Shopify is one of the best eCommerce platforms to host and grow your online store. In fact, when it comes to selling on Shopify, most business owners find that it is one of the simplest and least headache-inducing ways to promote and sell products online. So, how can you ensure your Shopify store is set up for success?

In this article, we take a close look at the leading eCommerce platform and give you five tips to help you sell more on Shopify.

5 Shopify tips to sell more.

Use attractive images.

In order to attract and persuade shoppers to buy your products, you need an online store that uses images to captivate your customers emotionally. When selling on Shopify, you can make use of multiple images and product variants to achieve exactly this.

One of the simplest ways to create eye-catching product images is to photograph them on white backgrounds. The first step to completing this is to locate a smooth, white surface.

If you sell small items, you may find that a white piece of card or poster board will suffice to get the job done. For larger items, however, you may need a larger piece of paper or could make use of multiple sheets. 

Another secret to great product photography is lighting. 

Consider purchasing clamp lights from your local hardware store to brighten your images and highlight specific parts of your products so that they stand out online.

Keep in mind that you’ll want to avoid relying on overhead light bulbs, as these lights can give off a yellowish tone and impact the overall quality of your images.

For more product photography tips that will help boost your conversion rates, take a look at our Product Photography 101article. 

Display clear product information.

Did you know that 60% of customers cite unexpected costs (e.g. shipping, tax or fees) as their number one reason for shopping cart abandonment?

And that 23% are unable to calculate the total cost upfront?

For Shopify store owners, this lack of information will contribute to lower conversions and will negatively impact your business overall.

Instead, consider the following:

• Use progressive disclosure techniques to structure product information clearly
• Display a full breakdown of the costs on each product page
• Communicate the value proposition to customers
• Make the “buy now” button stand out on your page

Improve your Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

These days, ranking highly on the search engines is paramount to benefit from a steady stream of site visitors and therefore customers.

However, achieving first page rankings can take a great deal of time, effort and expense.

But don’t get disheartened too quickly. 

In fact, there is a concept in SEOknown as Latent Semantic Indexing (LSI) which is proving to be very effective in helping retail businesses to rank in the search engines.

LSI keywords are those which are semantically linked to a main keyword or topic. These words help search engines determine the running theme of your website’s content.

For example, if your blog topic was “horticulture” then you would find many related LSI keywords, such as “agriculture”, “crop”, “botany” and “plants”. 

LSI keywords help search engines work out how natural a piece of content is based on the fact of whether or not enough LSI keywords show up. The more semantically-linked keywords there are, the more natural the content appears to be. 

What’s more, it’s been speculated that Google’s Panda update uses LSI keywords to figure out the quality of the content. If there are not enough LSI keywords present, the content looks unnatural and will be deemed to be of poor quality. 

Another way in which you can improve your SEO ranking is to ensure that your Shopify store is loading as fast as possible.

This is because page speed is a factor used by search engines to rank websites – with fast-loading websites being given preference over slower ones.

Although your options for reducing page speed are limited by Shopify, as you have no other option but to use Shopify’s servers and templates, there are some things you can do to make your online store load as quickly as possible.

These include:

• Make use of image compression tools (such as Tiny PNG) to reduce the size of your images being uploaded to Shopify
• Keep external scripts and custom codes to a minimum where possible
• Use Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) for your Shopify pages and posts 

Of course, you could also look at assessing the quality of your on-page SEO to improve your search ranking even further.

Assessing your on-page SEO helps to ensure that as many ranking signals as possible are present on an individual page for your online store.

For example, you may want to look at the following:

• Whether or not you have used headings and header tags properly
• Use of LSI keywords
• The position of your main keywords in your content
• Use of long-tail keywords
• Optimizing your images correctly 

Utilize email marketing with your Shopify store. 

Having a good email list is fundamental to any email marketing strategy.

After all, without contacts, you have no one to target and convert which makes selling on Shopify difficult indeed.

Building an email list that is made up of your target audience is key not only because it saves you money on advertising, but it can also generate easy sales.

So, how do you get visitors to join your mailing list?

One of the simplest ways to add people to your mailing list is to save their contact details after they purchase a product from your business. We recommend adding them to an email segment that is dedicated to paying customers. 

Another way you could increase the number of people on your mailing list is through offering a discount or running a promotion in exchange for a shopper giving you their email address.

The best time to run specific email marketing campaigns is during seasonal periods and holidays, such as Christmas, January, Black Friday, Easter and Valentine’s day. 

Sending out promotional emails that are appropriate to the particular holiday is likely to result in increased engagement and therefore more sales.

It’s also good practice to get into the routine of sending out shopping cart abandonment emails. Research shows close to 70%of shopping carts are abandoned online.

You may find that all some of these customers need is a final push to purchase their forgotten products – email marketing is the perfect opportunity to achieve this.

You could set up an automatic email trigger to remind shoppers that their shopping items are saved and ready for them. You could also add in a discount code as an incentive to encourage shoppers to complete their purchase. 

In addition to this, segmenting your email marketing campaigns to specific groups of shoppers should help your business see success. 

In fact, marketers have found a 760% increasein email revenue from segmented email campaigns.

Some ways in which you can segment your audience include gender, age, location and purchase history. Segmented campaigns minimise the generic and automated feel of a mass email, which allows for a more personalised tone and therefore increased loyalty.

You can also gain a lot of data from your email marketing campaigns.

Ask yourself the following:

• How many people opened your emails?
• What type of content is converting into sales?
• What sort of links get the most clicks?
• What device did your customers read the email on?
• How many sales did you receive from the campaign?
• Did anyone unsubscribe? 

Make use of Shopify’s built-in blog feature. 

One of the great things about Shopify is that all stores come with built-in blogging capabilities. All you need to do is give your blog a name and you can start posting.

Once created, your Shopify blog will be directly integrated into your storefront. This means that they can appear in the menus, footers or alongside your products. 

For this reason, you could create blog posts that reference your products, collections or any promotions that you are running and have links to them on your product pages. 

When deciding on the key themes of your blog, try to think outside the box.

It’s good practice to write about elements that are relevant to your industry and audience, but you also need to think about monthly search volume and how niche you can be. Content saturation is very real today and you need your business to stand out. 

While Shopify’s blogging capabilities are more limited than a dedicated blog system such as WordPress, it is still more than adequate for the needs of online stores. 

For instance, it contains the basic components you need for a blog post: 

• Title
• Content
• Images and videos
• Visual editor
• Tags

However, you will need your own keyword research tool (e.g. Ahrefs) so that you can write articles that are likely to rank on search engines effectively.

In order to customise your Shopify blog, you’ll need to be familiar with Shopify’s Liquid language and HTML, CSS and JavaScript. Alternatively, you could seek out a designer to help you perfect the aesthetics of your blog. 

Need some inspiration for your blog or Shopify store? Here are 101 of the best Shopify storesthat are worth checking out. 

Implement Shopify apps to grow your store.

There is no better way to grow your Shopify store than through the addition of apps.

And, with thousands to choose from, there are lots of options when it comes to extending the functionality of your store, making selling on Shopify a breeze.

Here are some of our favourites – and they’re all free to use:

Kit.

One of the first things you’ll want to achieve is driving a steady stream of website traffic to your new online store. If you don’t have much knowledge of marketing, this can be tricky.

Don’t worry though. Kit is there to help you.

Kit works as a virtual employee that helps with the running of Facebook and Instagram ads, email marketing campaigns and can generate reports and performance updates to provide insights on your sales and marketing performance.

With a few instant messages to Kit from your phone or Facebook messenger, you can create discount codes and promote them, initiate a retargeting campaign to bring shoppers back to your store, send personalised emails to customers and much more.

Product Reviews.

Where would your online business be without a reviews function? 

The Product Reviews app enables you to add customer reviews to your products.

This lets customers engage with you and leave honest feedback about your brand and products, which can influence future customers and increase your overall sales.

What’s more, the app has a fully customisable design so you can be sure it will match your chosen Shopify theme and fit in with the overall design of your store.

SEO Site Audit, Benchmark Hero. 

Effective SEO is essential to improve the visibility of your store in search engines. 

However, unless you have sufficient knowledge, it can be challenging to know exactly where you need to make changes and how your Shopify store compares with others.

The SEO Site Audit, Benchmark Hero app provides you with a detailed analysis of your website so that you can determine what’s working and what needs changing.

It should also help you find out why certain pages don’t convert as much as others.

Grow your business with Shopify.

Selling on Shopify is one of the simplest ways to conduct business for your online store. 

In fact, there are more than 50,000 active Shopify stores and the eCommerce platform has collectively driven more than 40 billion worth of sales since its beginning.

These simple Shopify tips should help you to sell more on Shopify and build the profitable and successful business that you’re dreaming about.