When optimizing a Shopify business, it's easy to dive deep into the most complicated problems. These are the solutions you spend sleepless nights turning over in your head trying to figure out. These are the problems you become an expert at handling.
But what about those simple Shopify optimizations that aren't complicated at all? What about the low hanging fruit that you've completely overlooked?
Don't worry, I've got your back. I reached out to my friends on Twitter and have put together 14 simple things your Shopify business can be doing today to increase sales.
Ready? Let's do this.
p.s. Want to know some super simple ways to increase organic traffic to your Shopify store? Check out this post next.
1. Collect Customer Contact Information Pre-Purchase
Most people who come to your Shopify store are probably there for the first time, and most of them probably won't complete a purchase. This is why it is crucial to provide a simple (and valuable) reason for them to connect with you via one of their personal inboxes (email, SMS, or Facebook Messenger).
By intelligently showing natural incentives to connect during the shopping experience Shopify brands can be converting 5% to 15%+ of their visitors to contact information (Examples: Giving a discount or piece of content in exchange for contact information when the customer first lands on the site and right before they leave the website). Once you have connected with a customer on their inbox it is crucial to follow up based on their actions and data you have collected from them. If they completed a purchase, send them a thank you message and a related upsell. If they didn't complete a purchase, send them a follow up message with recommendations specific to what you know they were looking for.
Strategically integrating email, SMS, and Facebook Messenger into your Shopify store can vastly increase your revenue. Some of the Shopify Plus brands we work with are earning more than $100k in additional revenue every month by following our strategies and using Octane AI. If you want a demo of how they are doing this, you can set up a time here.
2. Product Upsells and Offers On Your Thank You Page
Once a customer has completed an order on your store they are a lot more likely to make additional purchases. By using an app (or custom code) to show upsells on the thank you page you can recommend products that pair well, and are commonly purchased, with the products the customer just ordered.
— Aaron Orendorff (@AaronOrendorff) February 12, 2020
This can be a great way to add 5% to over 20% in additional revenue without much work.
3. Show Shipping Costs Throughout the Entire Buyer Journey
It is super frustrating as a customer to find the product you want, justify the price to yourself, and get up the courage to purchase it and then BAM, you find out that there is an additional $10 or $20 for shipping. You now have to start your justification process all over again and this is where a lot of customers lose conviction.
I've seen huge boosts in conversions by including a one-liner with shipping details below add to cart buttons.
— Bryan King (@bryankingdesign) February 12, 2020
The more specific, the better. But don't make the checkout the first time someone finds out about shipping.
A simple way to avoid this is to be as transparent as possible so that any additional shipping costs are included in the customer's original justification process. Put the shipping costs below the add to cart button where they are visible to ensure that you are attracting the right customers to your checkout process. This will also improve your pixel data for customers who add to cart since they will be doing so with all of the facts.
4. Don't Neglects Your FAQs
Customers have questions, so many questions. And it makes sense! They want to make sure they are confident in their buying experience.
If a customer can't find the answer to their question they can contact you, but this takes a meaningful amount of effort on their part and a good portion of people with questions won't actually end up taking the time to ask your customer support team.
Making sure your FAQ page is decked out with all the questions customers may ask in order to feel confident is an easy (and scalable!) way to help raise customer confidence.
Don't neglect your FAQs. Add live chat. Show shipping costs and throughout the entire buyer journey. Upsell at checkout completion. Follow up with customers after they have received their order.
— Kelly Vaughn 🐞 (@kvlly) February 12, 2020
Talk to your support team and make a list of the top asked questions from customers (or if you are the support team you'll know these right away), and then put these into your FAQ. Make this page clear and well organized with short and concise copy. Extra bonus if you include a little bit of a personality to really make your FAQ feel warm and friendly. Explain how your sizing works, how shipping works, and anything else that needs explaining.
Make sure to link to your FAQ in your footer and from the product page if you have a really high volume of customers asking the same questions over and over (Example: If people ask about sizing all the time, you can put a link on the product page that says something like "See how our sizing works" or "Find your size").
5. Add Live Chat
It's important to have an FAQ to answer basic questions, and to have a contact page if someone wants to send you an email, but on-site Facebook Messenger chat or Shopify live chat can be helpful in allowing you to connect with more customers and to receive feedback and uncover opportunities that you might previously have missed.
You can add live chat that is completely manual, or you can add live chat that starts automated but allows for someone on your team to jump in if they want to. At Octane AI we have seen businesses leverage automated live chat to meaningfully increase contact information collected and revenue within the first 72 hours of a customer landing on the store for the first time (Example: The automated live chat can prompt the customer with a value add conversation like "Want a free sample?" and then once the customer clicks in the Shopify merchant can connect with them on Facebook Messenger, SMS, or email, deliver them the instructions for the free sample, and have the ability to automatically follow up later if they don't complete a purchase or redeem their sample). If you want to see a demo of this we'd be happy to walk you through it, schedule a time with us here.
6. Collect Email Addresses from Facebook Comments
If you get a lot of comments on your Facebook posts (and your Facebook ads) then this is a really valuable tip for you. I'm guessing if you do get a lot of comments you probably take it as a positive indicator of brand engagement, but you most likely aren't responding to most of them.
Don't worry, you're not the only one doing this. So what can you do instead?
You can set up a Facebook Messenger bot to automatically send a private message to anyone who comments on one of your Facebook posts (you can even set it up so it only messages people who mention a certain word and exclude others if they mention other keywords). In your automated message you can initiate a conversation where you collect an email address, automatically sync it to Klaviyo, and send product recommendations or automatically answer FAQs.
MANSCAPED, a huge Shopify Plus brand, utilizes Octane AI for exactly this and collected over 30,000 email addresses in their first month doing it. Request a demo with our team to see how to set this up.
7. Add Personality To Your Newsletter Confirmation Email
Your first interaction with someone over email (or any communicational channel) can make or break your relationship. On the one side of the spectrum you could sell too hard, but on the even worse side of the spectrum you could have less personality than a rock.
Don't be the rock. Don't sell too hard either, but whatever you do don't be the rock.
Everyone is stealing my answers! 😂
— Kristen LaFrance (@kdlafrance) February 12, 2020
Here's a super simple miss I've encountered a lot this week: Making the first touchpoint after someone subscribes to your newsletter GREAT.
i.e. welcome email- get the brand story across, open a dialogue, tell a story, don't do this 👇 pic.twitter.com/vbQr1repab
If your email already includes personality, you're good, don't change anything. Examples of personality can be fun gifs, on brand jokes related to your types of customers and audience, notes from the founders or down to earth thoughts that are relatable or inspirational.
If your email looks like this though, it's time to hop into your email editor and get that bad boy updated.
8. For Subscription Companies: Upsell In Upcoming Order Emails
Subscription businesses have their own set of opportunities. There's just something so nice about knowing, with fairly high confidence, how many orders you are shipping out next month.
If you don't currently offer a subscription option for your product, and you have a product that it could work for, I would definitely look into adding it and seeing how your customer's react.
For shopify stores with subscription, leveraging upcoming order emails as an upsell opportunity. Possible with https://t.co/Om4LjHA1OU
— Wilson Hung (@WilsonGHung) February 12, 2020
If you do have a subscription business already set up on Shopify, you can be increasing revenue by adding upsells in the automated emails you send notifying customers that a new order is coming soon. This is a great opportunity to pair a valuable notification with a natural suggestion to purchase more products.
9. Use Shopify Apps That Integrate With Your Other Shopify Apps
If you're reading this post (thank you by the way!) then you already know there are literally thousands of Shopify apps. This is really helpful as a Shopify merchant because you can find something to solve almost any problem, but the downside is that most of these apps don't talk to each other. This leaves you trying to manually coordinate popups, customer journey, and data... a daunting task that only gets harder over time.
Also to raise an old thread:
— Scott Wright (@scright) February 12, 2020
Putting consideration into your Shopify tech stack to get the most from cross app integrations can really help your store grow and maximise performance from the apps. https://t.co/fKbUX9MMax
You deserve better! Save yourself the headache! The top Shopify apps have taken the time to integrate with each other so that coordination can be automated, simple, and easy.
Klaviyo integrates with over 50 other ecommerce apps, and the same goes with Yotpo. We have made sure that Octane AI integrates with all of the leading apps, including Klaviyo, Yotpo, Recharge, Nosto, and more.
10. Increase Your Prices
This might sound pretty obvious, but that's why it's such a good suggestion. The easiest way to increase revenue is to increase your prices. If you don't know for sure that increasing your prices by 15% wouldn't work, don't even bother reading the rest of this article, you should start exploring how to do this right now.
Simplest way to increase your sales is increase your prices by 15%. No apps needed and takes 5 seconds to do. Often times you will see little to no drop in CR%.
— Will Evans (@kingwevans) February 13, 2020
11. Abandoned Cart SMS
This is one of those things where you either know about it and you've already increased revenue with it, or you haven't heard about it and you're about to start making a lot more money.
Using Octane AI you can collect phone number during site visits and during checkout and then automatically follow up via text if the customer doesn't complete their order. Often times you are already collecting phone numbers (and marketing opt-ins) from customers who haven't even given you their email yet or completed a purchase. This is an asset you are already sitting on that is a few clicks away from activating. If you want to see how much you can be making, set up a time to chat with us.
12. Show Pictures of Real People Using the Product
We can tell when something is fake or off, even if we aren't consciously registering it. If a customer lands on your Shopify store and there are a lot of stock photos, or there aren't any pictures of real people using your product, this can turn them off without them even realizing why.
Spend the time to take photos of real people using your products. You can do this with a big budget or set up your own photoshoot with something as simple as an iPhone and a ring light. If you are going to shoot the photos yourself, take a look at some of the biggest companies in your industry and look at their photos for inspiration.
Show pictures of real people using the product. But I’m biased
— Kyle Wong (@kwong47) February 17, 2020
13. Offer Gift Wrapping
If you have a product that is often purchased as a gift, why not offer to gift wrap it for an additional charge? Not only could this help convert the customer to completing their order (because now it's gift wrapped and they don't have to wrap it!) but it also gives you a great opportunity to increase your average order value.
Oh man, you nailed it Tommy!! Here are a few, dare I say, “Bold” ways to do it 😉. https://t.co/Jd4S0ncmwH
— Jay Myers (@jasonnmyers) February 13, 2020
For the right brand this can be a super simple easy win!
