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The global eCommerce market is on track to achieve a total value of $4.89 trillion by the end of 2021, with more growth ahead. The market share for online purchases has also expanded, with a 6% increase over just the past two years. In short: eCommerce revenues are thriving.
This shift is largely attributed to the COVID-19 pandemic. Companies worldwide have had to provide robust shopping solutions for customers unable to visit brick and mortar stores, whether or not they were inclined to expand online.
However, now that the world has rolled out the red carpet, there’s no sign of business moving back offline — and brands need to embrace the change. There’s perhaps no platform better suited to doing so than Shopify.
As a major player in the eCommerce sector, Shopify has evolved into a powerhouse online retail solution for multiple industries. The third leading eCommerce platform, it holds roughly 11% of the global market share and boasts more than one million users worldwide — a number that’s only grown as more sales move online.
Here’s the catch: many businesses who made the pandemic pivot to Shopify jumped in without a full plan for the platform. They’ve embraced eCommerce, but are struggling to deal with growth, or not seeing the sales they should be.
With that in mind, let’s take a look at some simple, proven tactics that can help increase your Shopify sales.
Do you have a Shopify store strategy in place?
In the crowded, increasingly competitive eCommerce landscape, you can’t expect to drive sales without a plan in place. This is especially true when you have revenue goals and income requirements to meet. Whether you’re working with an internal team or agency support, your marketing experts must plan ahead and use all the tools available if you want to maximize sales without an inflated ad spend.
Leverage your social media platforms
Whether you’re in retail eCommerce or the B2B sector, one of the most powerful marketing and sales tools at your disposal is a strong social media presence. For eCommerce, the visual marketing tools integrated into Pinterest, Instagram, and Facebook are hard to beat.
While the platforms are primarily for connecting socially, millions of users have started to follow businesses they support to stay informed about new products. These users are a ready-made audience for you to target and re-engage with a thoughtful social campaign.
Not only do these platforms allow you to connect directly with a group of high-intent consumers, but they have also gone the extra mile to support eCommerce integration. That means tools for better targeting your ad campaigns, as well as the framework for customizable, boosted informational posts, all of which can include custom calls to action.
Even with new privacy standards radically changing the status quo for digital campaigns on these platforms, they’re still dedicated to providing the best options they can for brands on social media.
On the retail side of the equation, these social channels can support direct Shopify integration. Options include checkout buttons, product links, and even simplified purchasing with “swipe up” behaviors that allow customers to buy from your online store without leaving their app of choice. Used properly, you can seamlessly transition your customer from a post to a purchase.
Automate great customer service with Live Chat + AI Chatbots
With a brick-and-mortar business, you can get away with set service hours and offering customers in-person assistance. Once your eCommerce platform is in place, customers expect 24/7 attention and resolutions from the comfort of their couch. Not to worry; with an added Live Chat function on your product pages — combined with customizable AI Chat-Bots — always-on customer service is easy to achieve.
Even when your staff isn’t available, these automated systems can address simple problems, send out requested information, manage scheduling, and even handle refunds. All tasks that they can complete during off-hours when customers would otherwise have to wait for a solution.
Better customer service will improve consumer satisfaction and encourage repeat business, as well as giving your ratings and reviews a shot in the arm. These reviews then become a tool for building further traffic to your products and increasing sales.
Use automated cross-selling and upselling tools
There are even more automated tools that can be integrated with Shopify to build out responses to your customer’s actions. For example, you can customize your communication based on the products a customer adds to their basket. Used properly, tools like Conductrics, Adobe Marketing Cloud, or Marketo can add significant profit to your bottom line by strategically cross-selling and upselling with the right kind of products.
The key to success with cross-selling tools is presenting a customer with products based on their purchase history and their current basket contents. Since they’re likely interested in these purchases anyway, it’s just a matter of letting them know that they’re a part of your catalog.
Upselling, on the other hand, plays off of consumer emotions by presenting them with alternatives to the products they have chosen. Don’t be afraid to embrace their FOMO by sharing products with slightly better quality, better specifications and functionality, or slightly better reviews, even if they come at a higher price. What often happens is that a consumer will swap to the better item, feeling that the improved quality or functionality justifies the cost — once both options are in front of them.
Loyalty programs and rewards programs create repeat business
Would you implement a program if 77% of your consumer base said it would keep them shopping on your site? Of course!
Here’s the thing — that’s not a hypothetical. Loyalty programs that give customers an incentive to stick with your brand are extremely popular and increase the odds that a large majority will stick around. They add meaning to their relationship with your business and, over time, help to bring your brand into their lives. Implemented correctly, they’ll turn your store into more than just a destination for online shopping.
These programs also help to reduce overall costs, as retaining an existing customer is usually much cheaper than winning over a new one.
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Opt-in forms in the right places create traffic on your sales page
Any visitor to your website is a potential customer of your Shopify store.
But in order to get them to visit, let alone consume your products, you have to connect them with the right user journey. A reliable place to start is encouraging opt-ins with extra value for visitors: additional information, or regular discount offers through your brand’s email list, for example. This allows your inbound marketing funnels to work properly.
One of the best ways to accomplish this is to combine special offers and other incentives with pop-ups on your page. It’s a quick way to move visitors up through the customer journey and closer to a purchase. Whether it’s an invitation to receive coupons or an offer for a free eBook, you’re looking at 3% to 9% more traffic to your landing pages or additional subscribers to your mailing lists.
The high ROI on email marketing can drive Shopify sales
Using email marketing in combination with Shopify puts a data-driven spin on one of the most powerful forms of direct marketing available to you. Your Shopify platform provides that data, tracking a customer’s behavior on your site, including what they’ve bought, if they’ve left items in an abandoned cart, or when they joined your email list. These are all opportunities for tailored email engagement. You can remind them to revisit their abandoned cart or to consider other purchases based on their Shopify browsing history.
It doesn’t end with abandonment. If a customer signs up, makes a purchase, then disappears, you can design automated email campaigns to re-engage. You can also build additional email flows that educate customers on your brand and culture in order to build recognition, awareness, and loyalty.
A gentle push notification can go a long way
There’s no arguing that consumers are busy, and without help, your store can get lost in their day-to-day activities and to-do lists. In order to navigate the chaos, many of your potential customers rely on mobile apps to plan and navigate their schedules. You can use this to your advantage.
An unobtrusive push notification strategy to let them know about your events and offers, right on the device they’re already using. You can even time notifications for the times that they’re usually shopping on your app, which goes a long way towards inspiring a shopping session.
Just be judicious with your plan. Avoid sending too many notifications and use reminders that add value for your customers so they are useful, rather than intrusive.
It isn’t a marketing strategy unless you have a strong landing page that converts
Just like any other marketing activity, a push to increase your Shopify activity requires a point of entry into your marketing machine. That point of entry should always be a well-designed landing page that fits your campaign, then funnels them to your Shopify experience.
As with any effective landing page, you want a powerful yet simple call to action (CTA) supported by well-written headlines, high-quality product visuals, and content that addresses the consumer pain points your brand can solve.
Better yet, provide social proof in support of your messaging so that potential buyers have some evidence to back up your claims. This can take the form of reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers, as well as any other user-generated content that might have an impact on your visitors. If you’ve used influencer marketing on social media platforms, this is a great place to leverage those connections and content.
Wishlists are more than a future shopping list
For eCommerce, big data provides a treasure trove of information about consumer needs and desires — as long as you know where to look.
For example, wishlists can be an invaluable source of data for building out campaigns tailored to your customers. Letting site users save a potential shopping list without purchasing allows you to fold its contents into future marketing campaigns and other email communications. With this tailored content, the odds that a visitor will become a purchasing member of your site go up.
The items being added to Wishlists can also help you design targeted ad campaigns and promotional material, build lookalike audiences, and ensure that you’ll capture sales from a wider range of consumers.
Create a Shopify sales strategy that converts
If you depend on Shopify for your eCommerce revenue, you can’t rely on your storefront alone to build sales. The onsite and offsite solutions we’ve discussed can help your lead generation and conversion rate optimization, but when it comes to increasing your Shopify sales volume, they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
To learn more, you can always subscribe to our Mercury blog for the latest and greatest insights. Or, if you’re ready to launch, there are expert eCommerce agencies — including Major Tom — that are ready to help your Shopify business thrive.