Back-to-basics: how to grow your Shopify store?

Creating a Shopify store, and that too from scratch, can be tough, especially if you’re a first timer and the territory is unexplored. Shopify’s software is sophisticated enough to hit the spot for experienced retailers and established businesses, yet, simple enough that new-comers can use it to swiftly launch a business and see it flourish. With all that being said, creating an account and completing the initial stages of the process is the easy part, staying on top of your game is the tough part. Why? Competition. Due to the reduced barrier of entry, often it can be hard to cut through the noise and start generating sales.

Sell more to earn more:

This is simplistic and anything but new. Having said that, don’t throw it under the bus because it can lead to your business thriving. Brick-and-mortar culture has been overcome by the likes of Amazon because of this simple strategy; offering more products to make more sales and engage more people. Take the example of Amazon, in brick-and-mortar bookshops there were only so many books that people could buy and when they couldn’t find what they needed they were left with a wasted trip leading to unproductivity. That’s when opportunity struck and Jeff Bezos decided to sell all of these books under one network. Amazon became a one-stop solution; hence it attracted the wider public who didn’t have to scurry around to find what they needed. You can’t possibly sell everything but increasing the volume of products you’re selling will to increase the amount of audience to engage who will become your potential customers.

Make your store mobile:

It sounds like a Herculean effort but invest in having an app for your store. Why? The times where people used desktops and laptops are long gone. Now, e-commerce sellers experience large amounts of traffic from smartphones and tablets. So since over half of all internet usage comes from mobile devices (and 10% of people’s time on mobile devices is spent browsing through e-commerce apps), not having a mobile app essentially means you’re instantly losing about half of your potential opportunities to engage and convert website visitors because they’re less likely to bounce away or get distracted on mobile devices. This’ll in turn start driving sales on mobile and improve overall experience for customers who’ll be able to add products to the cart on mobile and then buy on desktop, if that’s best suited to their needs. The point is you need to provide them with that accessibility. Your store is also more likely to rank in Google Search for mobile specific queries. This is a simple step yet quintessential in a world where you can access any and everything from the palm of your hand, peeing to the humble smartphone and its increasing dominance.

Regular email communication:

Keep users engaged by sending out regular emails and make your store the first one they think of when they’re ready to make a purchase. This doesn’t mean constantly blasting out emails droning on and on about the same product again and again, the only thing that’s going to do is make your audience want to click the unsubscribe button from your mailing list. And that’s the last thing you want. Instead, make the emails slightly more personal like sending out a birthday email to the client with a voucher as a present. This really says a lot about you as a brand and how much you care about your consumers.

There’s no cookie-cutter mold you can follow for instant success. It all comes with hard-work, diligence and navigating and working with your mistakes.