensure the changes increase conversions.
16. Figure Out Your UVP
What is your unique value proposition (UVP) as a brand? This aspect sets you apart from all your competitors. It might be that you have the fastest and cheapest shipping. Perhaps you carry products no one else does. Your UVP can also be a part of who you are, such as a customer-centered company. Once you understand the advantages of your brand, share that information on your website.
17. Improve Product Descriptions
Your patrons rely on you to adequately describe your merchandise so they’ll know if the item meets their needs. You have to physically describe the goods and include details such as its uses — and even pros and cons. Focus on solutions to any drawbacks. If you aren’t sure how to improve your descriptions, enlist the help of a professional copywriter.
18. Take Better Photos
Online shoppers of your brand only have photos to go on when exploring your offerings. Make sure images are clear and show the entire item from all angles. A 360-degree video isn’t a bad idea, especially for higher-priced goods. Work hard to improve the consistency of your images, too, so everything is obviously from the same business. If someone views it alongside a list of other products, it should look uniform.
19. Send Out Abandoned Cart Emails
Every online store has a certain number of abandoned carts. There are several reasons why someone might not complete the sale. Perhaps they got busy, or maybe they found the item cheaper elsewhere. Whatever the explanation, sending out a series of automated emails when someone approaches a conversion and then bounces away can increase your Shopify sales. This is a good way to improve your conversion rate. You can send an abandoned cart email o an abandoned cart text message. Here you have a list of abandoned cart sms examples you can get inspiration from
20. Sell More to Regular Customers
The customers you have are much more likely to buy from you than new visitors are. They already know they can trust you, and they like your products. One way to increase your profits in the coming year is by offering deals to existing clients. Start by segmenting your audience based on past buying history.
See what new goods match up with what they’ve previously bought. Then, send out an offer to purchase the item, get a discount by a specific date or receive free shipping.
21. Guest Blogging
As we have seen, blogging and creating interactive content is one way to drive massive engagements and traffic to your Shopify website. However, many business owners are often so occupied to update new content on their blogs regularly.
For such business owners, guest blogging is one effective alternative to blogging yourself. Guest blogging is the process of writing and publishing your content on an independent website and linking it back to your own site.
These links are called backlinks. The idea of this guest blogging process is more like getting endorsements or recommendations in the real world. Google sees each backlink as people that value your posts. However, these links have to be from a similar niche to not count as spam.
The higher the number of quality backlinks, the higher your Shopify page will rank on google search results. So, guest blogging is another way to do search engine optimization. As we earlier said, it’s a process.
The next question is, how do you get these websites or blogs that will allow you to publish on their site?
Our recommended option is searching for such websites and writing out emails to request slots to publish your post. Many websites openly ask for guest blog content, so the job is halfway done if you find such.
You can consider applying the format below in searching those websites out:
Clothing + intitle: “write for us”
The word “clothing” is the title, and you can replace that with the preferred title of your niche. Your search results should bring out the “Write for Us” pages of some blogs with a similar niche.
Once you have done this, you can begin to reach out to these blogs one after the other via email. Just ensure you send a personalized professional email to them.
22. Install a Wishlist App
There are times when someone loves a product but isn’t quite ready to buy for themselves. Utilizing a wishlist app with your Shopify store comes in handy in these cases. The person merely adds the item to their wishlist. Family and friends then shop off the register for birthday and holiday gifts.
Encourage users to add items, even if it’s only something they are considering buying. They can always remove it later. Remind them from time to time that they can share their desired objects with others.
23. Engage Site Visitors
Look for ways to engage site visitors. You have many ways of doing this, but the more interactive you can make the process, the better. Add a live chat feature, embed a video or link to your social media pages. When people feel connected, they’re likely to stick around and check out your offerings.
24. Personalize Offers
Today’s shopping websites do something pretty high tech. They either use cookies or login information to pull up data on past buying and browsing behavior of consumers. They then use those figures to personalize offers. For example, if a shopper bought a cookie sheet the last time they visited, the system might show them a selection of cookie cutters and rolling pins, along with other baking supplies.
You can even pull up browsing history and show them where they left off. Perhaps someone was searching for a sundress for an upcoming cruise and left your site because of an appointment. Now, they can see which items they were looking at when they left and save precious time. 8. Host Online Webinars and Events
Online events such as webinars and virtual conferences are excellent ways to promote your Shopify store and business ideas to a knowledgeable audience. There are some great virtual event platforms where you can host your event and eventually grow and engage your audience.
If you are the anchor, all you need to do is address the challenges that your product/brand tends to resolve and offer your product at the end.
You can also decide to sponsor an online meeting of people. Most times, this is to be done via donations. So, you accept being a sponsor of the event, and the organizers promote your online brand or Shopify store to the audience.
The advantage of this method is more if the gathering is that of people that are in your niche. In physical meetings, make sure you have what you can use to advertise your brand, such as your business cards with you.
25. Joint Promotion with Brands from Complementary Niche
Organizing social promotions and giveaways can sometimes be strenuous, especially if you’re just starting your online Shopify store. In such cases, having a joint promotional event with a brand that offers a complimentary product to yours is a good initiative.
As an illustration, imagine having a Shopify store that sells jeans. Partnering with a sneakers brand would be great. You can even decide to host promotions where every person who buys jeans trousers gets a reasonable discount on getting sneakers.
A lot of the time, partnering with other established brands in a complementary niche is the best way to understand the market and beat your competitors to the game.
26. Go Mobile First
According to Statista, by the year 2021, about 54% of retail commerce sales will be via mobile devices. Shopify is naturally geared to optimize to different screen sizes, but think of other ways you can tap into the smartphone market.
For example, offer to send out SMS messages when you ship an item or text special offers to your mobile customers. Design with the mobile user in mind and consider what features make shopping more convenient, such as easier checkouts, shorter forms and frequent reminders.
One of the best ways to create a more mobile-friendly experience is to use a Shopify mobile app builder to create an app for your store.
27. Start a Customer Loyalty Program
Online stores sometimes attract new buyers but don’t retain them. Offer a loyalty program and reward those who order multiple times a year. For example, provide a discount after so many orders over a certain dollar amount. You could also send a small gift after each purchase. Reflect on what your typical consumer likes and come up with something that ties in. If you sell bath bombs, you might include a shower steamer with each order over $25.
The brand Yumi, which sells fresh, organic baby food, gives a discount after specific benchmarks — such as order five times and get $5 off. They also have a referral program for those who tell others about their products.
Get Creative With Boosting Your Shop
The ideas above are a great start to growing your Shopify store this year. Make a list of the marketing strategies you’ve already tried and which ones you’d like to implement. Think outside the box, study what other e-commerce shop owners do and get creative in your marketing efforts. No energy is wasted when you’re trying to grow your business.
Even if a promotion doesn’t go as planned, you’ll have learned what doesn’t work with your customers. With a bit of effort, your Shopify store will grow in the next twelve months.
