How to Optimise Your Shopify Store to Increase Sales

Whether it’s the convenience of doing everything without needing to leave your seat, or the simplicity of adding a product to your cart with the click of a button, statistics show that, while offline sales may be declining, eCommerce sales are growing.

After all, from discovery to checkout, everything can be completed on a single website.

Even better, with an eCommerce agency by your side helping you program a chatbot to champion conversational commerce, which streamlines the whole online shopping experience even more than it already is, eCommerce is looking better than ever.

The question now becomes: what eCommerce platform should I use?

Like choosing the perfect location for your physical store, choosing its online counterpart can have huge ramifications on your business’ future.

For example, what if you’re doing so well that you need to expand, but the platform you’re on is making you jump through hoops in order to do so? Or maybe you’ve realised the theme or layout you originally chose isn’t as aesthetically pleasing as you once thought — what are you to do?

You could always bear it and hope for the best, but then again, this is YOUR store and you shouldn’t have to bear anything.

You could also migrate to another platform, but that, in turn, can be a lengthy process that leads to complications in the beginning, leading to even more delays as any bugs are fixed.

Don’t let that happen.

Instead, go with a platform that’s already known as a crowd-pleaser; one that, to-date, has hosted over 600K businesses, powered over 1 million active users, and garnered over £54B for those using its services — a platform like Shopify.

Why Shopify?

Shopify is, by far, one of the most popular eCommerce platforms you can use.

Not only is it known for its stunningly beautiful and responsive themes that are perfect for the mobile-first world we live in, but you can also customise absolutely everything about your store with no design experience whatsoever.

Do you want to add new sales channels? No problem, that can be done in seconds. Do you want to integrate your store with your social channels like Facebook and sell directly from there? Again, no problem. What if you want to add more products to your catalogue? Considering you can manage an unlimited amount of products and inventory, that is definitely doable.

The point being that Shopify is one of the best platforms you can use, and one that can be easily optimised to increase conversions.

How to Optimise Your Shopify Store to Increase Conversions

Whether you have high traffic but low conversions, or low traffic and conversions both, or whether another situation that’s leading to low conversions best represents you, with Shopify, conversion optimisation is easier than ever because of the amount of control you have over your own store.

To get you started, here are four things you can do to increase conversions on your Shopify store.

1. Make Use of the Shopify App Store

With 2525 Shopify apps up-to-date from 1413 Shopify app developers, 864 (34%) of which are free, and 1661 (66%) that are paid, the Shopify App Store is a treasure trove of opportunities for optimisation.

From a Shopify speed optimisation app, to a cross-selling app to boost sales, no matter what you want to improve on your shop, there’s an app for that.

For example, take a look at the following Shopify app categories, which can be broken down into further subcategories (e.g. Within the “Marketing” category, you have SEO, social media marketing, content marketing, and many other subcategories):

• Finding and adding products – Find existing products to source and sell, or design your own products using print-on-demand services.
• Places to sell – Sell your products where people spend their time. Boost your sales and grow your customer base.
• Store design – Add features and customise your store design with eye-catching and functional elements to make your store stand out.
• Marketing – Capture the attention and loyalty of customers through social media, contests, loyalty programs, and more.
• Sales and conversion optimisation – Turn store visits into sales by building trust and making it easy for customers to buy.
• Orders and shipping – Track and fulfill orders, get your products out the door, and protect your business from risky transactions.
• Inventory management – Automate ordering, forecasting, and inventory tracking with these great tools.
• Customer support – Support and track your customers to increase their satisfaction and build loyalty.
• Trust and security – Protect your business, your customers, and your assets.
• Finances – Get help with taxes, profit calculation, and reporting.
• Productivity – Reduce manual or repetitive tasks through bulk actions and automation.
• Reporting – Track and analyse business data to gain insights and visualise business performance.

Again, whatever problem you’re having with your store, such as low conversions, there’s an app for that.

2. Integrate Your Store with Your Social Channels

Social media is and will always be important for eCommerce.

Apart from connecting all your social channels to your store to increase traffic and engagement, which help you increase conversions, you absolutely have to integrate your store with each channel and start selling directly from there.

For example, within the app categories we just covered above, you can find the following apps, which allow you to sell from platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest:

• Facebook Channel – sell on Facebook from the Shop section of your Facebook Page
• Instagram Channel – sell on Instagram by tagging products in your posts & stories
• Messenger Channel – Sell products and provide customer support from Facebook Messenger
• Pinterest Channel – Sell on Pinterest by creating Buyable Pins for your products
• Buy Button Channel – Sell products on any website or blog, or share checkout links

With the apps above, and other apps you can find yourself as you look through the app store, you’ll be able to create a one-stop-shop where your audience can discover and purchase without ever leaving the page.

In doing so, the possibilities of a dropped cart are lessened by each step of the checkout journey that’s eliminated, which makes a conversion all the more likely.

3. Utilise Great Imagery 

My experience as a web designer has taught me that when it comes to ecommerce, people DO judge a book by its cover, so invest in solid product photography, says Mark Perini, Founder of ICEE Social.

Like Mark said above, imagery is of utmost importance in eCommerce, especially because you can’t actually feel or test a product before buying it. In these situations, the next best thing is to use high definition pictures that display them in the best light.

For added effect, images in which the product is in use are even better, as they give your users an idea of what they’ll look like in their own homes (e.g. a model wearing the jacket, a gadget in use, etc.)

Additionally, the more angles, the better. It comes down to the fact that you want your users to be sure of their purchase, and the more they can see about what they’re about to buy, the more certainty they’ll have and will be more willing to do so.

4. Send Email Reminders

Dropped carts are a nuisance to every business owner because they represent a missed opportunity; a chance that could have been.

In other words, every dropped cart is a conversion that could have happened, had something else that did happen not occurred in the first place.

Thankfully, because there are many reasons for a dropped cart, something that can guide them back and push them to pick the cart up again and convert is a gentle nudge in the form of an email reminder.

For example, maybe they were about to complete the purchase, but a real-life emergency came up and they had to stop short. Or maybe they were indecisive and started browsing other websites to compare, and got lost along the way.

The point being that, no matter the reason, an automated email with the items a potential customer was about to buy can be sent whenever they stop the checkout process short.

If you really want to get them to covert, you can also incentivise them by including a discount code in the reminder email. And if you really want to push them, making that discount code time-sensitive will work wonders.

If they ignore it, okay, at least you tried. If it works, wonderful, you got another conversion!

Final Thoughts

No matter what you think, you don’t need a team of Shopify web designers to increase conversions on your store.

Sure, in the long-run, it’s beneficial to get in touch with an eCommerce agency to make sure everything is optimised for conversions, but when you need to make changes fast, the points we covered today will help you increase sales in no time.