Three Things You Should Do To Improve Your Shopify Website

Shopify is an awesome platform for your e-commerce website, but don’t be disheartened if sales are sluggish.  You may even be seeing lots of traffic but only a few conversions.

Don’t panic.  You’re not alone.  Many website owners experience the same issues but there are some simple steps to take that will improve your eCommerce site, remove barriers to check-out and boost your sales.

Things To Improve Your Shopify Website

The First Thing You Should Do Is Transact on Your Own Website.

You need to put yourself in your customers’ shoes.  You can have all the theory in place, but you need to test the reality for yourself.  Go through the entire buying cycle thoroughly and critique every step.  Remember, you are looking for reasons why visitors aren’t converting, so don’t be disappointed when you hit a snag.   See flaws as opportunities to improve.

Ask the tough questions.  Is your site easy to navigate?  Is your journey through it intuitive and logical?  Evaluate the visual impact of the website.  Does it draw you in and encourage you to click through? How fast do the pages load?  Is your website responsive and properly optimised?  

The Second Thing You Need to Do Is Streamline Your Checkout Process.

Think about what frustrates you when you’re trying to buy stuff on other websites.  Laborious processes when you change your mind about an item in your cart.  Long-winded checkout processes.  Unexpected additional costs.  Annoying and unnecessary forms to set up an account. Having to repeat everything if you leave the site for an extended period of time.   Then think whether your customers are experiencing these issues during checkout on your site.

Your checkout process needs to be a seamless as possible and require the least amount of effort from the buyer.  Look at ways of setting up your cart so that people can add or remove items easily or change a product’s colour and have a ‘return to shopping’ button near the cart to encourage further browsing.

Research shows that around 60% of shoppers abandon their cart.  An unsatisfactory checkout experience is one of the reasons for cart abandonment, but many people also simply get distracted or run out of time.   When they return to your site, will their cart still be there or will they need to search all over again? Don’t forget you can also automatically email a customer a link to their abandoned checkout.  

Enabling autofill and card data to be stored securely are two really important features that will enhance the user experience and encourage them to follow-through and transact.

The Third Thing You Need to Do to Get Sales From Your Shopify Website Is Facilitate Payments.

It’s all about the money.  You need to remove all barriers to entry and provide customers every opportunity to purchase.  And that means providing a range of payment options.   PayPal is obviously a popular form of payment, but you should add alternatives like ApplePay, Stripe and ShopPay.  These are all straightforward solutions, the buyer’s details are all saved, they get a text message to confirm the transaction and the checkout process usually takes less than a minute.

In addition to the three actions mentioned above, you could also consider having a customer feedback mechanism on your site and investigate Shopify’s abandoned cart recovery apps.

You’ve made the investment to set up your Shopify website.  Now it’s really important to optimise your site to encourage them through to conversion as simply, smoothly and quickly as possible. My recent article “Don’t Miss These Top 5 E-Commerce Tips For Successful Websites” is packed full of useful info. You might also like “Getting Sales From Your Shopify Website“

If you’ve found these tips on improving your eCommerce website helpful, you’ll probably be interested in learning more about improving your website’s online visibility. Check out my new online, self-managed course, The SEO School, which takes you through all the key tools and techniques of a successful SEO strategy.  The course is great for business owners, website managers and anyone who wants hands-on learning about all the essentials of SEO from an industry expert.  Find out more about The SEO School here.

Karen Dauncey

Karen Dauncey has been working in SEO since 2003. She specialises in helping businesses get found online through Google using Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) She is the founder and creator of The SEO School an online SEO Course to help teach business owners how to do their own SEO. She regularly delivers educational programs for both Local, State and Federal Government and is an advisor for the ASBAS Digital Solutions Program. Karen’s passion and commitment to help small business owners get found online is the driving force behind her online school, making SEO advice accessible to all with free resources and online courses.

Karen's wealth of SEO knowledge and practical digital marketing experience comes from running her own SEO and Google Ads agency, Blue Cherry Online Marketing since 2008. Karen has optimised over 1000 websites, managed millions of dollars' worth of spend on Google Ads and has a solid understanding of the constantly shifting industry of digital marketing and SEO. This gives her a unique advantage when it comes to being able to recommend the right online marketing strategies for your business. This gives her a unique advantage when it comes to being able to recommend the right online marketing strategies for your business. She was recently recognised as an SEO Expert for the popular course creation platform, Kajabi as well as appearing on ABC Radio
for her expert opinion on the ACCC's investigation into search engines.

Karen has attended search engine conferences in London, Stockholm, Adelaide and Sydney, and was also invited to attend a pilot Business Coaching Course at Google’s Head Office. She has a Diploma in Marketing from the Chartered Institute of Marketing in the UK.

She is also the co-owner of the Digital Experts Directory, an online directory for female serviced-based businesses to promote their business (with a great backlink for SEO).

To keep up to date with the latest in SEO, join her Facebook group The SEO School Community or follow her on Facebook or LinkedIn.