It’s no secret that eCommerce presents a huge revenue opportunity. Moving beyond the limited scope of a local shop allows you to expand your offerings to your entire state, country, and even planet. That’s a large playing field, which is good for any seller.
On the other hand, the realities of online business mean you can expect some hefty competition for your eCommerce store because everyone else has a global reach as well. Today’s shop owners face challenges from huge companies like Amazon in the battle for supremacy among entrepreneurs and small store owners.
Therefore, if you want your Shopify store to succeed from first sale to the ultimate online shopping experience, you’re going to need a strategic plan. Using the right apps to boost sales is one such tool to put in your kit right now – though if you’re looking to boost traffic, increase sales, and beat out the competition on your eCommerce platform, you’re going to need more than that.
In this post, we’ll first take a quick look at some of the most common reasons for low sales. From there, we’ll discuss eight important Shopify sales strategies and then briefly cover some of the best Shopify apps available today.
Even if a Shopify store gets decent traffic, it’s still possible to see slow purchases and flat sales trends. There are many reasons your Shopify sales might be lagging, but the most common include:
If any of the above describes you, don’t feel bad. Lots of Shopify store owners struggle with the same issues, which is where the following smart strategies come in.
Good intentions are not enough to ensure consistent Shopify sales. If you want each potential customer who stops by your shop to stay awhile, you need a sales strategy. Only then can you increase both traffic and revenue. The following step-by-step approach will help you do just that.
Search engine optimization, or SEO, is a way of making your content appealing to web crawlers as well as to Google. That way, your blog posts, web pages, and new product pages will attract the attention of a web browser, which is often the first step in attracting an actual human. If you want organic traffic – that which comes through searches rather than ads – you must start here.
Good SEO includes a few basic tasks. First, you must make sure all your listings have complete metadata by using tags and descriptions to tell bots what they’re about. Then, audit frequently for inaccurate information and broken links, which can reduce the quality of your site and shop. And lastly, stay in the know with tools like Google Trends or Google Keyword Planner to learn what should be included in your site content.
Social media platforms are an amazing source of advertising, and influencers are often eager to help. Many online leads come through Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and other social platforms – so that’s where you want to be as well with the help of influencer marketing.
The basic idea is that you give someone a product to promote, either in exchange for that product or for a commission. They direct their followers to your shop, and their followers buy from you. It’s also important you make sure that you fully flesh out your listings, answer common FAQ questions, and provide customers with the support they need in order to trust you.
Using paid ads (like Google Ads or Facebook ads) is a common strategy for people who want to grow their shop’s potential beyond organic traffic and social media marketing. If you’re looking to bring more people in, though, you need to make sure your ad campaigns will convert.
To do this, focus first on imagery and copy, which the customer will encounter initially. Once you have leads coming in, make sure you put effort into segmentation: who is coming from where, and what do they want? That way, you can target your ads to the right people. Iterate as necessary.
It’s critical to optimize for mobile these days, as discussed above. That means your homepage, landing page, and other eCommerce destinations need to work for people completing the search and checkout process on their phones.
It’s also imperative to optimize for user experience as well. A good customer experience goes beyond the standard content marketing requirements of great product images and product descriptions; it also involves considering site design, strategic choice of form fields, button placements, and overall website functionality to make sure nothing is broken and the user can complete their purchases without incident.
Pop-ups – small advertising windows that appear overlaid or next to your main content – are a great addition to any marketing strategy. They increase conversion rates as well as your average order value, making each prospect a better one.
Research shows that the “average pop-up conversion rate across all pop-ups is 3.09 percent,” while the “average conversion rate of top performing popups is 28 percent.” When you can install them easily through an app, there’s little reason not to use them.
An email marketing campaign is a great opportunity for maintaining brand awareness, increasing sales, and keeping your email list strong. From welcome emails to new product launch alerts and abandoned cart reminders, the number of campaigns you can create to promote your shop and your products is limitless. By staying in your customers’ inboxes, you stay top of mind, and thus, prime for purchase.
Referral incentives are great for increasing brand awareness and page traffic. Likewise, customer reviews are crucial to letting new customers know your brand and site are secure and trustworthy.
If you’d like both customer reviews and new customers, make sure to offer incentives to loyal customers and furnish lots of social proof through product reviews. Hot tip: You can also create a Referral Campaign in your email marketing tool, sending out messages a set number of days after someone makes a purchase, asking them how they like the product with two hyperlinked images of a thumbs up and a thumbs down. If they click the thumbs down image, have an email open up that’s pre-addressed to customer support. If they click the thumbs up image, have a Google review form pop up. Win-win!
Upselling is when you convince a customer to buy a better, more expensive version of what they were planning to buy. Cross-selling is when you show them how much your other products will complement the one they’re here for.
Both upsell and cross-sell tactics are affordable ways to maximize the checkout process and increase your revenue, especially since the cost of paid ads is increasing all the time. If you can use some simple apps to achieve the same effect as online advertising, why wouldn’t you?
Enter the simple apps …
While the above marketing strategies are bound to increase your success with Shopify, they won’t work very well without the right tools to back them up. That’s where a few Shopify apps can help. Below are five of our favorite ways to use technology to increase customer loyalty, influence potential customer purchasing decisions, and see more success from your eCommerce marketing efforts.
Best of all, these tools work together to promote enhanced sales for a Shopify store. While each has its own benefits, you’ll see the best possible results when you integrate them all into your marketing approach. Luckily, trying apps out is inexpensive and the learning curve is low, so there’s really no downside.
If you want to try just one app on for size, we recommend Product Options & Customizer. It is hands-down the best app for tailoring your listings and increasing your chance of sales. Now you can personalize all your products so customers can see exactly what they’re getting ahead of time with Product Customizer – all you have to do is start your free trial today!
