July 18, 2019

4 Common Mistakes Made By New Shopify Sellers

Introduction

Shopify is the source of many success stories in the world of eCommerce. The fact that platform has now recorded over a Billion orders comes as no surprise due to how popular it is. However despite the potential for successes on Shopify it is also very easy for newer sellers to make simple mistake that can cost them sales. Here are some of the more common issues & how you can go about resolving them.

Not Setting Up A  Primary Domain

There aren’t many things that can be considered more off putting to potential customers than an unprofessional looking store. If you’re a seller who’s yet to set up your primary domain then your stores visitors are able to see the ‘. myshopify.com’ part of your URL instead of your custom domain name. Having your custom domain name visible to customers will help make your store look much more polished. If you’re not sure how to set up your primary domain then click here for an in-depth guide on how to set up a primary domain. For some help on choosing the perfect domain name check out this video from GoDaddy.

Overusing Popups

No one likes having to deal with annoying popups and usually a customer would prefer it if your store had none. However, popups are still proving to be a vital tool in customer retention, sellers using them to entice users into returning to their site with promotional emails are often found to be gather customers contact information with their popups. They do this by offering discount codes and newsletter sign ups, regardless of what you offer with your popups it’s important to get the timing of them just right & to ensure that you are using them sparsely. If you’re going to have a popup appear on your site’s homepage as soon as a user visits, then it’s a good idea to give the user at least 30 seconds before the popup or else they might feel like your site is spam or find it irritating. For example, a study taken in 2016 compared different types of popups found that 50% of users find pop ups annoying

It’s also worth noting that you shouldn’t have anymore than one popup on your site regardless of its purpose, if a user closes one popup just to be greeted with another one a few minutes later then its going to provide them with a very frustrating experience.

Shopify offer several different types of apps to help their sellers boost their stores, including Apps for popups.

Selling Products That Don’t Fit A Theme

When customers make online purchases, they are putting a substantial amount of trust in the seller. They want to feel confident that the seller knows and cares about the products they sell. So if you’re on Shopify listing a random selection of items then its going to become very clear to them that you’re just trying to make money. If your products fit into a theme and are somewhat related to each other then it shows buyers know that you care about the products you’re selling & helps build a better brand image. If you’re just getting started on Shopify & haven’t figured out what type of products best fit your store then this guide might be able to help. Another great way to build trust is to set up a Trustpilot account so users can review their purchase from your website. You can connect Trustpilot with your Shopify store and automatically send out emails after a purchase to get the user to review your site.

Poor Promotion

So, you’ve gotten your Shopify store just how you like it, selling products that you’re passionate about & ready to go. There’s just one problem, no one knows about your store! There are several strategies you can take to help build awareness for your store.

Social Media

Everyone is active on social media now. Which means it’s the perfect place to start promoting your site. The sites you choose to be active on is entirely up to you and can vary depending on the type of product you’re selling. However, it is worth noting that Facebook has over 2.3 Billion monthly users, so that just might be a good place to start. Statistic show that consumers are 71% more likely to make a purchase based on social media referrals & 15.1 Million consumers refer to social media before making purchase decisions.

(Source)

Paid Ad Campaigns

Want to make sure your store always appears near the top results when someone googles your products? The highest spots are reserved for paid google ad campaigns, roughly 49% of people have said they click on text ads, meaning you could potentially see a high return on your efforts. If you’d like to see more statistics on why you should take advantage of paid ad campaigns then check out this article from BlueCorona) Similarly, if you’d like your products to appear on someone’s Facebook timeline, then a paid ad campaign is the best way to guarantee this. Starting an Ad Campaign for the first time can be quite daunting, so if you’d like to read up about it first, AdEspresso have a great article on it here. Similarly, if you’d like some guidance on creating Google Ad campaigns then check out this article from searchenginewatch.com.

SEO

Another way of getting your store noticed on google searches is with search engine optimisation. This means having content on your website that is suited to googles algorithms. This puts a lot of focus on Keywords, its important to include words in your sites content that are relevant to your product but also something that someone might search for on Google. Research done by Junto estimates that 75% of internet users never scroll past the first page of search engine results. There are several blogs on how to improve your sites SEO including this one which is a complete beginners guide.

These are just a few of the many ways to attract more business to your Shopify store. There are countless other methods you could take, don’t be afraid to get creative and think outside of the box.