Starting a business with Shopify is super simple. After setting up an account, building up a quick storefront, and making a few clicks, you’re a genuine eCommerce business owner. However, that’s just the beginning. Now, you have to get customers to actually buy what you’re selling.

That can be a lot harder than you might think.

If you’re not actively utilizing the right selling and marketing techniques, your store can go completely unnoticed.

Today, we’re going to go over some of the most powerful Shopify tips and tricks to get more customers and get your Shopify store selling like hotcakes and growing beyond what you ever thought possible.

Let’s get started.

Shopify Tips and Tricks: Store Optimization

First things first, you have to make sure your store is up to par and inviting to potential customers. If you throw together a clunky mess, most visitors will hop to a new site without bothering to give you a shot.

Here are some things you need to look out for when building your storefront. Still, remember that the best thing you can do for your store is hiring a Shopify agency to help you out and make your store pop.

Manage Load Times and Performance:

One thing online shoppers don't like very much is when they have to sit around waiting on your site to load due to fifty ads, pop-ups of various kinds, tons of unnecessary photos, and other things bogging down your site's speed. If they have to wait even just thirty seconds for your site to load and let them shop, they'll likely get annoyed and head over to Amazon or another place they can trust not to waste their time.

This can be a difficult thing to balance when you need to implement quite a bit to look like a professional store, but try to keep your site’s load time as close to instantaneous as possible. You’ll scare off fewer customers that way, and the rest of your efforts will work a lot easier.

Professionalism:

This goes without saying, but just because you're online doesn't mean your customers don't expect you to look legit. The days when you could have a clunky online store that looked hand-coded in a high school web design class are long gone. Customers expect your site to be well organized, error-free, and pleasant to look at without a lot of clutter.

The various templates Shopify has available help with organization and decluttering quite a bit, but here are two things to really focus on:

Errors: If there is text, make sure it's written properly. Not only does this make it easier for customers to understand your product descriptions, sales announcements, and everything else, but it also makes you look like you put time and effort into it. Having typos all over your shop just doesn't look professional.
Imagery: You'll need pictures to sell your products. Make sure every picture you upload looks professionally captured, shows off the features people want to see with the product and aren't just tossed all over the place.

User-Friendliness:

Finally, making your shop easy for visitors to navigate and make transactions is absolutely key. You might have a one-of-a-kind product, but the vast majority of customers aren’t going to jump through a bunch of hoops to buy it.

Ensure that navigating your shop is easy, and if you have a lot of product categories or pages, make sure you organize and properly label everything to ensure they’re just a click or two away from finding what they want.

On top of that, take full advantage of the various payment tools at your disposal to match what each customer is trying to use; rather than limiting their methods of converting and oftentimes making them give up.

Shopify Tips and Tricks: Marketing

No one can buy your product if they don’t even know it exists. Furthermore, once they know it exists, you have to convince them that they need it. This is where marketing comes in.

Shopify offers some tools you can use for marketing, and there are plenty of them off-platform that you can utilize.

Here are various tips and tricks we think you need to leverage in your favor during your next marketing campaign.

Research, Research, Research:

No tip on this list of Shopify tips and tricks to get more customers will be as effective as this one. You can pay for high-end ad campaigns all day long. If you don’t understand who is likely to buy your product and how they make their decisions, you’re not going to get very far.

It’s a key point to spend time, and maybe even some money, researching your target audience to identify all of the following factors.

Who are they?
What age demographic are they in?
Does location matter?
Where does your target demographic turn to for information when making purchasing decisions?
Are your targets making purchases out of need or desire?
What type of marketing content does your target demographic respond to the most?
What options does your demographic expect to see from you?
What is your target demographic searching for that can be used to lead them your way?
What platforms are your target demographic on?
What pushes your target demographic to convert the most?
What things do your target demographic not like that you might be doing?

Get as much information as you can regarding the people who are most likely going to buy from you. You can use that information to push conversions. You can also work with a Shopify plus agency that will help you increase your sales and rapidly grow your eCommerce business.

Email Lists:

Email lists are extremely powerful for a few reasons.

First, an email list allows you to directly expose leads to your products and services without having to just hope they stumble upon an ad. You just send the ad to them. Then, they allow you to get a second chance with customers who might have been unsatisfied or just didn’t convert in the first place. Finally, it will allow you to maintain your relationship with your customers and keep them coming back for more.

The issue is that many business owners don’t use email lists properly. They put up a bunch of annoying pop-up notifications that hamper their visitors’ site experiences, get overzealous with email marketing, don’t provide anything of value for those who sign up, and just generally become a nuisance. You’ve probably experienced this yourself.

Luckily, you can learn from their mistakes and do better to ensure your email list is an effective tool that builds up customer trust.

Typically, a good way to get people to sign up is a single pop-up on-site that exchanges their email for something of value; such as an attractive discount on their next purchase. This does two things. First, it makes the new lead more likely to convert, because you’re lowering the price of their next purchase for “free”. So, you get a conversion and a chance to impress the new customer to keep them coming back for more. Then, you also get permission to send them emails.

That's the first step, but what you do with the permission granted is far more important. Mostly, you want to avoid being annoying. Only about a quarter of your emails should be sales-based, while the rest should focus on announcements, providing informational value to the recipient, etc. This shows that you're not just out to pillage their pockets every five seconds, and they get something from being on your email list.

Finally, even if you’re not spamming sales ads, you still shouldn’t fill up your recipient’s inbox. If you’re emailing them frequently, to the point that they’re having to scroll past your emails to find the things that are more important to them, they will likely block your emails; ruining the entire point of doing it. Try to go for an email once or twice a week, or depending on your demographic, maybe only email them once a month. Understanding your email list will help you make the right decision.

Value-Driven Content:

Consumers don’t just haphazardly buy things anymore. Instead, they tend to hop online and do some research to see if they can get some real value out of a purchase first. If done right, you can use this to your advantage.

See, because so many consumers rely on the internet to determine whether or not they should buy something, you can provide them with the educational material they need; albeit, with a little bit of bias.

For example, someone who owns a tow truck business might start a blog, find the most common search phrases, and then construct an article around those. Within the article, they’ll make sure to subtly link back to their service and depict their service as the best solution.

You can do that, too. Let's say you cook rice cookers, and upon further research, you find that a lot of people search for "best rice cooker recipes". You could then write SEO content on a blog or for another website that lists several rice cooker recipes but also create a section that tells readers where to buy the best rice cooker. Coincidentally, you'd want to direct them to your store.

This can be a powerful tool, but you don’t want to abuse it. Ensure that you’re providing honest, useful, information that the reader can truly learn from. This establishes trust, and it makes the reader more likely to head to your shop. If you spend the whole post ranting about how great your rice cookers are, they’ll see what you’re doing and look for another source of information.

Shopify Tips and Tricks: Reputation Building

Your reputation is one of the biggest determining factors in whether or not your store will grow. Obviously, you start out with nothing, and you have to earn your way to gaining the respect of your potential customers. There are a few ways to do this. So, we’ll go over the things you definitely need to do.

Use Social Media:

Social media might get a bit annoying sometimes, but it has quickly become one of the most powerful marketing tools you can have; better yet, it’s accessible to anyone.

Not only can you use social media for direct marketing to your followers, but you can also use it to establish a presence and a reputation outside of your shop.

This can be done with the same type of stuff you see companies do every day. You make value-driven posts that provide educational information relevant to your target demographic, align your brand with the movements and causes that they identify with, and overall position yourself as more than just a brand on the internet. You become a real person they can trust.

Beyond that, social media also allows you to communicate with your customers in a more personal way. They’re bound to comment, which really allows you to show your professionalism and how much you care. However, that can also work against you.

If you aren’t consistent with your posts, post too many obvious ads, or neglect the people reaching out to you, you can achieve the exact opposite of your goal and build up a bit of infamy. Plenty of small business owners have sabotaged their own businesses by letting their nerves get the best of them, too. Don’t forget that, while most customers are great, some can be a real pain. However, responding to the less reasonable people can make you look bad to everyone. So, you definitely need to ensure that you go into it with a plan, commit to it, and keep your emotions under control.

Customer Service:

Finally, our last tip is something every business owner, on Shopify or otherwise, should take to heart. Your dedication to satisfying your customers means everything. If you ensure they have a good experience and are accommodating when they don't, you'll see the results over time. This isn't something you can implement and see results within a week, but it is a commitment that will play a big part in whether or not your store succeeds and thrives for years to come.

Get More Help with Shrimpton

At Shrimpton, we help you get your eCommerce endeavors up and rolling while bypassing a lot of the hassle most business owners have to deal with at first. Our #1 Shopify agency is here to help you rapidly and efficiently scale your e-commerce business.