Whether you have just started your Shopify business, or it has been going for a while, there will always be room to take some steps in order to improve. These tips on how to optimize your store are perfect for businesses who want their growth trajectory to go steadily upwards without too many bumps along the way.
There are many ways to optimize your store, such as making your site look catchy, product reviews, guarantees, trust badges, social proof, load time, and much more. Sometimes it’s hard to know where to start. Here, we are going to share the top five common optimizations a growing Shopify store can use to help you represent your brand efficiently! Implement these tips and you will start getting good conversion rates leading to a healthy growth in Shopify sales.
Without any further ado, grab your coffee and give this article a read to learn how to optimize your Shopify store.
1. Use a professional theme & customize it to your brand to keep your store consistent and fast
There are many things that come into play when we’re talking about the design of your store. From something as obvious as a clear headline that explains what you’re selling, to navigation buttons, to the checkout process. These factors can take a long time to build an appealing and easy way that will allow your customers to find products easily and buy from you. Also keep in mind, as of this summer Google will also rank your site lower if your website takes a long time to load. So, why not invest some time and money into getting a great theme that’s made for you?
Getting a theme fully customized for your brand can cost thousands of dollars. If your business can support that, go right ahead and hire a company to do this for you. If you’re not there yet, you can always start with a professional theme and do some of the work yourself or hire a freelancer to do some of it for you.
How:
Here are couple of fast and well known themes (there are lots of others out there)
- https://outofthesandbox.com/products/turbo-theme-portland
- https://outofthesandbox.com/products/flex-theme
Some areas to keep in mind:
- Make sure your collections and products on the backend are organized well, otherwise they won’t show up properly on the front end
- Check all the main links and functionality when using your new theme
- Make sure any pages that don’t exist anymore/have been deleted has a redirect
- Remember that not everything has to be perfect from day 1. Keep moving with your business and fix/update things as necessary
2. Create a blog for engaging content to keep customers coming back
Most interesting content is “evergreen,” meaning you can write something once and tweak it slightly over time and it will always be useful. These kinds of content are usually “how tos”, guides, solving problems, fun info, etc. The more of these kinds of content you create, the more likely your customers will enjoy, share and keep coming back to your site. And that for you means digital footprint, which means higher chances of purchase!
This is not only great for existing customers, blogs are a great way to target SEO keywords that may bring on many new visitors to your site. Google looks at fresh content and tries to always send people to the best sites. Why not create some great blog content with the keywords that people are searching for on the internet? This will ensure you’re getting traffic from Google to your site (new eyeballs) AND giving you something to send to your past customers via email to bring them back to the site where they might buy again.
How:
Shopify already comes built in with blog writing capability. Create your blog under Online Store > Blog Posts. It’s basically like creating a page. Make sure to add some interesting images and work with your SEO manager to use the right keywords that will attract the right prospects.
https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/online-store/blogs/adding-a-blog
3. Get reviews from happy customers to create more trust with potential buyers
If your friend tells you that they loved a product, are you likely to look into that product and buy it yourself? Probably (as long as you need it!).
Likewise, a lot of people like to see others’ experiences before buying products online. This is called “social proof”, meaning that others are buying and liking it, so it’s socially accepted that’s a good product. Outside of creating other pressures like limited sales or low stock counts, this is a great way to ensure to people that your products are top notch and you stand behind them.
How:
Shopify has an app that will allow you to add Reviews functionality to your store. https://apps.shopify.com/product-reviews
You can also get additional apps that help you collect more reviews automatically from customers, such as Stamped.io Product Reviews UGC.
https://apps.shopify.com/product-reviews-addon
4. Optimize product descriptions by including keywords, short sentences, and bullet points to bring more potential customers from Google, and communicate clearly what’s important about each product.
Making product pages simple and easy to understand for people is crucial. At the same time, we have to remember to use words that are being searched for more. Enter SEO. You can either get an SEO app in your Shopify store or work with an SEO expert to help you optimize your store’s products. Keep in mind big paragraphs invite people to click away. Short lines and bullet points make it easy for them to stay and read.
How:
If you’re trying this one on your own, one of the best apps out there right now is SEO Manager. It has a lot of functionality packed into one app and guides you through a lot of things. $20/mo.
https://apps.shopify.com/seo-meta-manager
If your store is more mature and needs more intricate touch, definitely consider hiring SEO experts or companies.
5. Add apps that will increase conversion rates like Vitals, ReConvert or In Cart Upsell & Cross Sell to improve conversion rate and cart value
When it comes to conversions in a Shopify store, there are lots you can do. It may sound a bit overwhelming, but start slow. If you have Google Analytics or Hotjar Heatmap installed, take a look at some prospect behavior. What do they do? Are there patterns that you see across a lot of people? If so, start there. If you don’t have this data, you can ask past customers or others for feedback about your store.
How:
Generally speaking, Shopify breaks these categories down to these on their app store page:
- Upselling and cross-selling
- Customer feedback
- Cart modification
- Recovering orders
- Store alerts
They have hundreds of apps for each one of these sub categories. You can try the most relevant or top rated apps in these categories and see how it fares for your Shopify store.
Here are 3 of my top Shopify conversion apps to try:
- Vitals: 40+ Marketing Apps: https://apps.shopify.com/vitals
- ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell: https://apps.shopify.com/reconvert-upsell-cross-sell
- In Cart Upsell & Cross Sell: https://apps.shopify.com/in-cart-upsell
Caveat:
We mentioned a lot of apps that you can try. Do be careful as you’re trying new apps, because the more apps you have in your store, the slower your site will be. It’s a bit of a catch 22. Only use the apps that are performing the best for your store and remove others.
Other ideas to be aware of:
Not everyone is in the same position. Your needs may be different from other Shopify store owners. Here are some other ideas to keep in mind, in case you need to focus on something different:
- Create engaging product images & videos to catch the attention of potential buyers
- Use social media marketing and email campaigns to increase customer engagement with your brand
- Start using SEO strategies like keyword research, site architecture, link building, content creation, and optimizing images for better search engine placement
- Offer free shipping on all orders over $100 or offer free returns within 30 days of purchase date in order to attract potential customers
As you can see, there are a number of different ways to optimize your Shopify store for maximum sales. We hope that some of these tips will be new and helpful to you! If not, we encourage you to take the time to do more research on other optimization methods so that your shop is as successful as it possibly could be. The success of your business depends on maximizing every opportunity available – including optimizing your existing Shopify store! Which one or two tips did resonate with you?