Shopify has evolved into a reliable platform building e-commerce stores. Indeed, the demands of this industry have changed drastically in the past few years. Today, you need to be very careful about how you design your e-commerce site. This is where Shopify becomes useful.
When you wish to boost your sales and attract more customers into your site – themes and templates from Shopify will give you a push. You will be able to create stunning e-commerce sites that satisfy all the rules in the industry (at least a majority of them). In the long run, you will not have to worry about factors like security, social media metrics, and even cookies when you utilize the opportunity presented by Shopify.
Shopify allows anyone to create their e-commerce store. You can create and start selling products without any hassles or tussles. Any product that customers once bought over the counter can be sold via this platform.
Shopify allows customers to sell a range of products. And, it’s growth has been prominent in the past ten years.
Benefits of Shopify
One of the major benefits in choosing Shopify would be ease of use. You can set up a Shopify account without any hassles.
Two, the themes and templates in Shopify are truly appealing. You will be able to come up with some of the town’s most interesting e-commerce stores. The only thing limiting you would be creativity. In fact, integrating third-party applications in your site will never be a challenge. Extra functionalities will always give your customers another reason to spend some more time in your e-commerce store.
Three, the loading time of a Shopify store is incredibly fast. You don’t need to wait for minutes before a rich site starts and finishes to load. Everything will be rendered in your screen, without a fraction of a second. This is how efficient and reliable the platform is.
With this being said, here are few tips to be followed when you build an e-commerce website in Shopify.
1. Use Referral marketing
A referral program for your eCommerce set up is sure to fire things up. Surveys reveal that recommendations from friends and family influence buying decisions. A simple way of getting customers to review and recommend brands to others at the front end will go a long way in getting loyal customers.
A customer gained as a referral has a lifetime value which is 25% over than that of other customers. The referral program is just an easy way of getting existing customers to promote your product. Referral marketing is also known as “word of mouth” marketing and is a great way to drive awareness and sales.
2. Upsell & Cross-sell to your buyers
Many retailers ignore the strongest weapon in their kitty: upselling. Offering customers the option of buying a premium product to what they are looking for could be quite effective. Sometimes customers are unaware of a premium product available or an alternative to what they are looking for. Giving them evidence of how they could benefit from different products related to their original consideration and additional accessories could help in revenue acquiring a new customer.
Offering additional benefits to the product is cross-selling. Supersizing the order, selling a premium product, offering an additional product, offering a related product at a lesser cost along with the original one are classic examples of upselling and cross-selling. What is important to bear in mind is that the offers presented must fit into the budget of the customer. Many customers have an anchor price in mind and must not be put off by high price ranges.
3. Monitor & improve your site speed
Have you checked the speed of your site? It is a random activity that you must keep doing. If your site takes any longer than three seconds to load, then you are losing 50% of your customers.
Nearly 80% of visitors who get frustrated with the slow speed of sites do not visit the site again. You may want to seek the help of a tool that you will help you gauge, monitor and improve the speed of your site.
Almost 92% of consumers trust recommendations from peers and family. About 70% of customers trust reviews and recommendations from strangers who have bought the product. Social proof is where your customers believe that a sizable chunk of people considers the brand worthy enough to be purchased. Most eCommerce platforms benefit from social proof and it is important to have one for every product that you sell.
A powerful tool like ProveSource can easily boost your conversion rate by showing recent sales, positive reviews, number of visitors and more.
5. Send abandoned cart emails
Each time a visitor abandons a product without purchasing, you are losing the customer. The trend is common and well-researched. Visitors add items to their cart but abandon it during checkout. Research shows that almost 70% of shopping carts are abandoned.
It is important to address these hesitations as shoppers who have abandoned these items could be reminded to finish their shopping. They could be lured with a discount or other incentives. A great way to reduce the frequency of abandoned carts is by creating an email recovery program.
This can convince customers to return to the site to complete their original purchase. Draft an email that entices visitors to return to their shopping carts and try offering additional product suggestions to consider buying the product.
6. Send promotional emails
You have made every effort to build a subscriber list to email about your products. But how do you get it to generate revenue? Customers who revisit your site are likely to spend 67% more than new customers. Keep sending promotional emails with offers and discounts to your products to get customers coming back.
Lead your “loyal customers” into something special for a repeat purchase. Make sure you wrap it well for the customer to fall for and everybody’s a winner. Marketing experts vouch for the effectiveness of email marketing as a channel to make sales and garner repeat customers and loyal customer base. Email marketing has and is still one of the most effective strategies for influencing and convincing customers.
7. Simplify your checkout process
Most customers dump their products on an eCommerce site after they reach the checkout process. Paying through the checkout process is when customers get frustrated. It is worth considering the following to simplify your checkout process:
- Get rid of any unnecessary text, buttons and navigation tools
- Try to design a fast guest checkout
- Make sure the process is mobile-friendly
- Offer several payment options
Tweaking your checkout process could go a long way in retaining the customer and converting into a sale. Simplifying your checkout process leads to improving overall sales by optimizing your interface and easing the access to your visitors.
8. Introduce a rewards program
20% of your customer base is responsible for 80% of your future profits. This 20% of customers will be the key to eight of ten of your future sales. So it only makes sense to keep your customers happy. Which customer does not like to be rewarded for a purchase he makes? Amazon Prime is an excellent example of this. Amazon Prime offers value to its program members and offers them a chance to pay an annual membership fee.
You may not want to charge a fee for your rewards program but the Amazon Prime model is something that you can base your own program on. The rewards program is also a great way to generate a loyal customer base. Offering rewards will get customers to buy on your website and this will ensure that your customer base is as solid as ever.
9. Use retargeting ads
Retargeting is a great way to use data that you collect about your visitors. Very often, visitors leave your site without completing the action. You could target these customers on any other device with your advertisement. This could recreate the interest and they may visit your site to complete the sale.
Mazda used this model to create over 50% conversions. They used smart ads to retarget those shoppers who were likely to go to a Mazda dealer within their area and matched their inventory information to those buyers. Retargeting ads matches the shopper behaviour to specific marketing messages.
10. Use google shopping ads
Shopify sites are customised, beautiful, intuitive and also aid in converting sales. But clients often don’t get the kind of traffic they are expecting. Google shopping ads are an agile way to redirect traffic to your Shopify site. This can be done in a focussed and targeted manner which will direct the customer to your landing pages. This can be done in two ways:
a. Google shopping is free with “surfaces across Google” programs.
Participants in the Google Shopping Ads ( or Surface across Google) are eligible to appear free on the results page. You can sync your products and run a Google Smart Shopping Campaign and track results- all of this from Shopify. All you need to do is install Google Shopping feed app and connect to the Google Merchant Center to auto-sync products. You can run a Smart Shopping campaign by linking a new or existing Google Ads account.
11. Use Live chat
Chatting live with your customers is a great way to engage shoppers on your site. Live chat tools are great ways to engage with customers other than email. Live chat tools let you connect with the customers personally after they have arrived on your site and have a direct conversation with them.
It lets you address their concerns and queries right when they are browsing through the site and help them make an informed decision to buy the product. Over 80% of customers need help while buying a product and live chat is a great way to extend customer service capabilities.
12. Offer free shipping whenever possible
Over 50% of customers add products to their carts to qualify for free shipping and over 45% of customers abandon their carts as they need to pay for shipping. In a nutshell, customers hate to pay for shipping and this is an opportunity that you must use to your advantage.
By offering free shipping for products of less value you are generating a sale and also potentially increasing the chances of the customer coming back to make a purchase. Offering free shipping is a major image booster and can make you seem like a trustworthy brand. Such customers could also serve as great referrals and recommend you for your free shopping offer.
It can be now seen that you do not need a huge budget to be successful as an eCommerce platform. You need to get creative and draw strategies that will work for you. You need to incorporate as many tactics and strategies as you can to churn customers.
The consumer is at the heart of everything and is the king. Know your audience, tailor your marketing to suit the audience and take advantage of the available tactics to generate traffic and increase sales.
