Leggings. Coconut Oil. Wood Watches. Wood Sunglasses. People are using Shopify to sell anything.
Services, digital downloads, memberships, and classes are other things people are selling on Shopify.
For example, Wakes Surf and School sell wakeboard gear, boat charters and surfing classes using Shopify.
If you don’t want to write code, Shopify is the right platform to get started.
Shopify has the support and resources to help you understand HTML even if you’re a new web user.
I love Shopify.
It’s quick to set up, and it’s easy to sell and organize your products on it.
They’ve done the majority of the hard work for you.
So, do you want to know how to use Shopify to sell online?
What are the things you need to do?
1. Pick a nice name for your Shopify store
A short, memorable domain name can make a big difference between running a successful online store and struggling to convince visitors to come back to your site.
A good domain name makes your store look professional and credible in the eyes of web shoppers.
Successful Shopify stores like Tattly, Flat Spot, Allbirds, and Studio Neat have cool domain names prospects won’t forget easily.
According to a study published on Time, 98% of people still don’t trust the internet.
A generic domain name won’t help people trust your store.
Register your own domain name.
A domain name like https://cuppow.myshopify.com/ doesn’t inspire confidence in the minds of consumers.
When you own your domain name, you can control what people see when they search for your Shopify store.
Searchers who see yourstorename.myshopify.com would believe that you’re not willing to fully invest in the business.
Owning your domain name means you can leave Shopify in the future without losing your customers.
I highly recommend NameCheap.com for registering domain names.
You can register a good name for less than $12 on Name Cheap.
Your favorite names might have been taken. Get creative and keep coming up with nice names that relate to your brand.
If you can’t find a good name to register, you can check domain marketplaces to search for names that are available for sale.
The popular domain marketplaces are Sedo.com, GoDaddy, and Domain Market.
Note that most domain names on these marketplaces are expensive.
If you have limited capital, you may still end up creating a nice domain name to register for less than $12.
2. Sign up and create a store on Shopify
After getting a nice domain name, the next step is to set up your Shopify store.
I believe you have a product to sell and have learned a little about your competitors.
It’s time to start building your store.
First, you need to sign up for Shopify.
Shopify has created a video that shows you everything you need to know about signing up and building your store on Shopify.
Take your time to watch the above video if you are ready to start setting up your store.
Shopify also created comprehensive manuals on building a store on their platform.
After watching the above video, or visiting the link in the above paragraph, you should be able to create your store with ease.
3. Start adding your product content
What is product content?
Product content is the information that tells consumers about your product.
Examples of product content are product name, descriptions, and images.
The quality of your product content matters a lot. It needs to stand out when compared to the competition.
Online shoppers aren’t loyal.
They are on their mobile phones, desktops, browsing search engines, scanning social media feeds – all the same day looking for the merchant who offers them the best deal.
A poor or incomplete product data could make shoppers move to competitors.
That is why you need to ensure that your product content has better images and stronger titles, and thorough product descriptions.
Your product content should be unique and optimized for search engines to get the best exposure for your pages
Shoppers shouldn’t see the same phrases they saw while reading your competitors’ product pages.
Fifty Three has one of the best product pages I’ve seen.
If your product content isn’t well written, you’ll be wasting money, effort and time in advertising and marketing. Your product content is what shoppers want to read.
And if it’s not good, it’ll be hard to convert prospects into customers.
Your product images are part of your product content. Ensure that they are high-quality and beautiful.
High-quality images will make people value your product more.
Even if customers know what your product looks like, they won’t give you their cash if the product image is ugly, or the page doesn’t have any image to display.
Take this picture of the below Chevrolet Cruze cars for example. These cars look stunning on the Chevrolet site.
They know that they need high-quality images to get people to buy.
4. Choose an attractive web design
Great web designs are expensive.
Businesses pay so much for web design these days.
Why?
They invest heavily in their web designs to stand out.
You don’t want to be using the same theme your competitors or stores in related industries are using.
Web shoppers have seen them over and over again.
Getting a unique web design for your store will help it stand out.
Premium Shopify themes cost between $150 – $180.
If you’re not a web designer and know nothing about HTML and CSS, get a designer to help you tweak your design a bit to give it a unique look.
Talented web developers charge between $50 – $150 per hour.
It should take a few hours to customize your web design.
But if you have more to invest, don’t be afraid of hiring a web developer to build your design from the ground up to give your site a unique look and feel.
Doing this will ensure that your site is easy to use and navigate for shoppers.
Your competitors are likely investing in website design. You should do the same thing if you want to achieve success with your Shopify store.
5. Set up payments
Receiving payments is one of the most important aspects of running a Shopify store.
Shopify’s own payment system is only available to stores in the United States, Puerto Rico, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore.
With Shopify Payments, your customers can make credit card payments on your store.
You’ll need the following information to set up Shopify Payments:
- Banking details
- Employer Identification Number (EIN)
- The average price of your orders
- The average shipping time of your orders
Shopify Payments costs vary based on your plan. You can check out the full Shopify Pricing page here.
Setting up Shopify Payments is easy.
Inside your Shopify admin, go to Settings, then Payments.
In the Accept credit cards section, click Add a provider.
Note: If you’ve already enabled a provider, select Shopify Payments, and click Continue.
If you don’t want to use Shopify Payments, there are over 70 third-party credit card payment providers to choose from on Shopify.
If you use a third-party provider, you’ll be charged transaction fees each time a customer makes a purchase.
Shopify wants you to use their own Shopify Payments instead to avoid paying any transaction fees.
I’m a big fan of third-party providers on Shopify.
Here are some of the payment gateways available on the Shopify e-commerce platform.
- 2Checkout
- Affirm Alipay Global
- Amazon Pay
- net
- Bambora
- BitPay
- BluePay
- Cayan
- Chase Paymentech (Orbital)
- CyberSource
- Divido
- Dwolla
- E-xact
- PayPal Express Checkout
- PayPal Payflow Pro
- PayPal Payments Pro (US)
- Paymentcloud
- QuickBooks Payments
6. Claim your business name on social media platforms
If you’ve snatched up a unique domain name that fits your store and its niche, you should claim the name on social media platforms.
Use the same name across all social media for your business.
Also, you should make sure that the name is short, memorable, and easy to spell.
If your domain name is J. Hill Clothing Store, for example.
Let’s imagine that your Twitter handle is J. Hill on Twitter, your Facebook username is J. Hill Clothing on Facebook, and your Instagram username is J. Hill Clothing World, it’ll be difficult for consumers to remember your name across these social media platforms.
It’s not professional.
That is why it’s important that you have a unique name that is not only available on NameCheap.com, but also on social media platforms.
The biggest social sites where you should claim your store’s name are:
- YouTube
- Google+
Use a separate Gmail address to register on all these sites. Doing that helps you keep things organized.
Claiming your business names on these platforms will help shoppers find you easily anywhere they are.
It prevents the bad guys from using your business name to hurt your brand and reputation on the web.
Brand identity theft or brand hacking is real.
To minimize the risk of someone representing you and your business, claim all the names on every social media channel.
Don’t wait to claim your brand identity on these social channels before others do.
7. Use Email Marketing
More than 205 billion emails are sent daily.
The number is expected to hit 246 billion emails by 2019.
Email marketing is the go-to marketing channel. It delivers the best marketing ROI.
Email marketing beat SEO, PPC and content marketing.
Email is the cheapest way to communicate with your customers and achieve your business goals at the same time.
On average, for every $1 invested in email marketing, you can expect a return of $48!
To make email marketing work for you, you need to start collecting visitors’ emails on your Shopify store.
The best way to get visitors’ attention and collect their emails is through popups.
Not just ordinary popups, but what I call smart popups.
GrowthFunnel.io is one of the best services that let you create high-converting smart popups that turn random visitors into customers.
With GrowthFunnel, you can capture visitors’ emails, while at the same time, ask them to follow and share your brand on social media.
That’s like killing two birds with one stone.
No other popup tool can let you do that.
GrowthFunnel is a cutting-edge marketing tool that will help you build a huge audience for your Shopify store within a short period of time.
It’s free to get started with GrowthFunnel. Click here to sign up today.
8. Promote your store through Facebook Ads
Why Facebook Ads?
Facebook ads are 88% cheaper than Google AdWords, and the platform remains one of the most effective advertising channels.
People spend a ridiculous amount of time on Facebook.
Facebook is too huge to ignore. The platform has 2 billion monthly active users.
It’s a great place where new Shopify store owners can quickly create awareness for their products.
Google AdWords is the granddaddy of online advertising, but it is expensive.
And as competition continues to increase in most industries, we expect costs of advertising on AdWords to keep increasing.
The same thing can be said of Facebook Ads, but the platform is considerably cheaper when compared to AdWords.
With Facebook Ads, you can reach thousands of people with a few dollars spent.
9. Offer discounts to visitors on your site
Discounts let you gain prospects’ attention on your site quickly.
They help you sell more, which could increase your revenue.
Discounts have been proven as one of the best ways to quickly raise demand for products online.
The great news is that you can use discounts to collect emails on your store.
With a tool like GrowthFunnel.io, you won’t find it hard using discounts to collect emails on your site.
GrowthFunnel lets you create high-converting popups where you can put your discount message for visitors to see.
You can sign up for free to start using GrowthFunnel today.
10. Offer a live chat option on your site
The disadvantage of online shopping is that many sites lack the option where you can ask a question and get a real-time answer from a customer service representative.
Consumers get this option when shopping offline. They want it online too.
Live chat lets you bring the offline experience into the online world.
You can now use live chat on your Shopify store.
With a live chat support, customers know there’s always someone on the other end ready to answer any questions they may have.
Live chat is convenient for shoppers. So, offering it on your site will increase your revenue by a significant percentage.
Many online consumers want help from a live person while they are shopping online; in fact, 44% of online consumers say that having questions answered by a live person while in the middle of an online purchase is one of the most important features a Web site can offer.
If you want to sell more on your Shopify store, don’t hesitate in getting a Shopify live chat app.
Conclusion
The most important thing to do when selling online is to collect emails.
With a cutting-edge tool like GrowthFunnel, you don’t have to worry about that.
Sign up for GrowthFunnel today. It’s free.
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