5 Expert Tips To Grow Your Shopify Store Successfully

With the peak holiday season approaching, top eCommerce platform Shopify is poised to help millions of merchants to reach out to even more customers in the last quarter of the year. Following the latest financial report for the second quarter, Shopify revealed that merchants are leveraging the platform provider’s newer features to upscale and manage even more aspects of their businesses.

Some of these attractive, new-fangled features include:

• Tap to Pay on iPhone, which enables merchants to expand into offline retail (that’s right, in-person shopping is back!) with the iPhone.
• Twitter Shopping channel, which allows merchants to reach consumers via the social media channel, and buyers need not leave the app to see the product and its pricing
• Tokengated Commerce, which helps merchants deepen their connections with VIPs by giving NFT holders exclusive perks!

These new perks are some of the many reasons that keep merchants (and customers) satisfied and if you are new to Shopify, be sure to keep these things in mind before building your Shopify store. Otherwise, read on to find more tips to grow your Shopify store successfully.

Give people what they want

One beneficial lesson from one of the world’s largest eCommerce retailers Amazon is having a good ‘long-tail’ strategy — which allows companies to realise significant profits by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items. Or, in other words, give people what they want.

According to Wired Magazine’s ex-chief editor Chris Anderson, who coined the term, the overall demand for these less popular goods could rival the demand for mainstream goods. He posits that while mainstream products can potentially yield more hits through leading distribution channels, their initial costs are high, which drags on their profitability.

That said, you would not be able to sell everything. So consider only expanding your offerings according to your niche. So supposed you sell roasted coffee beans, you can consider selling coffee wares or even books about coffee, or if you sell candles, you can consider adding room sprays and essential oil rollers. Put simply, go ahead and diversify!

Embrace the good ol’ email marketing

Email marketing may seem old-fashioned at first glance, but ironically, it holds huge potential. Think about it, mainstream marketing channels are highly specific: social media, such as TikTok or Instagram, targets specific demographic, while listings on Google require boosting and decent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO).

(If you need a little help with your store’s SEO, check out 360&5’s services here.)

Email marketing, whether with Shopify’s own feature or Dotdigital, has remained reliable, faithful and effective in keeping in touch with customers and website visitors.

So how do you create a good email marketing campaign?

• Be relevant: Email marketing will always be about the email recipients. Making the content relevant and valuable to them will capture their attention and further that relationship these customers have with your brand.
• Have surprises: Sending a random discount code or even a birthday voucher can sometimes brighten one’s day. Remember, it’s all about personalisation and the thoughts that count.
• Use ‘power words’ in your subject lines: Subject lines should inspire to enact action. Try these words for a change: ‘great deals’, “% off”, “limited time”, “today only”.
• Experiment with emojis: Brands that add emojis in their subject headers are likelier to get more unique click-through rates.

Retarget your ads

If you want to reach the right customers, you have to invest in advertisement campaigns. Paid search ads and Google Shopping ads have proven to be successful to get your products out to customers, while ads on social media are successful in reaching a particular audience demographic.

In case you are unaware, you can also consider retargeting ads to serve potential buyers (often those who have demonstrated some interest) who have interacted with your ads. To do so, you must first run some ads to gather some data. Then, look to create new campaigns focusing on these pools of potential customers with a demonstrated interest.

That way, you can reach your sales goals faster and make the most of your ad spending.

Optimise your store for those on-the-go

We have established earlier that mobile shopping is no longer a fad. The pandemic has driven more customers to shop online; along this vein, mobile e-commerce has also boomed. Social media, such as TikTok, is now leveraging its own medium for sellers to sell their products and services live. Simply put, the space will only get more competitive and complex to navigate. All these make it even more impertinent for you to make your web store mobile-friendly.

The good news about Shopify is that the eCommerce platform allows merchants to seamlessly transform their website into fuss-free mobile apps. Otherwise, you can configure your store’s page to be mobile-friendly — keen to know more, arrange a call with 360&5’s team of experts here.

Here are some tips to get you started:

• Think with your thumbs: Make sure your website is navigable with your thumbs or index fingers. A mobile-friendly web store requires no pinching to zoom in and has targets that can be easily selected.
• Less is more: Content should be short and sweet on mobile. Learn how to tell a story with fewer words. Or incorporate icons to prevent your website from looking too cluttered.
• Make it fast: Always upload high-res images that have been optimised for mobile uses. Huge media files will take up more time to load. Along the same vein, you should upload video files that have been optimised as well.
• Test, test, test: Fortunately, Shopify allows you to view how your website looks on mobile, tablets and PC. Toggle between each interface and configure the settings accordingly.

Build a brand persona and be sociable

An impressionable brand persona (like Wendy’s on Twitter) will woo and convert curious onlookers into customers. While it may seem daunting to create one, you would be surprised that building a brand persona is as simple as publishing blog posts and embedding your social media onto your website. The key here is to post content consistently and stick to a personality (jovial, sassy, crude, or professional) throughout. Another way to showcase the sociable side of your brand is to let your customers do the talking. Invite them to leave reviews on your page (yes, Shopify helps with that) and consider commenting on them too.