Do you want to skyrocket your Shopify store? Beyond the Trends: Essential Life Hacks for Every Era.
E-commerce is firmly expected to continue its upward orbit from year to year. The growing success of this is not questionable. Whether you have been an entrepreneur for a long time or you are just about to start your business, it’s always good to get inspiration for the further work. In the following, we are about to give you e-commerce advice that can be evergreen. Trends come and go in this field, so a focus on core principles is key. That’s why we are here to help. You’ll notice the differences.
Every year is a time for changes, you always need to be up-to-date with the latest news and trends. Not just about e-commerce, but about everything on the internet and in the world. Anything can have an effect on sales. How can you make the most of it? Probably entering the way of long-time success, having bigger traffic, more purchases, and starting to get a bigger income. Try to make customers satisfied, so that they can become your fans.
Here are our tips and ideas that can help you with your online store. Let’s boost your e-commerce sales!
1. Try to hop on trends early
It’s recommended to be always up to date in commerce, e-commerce. If you hop on a trend at the right time, you will get a lot of sales. As an example, 2017 was the year of fidget spinners. If an entrepreneur hopped on this train early, he probably got loads of purchases. But if someone started to sell them for example in late Summer or in Autumn, the online store probably wouldn’t have experienced high demand for those little spinning products. Even if this gadget was still in people’s hands. When you hop on trends early, you will be among those places from where customers buy the product with pleasure. It’s because you will be also among those few online stores that sell the item, you’ll be well-known in that field.
2. Use abandoned cart software
There are a lot of abandoned cart tools for Shopify stores. You can check those out at the Shopify App Store. What is this thing, by the way? In short, you can get more money thanks to this. In long, these apps and toolboxes help you get back those customers who put something in their carts but then left your shop. The app sends a notification to those people by e-mail or on Messenger. You wouldn’t think how many potential customers left online stores like this, and you also wouldn’t think how much these applications can help.
3. People will judge by the book’s cover
“Don’t judge a book by its cover.” Well. People will do! You have to take care of how your online store’s design looks like. No doubt that the landing page is the most important. Is Your Store’s Design Holding You Back? Reimagine Your Online Space. What should you do? First, keep in mind, that if people won’t get the thought from the first sight that you are a reliable, neat, quality-look place, it’s less likely that they will buy. If your website doesn’t look good, people won’t feel comfortable. Second, take care of orderliness, pretty/cool/clear/modern/aesthetic design, quality content (by text and pictures) on every page. As for the landing/main page: you have to raise attention there, maintain interest, persuade, and encourage further action.
By the appearance: use matching colors, unified branding elements, attractive headlines, and these have to be easy to take in. Also, use high-quality, demanding images. However, be temperate, do not upload too much content on the landing page, nobody will check all of that. If you don’t have a good sense on designs or you just can’t decide what would be the best, do not be afraid to ask for help! Before you publish the site, do some tests, and ask others what they think about that. The appearance of your online store is extremely important to get more purchases. Try to be unique, and do not forget about following trends.
4. Send unique e-mails
If you do it right, e-mail marketing can bring you fine traffic and purchases, also can boost your conversion rates. The one thing you have to forget is the simple sample e-mail. You have to write attractive and creative text – but do not be too much, be temperate. As for the appearance, use HTML code to make messages look better. Furthermore, try to do targeting and segmentation too and always try to reach the adequate audience. These are the most important things you need to consider about e-mails and newsletters:
- As for the order e-mails. When the product, package is on it’s way to the buyer, write the text in the name of the product. People will like it. So, write something like this: “Hello XY, I’m on my way to you!” Continue the message in this style.
- Send abandoned cart e-mails. Use clever techniques. After people leave your online store without purchasing while they put products in their cart before, contact them by e-mail. Draw their attention. Try to bring them back to check out. You can also do this on Facebook. There are more Shopify apps to it.
- On your online store’s surface and in e-mails, try to avoid the phrases “newsletter” and “subscribe”. Why? Because these can deter people. Find words that express the same meaning, but are more creative.
- Make the e-mails’ look unique. Give them good design.
- Thank you e-mails. After visitors became buyers, send them kind messages saying for example “hurray”, but don’t be too much. Stand out from the other boring letters. Make the e-mails personal.
- After people bought from you, send them customized messages about for example how they can use the ordered product. Also, you can send their your newest blog posts – if you have a blog.
- Send survey e-mails. It’s good because you can see by the results what changes your online store would need.
- Surprise messages, offer people discounts, coupons by e-mail.
5. Pretty packaging
Think about those moments when you just receive a package by mail. When do you have the bigger smile on your face? When it is just a simple box or bag with a white paper in it – and the product of course? Or when it has a unique packaging? With a special box, special design, saying a great message in it… Use your most creative ideas. But please note, you only do it when you can also see the product in real life, and the supplier doesn’t send the package right to the customer.
6. Give discounts
Giving discounts is a good idea to boost your sales. For example, if people see an advert that is talking about a 50% sale, they will more likely click. It would be more engaging than just a simple ad saying what product you can find in the shop. Showing relatively big headlines on your landing page is also good, you can keep your visitors with that. Of course, you have to show what discounts you give on the certain product pages too. The best is when you have expiring promotions or offer free shipping – these things don’t let people procrastinate the purchases, also can keep them motivated. Customers like to see reduced prices. Emotions are the leaders of commerce. However, stay sober. Don’t be too much. Be temperate. If people have to see you always have discounts, they can become suspicious.
7. Gift with the package
Giving a little gift with every package is also a good idea. You can make customers smile this way. Remember, you are also happy when a company sends you gummy bears with electrical products you’ve ordered. Also, when you buy a book, it’s good to get bookmarks with it. Think through what would fit more to your online store’s products and choose a small gift depending on that. You can become more sympathetic to customers, and it can make them order from your store again and again in the future. Make them be your fans.
8. Don’t hide anything
If you have a website where essential details are hidden because the site’s structure is complex, it is time for a change. You have to make sure customers have access to every relevant information. Create a surface where people can reach anything with just a few clicks. Make everything as easy as possible. Put everything in separate submenus. Don’t make them far less likely to actually become your customer. It’s disadvantageous if they have to search for information for a lot of time.
9. Focus on customer service
Caring for customer relationship is such an important thing. People always have questions about everything, even if it’s an information you have already talked about on your website. However, you can get questions that you haven’t been prepared for. Having a live chat software, opportunity, a real-time customer assistance can help you keep your visitors and turn them to become real buyers. Probably if an online store doesn’t have a chance to ask, he will close your page and won’t purchase. Furthermore, maybe you have this kind of chat, or you provide an e-mail address, phone number, also you say people “feel free to ask on Facebook”, but your response time is really long. It’s disadvantageous, you can lose customers. You have to be always ready to help, before selling and after selling too. So please take this advice.
10. Dream big
It can be a platitudinous statement, but it’s always good to keep in mind. Dream big, never stop dreaming, have dreams then start to make them come true. If you have an online Shopify store you are in charge. Having your own business lets you create your life and work as you want them to be like. Even if you have difficulties sometimes, you need to know, those things lead you to the final things, to become successful and have a good income – if you do everything in the right way. About dreaming: first of all, decide what products you want to sell. Items that you think people would love and need.
Find the perfect niche for yourself and for others, for the market. Whether you want for example an online store selling organic and natural makeup or offering electrical products, seize every opportunity, be brave, dare trying new things, do not be afraid and be sober and sensible. Try applications that can help you to have bigger traffic and more purchases and so on. Be encouraged enough to make your online dreams come true. Try affiliates, or create YouTube videos by yourself. Be your own boss, have a big income, you can do it! And don’t forget: let others help you – even if it’s a friend, an expert or an application. What we are doing now: encouraging you to get started with your own business, online Shopify store – if you still hesitate. Make yourself be essential and irreplaceable on the market with your products and service.
“Dream big. Start small. But most of all, start.” /Simon Sinek/
11. Be patient
This tip is not just for e-commerce but for life itself too. But as for your online store, what you need to be patient about? • When customers ask, answer patiently, even if you heard the same question for the 100th time. • Be patient if your traffic and sales don’t grow as intensively as you’ve expected. It will get better if you do things right. Be optimistic, and do not look at things as they are frustrating. Every successful company has difficulties, but you can learn from them. So, be patient also when you have problems or a hard time. Don’t want everything come fast and with ease, without doing anything.
12. Use affiliate marketing
If you have an online store, if you sell unique products, if there’s demand for your items, if you’ve found the right niche, using affiliate program can be a great thing to do. This is about building relationships with relevant influencers. They can show your items to a bigger audience. So this is a good idea to have bigger traffic and get more sales. You can ask bloggers, YouTubers, well-known Instagram or Facebook users to promote your products. Check out what are the conditions of doing the affiliate program right, make sure you can do it, and then just get into it.
13. Target well
Well, it has to be one of the very first steps when you decide to establish an online store. So, the first thing is to find out what you want to sell, the second is to decide who you want to sell those products to. It’s important to identify the right target audience. This is how you can target people with your ads later (for example on Facebook where you need to do a lot of settings when advertising). And this is how you can always think about how to sell your products, in which way. You need to talk with them what they need, and also that’s not good when things are jumbled. So even if you are having an e-commerce business for a long time, you need to make it more clear to yourself that who is your target audience. If you do everything well, you will have more sales.
14. What, why, how?
These questions – and their answers – are for the product pages, for the description. Also, these are important as for your entire online store, the message you show. To put it simply: tell your customers, audience what you sell/provide, why and how. How they can reach what they want, how you do things. This can be a guide to them, this can make the process of buying easier! Tell people what to do! Use the best words, and have an effect on others emotions!
15. Optimize for all devices
This is something that makes people think you are something out of this world. If you use responsive web design you will be cool and user-friendly, so much! Having responsive design means that the structure of your website conforms to your devices and the size of the window when you set it smaller or bigger. Care about being legible on each device, and you optimize well. You can make people’s lives easier with this, even if it seems like a little thing.
16. Check your analytics
If you haven’t checked your analytics before, you have to do changes now. You can check the statistics for a reason, they are not just decorations. That’s just one thing that you are curious about how many people click on your site and from what sources. It can be really helpful. Watch analytics and do your job depending on your results in the analytics. There’s a lot of software etc out there now that tell you many details about your traffic and about how people behave on your site, where they click the most, how much time they spend on certain pages and so on. If you always check the analytics you can learn from it and you can create more – returning – traffic and more purchases after that.
17. Provide coupon codes
You can provide coupon codes by e-mail to your subscribers. There are more potential techniques of course, for example, pop-up windows on your website when people are about to leave your website. Or when it’s a special occasion like Easter either the starting of school. Furthermore, let’s see what if you are having an affiliate program. When they show your products, you can give them coupon codes what they can offer to their audience. You can boost your sales with these methods. You can make them feel you have a nice online store. If you are nice to people, they will buy more from you, again and again. You can keep customers.
18. Use Syncee with your Shopify store
Haven’t you used Syncee for adding products to your online store yet? Then the time for change has come! Syncee is a Shopify application you can manage your products with. This service lets you add data feed file provided by your supplier to your Shopify store. The file can be CSV, XML, XLS(X), TXT or JSON. Syncee can automatically import and update, synchronize the product lists with the online stores and no programming skills are required. The application has full product variant support. So, you can automate your product management with us and keep your virtual stockpile up-to-date. Syncee helps Shopify store owners to handle their drop shipping product management easier. If you want to know more, check out our site in detail, go to Shopify App Store or learn more in Syncee’s Help center.
This year the app has new features:
- Higher product managing speed of your Shopify store, tasks run faster.
- New dashboard and more information added.
- Product Import new features:
- Awesome new “Basic products filter”.
- Added “Updating basic mapping settings” to the Field mapping step.
- Added “Custom field(s)”, you can add all products a custom value.
- Added “hide” product which is not in the source file when updating the products.
- Added “hide” products which have 0 quantity in the file when updating the products.
- Added more product number information to the summary page.
19. Refresh your content
It’s not about products, it’s about the textual and visual content on your website, and the structure of that. You have to refresh it, make it develop from time to time. Especially if it hasn’t been modern, up-to-date yet. What changes may you need? Consider making the texts more reader-friendly. Create it cool, use headlines, don’t write long sentences and paragraphs. Don’t let the structure be a maze.
What else can you put on your site?
Use high-quality product images. Upload photos that your customers made being next to their ordered item. Create videos about your products in use. Make ‘Add to Cart’ buttons prevalent. Have detailed descriptions. Use recommendation engine by browsing history. Write a blog about your products and service. Make your design aesthetic. Provide enough information about everything. Make your main and product pages structure clear and well-designed. Focus on quality. Show others why you are reliable. Be neat. Use good grammar – feel free to ask for help or use Google’s Grammarly. Create a Frequently Asked Questions page. Upload size chart for dresses for example. Upload references. You can read more about this topic in our other article, click here for that.
20. Use ads
This year you have to use ads or do remarketing if you haven’t worked with them before. The reason why is, that you can get more purchases this way. You can use ads on Facebook, on Instagram, on YouTube etc., and with Google AdWords. What is remarketing? Remarketing is when someone was in your online store before and after that, he will see ads about your site on a lot of platforms. It’s good because people can return to make – more – purchases. Probably you will need to do tests before you commit yourself with the final targeting, picture, and text. Experimenting this way will eventually bring you more traffic and more sales.
21. Be on social media
If you want to create bigger traffic for yourself and having long-time fans, it’s always good to be social. Well: be on multiple social media platforms. These are like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, YouTube, Tumblr, LinkedIn, Google+ for example. Having a blog can be also beneficial. Okay, you have signed up, but that’s not nearly enough. You need to be active. If you are not, then that’s not really worth being up there. If potential customers see that your last post was published half a year ago, they will think your online store doesn’t exist anymore or that you are not taking care of your business. I know, you have a lot of things to do about your venture, but other people don’t know that from the outside. If you want to make your online store more successful, you have to do more things and create more time to do stuff about that for yourself. So, if you are not active, people would decide not to buy from you.
What content can you upload to these social media platforms? Here we give you some advice, but you need to figure out what content is the most appropriate for your store and on which site. So, some examples:
product images, post about discounts, post by product categories, videos, inspiration or motivational quote, user-created content, review/feedback from customers, upcoming looks, pretty creative self-made images, tell what services you provide (about delivery, customer service etc). Use hashtags – but in the right way!
Anyway, you can connect your online store as for selling with some of these social media platforms using the adequate options, services there.
22. If your visitors are insecure, they won’t buy!
If you feel like you need any more information, please check out our other article. That is about what could be the problem if you have traffic but you have no sales. You can read about interesting things like these there: price • reliability • main page • product page • quality • design • images • grammar • call to action • reference • text • orderliness • warranty • delivery • size chart • information • social media • live chat • aida • drop shipping • focus on the target.
Do you want to know what products are the best to sell? Check our relating article about that!
