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Top 7 Tips to Design a Perfect Shopify Website

For any e-commerce seller, their website is a heart of their online business. Having a good website is of the utmost importance that can have a direct impact on the success of your business. However, having only a good website is not sufficient, the design of the website also plays a crucial role. In fact, a research says over 75% of the customers judge a business’ credibility based on its website design. Furthermore, if a website design is not attractive or responsive enough, your prospects may leave your site even before browsing. That is why it is essential to pay close attention to your website design as it can greatly help you in boosting conversions.

So, let’s dig in to know more about how you can improve your Shopify website design and generate more sales.

#1 Choose an appropriate theme for your store

The first thing to keep in mind before you design your Shopify store is to choose the right theme for your store. Your theme is the backbone of your website, and it can directly influence the user experience and all-around look of your website. If the aesthetics and design don’t stand out, you are likely to lose customers.

Fortunately, Shopify offers plenty of free as well as premium themes to choose from. While choosing the right theme for your site, think about how you wish to display products on your site, what features you need, what type of experience you plan to deliver to your audience and what is your budget for the theme. A good website design can help you create a great first impression and hold customer attention for longer.

#2 Work on improving the website loading speed

Another critical aspect of the Shopify site design is to ensure it loads quickly. Users dislike slow loading sites and they may move to your competitors. Every extra second your page takes to load, conversions are reduced by 7% and page views by 11%. If you don’t want to be the part of such losses, pay attention to improving page loading speed of your website.

Examine your website by checking it in the Google PageSpeed Insights tool. If it is too slow, try to optimize design elements of your website. Compress media content, remove unnecessary features or widgets, avoid third-party themes and skip carousels. Fast loading sites can dramatically improve user experiences. Moreover, search engines also favour fast loading pages.

#3 Use necessary apps to setup your store

While designing your Shopify website, you can use free and paid apps to cover all your store setup, configuration and management needs. These apps integrate seamlessly with Shopify and they can greatly help in extending functionality of your site without much effort.

You can find plenty of apps in different categories, such as store customisation, orders and shipping, inventory management, sales and conversion, marketing, customer support and many more. Using these apps, you can easily customise your store’s interface and ensure smooth functioning.

#4 Declutter elements on the website

Your website might seem like a blank canvas where you want to put anything and everything to make it look pretty. As a website owner, it is very common to be tempted to showcase everything you have to your users. However, you need to understand that users abandoned the website when there is too much information. Too many content confuses their brains on where to go.

While choosing what products to display, focus on only a handful of specific products at a time. Be it the bestsellers, discounted products or combo offers, showcase only what is important for that particular page. Also, don’t forget to highlight CTAs of your website.

#5 Showcase your products using visuals

Visuals can have a great impact on how visitors perceive your website. Since you are running a digital store, it is important to provide as much information as possible about your products to help them make an informed purchase. And, one way to do is by using visuals, such as photos and videos. That being said, not using appropriate visuals can increase the chances of visitors abandoning your site.

Therefore, use high-quality photos and videos to showcase your products. This way your customers will be able to enlarge and see the tiniest details. If possible add multiple images of a single product, so your customers can view it from different angles. However, pay attention to the size of the images as too large sizes can bog down your website speed. Make sure the visuals you use go well with your store design.

#6 Reflect your brand’s individuality

When you use Shopify’s pre-built themes, you risk of creating a website that may look like others who have used the same theme. With this growing competition, how do you distinguish yourself? It is essential to make your website stand out even among those who use the same theme. In other words, you must reflect your brand’s individuality.

There are many aspects of the website where you can make your website stand out. Use photography to add unique images to your site to enhance its appearance. Some shops opt for photos with plain backgrounds to let the products do all the talking. Use decent colour schemes that make the text around easy to read and appealing to your customers.

#7 Hire a professional Shopify designer

Although working with Shopify is pretty simple, but there may come a time when you realise your limitations. You want to customise the theme to your heart’s content, but that’s beyond your skills. In that case, you will need to seek professional help. The experience of a dedicated Shopify website designer could give you some new insights.

Specialist Shopify designers are well-versed in working with different plugins, themes and features. A skilled Shopify designer will help you create a perfect website design that takes the customers by the hand, walks with them throughout your store and guides them on how to complete making the purchase. A great website design means more conversions and more profits for you.

Conclusion

Keeping your customers at the heart is perhaps the most important practice that you can follow while designing a Shopify website. Before you begin designing, think about the functionalities required. Then, you can go ahead with choosing apps, themes and custom solutions that offer the best user experience. Every single element you use in your website, be it product images, search box or navigation menu, it should make the buying process smooth for your customers. This will eventually drive more sales for your business.

7 Essential Things to Keep in Mind Before Building a Shopify Store

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.

Top Tips to Choose the Right Shopify Theme and Make Your Store Stand Out

E-commerce industry is blooming at a faster pace, and more customers are shopping online than ever. Hence, if you don’t have an e-commerce store, then there has never been a better time to start one than now. Shopify emerged as one of the best platforms to build a robust e-commerce store. One reason why many online store owners love Shopify is the flexibility it offers with plenty of Shopify themes.

A Shopify theme is a template that defines how your store will look and feel to the users. Themes come with different layout and styling options that can be customized according to your needs. It is crucial to have a good store design that reflects your brand identity and keep your shoppers engaged for longer. Furthermore, a theme can have a significant impact on the performance of your e-commerce store in terms of customer experience, trustworthiness and conversion rates. Therefore, it is imperative to choose a theme that would suit your store without a wrinkle.

In this post, we will guide you on how to pick the perfect theme for your Shopify store.

#1 Prepare a list of key features and functions you want

Before you start finding a perfect theme for your Shopify store, list down all the primary features and functions you would want in your store. Whether you want video player, forms, blog, landing pages, cart drawer, large catalog size, email pop-up or new product highlight section, having a list of required features in hand will help you find the right theme more easily.

If you see a theme that has one feature you want, but have five other features missing, then move on. Look for a theme that offers more features, and get remaining missing features added with the help of a Shopify developer.

#2 Research your competitors

If you are not sure what do you want in your theme, it doesn’t harm to get inspiration from your competitors to get an idea about what you can add to your store. Learn about what theme they are using, what elements they have included in their storefront, what color combinations look best and what elements are distracting.

Learning about features and elements will help you choose a suitable theme for your store. Moreover, you can identify missing critical features in your competitor’s website and implement those to get a competitive edge.

#3 See whether it is mobile-friendly and light-weight

Another important thing to consider while picking a Shopify theme is to check the mobile view of the theme. That is because the number of mobile users is growing every day, so there are high chances that most of the website traffic will come from mobile. If you fail to deliver a great mobile experience, you may lose a potential sale. Therefore, ensure the theme you choose make your website easy to access from the mobile device.

Website speed is also crucial to its success. It can directly impact bounce rate, conversions and search rankings. Many Shopify themes come with fancy features, which may look attractive, but they slow down the speed of your website. So, look for themes that are lightweight, meaning they are not loaded with unnecessary elements, and focus more on performance.

#4 Inbuilt SEO features

SEO-friendliness is another important factor to consider while choosing the right Shopify theme. A beautifully designed site is of no use if it doesn’t rank in search engines. When your Shopify store has an SEO-optimized theme, it means it follows the best SEO practices to help you increase search engine rankings. SEO-friendly themes welcome more organic traffic to your website and boost conversions. Shopify offers a number of themes that are SEO-friendly right out-of-the-box.

When looking for the right Shopify theme that helps your store get discovered organically on Google and other leading search engines, make sure it is compatible with all devices, have clear navigation, support rich snippets and loads quickly.

#5 A great theme design and aesthetics

Attracting and retaining customers is a key to building a successful Shopify store. You can attract prospective customers to your site using SEO best practices, but retaining them is all about delivering a great experience. If your website is not attractive or interesting, then visitors may not stay on your store for long and may quit using your site.

A good theme contains many elements, such as matching color palettes, appealing user interface, proper background, readable font style and font color and so on. As your customers can’t really feel your products, they depend on visuals to experience them. So, if you succeed in grabbing their attention, they are more likely to buy from you.

#6 Shortlist based on your budget

Shopify themes are available at varying price points, ranging from zero to $250. Before you decide to buy a theme, determine what features you need and how much you are willing to spend on them. As with everything else in life, you get what you pay for, and it goes same with Shopify themes. Hence, differentiate between must-have and nice-to-have features.

Free themes are good, but if you are looking for a theme that offers a greater level of customization and features, then go for the premium ones. Since premium themes are designed to expand your store functionalities, there are good chances that you will find most of the features in your theme.

Choosing the Right Shopify Theme

With so many factors to consider, it can be overwhelming to choose the right theme for your Shopify store. You want all the necessary features and convey your brand message, and at the same time you want to ensure it fits in your budget and can be customized the way you want. At Island Wizards, we help you go through this theme selection process and offer theme customization service that will not only suit your store, but also make your shoppers fall in love with your brand.

6 Effective Ways to Speed Up Your Shopify Store

The global e-commerce market is blooming at a massive rate. People are now accustomed to shopping online without leaving the comfort of their space. E-commerce has simply bridged the gap between the sellers and buyers, and Shopify offers a great way for small as well as large businesses to leverage that opportunity. However, just like any other website, a Shopify website needs to be optimized for its speed and performance. That is because poor site speed can severely impact your website traffic, credibility and revenue generation.

Why High Page Speed Matters?

Before we discuss on how to improve your Shopify site speed, let’s first understand why it matters in the first place. There are two reasons behind this – Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and User Experience (UX). SEO is about ensuring your website gets found on the search engines and UX is about ensuring your users find convenient to use your website.

All the major search engines consider site speed as one of the crucial ranking factors. That means if your site loads quickly, your search engine rankings will improve. This brings a lot of potential leads to your site. And, if prospects can access your site immediately, there is a good chance that they will stay longer on your website and make a purchase.

Now, let’s dig into some effective ways to improve your Shopify store speed.

#1 Use only necessary Shopify apps

Every store needs external apps to extend its functionality. When these apps are added, they add script into the theme to run efficiently. Be aware that even if the apps are not in use, the script runs in the background, which can slow down the page speed.

Hence, it is essential to frequently review your apps and find the balance between the store features and speed. If you think some apps are interfering with your site speed, then disable some features of the app, or remove them completely if you don’t need them. Also, while removing the app, be sure to remove any code that was added as a part of the installation process. Removing unnecessary app code will most certainly help in improving your store performance.

#2 Install responsive and fast theme

Choosing a theme is crucial for a Shopify store owner. Besides enhancing the look and feel of the website, a theme also affects the page loading time. When themes are not optimized or installed properly, they can slow down your website. Furthermore, themes are made of HTML, CSS and JavaScript code, and when you customize themes, the file size can increase and affect your store performance.

Therefore, before you install any theme, check whether it is fast and responsive. See the live demonstration of the theme, so you get to try its features and analyze its performance. Once you install the theme, ensure to keep it up-to-the-date.

#3 Make your website super fast with AMP

Accelerated Mobile Pages or AMP is a standard framework developed by Google to create fast-loading mobile pages. In this fast-paced world, over 50% of shoppers buy through mobile devices. Hence, it becomes imperative for businesses to develop a mobile-optimized site, so users can access their site conveniently through mobile phones.

Shopify enables you to create AMP sites quickly and efficiently with the help of RocketAMP or FireAMP apps. Both these apps can assist you in transforming your webpages to fast-loading pages on mobile, which can also help you improve user experience.

#4 Optimize images to improve page load speed

Images are an important asset when it comes to enhancing the visual appearance of your website. Over-size and un-optimized images are often the most common reason that can significantly slow down your website. If your images take too much time to load, users might perceive your website to be slow.

Image compression is necessary and critical for faster loading websites. While optimizing images, make sure you compress images to an acceptable size and don’t add a multitude of images on a single page. Also, while compressing images, ensure you don’t compromise on the quality of the images. TinyPNG and TinyJPG are great tools that can help you reduce image sizes without losing its quality.

#5 Fix broken links and minimize redirects

Too many redirects and broken links can result into performance issues. If your website is experiencing the same issues, consider removing unnecessary redirects and fixing broken links. Shopify offers a builtin redirect function called ‘URL redirect’ that allows you to apply 301 redirects.

Broken links on your site can give a rise to too many unnecessary HTTP requests, which can cause a poor user experience. With tools like, Xenu and Broken Links Checker, you can identify and fix broken links across your Shopify store.

#6 Check your store performance with Google PageSpeed Insights

If you are not sure what is decelerating your website speed, you can analyze the performance of your web pages using Google PageSpeed Insights tool. With this tool, you can identify the elements in your store that bog down your store and fail to load quickly, and then work on the provided recommendations to enhance website performance and minimize load time.

Google PageSpeed Insights can give you insight on critical elements of your store, such as server response time, browser caching, landing page redirects and many more, so you can find what hampering your store speed and how it can be corrected.

Conclusion

Store with fast-loading pages is essential to attract and retain your prospective buyers. If a website loads quickly, more people will explore your store and learn about your brand. It can also boost conversion rates if your website displays all the relevant content quickly and seamlessly.

We hope these techniques help you performing Shopify store speed optimization. Shopify stores are designed to deliver pleasant and rich shopping experience to its users. Therefore, if you miss to install some features correctly, your online store may slow down. If you are not equipped with adequate technical knowledge to resolve these issues, seek professional help from skilled Shopify developers who can help you speed up your Shopify store and get massive traffic to your site.