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There are well over 500,000 Shopify stores in operation today, which puts Shopify in the driving seat when it comes to the most popular e-commerce marketplaces. Online merchants love it because it’s a hosted solution that allows them to get up and running within minutes. It supports numerous languages and it has an excellent customer support system.
Then again, you probably already knew all that. At this point in your e-commerce career, you want to know how to use Shopify to take your online store to the next level.
It’s one thing using Shopify as an e-commerce solution, and another getting the most out of it so that you can boost conversions, prevent fraud, and increase your sales.
We’ve got the answers in this article. Let’s take a look at how Shopify can propel your e-commerce business forward.
1. Make the Most of Free Apps
Shopify is really good to online merchants by providing lots of cool free stuff.
And their apps are really great, too. For example, Shopify’s logo maker tool is on hand to help even total newbies create an eye-catching logo in just minutes.
There are also apps that will improve your email campaigns, apps that will help you manage your inventory, and apps that will help you perform better split tests.
Moreover, if you talk to any fellow seller who’s using Shopify, they’ll tell you that free apps really do enhance your store and make your life easier.
Here are some tips to help you get the most out of Shopify’s free apps:
Do some research. Ask fellow merchants what apps they’ve personally been using and which ones they’d recommend.
- As well as free apps, there are also paid ones. Before committing to a paid app, take each one for a test run first via a free trial so that you can see if you really need it.
- Don’t be afraid to pay. Some apps will cost money, but don’t let that put you off. If the ROI is increased and your conversions and sales go up, why wouldn’t you pay a monthly subscription fee?
2. Make the Most of Shopify’s AdWords Credit
PPC is a pretty great way of making your store more visible on Google so that traffic goes up.
This is how PPC works:
A merchant places an ad for their store at the top of the first page of Google. When someone clicks the ad, they pay a small fee to Google.
Just imagine how happy you’ll be if you pay $2 to Google for an ad that returns $200?
The problem, of course, is that your budget might be small when first starting out. Happily, the good folk at Shopify will give you $100 in AdWords credit when you spend your first $25.
A hundred dollars is a good amount, but it won’t last long. For this reason, you need to carefully think through your PPC campaign so that you get the most out of it (rather than wasting $100).
3. Protect Your Store Against Fraud
The stats are pretty scary when it comes to online fraud - 50% of all small businesses are targeted by cyberattacks at some point or another.
That’s 1 in 2, which means your business is at risk.
However, Shopify wants to protect your store as best they can from payment fraud, hacking, phishing and so on, which is why they’ve got a new fraud prevention feature in the works.
You need to do all that you can to protect yourself. Installing a third party fraud prevention app that integrates with your Shopify store will help.
4. Add a Point of Sale Card Reader
More and more of us are buying online in 2018. But we’re also buying offline, too.
We buy on various devices, from our phones to our MacBook’s, and we want to be able to buy anywhere, anytime.
We want a seamless, convenient, and fast buying process, which is what Shopify’s POS card reader offers.
A POS card reader allows you to sell anywhere and at anytime. It also protects you and your customers from hacking, which helps you to build more trust around your brand.
Make life easier for you and your customers and make sure you don’t miss out on crucial sales by installing a POS card reader.
As well as the POS card reader, make sure to use Shopify Payments so that you can accept payments from all the big credit cards.
5. Prevent Less Abandoned Carts
If your online store is self-hosted and you’re not using Shopify, you’ll be in a bit of a jam when 68.89% of your customers abandon their carts. The only thing you can do is manually email each one of them and remind them to finish their purchase. And let’s face it, that’s going to take some serious time.
That said, you’ll have to do that even if you have Shopify and are on the standard plan.
What you could do is either download one of their cart abandonment apps or upgrade to the advanced plan. What happens then is Shopify sends out an automatic email to each customer who abandoned their cart and nudges them to finish their order.
6. Create Customer Accounts
Lastly, to keep track of your customers and use their browsing and purchasing history to personalize their future experiences in your store, get them to create an account before they make their first purchase with you.
This will allow you to curate detailed information about each customer so that you can target them with better content, emails, promotions, and so on. This, in turn, will boost customer loyalty, conversions, and sales.
Conclusion
All in all, Shopify is as good as you want it to be. If you use the tips in this article, Shopify will take your online store to the next level.
Michelle Deery is the copywriter for Heroic Search, a SEO agency based in Tulsa. She is passionate about helping e-commerce stores boost their profits. If she is not producing content about e-commerce and marketing you can find her reading and keeping up-to-date with the latest trends in the industry.
