Shopify is a hub for eCommerce marketing that allows users to build, customize, and sell on their personalized Shopify store. If you're looking to run an online business, this platform is a fantastic place to start.
With over one million businesses using Shopify, you're in good company, which also means the competition is stiff. You may be asking yourself how you can set your Shopify store apart from the competition and what tools you can implement to generate more sales.
This article will guide you through how to set up your online store for success, implement eCommerce marketing, increase web traffic using SEO optimization, and more. It doesn't matter if it's your first time using Shopify or not—these tips and tricks will work for everyone, no matter the size of your business. All that matters is that you're willing to put in the work necessary to see results from your efforts.
With these tips and tricks in mind, you'll be well on your way to increasing Shopify sales. Let's dive right in!
What Is Shopify?
Shopify is a leading e-commerce platform where users can design and manage an online business. They provide templates and easy-to-use integrations that allow you to have complete control over the look of your digital store.
The best part? Shopify makes it easy to create a high-quality website without any coding experience. The platform is streamlined and straightforward, so you can focus on selling your products. Shopify is fantastic for beginners trying to launch their first e-commerce store and existing entrepreneurs looking to grow their business.
However, because Shopify is so popular, you may be wondering how to stand out against the competition.
Read on to find out how to make more Shopify sales and attract loyal customers.
How Can I Increase My Shopify Sales?
Tip 1: Go Back To The Basics: Ramping Up Your Shopify Store
You've put in the work to design your store and upload products, but maybe you aren't gaining as much traction as you wanted. Not having success right away can be frustrating, but not to worry—going back to the basics by doing market research and taking advantage of Shopify's many resources can increase traffic to your store.
This section will outline ways you can improve your business plan and storefront to start selling more products faster.
Do Your Research
As an online seller, you shouldn't underestimate the importance of market research. A little legwork now can save you a lot of time and money later on, especially if your products don't sell as well as expected at first.
To start, browse through other online stores selling similar products to yours. What are they doing right? What could be improved upon in your store? Are your prices matching the competition?
Keep this information in mind when creating your website and product pages. This knowledge will help you increase Shopify sales in the future because you'll better understand what works and what doesn't work for your target audience.
Find A Niche
If you're feeling overwhelmed by brands selling similar products, you can adjust what you sell to fit a more specific customer base. Using what you learned from research, try to think outside the box—what is missing from the market that buyers might be looking for?
With a niche product, you'll be able to hone in on your strengths and interests. Many Shopify users choose products based on their interests or career background. If you love DIY projects and want to sell an artisan product, that is also an option to make your passion project a business plan. The more creative you can be, the better.
Customers may be turned off or overwhelmed by a store with a random assortment of products or brands. Additionally, having a specific niche or product will make marketing and tagging your products with keywords much more manageable. Less work for you and your customers!
Explore Your Shopify Plan
With three plans to choose from, you may not be getting the best bang for your buck. Make sure to compare the plan you have to other options to see if what you chose is serving the size, scalability, and cost of your current business.
Here’s a quick comparison of Shopify’s paid plans:When choosing whether to update your plan, consider the size of your staff, your required amount of inventory locations and if you want to scale your business internationally. These factors may impact the number of online sales you can make in the future, so consider their benefits.
Alternatively, if you're paying for a plan where you aren't taking advantage of all the benefits, this is a perfect opportunity to downgrade and cut costs.
Showcase Your Products With Powerful Text, Images, and Videos
When designing your store, you should always consider how your webpage will look to your customers. To encourage more purchases, you should create a shopping experience that's easy to navigate and focused on the customer—as well as aesthetically pleasing.
To attract the attention of customers, you can take advantage of Shopify’s easy-to-use media tools, where you can input detailed descriptions of your products and relevant keywords, as well as high-quality images, videos, and 3D models.
After playing around with your design and product pages, you can preview how your digital storefront looks from an outside perspective by clicking on the eye icon next to the online store button on your dashboard.
Add Apps
The Shopify app directory has over 6,0000 different apps that users can integrate with their store. The Shopify app store is an excellent resource for businesses of any size because it allows sellers to think outside the box and incorporate personalized features into their online store.
You can add apps to your Shopify store to grow your customer base, expand on the services offered on your website, and boost online sales. There are designated categories for marketing, conversion, customer service, store design, and more!
Below are some examples of popular downloads on the Shopify app store that can take your sales on Shopify to the next level:
These are just a few of the fantastic apps you can implement to make your store more efficient. Throughout the article, I will highlight more of the most popular apps on the Shopify app store, so keep an eye out for my recommendations.
Provide More Payment Options
To appeal to a wide range of prospective customers, you should have various payment options in your store. Having multiple payment gateways is essential because it gives online shoppers the convenience of paying for their order quickly and easily using their preferred method.
Shopify has its own payment gateway called Shopify Payments which is the easiest to integrate with your store. If you want to set up an alternative payment method, Shopify is compatible with PayPal, Facebook Pay, Amazon Pay, Apple Pay, and cryptocurrency. Here’s a list of all the payment gateways that Shopify accepts.Sell In Person
If you're selling products in your local area or have a brick-and-mortar store, consider using Shopify's Point of Sale (POS) system to help increase sales. You can download the app to your mobile device to integrate your store with your Shopify website.
With Point of Sale, customers can browse in-store or buy online and pick up their items in-store, allowing tons of flexibility without the hassle of managing a separate storefront and Shopify store. Sellers can also use POS for in-person sales at pop-up stalls and fairs.
Tip 2: Email Marketing
An essential facet of eCommerce marketing is email marketing— and with Shopify, it's easier than ever to keep in touch with loyal customers via email communication to make more sales.
Email marketing is the practice of using email to promote products or services. Businesses can use email to communicate information about their product or service to potential and paying customers without hassle or high costs.
This section will explore how to easily and quickly implement email marketing to create more sales and improve customer retention. To learn more, another helpful resource is my article on the advantages of email marketing.Start With Choosing Email Marketing Software
Shopify Email is a fantastic tool to get started with marketing via email. Just like building your storefront is made easy using Shopify, so is using the pre-made templates and branded emails.
You can create beautiful newsletters and promotions that speak directly to your target audience without coding experience. The best part is, with a Shopify plan, you can send up to 2,500 professional-looking emails for free.
If you need to send a higher volume of emails, you can also integrate apps like TinyEmail, a free Shopify app that lets you send up to 25k emails and allows you to track conversion rates and revenue from your email campaigns.Improve Your Email Campaigns
Image credit: Shopify.com
Design a newsletter that pops and is easy to navigate with links. To pique the customer's interest, you can advertise special deals and promotions.
Make sure to include a heading or a message which will make people want to read the rest of your email. Stand out with vibrant images of your products and streamlined designs (the photo above is a perfect example).
Once a customer has subscribed to your mailing list, send out emails on a schedule that works for you—weekly or monthly is best, so you don’t overwhelm your customers or appear spammy.
Capture More Email Subscribers
For more efficient email campaigns, you can add email collection tools to your website that give people the option to sign up for your newsletter when they make a purchase. This tactic is an excellent (and free) way of getting more subscribers and boosting Shopify sales in the process.
Shopify makes it easy to collect customer information by prompting them to add their contact information to sign up for newsletters during checkout. If they accept, you'll be able to access their information on the customers' page of your dashboard.
Send Wishlist Reminder Emails
Shoppers who are about to make a purchase will often save items to their wishlist. You can then send personalized emails that remind them of these items, which gives them an incentive to buy your products. Wishlist + Share + Reminder is a helpful app you can add to your store to send automated email reminders to customers who have your products on their wishlist.
Tip 3: Social Media Marketing
You can use social media marketing to tell your business’ story—your Shopify store isn't only about selling products, it's also about selling your brand.
Social media marketing is a way of gaining website traffic and attention through popular web-based platforms. These have been designed to enable people to share content in real time with other users within the same online communities.
That means you need to use popular platforms with your customer base—I’m talking about Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Snapchat.
If you don't have a lot of experience with social media, that's not a problem. You can learn how to increase your sales by following these tips below.
Invest Time In Your Social Media Marketing Strategy
Social media is a very powerful tool for promoting your website and garnering more sales, so keep that in mind as you do your research. The more time and energy you put into sharing content on social media, the better results you'll get.
Shopify provides many apps and resources to get started with the process. A fantastic source is Shopify Learn, which provides a wealth of information through free online courses on all things marketing. You can learn from successful Shopify entrepreneurs on topics from Facebook ads to influencer marketing.Optimize For Mobile Devices
The more people who can access your online store on their mobile devices, the better, as most online shoppers also use smartphones and tablets. In fact, 79% of mobile users have used their smartphones for online shopping.
You should optimize your design and make sure it's user-friendly on every device. A layout that looks fantastic on a desktop could be hard to navigate when viewed on a smaller screen, so keep this in mind when launching new designs or layout changes.
Reach Out To Your Inner Circle To Get Your First Sales On Shopify
If you're just starting out, don't be afraid to reach out to people you trust and ask them for help. This process might involve encouraging family members or friends to make your first orders and leave reviews.
You can also market on your personal social media accounts—you already have a potential customer base just a few clicks away! The more you engage on social media, the more attention your Shopify store will get. Incentivize your followers to repost news about your Shopify store, or even share your products, on their Instagram stories or Facebook pages for even more advertising.
Set Up A Facebook Channel
Suppose you're already marketing and selling products on Facebook. In that case, you can use the Facebook Channel app on the Shopify app store to connect your Shopify store with your Facebook business page. Integrating these platforms is a fantastic way of increasing sales by reaching out to an online community that already knows and trusts you.
Facebook channel is simple to set up—once you connect your accounts, the products listed on your Shopify store will also be viewable in your Facebook catalog. From there, shoppers can browse on your Facebook store and quickly check out your Shopify website.
If you don’t have a Facebook store, follow these steps to get started:
Voila! It’s that easy to integrate. With Facebook, your reach to potential customers will be much more extensive but the checkout and payment process will remain easy and streamlined through Shopify. Keep in mind that the process can take 24-48 hours for Facebook to review and approve.
Connect To Instagram Shopping
Instagram shopping is a feature that allows businesses to market their products on Instagram using tags. Customers who click on the tag will be directed to your Shopify store directly from Instagram.
To connect Instagram Shopping to your Shopify account, you must first ensure that your Instagram profile is designated as a professional account.
From there, you will follow similar steps to integrating with Facebook:
Similar to syncing with Facebook, the review process can take up to 48 hours. Once approved, you will have another popular social media platform ready to advertise and sell on.
Get More Shopify Sales Via Amazon
If you already have a professional account on Amazon Marketplace, consider linking it to your Shopify using the Amazon Integration Plus app.
The more people exposed to your products, the better chance there is of increasing your overall sales. Once you’ve downloaded the app, you can synchronize your Shopify products with your Amazon marketplace store, allowing for a streamlined workflow between the two platforms.
Run A Marketing Campaign
Marketing campaigns on Shopify are multi-faceted and can help you reach your sales goals in a variety of ways:
With Shopify’s campaign templates, you can easily integrate social media platforms and marketing apps to reach your goals. You also have the option to create your own campaign if you have a unique ecommerce marketing strategy.
To access campaigns, go to the marketing section of your Shopify admin page. You’ll see campaigns there and can click on add activity to browse the options.
There are possibilities for a variety of ads, both free and paid. Below are examples of what you can do with Shopify campaigns:
As you can see, there are tons of options to get your foot in the door of social media marketing using Shopify’s platform.
Instead of spending hours researching how to purchase Facebook ads or paying high prices for advertising space, you can easily access these campaigns through your Shopify page and start reaching larger audiences on sites like Facebook, Snapchat, Pinterest, and Yahoo.
Make Your Customers Into Brand Ambassadors
People who love your products and have a good customer experience are prime candidates for being brand ambassadors. Reward these individuals by reaching out to them with exclusive specials, discounts, and other opportunities in exchange for promotion on their social media pages.
If you cannot find the right fit for your brand, you can locate brand ambassadors with apps like Affiliate Marketing Ambassador, which takes the hard work out of the process. You can set your account to work on autopilot, so that ambassadors can find you—the app creates unique discount codes for each ambassador, so you won’t have to worry about recruiting manually. You’ll be able to set their commission rates and track their sales.Partner With influencers For Paid Shoutouts
Image credit: Shopify.com
You can pay Instagram influencers to feature your products on their page. If the influencer has an excellent following, this will directly impact Shopify sales. User-generated content gives you more exposure and puts your brand in front of a new audience that you haven't reached before.
To get started, you can either reach out to influencers directly or utilize resources like Shopify Learn, which has many courses and tutorials about influencer marketing. Familiarizing yourself with social media influencing is essential since it’s a quickly growing community and the future of advertising.Tip 4: Embrace Personalization And Interact With Customers
Potential buyers want to feel like they're buying from real people rather than big companies. You want customers to feel appreciated and there’s no better way to do that than interacting with them and creating personalized content about your brand.
If you can utilize Shopify's communication tools to interact with your customers and build relationships, you will provide better service and give buyers a better shopping experience.
Engage Online Store Visitors With Shopify Inbox
In this day and age, people want instant help and responses from brands they interact with. Luckily, Shopify Inbox is here to aid you in your customer service needs.
You can use the live chat feature to talk to customers from any device at any time. Using the chat, you can also share discount codes and see what customers have in their cart at the time of contact.
If you’re busy or don’t have the resources to meet all of your customer’s demands, you can set automated messages and create quick reply shortcuts. You also have the option to set up an FAQ page if you’re getting a lot of the same inquiries.
Create A Blog
Shopify blogs are a fantastic way to boost content and promote your products while being creative. Shopify makes it straightforward to create blog posts right from your dashboard.
To get started, all you need to do is go to your admin page and click on the online store button, under which you will see blog posts.
From there, you can blog about your latest collections or products and add pictures and videos—think of the tool as an extended product description. You can also add an excerpt to showcase a blog on your store page.
Run Sales And Promotions
Running sales and giving loyal shoppers discounts is another way of connecting with your Shopify customers. You can incentivize customers to shop on your page by offering discount codes—either a general code that everyone can use or a unique code to reward top customers in a loyalty program.
By offering discounts and BOGO (buy one, get one) offers, you will not only make your buyers happy, but you will also benefit your own business and increase your average order value. Deals like this will help you move unwanted inventory at a faster rate. Shopify also claims that checkouts with a discount code can raise conversion chances by 25%.
Get Referrals From Your Existing Customers
Incentivize existing customers to help you find new ones. Reward them for reaching out to their network and bringing in new business by offering discounts or gifts. For example, when one of your customers refers a friend who makes a purchase, they can get 20% off their next order as a reward.
You can use apps like Referral Candy to automate your referral program, meaning that customers who made successful referrals will automatically be rewarded. This app will make tracking these referrals simple and easier to scale if you wish to expand your program.Add A Review Section
Add a review section to your store so customers can share their experiences and opinions with the entire Shopify community. That way, other shoppers will know what to expect when purchasing from you and won't have to ask you as many questions personally.
You can add a review section to your store by adding the free Product Reviews app. The reviews come with templates to match the aesthetic of your store. There’s also an option to add your review scores to your Google search reviews, which helps with SEO optimization.Tip 5: Drive More Traffic To Your Store
Image credit: StyleFactoryProductions.com
Target Your Ideal Customers With Paid Advertising
In addition to running campaigns, you can use services like Google Ads as another avenue of paid advertising. They have a Smart Shopping campaign that you can integrate with your Shopify.
With Smart Shopping, you can create various ads that will appear on Google Search, YouTube, Gmail, and more. You’ll also be able to track conversions to see if these ads are effective. You can check out Shopify's guide on Google Smart Shopping Campaigns for more information.Optimize Your Marketing With A/B Testing
A/B testing is all about running experiments to find out what works best. For example, you might try two different store templates or advertisements to track which variation brings in new customers.
You can use apps like Neat A/B testing to get started with the process and see what works best for your shop (and sales).Build Organic Traffic With Great SEO
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is a long-term strategy, and it takes time and patience, but the results can be well worth it. It entails optimizing your Shopify store so that Google and other search engines recognize it as relevant content for specific keywords and tags.
You can check out Shopify's blog post that goes in detail about eCommerce SEO for beginners to learn more.That said, if you want to be in complete control of your SEO, learning how to create an ecommerce website might just be the way to go.
When you create a website from scratch, you can optimize it for search engines from the very beginning. This means that your site will have a much better chance of ranking high in search results right from the start.
How To Increase Shopify Sales - FAQ
The amount of time it takes to get sales on Shopify depends on a few factors. You'll have 14 days on the free trial to build your store but will need to purchase a paid plan to go live.
The sooner you purchase advertisements, start posting on social media sites, and optimize for SEO, the faster your site should gain traction. However, because there is so much competition, you need to ensure that your site is polished and professional—take the time needed to design your product pages, upload high-quality images, and set up payment options.
Some customers may also be turned off by a slowly-loading page or a difficult-to-navigate website, so test that your store runs smoothly before launching.
To gauge the amount of time it’s taken other beginners to make sales, you can check out Shopify Discussions, a forum where members post questions and provide insight.There are many hacks to get more sales on Shopify. Here are some of the suggestions I made in the article:
Throughout the article, I mentioned quite a few of the best Shopify apps to increase sales, so here is a summary of them:
The best ways to promote your Shopify store are through paid campaigns, including advertisements on social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest.
There are also opportunities to partner with influencers and create loyalty programs for your top customers, whether through making them brand ambassadors or implementing benefits for sales made through referrals.
You can also showcase your business for free on social media and through marketing via email. The more work you put into creating compelling marketing campaigns, the more site visitors you will attract.
Conclusion
Image credit: wdexplorer.com
With these tips and tricks, you will start making more money faster on Shopify. Once you utilize the power of ecommerce marketing to successfully grow your business with social media ads, targeted SEO campaigns, and customer engagement, you’ll be on your way to making more sales.
I understand that the process can be overwhelming at first, so make a step-by-step list of what you need to accomplish, using this article as a guide—from the basics of selecting the right plan for your business, to customer services practices once you start making online sales.
If you’re just starting out, make sure to check out my Shopify dropshipping article as well as refer to my video on how to make money on Shopify as a beginner.
Happy selling!
