Getting more sales on your eCommerce store is something about which all merchants dream. Shopify often comes across as an online store builder, but it offers a ton of features. Many of these Shopify features can turbocharge your sales.
One of the best things about Shopify is its massive potential for expansion. It integrates well with multiple other marketplaces, social media platforms and even has a formidable App store for even more.
Read more – Learn more about the pros and cons of Shopify.
Now, let’s examine some of them to see how you can boost sales on your Shopify store by leveraging native features.
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1. Built-in Blog
Shopify comes with a built-in blog you can use to create content. This feature is one of the most important since that content will help you build a steady stream of organic traffic from search engines. Unless you have deep pockets and plan to rely on ads alone, the blog will become your best friend.
Blogging will take up a lot of time since you need to create articles capable of getting ranked on search engines. As a rough guideline, create articles that are;
- At least 800 words in length
- Include internal and external links
- Are well researched
- Target the right keywords
2. Abandoned Cart Recovery
As of 2020, online shoppers abandoned a staggering 88% of orders. For some reason, shoppers added items to carts and left without completing the order. That’s a considerable number that, if converted to sales, could make a tremendous difference to your business.
Shopify provides the features you can use to convert these abandoned orders into potential sales. It’s a multi-step process you can handle differently depending on how far you wish to attempt a conversion from abandonment.
First, check the abandoned checkouts under your orders. From there, you can send a link to the orders directly to individual customers. Alternatively, set things up to sent links automatically for all abandoned orders.
When sending links to recover abandoned sales, remember the golden rules to follow. Conveying the right message is essential. You want to build an urgent need by highlighting limited availability, expiring discounts, and other similar ideas.
3. Gift Cards, Coupons, and Discount Codes
Everyone loves a bargain, and it makes things even more special if they feel uniquely loved by an online store. You can use gift cards, coupons, and other codes to customize experiences and build brand loyalty if done right.
All of these are natively available as part of your Shopify experience. They can be created and applied in multiple ways. For example, you may want to include one as an incentive for abandoned cart recovers. Or perhaps you could send periodic codes and coupons to select customers to increase brand loyalty.
Shopify will even allow you to combine various coupons and codes to create a dynamic shopping experience. One example of this can be a “buy one, get one free” offer in addition to getting a gift card.
Be aware, though, that over-use of these things can cause buyer fatigue. Use them strategically for maximum impact on occasions such as;
- Launch offers
- First-time purchases
- Loyalty programs
- Abandoned cart recovery
- Incentives to encourage actions
4. Custom Barcodes
Barcodes may not always be necessary, but they add a touch of professionalism to your online store. Shopify has a barcode generator that you can use to create unique ones for each product. These can be downloaded and printed then stuck on items as they’re shipped out.
Shopify barcodes do more than just help you look professional, though. You use them to track and organize your products, making sure everything’s moving like a smoothly oiled machine.
5. Shopify POS
One interesting Shopify feature is its high compatibility with physical retail via Shopify POS or Point of Sale. They have a POS app you can use to read barcodes and interface with your inventory system.
If you’d like to accept in-person payments, you can use the Shopify POS “chip and swipe” reader that’s available for free. For contactless and other payments, they have a reader available for extra fees.
This capability is generally beyond the scope of what most other eCommerce site builder platforms offer. The result is the ability to combine online and offline channels for even more sales.
6. Omnichannel Sales
In addition to POS, you can integrate Shopify with a massive range of external sales channels. These channels include many high-potential ones such as Amazon, Facebook, eBay, and more.
Omnichannel is slightly different from multi-channel in the sense that you’re aiming to provide a streamlined customer experience across all platforms. This capability can help immensely boost sales and customer loyalty.
The result is a very cohesive brand experience that caters to the varying needs of a global audience.
7. Invoice Generator
Even if you’re a B2C eCommerce store, you’ll want to provide customers with an invoice for each sale. Aside from being a good accounting habit, it also shows a professional touch to improve your brand strength.
Shopify offers a free invoice generator and template to get you started. It’s simple to use; just head to their invoice generator page and fill in the blanks. You may want to automate this process, though, but that’ll be covered further down under “Shopify Apps.”
8. Social Media Integration
Shopify integrates easily with most social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram. Even if you aren’t using these as part of your omnichannel strategy, you can further your marketing objectives.
Sharing blog posts, snippets about ongoing sales, new products, and more can help boost sales considerably. Some platforms like Facebook also have tracking features like the Pixel to help you collect more data to boost marketing efforts further.
To give you an idea of how this works, let’s consider the Facebook Pixel. This tracking pixel helps you keep a close eye on user activity if you embed one on your Shopify store. It can also collect conversion data from your Facebook ads.
9. Email Marketing
If you aren’t interested in using third-party services, Shopify has a built-in email marketing tool. Similar to how it works for abandoned cart recovery, you can use this to build entire email marketing campaigns.
To leverage this, though, you’ll need to have an email opt-in form or option somewhere in your store. It can be part of the checkout process or even a call to action placed on the storefront. You can then target that database of customers for specific marketing campaigns.
10. Commercialize Your Mobile App
If you have a mobile app for your brand but haven’t been using it to sell products, Shopify can do that as well. They provide an Android Software Development Kit (SDK) you can use to enhance an existing mobile app and tie it back to your Shopify store system.
While this may be a bit technical for most eCommerce store owners, you can bring a freelance developer on board to quickly upgrade an existing app. The SDK is free and available from Github. The app can make use of web checkout but can also use Android Pay as an alternative.
11. Shopify Apps
The most powerful feature of Shopify is its App Store. It works like WordPress and the plugin system, allowing you to boost the capabilities of your business beyond basic limits. This means you can use apps to enhance native features or add ones that don’t exist on the core platform.
There is a vast collection of apps on the store; some are free while you need to pay for others. Even ignoring the “value-add” apps, there are many offering features that can help you bring up sales numbers in various ways.
Some of the best to help increase sales figures include;
- ReConvert Upsell & Cross Sell focuses on the thank you page rather than spreading sales boost across multiple areas. From there, it uses collected data to allow you quickly upsell across your entire Shopify store.
- Smile: Rewards & Loyalty will help you build an entire loyalty system for your brand. Think about the member cards you have that let you collect points, and you’ll get the idea of how it works. It’s a great way of getting customers to return.
- Judge.me Product Reviews fills in on the slightly lacking schema system on Shopify. It fills the need for this along with helping you collect user reviews automatically to boost sales through social proof.
- HelpCenter | FAQ HelpDesk Tabs adds a dimension that many online store owners find a headache. It’s a complete drop-in customer support portal that provides answers to frequently asked questions, allows live chat assistance, and has a ticketing system.
Final Thoughts
Shopify is one of the most powerful eCommerce store builder platforms around. It’s so comprehensive that many users take a long time to simply get familiarized with what’s available and how it works.
Some of the features I’ve highlighted here are pretty obvious, but getting to know how to use them is just as important as knowing they exist. If your Shopify store seems to be languishing, don’t worry. Explore some new options or rework the way you’re using existing ones – the potential is unlimited.
Read more:
- How to create an online store using Shopify
- Examples of Shopify stores we love
- How to open Shopify Facebook store
- Easy steps to start a dropshipping business using Shopify
- How to sell art online using Shopify
- Best Shopify themes that boost conversions
- Shopify vs BigCommerce: Which platform should you pick?
