What you can do
Be sure to set pricing
This seems like a no-brainer, but you’d be surprised how many online and ecommerce stores forget to set prices on their products. Shopify tries to protect you by not showing products when they don’t have prices.
Going off this, make sure your Collections don’t have conflicts. For example, it’s common to create a Collection in Shopify for Products that are On Sale or Not On Sale to use when filtering what products Sales or Coupons can apply to. Make sure your Compare-At Price isn’t set to the same price as your Base Price – doing this may include that Product in an On Sale collection and prevent customers from being able to use Coupons.
Google does seek to serve the Searcher though too, so it may rank a lower-priced product higher in the search results compared to a competitor’s product. This is another reason to be sure you are not overpriced!
Make sure your pricing is competitive
If your products aren’t priced competitively in your Shopify store, it can deter people from buying – whether your product is priced too low or too high.
If your product is priced too high, people will be more likely to buy from your competitors instead, to save money.
Alternatively, if your product is priced too low, it may appear “cheap” compared to the competition. Or, if you sell an identical product to a competitor, someone might think your product will take longer to ship or have another negative thought just by looking at the price!
Use 99-cent pricing (aka Charm Pricing)
Studies have shown that people are more likely to buy when you round to a number ending in 9. Multiple tests were conducted and found conclusive results – rounding to 8 or another number instead of 9 just doesn’t work the same, and when researchers sold the same product for $34 vs $39, the $39 product sold more! This also shows that rounding to a number ending in 9 could even improve your profit margins.
Make sure all elements are responsive
If your site isn’t responsive, customers may not be able to read everything on your page. Fortunately, Shopify offers hundreds of pre-built themes that take the hassle out of making sure your website is responsive across devices.
Ensure all elements are clickable
This seems like another no-brainer, but once again, you’d be surprised how many sites miss this one. If your call-to-action isn’t clickable on your ecommerce store, or the buy button is not clickable, you will certainly miss out on online sales.
Avoid scammy features
There is a fine line between elements and apps that can increase your chances of making a sale or decrease your chances of making a sale. This is because there is also a fine line between apps that create a feeling of scarcity or urgency, and apps that look scammy. If you use an element, for example, that shows “X Products Sold In Last Y Hours,” but the X and Y keep changing, it’s going to look scammy.
Optimize for SEO
As tedious as it may be to add new products and fill out every aspect of the product details, doing so is critical to your SEO. Product Title and Description are critical for SEO, and as we mentioned earlier, your price matters too! Be sure to fill in every detail! Google Merchant Center also shows Limited performance on products missing certain details, like Barcodes or UPCs, so be sure to input these any time they are available.
If your products don’t have descriptions, whether you’re selling your own products or products from another vendor, you can use ChatGPT to generate product descriptions.
Get listed on Google
If your business isn’t already on Google, you can add it in a couple of areas. The first is to create a Google Business Profile – this is especially important if you are a brick and mortar store, but not necessary if your shop is online-only. The other is to log into Google Search Console and make sure your website's pages are being properly indexed on Google.
Run Ads
Ads can be a great way to get your product in front of customers! There are a few different ways to run Ads for an ecommerce shop, so we’ll save this for another post. But, we highly recommend choosing an experienced agency like Boggs to run your ads. Leaving your ads in the hands of someone inexperienced will cost you and eat into your profit margins, or worse, put you in the negative. Invest in someone experienced, and they will deliver ROI that pays for themselves and then some!
Improve your Ads
If you’re already running ads for your ecommerce store, improving them may give you more visibility and lead to more sales. Some common ways to improve your ads include: better SEO product titles and descriptions, better images, and better targeting.
Have a professional-looking website with good UX/UI
Let’s face it – if your ecommerce website looks dull or boring, outdated, or has too much or too little information, you’re going to lose trust or distract people from buying. Just today, I spoke with someone who was trying to purchase a product online and every time they added a product to their cart, they were forced to log back in and their cart was empty! This is a great example of a poor user experience. As we mentioned earlier, you should also be sure your ecommerce site is responsive and that all necessary buttons and links are clickable.
Use automations to send Cart and Checkout abandonment emails
Even small businesses can lose hundreds or even thousands of dollars to abandoned carts and checkouts. The worst part about this is you’ve already paid to get their traffic – they already watched your video, clicked your ad, and browsed your website; all 3 of which you’re paying for! When they make it to adding a product to their cart or even make it to the checkout screen but don’t buy, then all those marketing dollars are wasted!
Recover your marketing dollars by creating and automating Cart and Checkout Abandonment emails. What this means is that when someone adds a product to their cart in your ecommerce store, but doesn’t complete checkout, your Flow initiates an automated email to the customer reminding them to complete their order.
Shopify has this feature built-in, you just have to enable it. However, the default is to only send one email, and to send it only a few hours after the abandonment. You should set up 2 to 4 emails reminding customers to complete checkout. We recommend 1 email 2 hours after abandonment, a second the following day, a third after 3 days, and a fourth after 7 days. On the final reminder, you can also include a Coupon to help further nudge their buying decision. Somewhere in the process, you might even include some more information about the product or a comparison to the competitor showcasing why your product is better, and why they should buy from you instead.
Use Social Proof Popup tools like Proof Bear
Social Proof is the same concept as reviews. You use proof of other people buying your product to demonstrate to potential buyers that it’s safe to shop with you. With a social proof popup like Proof Bear, you can establish social proof by showing shoppers what products have been purchased recently via a popup. This not only establishes social proof, but may also show shoppers a different product that they might not have otherwise seen. This can also be a great way to show off products that are trending.
Monitor and adjust to Trends
Speaking of Trends, you should make sure you’re monitoring and adjusting to them. Do some product research and find out which products are selling well – what will sell well this year might not be the same thing that sold well last year. There could also be certain trends or hot topics going on that may encourage another product to sell well.
You can use Google Trends to monitor search traffic over time. Google Trends lets you view data on specific keywords as well as see some other related searches and breakout topics related to those keywords. It shows search volume on a scale from 0 to 100, 100 being peak search volume. One example of how you can leverage this for your ecommerce store is using it to see when people start searching for seasonal and holiday products so that you know when to stock your store or run seasonal promotions or ads.
Product Reviews
Back along the lines of social proof, product reviews are a great way to establish trust with your product and brand. You can talk or write all day long about how great your company and your product are, but obviously you’ll be a bit biased. Reviews come from people who relate to your other customers, and show real examples of real users of your products and your brand.
Reviews can also provide great feedback for you to develop your product and your lineup moving forward. You should monitor your reviews and respond to them, thanking sincere well-intentioned people for their feedback.
Also related to reviews, responding to reviews can boost your visibility in search rankings. Google values businesses who engage with their customers; responding to reviews does just that.