Traffic, conversions and growth

Your map to the wonderland of ecommerce

If there is one thing that’s abundantly clear when creating a Shopify store, it’s that there are a million and one ways to go about making sales online. Identifying your next move and hunting down resources can at times feel overwhelming. With so many guides, articles, blogs, forums, apps, and video tutorials out there it can be hard to know where to start.

This blog won’t walk you through each and every step of how to increase traffic on your store and make more sales. Rather, its aim is to compile these valuable, scattered resources into one place for you to refer back to. Think of this as your rudimentary map before tumbling down the rabbit hole into the Wonderland of ecommerce.

Focusing on the three of the most common stages of online business — driving traffic, increasing conversion rates, and customer retention and growth (along with the different ways to address them) — this blog’s goal is to act as a touchstone of sorts. A compilation of introductory resources for you to come back to when taking on one of these projects.

Some of you may find that you’ve implemented all of these strategies already. Some of you may bookmark this blog and follow it from beginning to end (and that would make me very happy). Or, more realistically, you may find a strategy or two that you had yet to use and find success with them. If this guide helps you make even one extra sale, I’ll consider it a success.

Without further ado, down the rabbit hole we go!

Driving Traffic — Getting visitors to your store

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) can help people discover your store on search engines (Google, Bing, etc) by ranking your pages and products higher over time. Optimizing your store’s content to better help search engines find your pages is one of the easiest ways to drive traffic to a new business.

• Shopify’s Built-In SEO Features and Basic Steps
• SEO Tips
• Keyword Research
• Keyword Rank Checker
• SEO Checklist
• Finding and Submitting your Sitemap to Google
• SEO Image Optimizer
• 10 Must Know Image Optimization Tips

Social Media Marketing is a given these days. Marketing on social media platforms can increase traffic to your store, improve your SEO, lead to higher conversion rates, and a host of other benefits. Studies have shown that online adults aged 18–34 are most likely to follow a brand via social networking (95%). And 71% of consumers who have had a good social media service experience with a brand are likely to recommend it to others.

Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Snapchat, Pinterest — learning who your customers are and which of these social media platforms they use can have an enormous impact on getting your products seen by the right people. Learn a little more about the differences in these platforms here.

• Kit and what Kit can do for you
• Facebook Ads Manager Tutorial Video
• Social Media Marketing Blogs
• How to run a “Like Campaign” on Facebook

Advertising on Google can allow you to reach more potential customers by displaying your products the moment they search for the things you offer. (See more on where your ads can appear here.)

• Google AdWords Basics
• Redeeming your Google AdWords Credit via Shopify
• How to Spend Your First $100 on Google AdWords

And many more resources!

• 6 Practical and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic
• 5 High-Impact Strategies for Getting More Traffic
• 13 Actionable Marketing Tactics to Drive Traffic
• 5 Unique Ways to Drive Traffic
• Taking Advantage of Shopify’s Free Sales Channels
• Getting more High Quality Traffic

Conversion Rates — Turning traffic into sales

Shopify’s App Store can act as your Swiss Army Knife once your store is out in the wild. Apps can create a sense of urgency, a feeling of trust, blast out a newsletter, or dangle a shiny new discount code. Below are some of Shopify’s most popular, focused primarily on free apps (or as close as possible) to help keep your costs low as you get started.

• Kit, more specifically in this case Kit’s Retargeting Campaigns and how they work.
• Product Reviews and Product Reviews Addon
• Privy
• Sales Pop
• Discounted Upsells
• Free Shipping Bar or Quick Announcement Bar

As much as it may pain us, when it comes to ecommerce, appearance is everything. A visually pleasing store will often come out on top.Thankfully, there are many ways to ensure your storefront is looking in tip top shape.

• Burst
• Shopify’s Best Practices for Images
• Photo Resize
• How to Pick the Perfect Theme
• 5 Design Mistakes that Could Be Killing Your Sales

And (once again) many more articles!

• The Secret to Increasing Conversion
• 6 Ways to Increase Conversion
• Email Marketing 101
• Conversion Rate Optimization

Customer Retention and Growth — Turning those customers into repeat customers, and encouraging them to engage potential new customers

Trust might be your most valuable tool when it comes to ecommerce. It goes without saying that if a customer comes across two stores selling the same product for the same price, they’re more likely to buy it from the store they trust more.

There is, however, a fine line that can be easily crossed. Adding a Security Badge? Sure! Adding 4 or 5? Something feels off.

Shopify already offers your store full SSL protection — and has for a while — but there are other ways to effectively build trust. The three most effective and simple ways to do this are Reviews, Rewards, and Customer Service.

• Yotpo Reviews and how you can leverage them with Kit
• Product Reviews and Product Reviews Addon
• Loyalty Lion or other Loyalty Apps.
• Customer Reorder
• Facebook Chat
• Tawk.to Live Chat

Another great way to keep customers coming back is through email marketing. Email marketing keeps your customers in the loop, informs them new products, can announce an upcoming sale, or share a discount code to encourage a visit to your shop.

• Email Marketing 101
• Shopify’s Email Marketing Guide
• Using Kit to Send Email Marketing Campaigns
• And Other Email Marketing Tools

And (one more for the road) more helpful articles!

• How to Measure and Improve Customer Retention
• Foolproof Customer Retention Strategies
• 7 Customer Retention Strategies

These resources, as robust and detailed as they may be, are only the tip of the iceberg. Shopify provides almost infinite possibilities to create and run your very own unique business, and with that, infinite ways to reach new customers and keep them coming back for more. As new features are added, and new social platforms become available to market on, guides like these may over time get stale. I urge you to stay vigilant and always keep looking for new ways to attract and retain customers, and if you find other great resources, add them to the comments below!