Shopify Best Practices: Take Your Sales To The Next Level

Welcome to a comprehensive guide on Shopify best practices to maximize conversions and elevate sales. In today’s competitive eCommerce landscape, making product pages that captivate and convert is important. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting your online venture, mastering these best practices can move your business to new heights.

In this guide, we delve into proven strategies and actionable tips to enhance every aspect of your Shopify store, from product page optimization to checkout streamlining. Our aim is to empower you with the knowledge and tools necessary to attract, engage, and delight your customers, ultimately driving sales and fostering long-term success.

Best practices for optimizing Shopify product pages

The efficacy of product pages can determine whether a prospective customer takes action or navigates to a competitor’s site. Optimizing your product pages for conversion is paramount.

Research indicates that customers typically spend 10-30 minutes perusing a product page before committing to a purchase—an ample window to captivate their interest. Those product pages that excel in converting visitors into customers seize this opportunity to its fullest potential.

Below are some Shopify tips for crafting product pages that drive conversions:

Display Clear Product Information

A staggering—but unsurprising—number of eCommerce customers abandon their shopping carts due to inadequate information about the actual costs involved. Research reveals that 60% of customers attribute cart abandonment to unexpected expenses such as shipping, tax, and fees, while 23% struggle to calculate the total cost upfront. The absence of transparency poses a significant threat to conversion rates on eCommerce platforms.

To address this challenge, consider the following Shopify tips and tricks:

1. Implement progressive disclosure techniques to present information clearly and systematically.
2. Provide a comprehensive breakdown of costs upfront, ensuring transparency from the outset.
3. Explicitly communicate the value proposition to underscore the benefits of completing the purchase.
4. Designate the “buy now” or “add to cart” button with visual prominence, making it easily discernible amidst other elements on the page.

Use Captivating Product Images

In the realm of online shopping, captivating product images play a pivotal role in capturing the attention and interest of potential customers. As human beings, we are inherently visual creatures, and when it comes to browsing and purchasing products online, the importance of visually appealing images cannot be overstated. In fact, studies have shown that for 90% of consumers, high-quality product photos are the most critical factor when making a purchasing decision.

When presented with small, low-resolution images, consumers are unlikely to spend much time scrutinizing the product. These images fail to convey the quality and appeal of the product, resulting in lost sales opportunities. On the other hand, high-quality, visually stunning images have the power to engage customers and compel them to explore further.

But it’s not just about static product images; dynamic alternatives should not be underestimated. For instance, 360-degree product displays have gained traction in recent years for their ability to provide customers with a comprehensive view of the product from all angles. Numerous A/B tests have demonstrated that incorporating 360-degree product displays can significantly boost conversions and, simultaneously, reduce returns by more than 35%.

By offering dynamic product displays, businesses can enhance the online shopping experience for their customers, providing them with a more immersive and engaging way to interact with products. This not only increases the likelihood of a purchase but also helps to build trust and confidence in the brand.

Add Video Elements

Statistics reveal that video content is 70% more engaging than text, making it a compelling addition to your website. Incorporating videos into your homepage can captivate visitors’ attention within a mere 55 milliseconds, establishing an immediate connection. To streamline this process, consider leveraging a video creator tool to effortlessly produce and integrate captivating videos into your website.

For example, with ChipBot Pylons, you can greet visitors with video content as soon as they land on your homepage or any other page. This instant face-to-face interaction serves as a potent mechanism for fostering deeper engagement and ultimately driving conversions. Tailoring the content of these videos—from introductory to explanatory—allows you to communicate your message and goals effectively, maximizing the impact of your homepage.

Use Color Strategically

Whether you’re a designer, consumer, or entrepreneur, you likely grasp the influence of color on conversion rates, albeit in a broad sense. Yet, the full extent of color’s potency may surprise many. Hubspot’s analysis of 2,000 websites revealed that red call-to-action (CTA) buttons outperformed green counterparts by a substantial 21%. This statistic underscores a key principle: color choice can significantly impact user behavior and conversion rates.

Color affects human psychology and perception, often in subtle yet profound ways. Red, for instance, is known to evoke a sense of urgency and excitement, which can drive action and engagement. This is likely why red CTA buttons perform better—they create a visual cue that prompts users to click, acting on their impulses. On the other hand, green is commonly associated with safety, tranquility, and environmental friendliness, which, while positive, may not trigger the same immediate response as red when it comes to CTAs.

In e-commerce, for instance, the color scheme of a product page can influence a customer’s decision to purchase. A well-designed layout that uses contrasting colors to highlight critical elements like ‘Buy Now’ or ‘Add to Cart’ buttons can lead to higher conversion rates. Similarly, in email marketing, the color of CTA buttons can determine whether a recipient clicks through to the website.

By thoughtfully incorporating color psychology into design decisions, you can improve user experience and ultimately boost conversion rates.

Optimize for Mobile Devices

By now, you might feel inundated with discussions about mobile optimization—and that’s a good thing! In 2021, mobile orders have constituted a surprising 69% of all orders processed through Shopify stores. 

While implementing a responsive design that seamlessly transitions from web to mobile is a great starting point, delving deeper into your site’s structure may reveal the need for further optimization measures. Here are some key areas to focus on:

• Page Load Speed: Mobile users are often on-the-go and may have less patience for slow-loading pages. Ensure your site loads quickly by compressing images, leveraging browser caching, and minimizing code.
• Navigation: Simplify your navigation menu for mobile users. Use clear, concise labels and ensure that the menu is easy to access and use with one hand.
• Touch-Friendly Design: Ensure buttons and links are large enough to be easily tapped without zooming in. Space out clickable elements to avoid accidental clicks.
• Readable Text: Optimize font sizes and line spacing for readability on smaller screens. Avoid using text that is too small or cramped.
• Mobile-Specific Features: Consider implementing mobile-specific features such as click-to-call buttons, mobile payment options (like Apple Pay or Google Wallet), and GPS-enabled location services.
• Test on Multiple Devices: Regularly test your website on various mobile devices and screen sizes to ensure a consistent and optimal user experience across all platforms.

If it’s difficult to you, you can leverage some tools such as MobiLoud, Median.co and Twinr. By addressing these aspects of mobile optimization, you can significantly enhance the user experience for your mobile visitors, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates. 

Build Trust and Reassurance

The Baymard Institute reveals that 19% of customers abandon their carts at checkout due to a lack of trust—a concerning statistic. Fortunately, all Shopify stores come equipped with SSL (secure checkout) by default, bolstering security. Moreover, they provide the opportunity for customers to leave reviews, serving as social proof.

Social feedback is a powerful tool for boosting conversions on eCommerce platforms by investing trust. According to BrightLocal, a staggering 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as individual recommendations. Hence, it’s crucial to encourage previous customers to leave reviews, seamlessly integrating this aspect into the customer journey. Additionally, most Shopify themes leverage Schema markup to include these ratings directly into search results.

In addition to social validation, consider enhancing customer confidence with a live chat solution such as Intercom, Zendesk, Drift, or Kayako. Shopify facilitates integration with third-party services through its app store or manual installation, providing further avenues to build trust and assurance.

Show Related Product Recommendations

One effective strategy that top-tier eCommerce enterprises use to enhance sales performance is showing related product recommendations. This technique capitalizes on cross-sell and upsell strategies, which have been proven to significantly boost revenue. By presenting customers with products that complement or enhance their original purchase, businesses can encourage additional sales and increase overall customer satisfaction.

Utilizing tags, alongside advanced analytics and A/B testing integrations like Optimizely’s Web Recommendations, allows eCommerce platforms to fine-tune their recommendation engines. These tools enable designers and developers to create personalized shopping experiences that resonate with individual customers. By analyzing customer behavior, preferences, and purchase history, businesses can showcase alternative or supplementary items that are likely to pique the interest of shoppers.

For example, if a customer is browsing for a smartphone, related product recommendations might include accessories like phone cases, screen protectors, or wireless earbuds. This not only enhances the customer’s shopping experience by providing them with relevant options but also increases the likelihood of multiple purchases.

A/B testing plays a crucial role in refining these recommendations. By experimenting with different product combinations, placements, and messaging, businesses can determine the most effective strategies for driving engagement and sales. Optimizely’s Web Recommendations, for instance, offers robust tools for testing and optimizing recommendation algorithms, ensuring that the most relevant products are shown to each customer.

Furthermore, the benefits of showing related product recommendations extend beyond immediate sales. They can also help build a more loyal customer base by enhancing the shopping experience. Customers appreciate personalized suggestions that save them time and effort, making them more likely to return for future purchases. Additionally, these recommendations can introduce customers to new products they might not have discovered on their own, further enriching their shopping experience and increasing the perceived value of the store.

Shopify best practices for improving customer experience with apps

Shopify stands as a formidable e-commerce platform. Yet, what’s a platform without its arsenal of apps? Should Shopify’s standard functionality fall short of fulfilling your business requirements, fear not. Navigate to the app store and explore a selection of over 100 native apps along with numerous third-party solutions.

Below are several ways in which Shopify apps can elevate your store to new heights:

Abandoned Cart Apps

Utilizing third-party applications like Cartly Abandoned Cart Recovery enables businesses to connect with customers based on specific cart status criteria. For instance, if a customer adds items to their cart but subsequently abandons it for an extended duration, the application can prompt them to proceed to checkout or present tailored promotions designed to spur action.

Analytics Apps

If you haven’t already integrated analytics into your store’s operations, now is the time to do so. Applications such as By The Numbers and Conversific offer access to over 30 reports spanning segmentation to conversion rates. Leveraging this data allows you to pinpoint customer pain points and devise strategies for resolution.

Shopify best practices for making checkout seamless and profitable

A pivotal strategy for bolstering long-term sales is simplifying the purchasing process for customers—encouraging repeat transactions. By optimizing the checkout experience to be both effortless and gratifying, you instill in customers a positive impression that often prompts return visits whenever they require the products you offer.

Here are actionable steps to streamline checkout for your customers:

Offer Discounts And Promotions

An enduring sales strategy involves offering discounts or promotions periodically throughout the year. However, it’s crucial to exercise caution—excessive sales might inadvertently reduce the sensed value of your product.

While discounting is undeniably a sales tactic, marketing strategies also play a key role. Utilizing newsletters, as previously discussed, can effectively promote upcoming discounts, or employing opt-ins to offer customers exclusive memberships with benefits such as a 10% discount, for instance.

There exist myriad ways to showcase your products as exceptional bargains without compromising your brand’s value. This underscores the significance of establishing a strong brand identity from the outset.

Make Shipping Costs Clear

Unexpected shipping expenses stand as the primary culprit behind revenue loss when customers reach the checkout phase of their journey. Should the final checkout price deviate from customer expectations, historical data indicates that 28% of them will seek alternative sources. While shipping costs need not dominate every product page, they should remain clearly visible. Above all, refrain from advertising free shipping unless the majority of your customer base qualifies for it.

Automate Upselling and Cross-selling

Upselling and cross-selling have evolved beyond mere retail tactics. With applications like Avada Trust Badges & Upsell, you can dynamically showcase tailored sales videos when customers add or remove specific products from their carts. When customers add a product, present them with related items or complementary products that enhance their purchase. Conversely, if they remove a product, offer them alternatives to keep them engaged in the buying process.

Shopfy best practices for driving site traffic

Keywords

Conducting keyword research reveals the precise terms individuals input into Google while seeking a product akin to yours. Once you unearth these keywords, strategically placing them in strategic locations on your website aids various pages in securing coveted positions on the first page of Google search results. When a page “ranks” on Google, it signifies its prominent visibility in search results for a specific keyword, also known as a search term.

Research the best keywords to target

Employing a keyword research tool is instrumental in pinpointing the most suitable keywords for your business to target. Ubersuggest stands out as a free tool with optional upgrades, much like the Moz Keyword Explorer. Although Ahrefs lacks a free version, its $99 per month subscription offers comprehensive features for keyword exploration and rank tracking.

Once you’ve selected a tool, your focus shifts to identifying the keywords frequently searched by potential customers seeking products akin to yours.

A straightforward approach involves conducting a Google search for your product. Identify the top-ranking businesses and input their names into the chosen keyword research tool. This process unveils the keywords they rank for, allowing you to emulate their strategies. For instance, a search for “rosette-shaped succulents for sale” yields results where Succulents Box secures the top position.

Ensure the keywords you found have purchase intent

Online searches stem from various motives, but what you’re truly after are individuals actively seeking to make a purchase. For instance, someone might query “prickly pear cactus” on Google to admire photos or because they intend to acquire one for their garden.

To discern keywords infused with genuine purchase intent, delve into the keywords for which Google ranks product and collection webpages. When Google assigns rankings to product and collection pages for a particular keyword, it signifies buying intent.

For instance, a search for “prickly pear cactus” furnishes images, a definition, and care instructions. Conversely, a search for “prickly pear cactus for sale” yields collection pages. Thus, this latter keyword signifies purchase intent and is the one you should target.

Place them strategically across your website

Now that you’ve unveiled a suite of keywords tailored to your product offerings, it’s pivotal to strategically position them across various pages on your website and develop content revolving around them. This entails integrating keywords into:

– The meta title: This is the page title visible in search engine results such as Google.

– The H1 headline of a page: This headline appears prominently at the top of a page, akin to a blog post title.

– The meta description of a page: This brief description accompanies the meta title in search engine results, providing additional context.

– A dedicated blog post addressing the keyword’s topic: This could encompass informative articles or how-to guides.

– The description box on a collection or product page: This box furnishes supplementary details about individual products or product collections.

– The URL of the page: Incorporate the keyword towards the end of the URL, following a structure like this:

All these adjustments can be executed within the backend editing section of your ecommerce platform. While it’s crucial to strategically position your keywords, refrain from excessive usage, a practice commonly referred to as keyword stuffing.

The content within a blog post or on the collection page should accentuate the distinctive features of your product, elucidate its uniqueness, and delineate how it surpasses competitors’ offerings. If feasible, incorporating this messaging directly onto the collection page can aid Google in comprehending the page’s essence more efficiently.

Add keywords to every meta title

A meta title serves as the headline of your webpage displayed on search engine result pages, such as Google. Enhancing your meta titles by incorporating relevant keywords represents a simple yet highly effective SEO adjustment for your website.

While conventional wisdom suggests that SEO outcomes may take up to six months to materialize, there are instances where the most significant improvements occur within the first month, primarily due to the pivotal role of meta titles.

Most ecommerce platforms offer the functionality to set meta titles for individual pages. In Shopify, for instance, you can access this feature within your admin dashboard. Simply navigate to the desired page, and locate the “search engine listing preview” section at the bottom of the page. This section provides a preview of how your meta title will appear in search results.

Backlinks and internal links

Link building entails establishing connections with diverse brands and online publications, persuading them to feature a link to your website on theirs. The more inbound links you accumulate, the more reputable you appear to Google. Google, in turn, acknowledges this credibility by elevating your position in search results. In essence, when numerous entities trust your content and deem it link-worthy, Google follows suit.

Cultivating backlinks is a fundamental eCommerce SEO strategy, and fostering alliances with other brands constitutes an effective approach. However, to garner backlinks, you must craft compelling content worthy of linking. Once you produce such content, you can then cultivate relationships and pitch your articles to secure links.

This underscores the significance of maintaining a blog. While other brands might hesitate to link to a product collection page, they may eagerly endorse a helpful blog post. For instance, they are more inclined to link to a blog post offering succulent care tips than to a collection page showcasing succulents.

While link building necessitates outreach and relationship building, internal linking involves interconnecting pages within your website. This entails linking to one of your blog posts from another or linking to a collection page from a relevant blog post. Both forms of linking are instrumental in bolstering page rankings.

Blog

Establishing a blog constitutes a pivotal aspect of an effective eCommerce SEO strategy, albeit not for conventional reasons. Rather than solely focusing on driving sales through blog traffic, the true advantage lies in cultivating what’s known as topical relevance.

Google prioritizes ranking sites deemed authoritative within their respective domains. This authority can manifest through a robust link profile or through exceptionally high-quality content that comprehensively addresses user queries pertaining to specific products.

For instance, Succulents Box, a plant shop, curates concise blog posts centered around informational keywords relevant to succulent care, such as:

– “When should I water my succulents?”

– “How to deal with transplant shock”

– “Can succulents grow well in sand?”

Once these informative pieces are created, it’s crucial to incorporate internal links from each blog post to the corresponding product collection. For instance, linking an article discussing succulent growth in sandy soil to a collection page featuring succulents thriving in such conditions.

This strategic approach establishes a layer of relevance, bolstering the visibility of collection pages in search rankings.

Social Media

With over 70% of individuals in the United States actively utilizing various social media platforms, businesses have a prime opportunity to connect and interact with their customer base where they frequently engage.

Social media marketing offers small business owners huge advantages, including the acquisition of new customers, reinforcement of brand loyalty, enhancement of customer relationships, and augmentation of sales figures. However, to reap these benefits, it’s imperative to grasp the nuances of utilizing diverse types of social media content effectively and discern the art of crafting compelling, audience-tailored content that yields tangible outcomes.

Here are five best practices for optimizing your social media advertisements:

1. Communicate on a personal level: Social media thrives on authentic, user-generated content. To resonate with your audience, employ casual language and utilize photos and videos that exude a sense of authenticity rather than being overly polished.
2. Leverage Targeting Tools: Make the most of your ad budget by precisely targeting your desired audience. Utilize the audience targeting tools provided by social media platforms to reach individuals based on location, interests, and browsing habits. Adapt your content to suit the preferences of mobile users, ensuring compatibility with portrait mode.
3. Adhere to Advertising Policies: Each social media platform has specific guidelines controlling the content allowed in advertisements. Ensure compliance with these policies to avoid disruptions in your ad campaigns.
4. Incorporate Strong CTAs: Encourage user engagement with compelling calls to action (CTAs) that prompt specific actions, such as visiting your website or subscribing to your mailing list. Learn from effective CTA examples to optimize the impact of your campaigns.
5. Analyze and Adapt: Utilize the data provided by social media platforms to refine your advertising strategies. Evaluate metrics like click-through rates to make informed decisions and optimize your campaigns for better performance.

Conclusion

Optimizing your Shopify store by adhering to best practices is not just about enhancing the visual appeal of your product pages or adding a few new features. It’s about creating a seamless, engaging, and trustworthy shopping experience that turns casual browsers into loyal customers. By implementing strategies like clear product information, captivating visuals, mobile optimization, and effective use of apps, you can significantly boost your conversion rates and overall sales performance.

Remember, the eCommerce landscape is ever-evolving, and staying ahead requires continuous learning and adaptation. With dedication and the right strategies, you can take your Shopify sales to the next level and build a thriving online business.