There are over 800,000 stores on Shopify. And with that, Shopify has a 20% ecommerce market share.
Also, over 1 billion orders have been placed on Shopify stores.
But Shopify’s general success as an ecommerce platform doesn’t seem to reflect in your online store, right?
Well, you are not alone. The conversion rates for an average Shopify store range from between 3% to 5%.
Thus, it is safe to say that most of Shopify’s success comes from a few select stores. While the other struggle to reach the breakeven point.
Now, to drive Shopify sales, you need to identify the areas with potential for improvement. And then implement powerful strategies to drive sales. Just like the successful store owners do.
And here are seven strategies that experts use. With proper implementation of these strategies, you too can improve your store’s sales.
1) Retarget Those Who Have Shown Interest
You search for something online and then see ads about the same thing for days. That’s retargeting.
And that is annoying.
So, then why should you annoy the people you want to impress?
It is because retargeting is essential. You cannot just let a potential customer go without making a purchase. You need to bring them back.
But, you don’t have to annoy potential leads to get them to convert. And here is what you need to do to retarget without being annoying –
- Reread the title of the strategy. Retarget Those Who *Have Shown Interest*. If the customer has shown buying intent, only then retarget. If you sell bicycles and someone visits your blog titled ‘Is bicycle insurance necessary?’, they do NOT need a bike now. They have a bicycle and need insurance. Do not follow them around with your cycle ads. Understand the intent.
- Know when to stop your retargeting campaign. You’d probably know how to set up a retargeting campaign. But you also need to know when to stop. If you keep showing ads to leads that converted, you are wasting your budget. And you are risking getting your ads blocked by the viewer. Or worse, you’ll make your brand look creepy.
2) Use Social Proof to Improve Trust Within Your Funnel
70% of customers consider recommendations by others before making an online purchase. And a display of social proof can increase sales by 18% when used on eCommerce stores.
When people are just shopping around, they tend to get influenced by what others think and do. Especially if your brand is not a household name, social proof is a good way to build trust.
Here’s how (and where) you can use social proof for trust-building –
- Have a Best Sellers page
- Publish customer reviews on product pages
- Show the purchase history of a product. Mention the number of people who have bought the product in the past.
- Show current site activity. Let people know how many other visitors you have at a particular time. What are the others viewing or buying? How many people have added the same product to the wishlist? Make sure your visitors don’t feel like they are the only ones shopping on your site.
- Use press reviews.
3) Simplify Your Checkout Process
Yours isn’t a physical store. People won’t wait at the checkout counter. And they will definitely not tolerate an experience that is less than perfect.
Don’t believe us. Have a look at the stats.
The average cart abandonment rate was 69.57% in 2019.
You need the perfect checkout process.
And a simple, fast, and streamlined checkout process is not hard to achieve.
That’s when you know what to do.
And here’s what you need to know –
- Allow guest checkout. It is quicker. And you still get their email id for further communication. A perfect win-win situation.
- Provide order previews. Be transparent and let your customers preview their orders with complete costs and charges. This way, they won’t get a shock when they land on the payment page.
- Give an option to use the billing address as the shipping address too. No one likes feeding in the same details twice.
- Allow social sign-ins. This saves your customers from having to enter the address and phone details. And you are saved from cart abandonment.
- Make sure your checkout pages are mobile optimized.
4) Improve your Email Marketing Strategy
Do you think emails are outdated? Think again.
If you spend $1 on email marketing, you can expect to get a return of $42.
Also, 49% of customers actually like getting promotional emails from their favorite brands.
And here are the results of a Shopify study –
Email marketing is the king of driving conversions.
So, how to run a successful email marketing campaign to get great results?
Here’s how –
- Focus on your content. Your email’s subject line, the landing page, and the email copy should be perfect. Short, clear, concise, personal, and on-point – that’s how your content should be.
- Use colors, different fonts, images, and even videos in your emails. Do not be boring. You aren’t sending emails to your boss. Don’t make it look like a work email.
- Track your email conversion rates. And keep improvising, testing, and analyzing what works.
5) Implement Upsells and Cross-sells
“You can get the larger bucket at just $1 extra.” Yes, that’s the popcorn guy at the cinema hall acing the art of upselling.
“Would you like fries with that?” That is a McDonald’s employee cross-selling their way to making sure McD makes a few extra millions each year.
Upselling and cross-selling are simple marketing techniques. You see them everywhere.
Now, bring them online to your Shopify store.
Show recommendations for higher variants of the products that your visitor is looking at. And then give them suggestions about what additional items would be a great buy.
But it is easier said than done.
There is a fine line of difference between successfully increasing your average order value (AOV) with these techniques and becoming the pushy salesman who drives potential customers away.
Here are two things that will help you make sure you don’t cross that line –
- Always add value. Don’t ask people to buy $100 worth of stuff when a $50 product would be just fine. Upsell only when your lead will get a definite and obvious value addition.
- Be reasonable. If the new phone you are buying comes with a charger, would you want to go for another charger, no matter how powerful it is? No, right? Make sure you are reasonable in your cross-selling techniques. Don’t bundle things just because you have them for sale. Let logic prevail over your will to sell as much as possible.
6) Keep your Content Creative, Concise and Relevant
Would you like to hear a story about how I landed my dream job? It is an interesting story.
You still don’t want to hear about it now, right? You want to know about strategies that drive sales.
If I start telling you something that isn’t relevant to you, you’ll click away. And so will your audience when your Shopify store has irrelevant content.
Online shoppers are busy. There is no time for fluff.
But, don’t be blunt. Be creative. That’s the only way you’ll stand out from the crowd.
Strike the right balance.
Content is the king. And make sure the content on your Shopify store is good enough to convince people to make a purchase. Hire experts if you please, but don’t let crappy copies crush your conversion rates.
7) Use Effective Paid Marketing
Effective paid marketing can translate to quick sales for your online store.
You might feel it is expensive. And you might also have heard businesses fail to generate results with paid marketing.
But all that is not because the technique is flawed. It is because newbies don’t always understand what to do and how.
Here is how you can make your paid marketing campaigns effective. And consequently, drive more sales for your Shopify store –
- Start small. Do not spend hundreds of dollars on one campaign. Invest small amounts first. Test what is working. And when you have the winning campaign, that’s when you should go all out.
- Keep testing. Even after you have one successful campaign. Keep analyzing and improvising your ad copies, keywords, target segments, and other variables.
- Run multiple campaigns. And add multiple ad variations to those campaigns. When the traffic starts to flow, monitor the metrics. Understand what kinds of ad copies bring in what customer segments.
Where to Begin?
Now you know the strategies that experts use to drive sales to Shopify stores. But that is not enough.
There is a world of difference between knowing how it is done and actually being able to do it.
You can, of course, go the trial and error way. But don’t expect quick results in that case.
But, if you need quick results, hire Shopify experts from Uplers.
We helped an Australian footwear brand, Zoe Kratzmann, increase sales by 115.43%. In just 6 months. We have the experts, the experience, the resources, and tried and tested strategies to duplicate those results for your brand as well.
If you want to be the next sales powerhouse, give us a call to schedule a consultation now.
