Over 1.75 million merchants across 175 countries trust Shopify to power their e-commerce stores. It is one of the leading platforms that allow merchants to efficiently build and run an online storefront. Shopify says they will do all the heavy lifting, while you focus on entertaining your customers and gain more profits. However, it is more complicated than that.
While Shopify offers tons of features to create a feature-rich and high performing online store, failing to pay attention to some key elements while building a Shopify store can create severe problems in the future. If you are just starting out with a Shopify store, this post is for you. These crucial tips will help you set up a robust Shopify store and keep it organized.
#1 Focus on developing a mobile version of the site
Shopify is a great e-commerce design tool. However, even in 2022, many businesses don’t care to give a thought to create a mobile version of the site. Having an excellent mobile version of the site is important because 8 out of 10 people will quit using your site if it is not properly displayed on their device. That is a loss of 80% traffic.
Thankfully, Shopify offers several features that allow you to optimize your site for mobile devices and make it responsive on any device. Some handy tips while creating mobile-optimized design are keep the header fixed, show as little text as possible, use minimal images, make CTA buttons bigger and optimize the site for different screen sizes.
#2 Buy your own domain name
When you first set up your Shopify store, it will give you a free myshopify.com domain. It is a sub-domain and it looks like “your-store-name.myshopify.com”. From the visitor perspective, this doesn’t look professional, which can prevent you from creating a strong brand image. Moreover, all your SEO efforts will be directed towards Shopify main domain.
Whenever you plan to launch your Shopify online store, make sure you first buy your own unique domain name. Don’t wait for your store to grow before you buy a domain. Buying a domain name cost a couple of dollars, but it gives you more than that. You can build your brand identity and make SEO work for your store.
#3 Use high-quality media
Although Shopify offers plenty of features right out-of-the-box, some things aren’t under its control. The most important thing that makes your store complete are the visual assets of your store. You built a perfect website, but if it doesn’t include high-quality product images, stock images, video files, GIFs and icons, you are getting nowhere.
This may sound a lot, but poor media files can easily put off your prospective shoppers. Therefore, use high-quality media files in your store, and include different images of your product along with detailed specification, so your buyers can get an idea should your products cater to their needs.
#4 Install essential plugins
Shopify offers more than 6000 plugin and apps to help extend the functionality and add more custom features to your site. Installing the right plugins can drive more leads and maximize revenue. Here is a list of some of the best Shopify plugins:
Voyager Upsell & Cross-sell – Recommend and sell more products
One Click Social Login – Let your shoppers sign-in automatically using popular social networks
Plug in SEO – Discover simple ways to optimize SEO and improve ranking
ReferralCandy – Reach new prospects with a powerful referral program
Jugde.me – Build social proof with product reviews and ratings
While installing plugins and apps, make sure you add only those you need as adding each plugin will increase your website loading speed and may affect site performance.
#5 Prepare a solid marketing plan
You have invested a lot of time and money in building a great Shopify store, but you don’t know how to attract target audience to your store and convince them to buy from you. A solid marketing plan that defines your efficient marketing strategies based on your target audience is what you need.
It does take time to understand your market niche and build a marketing plan. However, if you do it right, your marketing techniques will help you get your products in front of the right buyers. As a part of the market research, learn about what marketing techniques your competitors use to understand what works and what requires improvement.
#6 Familiarize yourself with basic SEO
When you build a store with Shopify, it optimizes every page with default SEO settings. Shopify offers adequate tools to improve SEO, but it is up to you how you use them. Once you familiarize yourself with basic SEO settings, you are a step closer to making your website appear in organic search results.
Spare some time to optimize keywords, submitting a sitemap, adding title tags, alt tags and meta descriptions, link building and content creation. Optimizing these on-page and off-page elements will most certainly help in improving visibility of your store on leading search engines, such as Google and Yahoo. SEO is huge, so keep working on it to make your website rank higher and make it more accessible.
#7 Create proper About Us and Contact Us page
You have identified your target customers, but do your customers know you well? Many customers want to know about merchants they are giving out their money. In fact, Contact us and About us pages are some most visited pages of a Shopify store. So, don’t make a mistake of assuming that your customers will buy anything from you without knowing about your brand.
Create appropriate About us and Contact us page by including the details of your company, your journey so far, what makes your brand unique, customer support contact number and email, and address of your physical location if you have. Also, include a contact form where your buyers can leave a quick message. This builds customer loyalty and adds professionalism to your business.
Conclusion
The aforementioned tips will most certainly help you in running a successful Shopify store. If you wish to start a Shopify store, but don’t have adequate resources, get in touch with us today. We offer 360 degree Shopify solutions to help you set up a custom e-commerce store and boost your online sales.
