Top 11 Tactics to Increase Sales in Your Shopify Store
Whether you’ve just started on Shopify or have been involved with the e-commerce platform for some time already, it’s always a good thing to learn how to increase your sales. The beauty of a platform like Shopify is that while everyone can use it, nobody is a master of it, so there’s always something to learn.
Shopify is the second largest e-commerce platform in the world with an almost 20% market share. It’s second only to WooCommerce and is incredibly popular because of its low bar of entry and caters to everyone starting up new stores, or those who have been in business for years. There are dozens of themes, the site is truly flexible and easy to use, they have affordable plans and allows for affiliate marketing through your website too.
It’s not just Shopify that is booming though, because globally e-commerce is on the rise. The market has from $1.3 trillion to $3.5 trillion in the space of just six years with an estimated forecast of almost $5 trillion by next year. This is evident by the number of stores using the Shopify platform, with that number topping 820,000 merchants.
With these kinds of numbers, can you ever afford not to make sure that your company is doing the best it can? We are here to offer you the top tactics to increase sales in your Shopify store that you can use every day. This will give you increased revenue and will allow your business the opportunity to succeed.
Table of Contents
How to Increase Those Sales
To boost sales in your Shopify store isn’t something that happens overnight as it’s a long and arduous process that users will need to constantly be changing and adjusting. By allowing even the smallest amount of positive change based on statistics and other experiences across stores, merchants can bring in more revenue than ever before. Here are some of the top tips that you’ll ever receive that will help you to increase sales in your Shopify store.
Let’s get started!
#1 Offer Customers Safety and Security – Become a Trusted Source
If there’s ever anything that people want to feel in life, it’s safe. It’s your responsibility to ensure that your customers are in safe hands when they shop on your website.
For starters, there should definitely be some sort of compliance section on your site, telling people about cookies, how they are stored, and how your company uses them. Usually, this will be up to Shopify, but if your site has its own URL and domain, it’s important to add them.
With everything happening right now with COVID-19, people also want to hear and understand how companies that handle products are dealing with the global pandemic. If you are able to mention what your company does during the times of crises and how they are staying safe, then make sure that you let your customers know. They’ll want to hear how you’ve done to protect your staff and products and will want to ensure you are being a responsible business owner.
It’s important to not just say that you are doing these things but do them too. Ways that you can do this are by having trusted signs and badges up on your site, showing people that you adhere to certain measurements and regulations. This will help your customers feel safe in knowing that you’re always doing the right thing.
#2 Drive Traffic Through SEO and SEM
To drive traffic to your website is one of the most important things that you can do to directly increase sales. What you’ll need to understand is how SEO and SEM work, and how you can use them to benefit your business. Having a clear marketing strategy, content marketing, and SEO strategy is an effective way that will lead to results and more sales. One of the main things that you and your business can do is have information about all your products on your website and ensure that it has been keyworded correctly.
SEO is your search engine optimization and what it does is indexing your site through search engines so that the people looking for a specific product or service, will find the right website addressing their needs. In order for you to do this, you need to ensure that
- your pages are optimized to load quickly,
- they have pertinent information on them,
- the website is accessible,
- the website has the correct keywording and phrasing for what you’re offering.
It also helps to have links from other websites redirecting to your site that will give it a little more authority in the eyes of a search engine.
SEM is search engine marketing and refers more to pay per click and Google Ads. Whenever you Google a search result, you’ll often see three results at the top of the page with the word “Ad” on them. These are results that have been paid for by companies for the results that you’ve searched for. For example, if you’re searching for shoes, and you find that the first entry that pops up is something like Nike, it means that Nike has paid to have the advert there on Google. This process ends up being a bidding war between who pays the most for a certain word, at a certain time of the day, in a certain region, and it’s a common practice in SEM.
SEO is free and while SEM does cost money, they can both be incredibly effective if they are used correctly. The right kind of search engine optimization can make your company hit the first page of search engine results which generate the most traffic by far.
#3 Optimize for Mobile Wherever You Can
The world is mobile. Every person you own likely has a mobile and this isn’t just true in places like the UK, USA, or Europe. It’s true all over the world. Embracing mobile is the only way that companies are able to succeed in the world of e-commerce, and while many companies make a great success in using an application for either Android or iOS, it’s not completely necessary.
Some websites use mobile responsive technology for their sites and web pages so that when someone does visit the website on a mobile device, it will adjust based on the screen size that it has to work with. Not only can this be incredibly useful for people who don’t want to download apps, but it will make for a fantastic user experience whenever someone visits your website, making them far more likely to return.
Mobile accounts for 65% of all e-commerce traffic and over 53% of all sales happen on mobile. This is still a large portion of the pie, but it seems a little shocking that it’s not higher, right? This is primarily because people adopt a mobile-first view of things but make it a little more complicated by not having only essential information on the page, stopping customers from completing the journey. There’s a gap between adding something to the basket, or making the leap towards the purchase, and then actually having that purchase triggered. Make sure that what you’re doing for mobile can be easily pushed across to a larger desktop screen, and that you’ve given the customer such a fantastic experience they’ll want to finish the journey in its entirety.
#4 Eliminate Waiting Times – Change the User Experience Journey
Something that actually ties in quite well with SEO is also eliminating waiting times on your website. It’s perhaps one of the most fundamental things that any web designer will preach. Having long wait times or putting potential customers in queues is the perfect way to send people packing, and straight for the hills. You’ll want to make sure that there are almost zero waits between clicking “add to basket”, looking at the basket, and then checking out.
Think about it logically. If you went down to the market to buy something in person, and there was a queue in front of the checkout, you’d probably wait it out, at least for a few minutes. This is because you already have the product or products in your hand, and you’ve made the trip down to the store.
With the online journey, the item is never physically in your hand, creating a lack of connection between the two. This makes it far easier for customers to abandon everything altogether. The wait from page to page should be instantaneous. Visitors should be able to check out in a matter of seconds.
The same logic stands true for someone looking to get help through customer service or something similar. If new customers and visitors are left waiting for a few minutes, there’s a good chance they’ll just leave. Sure, the problem has been avoided for now, and it’ll likely resurface at another time, but you also may have just alienated customers to have them never visit your website again.
#5 Loyalty is Key
There’s a reason why supermarkets and casinos use loyalty programs. The reason is that they work. Having anything that can incentivize your potential customers is bound to have a positive impact on your business and the relationship between you and your customers. Loyalty program schemes of some kind that cater to your audience can have a massive impact on customers returning, keeping you as a primary seller, and telling their friends and family about you.
They say that the best form of marketing is word-of-mouth, and if you’re giving your loyal customers a discount every time that other people aren’t getting, they will start telling everyone they know about it very soon. Having something that is simple, straight-forward, and out of sight will be the best bet. Customers should be able to just spend and add up loyalty points for them to come back someday and give them a great surprise, giving them an incentive to keep using you as an online store.
#6 Treat Customers the Way You’d Want to be Treated
We always tell businesses to communicate. A lot of online companies have made success or failure based on their communication or lack thereof. Customers want to know things, they want dates, information, and tangible news. If you keep telling people that something is coming “soon”, they will sooner go off what you’re selling.
Treat the customers the way that you would want to be treated as a person. If you have a shortage of some type of products, then customers would rather you tell them straight up. If you string them along you create a negative connotation with your business in particular, rather than admitting what the issue is and trying to rectify it as soon as possible.
The same actually goes for anything that changes in your business. If you feel like you want to start talking about some kind of a special product, then you should tell your customers that may be interested in them. The last thing you’ll want is to run a special and not be able to hit every customer who is interested in it. They’ll want to know, so make sure you tell them.
Sometimes it helps just a little bit to do some remarketing on a customer too. If they’ve managed to buy from you before, or have a history of browsing your products, let them know that you miss them and offer them some kind of special or discount that they can’t get anywhere else. Segment your email list and send a special email only to your loyal customers. And you can do it at no cost. Not surprisingly, email is one of the most cost-effective marketing channels and it is an indispensable part of any successful marketing strategy. This way, the right leads get the most impactful information at the right times. Obviously, email marketing is critical for your ROI.
Having a company thinking about you as a customer and giving you special offers is a great way to make people happy! It’s also useful for building brand awareness.
#7 Refunds Make Returning Customers
People love it when something is easy to return. Amazon is evidence of this. As a business that is running everything through a Shopify store, you should be offering your customers free shipping or at least, free shipping over a certain amount. But don’t stop there, because if you do that, ensure that the customers get free returns too.
If you have someone who buys a product from your Shopify store and is able to quickly make a return and receive a refund, they’ll be far more likely to use your store again because it was such a breeze dealing with the return the first time.
#8 Address the Abandoned Cart
Abandoned carts plague the e-commerce industry very often. We always advise where possible, that companies using Shopify turn visitors into new customers by getting email addresses. When you have an email list, you’re able to chat with people who have come to your Shopify store, put products into the basket, and then abandon the cart before making the checkout. It’s the most common problem for not completing a sale in e-commerce.
One way that an abandoned cart can be addressed is by telling customers that they have items in their cart still. Perhaps you could offer them something special in order to incentivize them to checkout with their cart.
A mainstay of every successful e-commerce business is the cart abandonment email automation. It’s one of the remarkably effective sales recovery tactics.
Having a cart that works across multiple devices through a single cart is something that is of the utmost importance too. Carts are sometimes difficult to navigate, but if a user adds something to their mobile cart, and then a few days later comes back to add something on the desktop, they’d like to ensure that the basket still updates.
Data at SalesForce shows that over 60% of customers return to make a purchase within 24 hours of receiving a personalized email. Collect email addresses and make the abandoned carts work for you.
#9 Social Media Presence
Social media is a prime real estate and let’s face it, completely necessary. It’s a fantastic way to engage users in the first step of the journey, but also a great way to re-engage them, bringing them back into the fold if they weren’t able to make a purchase the first time around. There are a lot of Shopify marketing tools that can help you to target your Facebook ads and reach your target audience.
Build your shop on Facebook. Unlike other social media platforms, Facebook lets the sellers create dedicated stores within the profile of a brand, meaning retailers can generate sales by having a Facebook shop. It’s one of the best destinations for Shopify marketing!
All you need to do is connect your Shopify and Facebook accounts to link store products and it’ll all be automatically managed for you.
Another way that social media works really well is by allowing users to create content for you. Usually, this is the best kind of content that goes viral, and having people creating powerful messages using your products is something that also plays big in the SEO world, but also makes audience engagement and buzz around your products really exceptional.
Influencers can also be used across other social media platforms like Instagram or Snapchat. Having an influencer using your products will heavily boost your e-commerce sales and there are so many real-world examples that can attest to this, it should just be seen as common knowledge now. One only needs to look at people like Kendall Jenner or Justin Bieber to see how influencers can make an impact. Of course, you’re not expected to have them use your products right away, but smaller influencers work too!
#10 Live Chat Service
Customers who have problems or complaints want to speak to someone almost immediately. Live chat can be done as a side task rather than the main task that you’re currently doing right now. Over 90% of customers feel completely satisfied with a live chat feature compared to all other communication methods. That’s easy to see why because more often than not, there are no waiting times, it’s super convenient, there’s a record of the chat, and it can be done at work.
If you’re sitting on the phone talking to someone from customer service, especially in an office setting, then it can be rather intrusive on your colleagues, let alone the fact that you’re discussing something personal out in the open. There are probably a few feelings of guilt in doing that, even though you shouldn’t need to feel that way. With a live chat service feature, users can get their problems sorted out at their own convenience without having to take a portion of their day out on customer service problems.
#11 Upsell and Cross-Sell
In order to really drive sales in your Shopify store, you should try and be on the lookout for opportunities to offer your customers a little more than normal. Understanding their needs is a great opportunity to upsell and cross-sell your customers. Should they be in the market for garden supplies, such a spade may suggest that the person is looking for something else that can go with the spade. Perhaps some soil, fertilizer, a garden fork, or a wheelbarrow. This is a basic and simple example of cross-selling.
If that same person is looking at a wheelbarrow that’s near the bottom of the line, and you’re able to offer them one that is a size bigger, then you’re done your job in upselling the client to something a little extra.
These kinds of suggestions come to clients in little snippets, emails, and pop-ups that are non-intrusive. It’s all a part of understanding your customer and the journey they are taking so that you can do your best to serve them in your business.
Start increasing your Online Sales today
Get a quick free consultation about your website.
