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Where do you shop? More often than not the answer would be online. To be more specific lying on the living room sofa on my phone.
Gone are the days you need to walk into a physical store and do your shopping. Almost everything that you need or want can be found online. And, with just a click of a button, you can make your purchase right in the convenience of your home.
With this ease, retail e-commerce has seen sales amounting to approximately $5.2 trillion worldwide in 2021. And, that number is still growing. By 2026, it has been forecast that sales will increase by 56% reaching $8.1 trillion.
This growth is evident. Shopify has seen revenues of up to $3.202 billion in just the first two quarters of 2023. This is due to almost 6.95 million websites that have used Shopify. This guarantees significant traffic to every Shopify store.
But, although Shopify will get you armed with the necessary tools to manage your store, your management as an owner will determine the success of your business. You are the decision maker in every aspect of the business like marketing, market research, customer support, etc.
The work could be quite intimidating and overwhelming. But, this blog will help you understand how to have exceptional store management by giving you 15 essential tools.
Store Setup and Customization
MART PRODUCTION | Pexels
People gravitate to visually appealing storefronts. This is the first thing store owners use to entice potential customers to come into the store. You are more inclined to enter a store that is aesthetically pleasing and seems to have a comfortable and relaxed atmosphere. In some cases, a storefront could feature something interesting like one-of-a-kind items or whimsical curios that could tickle someone’s fancy. Big bold letters of discounted prices could also attract attention because who doesn’t want a sale?
What applies to brick-and-mortar stores could also be applied to your Shopify store. Your homepage is your storefront. It is your showroom for your products. This is where they visit, browse your products and buy them. With the various Shopify tools available you can customize your homepage to whatever design or color palette you want.
1. Shopify Built-in Themes
Shopify themes enable you to make changes in your online store. You can customize the color, typography, social media links, and checkout settings. They offer a wide variety of themes and color palettes that you can use at your online store. The settings are easy to use. Here is a link to help you as a guide.
Shopify offers a lot of Shopify tools that make customization of your online store.
You can design all elements of the homepage not only to be visually pleasing but to also form your own brand identity. Make sure that all the colors, tests, and images must reflect what your brand is all about and what it stands for. This helps in creating brand recognition also.
2. Dribble & Behance
These sites offer hundreds if not thousands of works by graphic artists. You can browse the images and be inspired. Or, for a small amount you can buy some of their works and use it on your homepage.
Product and Inventory Management
In order for you to have a successful Shopify store, you need to have complete knowledge of what products you are selling and how many are available for purchase. This will enable a smoother flow of your supply and logistical chain. And, you can achieve this by having an efficient inventory.
To help you with your product and inventory management, Shopify tools include bulk editing, inventory management and product organization.
The bulk editor is beneficial if you want to change some properties of multiple products at the same time.. You can edit inventory, customers and collections of 100 products simultaneously
1. Removal.AI
If you want a background remover of your product image, this site will be convenient for you. Just upload the image on the site and it will cleanly remove the background leaving just your main product. You can even choose which background you prefer as they have hundreds of backgrounds you can choose from. The site is easy and hassle-free to use.
Your product catalog must be first-rate. You can also outsource image editing services for a professional look. You need images that are excellent. A high-quality product image implies high-quality products. This builds credibility for your business as legitimate and serious business.
2. Lightspeed
If you are mainly a brick-and-mortar store, Lightspeed offers a more comprehensive way of efficiently managing your inventory and product catalog. It can seamlessly sync your products in-store and online by Lightspeed Retail.
It offers automated product ads, built-in SEO tools, and advanced targeting. It even has a feature that sends emails if your customers’ have abandoned carts.
Having a system like this for your e-commerce would boost the efficiency of your store. Not only would it lessen the number of hours spent on inventory but it would reduce human errors.
Marketing and SEO
Shopify strategies and e-commerce tips would always include the importance of SEO. Referred to as Search Engine Optimization, this is a marketing strategy that will greatly affect traffic to your store. By using keywords and relevant information on your homepage like captions, product descriptions, etc. This gives your site or homepage a greater chance to be higher in the search engine results. Placing higher means a lot more people would see your link and would visit it.
If you integrate this strategy to your social media platforms, you can expect a greater chance of increasing traffic to your pages. Since social media is king right now, taking advantage of these platforms to market your product is a great move. Look into Shopify resources and see an in-depth article on posting on social media.
Here are some sites to help you understand SEO and how to choose keywords.
1. Ahrefs
This is an SEO software suite designed for marketing professionals. It helps you design a site or page that will get a higher ranking in Google searches. It contains competitor analysis, rank tracking, keyword research and site audits. It is easy for beginners to use this tool.
This auditing tool is best in giving you tracking of your rank and keyword research. It has a backlink database that will help you compare your backlinks with your competitors.
2. Google Trends
This is another tool to help you with keyword research for SEO. It shows the current ranking or trending of popular search terms in Google. With this tool, you can analyze the popularity of search terms over time. It is used to discover spikes in keyword searches and volumes that are based on real-world events.
3. Meta Business Suite, Tiktok Business
Most people these days are into social media. One of Shopify strategies is to use social media marketing. Facebook and TikTok are two of the leading social media platforms available. They boast millions of users that are filled with your target audience. By integrating your business with these platforms. You get a piece of the cake, in a manner of speaking,
Analytics and Reporting
You need to have an accurate understanding of your online store performance. Data and reports need to be analyzed carefully for you to have an overall outlook of how your store is doing against competitors. You’ll be able to find what sections are having problems, if your marketing and store promotions are working, and if the store is making profits or not. This is one of the Shopify tips to always keep updated.
This would then help you to change or adjust how you manage your store. You should always strive to improve your store. Your customers’ online shopping experience greatly affects your growth.
Tracking and analyzing tools are available for you to use. Here are some that would greatly benefit you.
1. Google Analytics
This is one of the most popular tracking and analytical tools available. It helps get a clear perspective on how users interact with your site. It has up to 200 different metrics to measure how your site is performing. This will help you understand what parts of your website are working or not working in terms of fulfilling a positive shopping experience for your customer.
2. Google Search Console
This is a free service offered by Google. It helps you to stay on top of your SEO performance. It is a tool to improve your rankings and make your online presence relevant.
It can monitor organic traffic, traffic date, click-through rate (CTR), keyword ranking, etc. It can even troubleshoot and identify mobile usability issues.
For small businesses and start-ups, this is an all-in-one SEO tool that would greatly benefit your online store.
3. Shopify Analytics
This is one of the many Shopify tools available for Shopify store owners. You can view your store’s analytics like recent activity and analyze your sales and store transactions. It can give you data on how your visitors behave on your online store.
This will enable you to have data and information that will help you in strategizing your marketing, promotions, and store management. And, you can gauge the results of any actions you have taken almost in real-time. This allows you to fine-tune adjustments that can benefit your store.
You may be interested in reading :COMMON SHOPIFY STORE SCAMS AND HOW TO PREVENT BEING SCAMMED OVER
Customer Support and Communication
You must always aim for a positive shopping experience for your customers. If you have satisfied whatever they need from your site, you can be sure that they are going to come back to you for another purchase. One of the e-commerce tips is to make sure that you have engagement with your customers. Because this will build rapport that will eventually turn into brand loyalty.
Engagements such as asking for feedback, providing customer support and email support. This will help get a better understanding of what your customer wants from you or from your brand. This will then help your business to improve and cater to a lot more customers.
1. Tidio
An AI chatbot for your store is a good way to engage with your customers. The AI chatbot will help satisfy the immediate need of information. They can offer answers to frequently asked questions. They help make sure that your customers feel that they are heard and it offers a better communication experience.
Tidio offers to solve 70% of customer problems with conversational AI. They offer a lot of AI chatbot plugins that can help your store’s customer support. It can be set up with custom greetings and automatically recommend related products to increase conversions.
2. Brevo
Emails have and will always be part of e-commerce. It is still used as a digital marketing strategy by 44% of businesses. It is mainly due to familiarity, cost-effectiveness and wide reach. One of Shopify tips is to use email marketing because it can still deliver a solid stream of conversions.
Brevo says that it can handle up to 120, 000 emails in a minute. They have 99.8% of successful API calls which is admirable. It can initiate, confirm or update customer transactions via SMS, WhatsApp or email.
Payment Processing
Included in the positive shopping experience is how convenient online payment processing is. You need to remember the more hassle-free the shopping experience is, the more customers will come back to your online store. Choose carefully which payment system you’ll be using. Security, credibility and ease of use should be the main aspects that should be thoroughly considered.
1. Paypal
This is one of the most popular payment systems currently available online. They are known to have a high level of security and fraud protection. They encrypt your bank and credit card information. This makes any user of Paypal feel secure in sending and receiving money with any transactions online.
A lot of shoppers prefer PayPal or have a PayPal account. So, having them as a payment system for your store is a no-brainer.
2. Stripe
This is a Shopify plug-in for your Shopify store.
This is more than just a payment system. It offers a lot more financial and payment products. The suite optimizes checkout conversion, increases authorization rates and has local payment methods.
A paid subscription offers unlimited months of historical data, third-party integration, invoicing and custom revenue reports.
Customer Feedback and Reviews
You need insights into what your customers’ satisfaction levels are. You need to know if they are satisfied with your offered products, your services and overall interaction with your online store.
You can use all the Shopify tools and Shopify resources that are offered that you think you need to have the best online store. But, customer feedback would still be an appropriate way to gauge if your store is working or not.
Your customers will tell you what issues they are having. These should be immediately addressed to prevent losing your customers’ trust and patronage. Respond to their feedback as much as possible.You need to make them feel important. That what they are saying matters and you are serious in listening to their concerns.
Remember, you are building a base of loyal customers.Having a concrete means of communication helps build that base.
Here are some tools to help you.
1. Loox
This is available in the Shopify app store for a paid subscription.
They offer to sync reviews of Google Search, Google Shopping, Meta Shops and more. This will get you more reviews from different relevant retail sites. They also collect product reviews on auto-pilot with customized emails and review forms. You can use widgets that can match your brand.
Reviews will build your online store’s credibility and will make other customers purchase from your site. Most shoppers need to validate their purchase with another shopper’s review. It is like social proof that the product is what it is advertised for.
2. Fera.ai
Fera.ai will manage your reviews with an easy-to-use dashboard. It has store review widgets that will enhance your storefront. It will showcase positive reviews that will help in the credibility of the quality of the products and online store.
Conclusion
Yan Krukau | Pexels
An efficiently managed Shopify store will not only make management easy but also project an image of credibility and legitimacy.
So, take advantage of all the available tools and resources you can find online. Explore and try to test them. You need not to have all the tools. Choose which tools are helpful and which are not. Use only those that you fully understand. Because you might have all the data you need, but if you don’t know how to use them it is all a waste of resources.
It will take a lot of trial and error when it comes to fully optimizing your online store. But it is doable. All online shoppers or customers would want to have a positive shopping experience. They want the convenience of shopping online. But, they are selective, and would mostly shop to online stores that they have proven to be trustworthy.
You need to be the store that customers want to shop at.
Success lies within your reach. Grab it.
About The author : Yen Pedrajas, Removal.AI
Yen is a content writer for Removal.AI, an image background remover tool. She is a digital marketing and eCommerce enthusiast who loves to write and share new insights about marketing, eCommerce, and growth-hacking tips for startup businesses.
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