How To Get More Sales On Shopify – 75 Proven Ways To Improve Your Store

1.Speed Up Your Store:

Speed is a big deal in ecommerce. Shoppers have become incredibly impatient and if your product pages take more than 3 seconds to load then you are losing customers.

Faster is always better and Google also knows this. If you are doing SEO then slow load times will also affect your rankings in the search results.

There are a number of ways to speed up your store. Using optimized images, reducing the amount of apps you use (that load scripts) and having a light theme that loads quickly are all ways to do this.

2.Use A Better Theme

Some themes are just better than others. The layout, the load times and the general design can have a huge impact on your store’s success.

With most free themes you end up using way too many apps to create the functionality you need. It is often better to buy a theme for a one-off amount and you will end up saving a lot of app costs and it will also make your store run much more smoothly.

In general, paid themes look more professional, has more features and tends to perform much better than free themes.

With free themes you tend to add a ton of apps to enhance its functionality and this can slow your store down.

Free themes also require much more editing and unless you have some editing skills you may have to pay someone to do it anyway.

A good theme like the ones from OutOfTheSandbox is an investment and it also gets you free updates which ensures your store is always up to date and running as fast as it could from a theme point of view.

3.Limit The Amount Of Apps You Use

We’ve already touched on this, but using a lot of apps can really slow down your store. It is important that whenever you remove an app that you make sure you remove all the code left behind.

If you installed and uninstalled a lot of apps to test stuff, then you might have a theme that is littered with unnecessary code.

Not only can it slow your store down significantly but it can cause a lot of issues with your theme’s general performance. Free themes often need a lot of apps to create the functions you need in your Shopify store.

Using a lot of apps can also add up in costs quite quickly. Apps in the Shopify App store are generally quite cheap and you think a $10/month here and there is not much.

If you use three $10 per month apps that is $360 per year. A decent paid theme is well worth it when you look at it that way.

4.Test Different Colour Schemes

Color theory is a real thing and it absolutely affects how people respond and act on your store. In many cases it will have a very negligible effect but it can have a big impact on conversion rates.

Research have found that people respond to colours in different ways. Changing your store’s colour scheme can vastly change the look and feel and consequently the way people behave on your store.

The best way to find the “best” color scheme for your store is to simply look at the top stores in your niche and you will soon see that they all have similar colour schemes. Just use that!!

5.Use A Sales Funnel

Online stores have become a bit same-old and most well designed stores have a very similar layout. Sales funnels is a vastly different way of selling products. It is a strategy that has been use with information products for years and it is proven to work – very well!

A sales funnel is a way of selling where you lead your customers down a “funnel” where you let them take small steps towards a sale. Often times they don’t even see a sales pitch coming. You don’t try and sell them something but instead offer them information about the product upfront.

You then collect their details and have a process of selling them further down the line. It is much slower as you rarely get much sales on the front end but the lifetime value is much higher and much more lucrative.

ClickFunnels is probably the best known app/software for doing this but there are a number of alternatives that work well with Shopify and Woocommerce.

6.Use Tripwire Products

Tripwire products are small low cost products that you use to “buy” customers. The goal is not to make money from these tripwire products and you may even lose a bit on the front end.

The goal however is to make money from the upsells. Once someone has bought something from you, they are far more likely to buy from you again.

So-called free plus shipping offers was incredibly popular in 2017 when you could find a lot fo super cheap products from China with a high perceived value. You would then “sell” these products for free BUT the customer has to pay shipping and handling – which was usually about $10.

That $10 would cover at least your product and shipping costs. Once you have a paying customer you can easily upsell them on higher ticket items and if you have great products a customer can be worth hundreds of dollars in the future.

7.SEO

Search engine optimization has gotten a bad wrap over the years. There are so many ‘snake oil salesmen’ selling SEO miracles and this has largely contributed to the bad image of SEO.

That aside, traffic from search engines can be incredibly good. Unlike paid traffic, these are customers that find you themselves and the value of search engine traffic is much higher than paid traffic – and it usually converts much better.

Doing some basic keyword optimization is critically important with SEO. Choosing the right keywords is the name of the game since a Shopify store is not like a content site with a lot information on it.

I recommend Ahrefs for keyword research as it is easy to find keywords that have very low competition. With low competition keywords you can easily build your free Shopify traffic without too much effort.

8.Use Retargeting Ads

If you are not using retargeting ads then you are leaving money on the table. We’ve all seen retargeting in action. You visit the Godady website and for the next 2 weeks every ad you see is a Godaddy ad.

Retargeting uses a pixel and cookie that allows you to show ads again and again only to people who performed some kind of action on your store already.

Retargeting ads are incredibly targeted because you can quite literally only show ads to people who are already interested in your store and your products. You can set up retargeting ads with both Google Ads and Facebook ads.

Retargeting ads will be the highest ROI ads you will ever run. It is a low risk advertising strategy and one that you should consider once you get 100+ visitors to your store per day.

9.Test Alternative Ad Platforms

More than 90% of ecommerce stores that run advertising do it on Google Ads and/or Facebook ads. It is true that these are the two biggest ad platforms with the easiest access, but they are definitely not the only ones.

In many cases, alternative ad platforms can be just as good if not better. Native ads has a lot of high quality traffic and many ecommerce stores have seen great success with ad platforms like Outbrain, Revcontent and Taboola.

There’s also Snapchat and TikTok – two much overlooked social networks with huge followings amongst a younger crowd.

10.Branding And Rebranding

Branding is an incredibly important part of any business. People don’t really buy products anymore. They buy ideas. The ideas behind your product is what really sells it.

People who buy Apple products buy it because of what Apple represents. It is the story and the emotions that are connected to your products that really gets people to take action and pull out their credit cards.

A brand can also create a very loyal following and with proper branding you can create customers for life.

From time to time it may be necessary to rebrand – es[ecially if your sales have become stagnant and you are struggling to reach a fresh new audience.

11.Use Instagram Influencers

The last few years has seen an explosion in the so-called influencer space on Instagram. This is largely a result of the popularity of Instagram as a social network. An Instagram influencer is someone with a large and loyal following on Instagram.

Because they are influential, their followers look up to them and if they recommend products to their following it usually results in big sales.

There certainly is a grey area as these recommendations often do not come with a disclaimer and the Kardashians have been pushing all sorts of products for years – making their followers believe that they actually use these products themselves.

As an ecommerce business you can take advantage of influencers in your niche. There are hundreds if not thousands in virtually any niche and some will promote your products at a fraction of the cost of traditional advertising.

12.Use Instagram Shopping

The popularity of Instagram has led to some big improvements on the platform. Unlike Facebook, it can be very hard to create links and letting people buy products through the platform can be clunky with only 1 link allowed in the bio.

Fortunately Instagram has now made it possible for you to tag products and allow customers to buy products from within the feed.

At this stage, Instagram Shopping is still not open to everyone and you need to meet certain criteria to qualify. In time, I am sure they will open this up for everyone to take advantage of and I am sure this will provide a nice bump in conversion rates.

An alternative is to use the Later app. It allows you to create a “shopable” page in your Instagram and you can link posts to it.

13.Improve Product Titles

Along with your product images, your product titles are the first thing that your customers will see when they land on your product page. Writing informative and captivating product titles is an art.

It needs to be both engaging and informative and it can have a huge impact on whether someone stays on your page or simply bounce straight away.

Naming your products appropriately and using descriptive and engaging language can get your customers hooked in.

If you are doing SEO then your titles become incredibly important as you will have to focus on the use of the right keywords. Writing keyword rich titles that still read well is a real art and something you need to spend a lot of time on to get right.

14.Improve Product Descriptions

Product descriptions go hand in hand with product titles. To be honest, most online stores have terrible product descriptions.

A good product description is not about describing the physical properties of the product. That is important, but what is more important is writing benefit rich product descriptions.

Always keep one thing in mind when you write product descriptions: it’s all about the customers and “what’s in it for them”. Writing about how good your product is will do nothing for your sales. Writing about all the benefits it will bring to your customer is what will make the difference.

15.Use Video And Gifs On Product Pages

Stale and boring product pages seem to be the norm. The way Shopify pages are laid out tends to be the culprit. You need to make you product pages, fun, informative and engaging.

Don’t be afraid to use a lot of images in your product descriptions with videos and gifs to help inform and educate your customers. You need to get your customers to buy into your story.

Many Shopify themes do not allow for much creativity in terms of layout which is why I recommend the themes by OutOfTheSandbox as it has collapsable templates that allow you to create virtually any layout for your theme.

You can also use Gempages that has an easy drag-and-drop functionality and allows you complete freedom in creating your Shopify product pages.

16.Use Testimonials

Testimonials is a proven way to boost conversion rates on your store. It is what is commonly known as social proof. The idea behind social proof is backed by a lot of research and basically comes down to the fact that people like to do what other people do.

If you see someone who is just like you who bought the product and liked the product then you are far more likely to do the same.

People tend to trust other “normal” people more than they do someone who is trying to sell them. The most powerful testimonials you can use are photo testimonials where real customer showcase te product.

You can use an app like Loox to easily add photo reviews to your Shopify store. It also allows you to import reviews from Aliexpress which instantly gives you store credibility – even if you’ve never made a sale before.

17.Get Your Products Featured

So-called Advertorials started as a black-hat technique that affiliate marketers used to attach their products to big brand publications. Times have changed and with most traditional print publications struggling to survive, many of them now offer advertorials.

An advertorial is basically a paid editorial that is actually one big ad. Its an article written and disguised as an advertisement and it is something that you pay for. Since it is not obvious that it is an ad, people often respond very well to these types of publications.

This is very prominent in magazines like Men’s Health that is filled with articles about great products – that are nothing more than sales pitches. For some products this can work very well.

18.Partner With Content Sites

Content rich websites can get astronomical amounts of traffic. It is mainly because people visit these sites looking for information. It is vastly different from people doing online searches for products.

Most content sites monetize from ad revenue and affiliate earnings. This can be really low payouts compared to what ecommerce sites would earn.

If you can find a content site that matches your niche you can easily set up a deal for them to promote one or more of your products. I’m not talking about standard affiliate sales here.

You will make them a partner and give them an incentive to drive traffic to your store. Even if you give them a 20% cut of the profit you are still better off. Its a win-win and they can use all their channels of traffic to drive sales for you.

19.Start An Affiliate Program

Affiliate programs have taken over the internet. Almost every product you can think of can be promoted by affiliates through the Amazon Associates program.

An affiliate program is where you pay someone else a commission for the sales they generate by selling your products.

Given that no sales are really free, it can make a lot of sense to offer generous commissions. As much as 30% of your costs per product will go into advertising and marketing. If you offer 20% commissions then you can potentially attract a lot of affiliate sales.

Affiliates are usually people with either a large content based website or someone with a large social media following. They have the traffic. You have the product. Go figure!

20.Craft Offers Around Holidays

When holidays come up, people do funny things. We’ve all seen how people behave during Black Friday sales and this has become a huge date in the ecommerce world. Offering special deals over the Black Friday period is a no-brainer.

Apart from Black Friday, Cyber Monday and off course the Xmas shopping, you can craft offers around almost any holiday.

It is a way of engaging your customers with something that is current. It also gives you an “excuse” to offer discounts and special offers. Halloween, 4th of July, Mothersday and a dozen either holidays all work incredibly well in boosting your sales.

There’s enough opportunities year round to consistently increase your sales by simply tapping into the psychology of holidays and holiday sales.

21.Tap Into Current Trends

Trends matter because they are relevant. It is what goes on in people’s everyday lives. If you can associate your products to current trends you make yourself more relevant.

People respond to that.

We saw this in action with the COVID-19 outbreak. So many companies jumped on the bandwagon with TV ads. You don’t have to go to those extremes though.

All you need to do is to find a way to relate your products to current trends. You need to stay up to date with what your particular audience are engaged with online and offline. Always look for opportunities to tap into current trends.

22.Bundle Products To Increase AOV

Bundling products is a proven way to make more money on your Shopify store. Its all about the math. By encouraging people to buy more than one product you can offer them much better value.

If you can make $10 by selling just 1 item, would you be happy to make $15 selling two? Of course you would. You will sacrifice some profit margin but in the end percentages doesn’t matter.

Profit matters.

On top of that, you can offer your customer a great deal and that is a win-win.

There are numerous bundling apps available for Shopify and it comes in all shapes and sizes. Personally, I do not like offering bundles on product pages. It tends to clog things up too much.

I like CandyRack as it is very intuitive with how and where you can offer bundles and discounts on your Shopify store.

23.Offer Upsells

An upsell is when you offer a customer a related product that is of a higher value than the one they just purchased. Upsells are usually employed in post purchases and is a common practice for increasing AOV’s.

The theory is that if someone just purchased a product from you – even if it was just a $10 purchase, they are far more likely to buy again. They are in a buying mood and often just presenting them with an offer is enough to seal the deal.

By using so-called ‘front end’ products at a low price point (with low margins) you can get customers in “through the door” and make your money on the back end with upsells.

You can use upsells on your Shopify thank you pages or if you use a 1-click upsell app this can work even better.

Upsells also work incredibly well with email marketing.

24.Offer Cross-sells

Cross sells is all about increasing AOV by offering customers related products that are “no brainer”. If you sell products that require repeat purchases of parts or components then this works incredibly well.

Selling coffee machines? You can cross sell a monthly supply of coffee, or water filters or even cleaning equipment.

Almost any product can have complimentary items that enhance the use of the main product.

Ideally you want to offer cross sells on your product pages and/or in your cart. It can off course work very well in email campaigns as well.

25.Offer Downsells

A downsell is where you offer a customer a product of a lesser value than the one they just purchased. The theory here is that when someone buys a higher ticket item – lets say a $200 chair, then downselling them a $20 cushion does not seem like much money.

Downsells are generally much easier than upsells and you can follow the same logic you would as for upsells.

26.Use 1-click Post Purchase Sales

Upsells is a great way to increase your AOV. There is a much more advanced way to do upsells and it is something that is very common outside the world of ecommerce.

Information marketers tend to use upsells all the time. Shopify as a platform however do not offer this. It’s a bit of a grey area.

A 1-click upsell basically allows you to upsell a customer AFTER they already purchased. Instead of them having to go through the entire checkout again, they can simply purchase the upsell with 1 click.

You do this through a payment processor that allows you to “store” the customer’s checkout session and they can add items to their order with just one click.

This greatly improves the take rate on these upsells because its so easy. Just one click.

More and more apps offer one-click upsells now. Zipify was one of the first and Carthook has been around for some time. Smarketly is newer and in my opinion the best one as it is affordable and easy to use.

Carthook has become way too expensive and Zipify is just too frustrating to use.

27.Alternatives To Shopify Checkouts

This goes hand in hand with 1-click upsells. The Shopify checkout process is notoriously slow and cumbersome.

It is basically a 3-step checkout to go from product page to purchase and Shopify has been criticized for this more than anything else. Everybody knows that you want to have as little friction between clicking Add to Cart and completing the sale.

Making shoppers jump through 3 hoops definitely affects sales. Thankfully you can use Zipify, Carthook or Smarketly to craft your own checkout pages.

1-Page checkouts outperform the Shopify checkout every day of the week. Users can checkout 50% faster and this will always win against a 3 page checkout process.

Again, this will not be free. You will need to use a plugin like those I’ve mentioned and it probably won’t make much sense if you only make a handful of sales per day.

28.Show Related Products

I’ve written a much more detailed article about showing related products on Shopify and I would encourage you to read that.

What related products does is that it gives your customers more options to buy from your store. If you carefully curate the products that show up in your related products section then you can greatly increase your ROI.

People are naturally curious. Most people that land on one of your product pages would sniff around and explore the rest of your store.

This is an opportunity for you to show them something that they like and would like to buy.

29.Use Your Shopify ‘Thank You Page’

The Shopify “thank you page” is one of the least utilized pages on Shopify stores. This page is the final page in a shopper’s journey and is the order confirmation page. When a customer lands on this page, congratulations! You made a sale.

But why stop there? Someone who just purchased something from you are far more likely to buy another item than a cold customer.

Presenting customers with more great offers on your ‘thank you page’ works very well. Even if the take rate is 1 in 10, it is still sales that you effectively get for free.

The best way to use your order confirmation page is to present your customers with exclusive offers. They just purchased from you. Make them feel special and make them an offer they can’t refuse.

You can use an app like ReConvert or Thank You Page Customizer to set up your thank you pages.

30.Use A ‘sticky’ Add To Cart Button

A sticky add to cart button is particularly useful on mobile devices. Since most people now do their online shopping on their phones, this can make a big difference on your store’s results.

One problem with mobile devices is that the content can become quite long and this pushes users all the way down the page as they scroll.

It means that your add to cart button is often way up high on the page and users have to scroll all the way back up to add to cart.

A sticky add to cart fixes that. It docks the add to cart button to the bottom of the screen so when users scroll down the add to cart button remains and “sticks” while they scroll. This makes it very easy to simply click on the add to cart button.

31.Use Trust Elements

Building trust with your customers is super important. When someone lands on your store they probably don’t know you, your brand or your products.

They don’t know you and they don’t trust you and because of that they won’t buy from you.

Unless you can build a level of trust with your potential customers you are up against it. The overall design of your store plays an important role in building trust. If it looks like a scammy dropshipping store then people can be scared away quite quickly.

Using trust elements on your store is a great way to build trust. You want to put customers’ minds at ease that you are not going to take their money and run.

You should take great care not to overdo trust badges and logos as it can look very spammy. Make sure it always blends in with your store naturally. Subtle is better.

32.Use Unique Images And Photographs

The days of grabbing a few crappy images from Aliexpress and sticking them on your Shopify store is over. It’s too easy. Everyone is doing it. It also looks crap – most of the time.

There’s nothing unique about it. You end up being one of a hundred store with the same products and the same product images.

Standing out and being unique is really not that hard. Just order the products from Aliexpress. It’s super cheap!

Whip out your phone, find some nice light and take your own pictures. Use your phone’s filters to touch up the pictures. Its not professional studio photos but it works. It works much better than Aliexpress images and it also adds a personal touch to your store that no one else will have.

33.Use Images of People Using Your Products

This is a big mistake that I see so many Shopify stores make. Showing customers using your products not only makes it real but it adds character and social proof.

People are not really interested in products. They are interested in themselves and what the products will do for them. When they see other people using the product they can easily see themselves using it.

If you have a store that is filled with product photos – even if it looks great, it will not have the same impact as having a store with pictures that show real people using your products.

If you do get professional photos taken, make sure you always have pictures with people in them. Adding people into your photos gives it scale and gives it a human touch.

34.Make Full Use Of Youtube

Youtube is now the second biggest search engine on the internet. People consume video at an alarming rate and in many ways it has made people lazy.

Nobody reads pages of information anymore. They would much rather watch 10 minutes of video. Embedding youtube videos on your Shopify product pages is quite easy and if done correctly it can work amazing.

Aside from that, you want to use youtube for the search engine that it is. If you can make fun and engaging videos about your products and get the descriptions and tags right you can get a lot of organic traffic to your Shopify store from Youtube.

35.Make Full Use Of Pinterest

Pinterest is a massive social network that is very different from every other social network. Pinterest allows users to collect pictures and “pin” them to digital boards. Its a great way to arrange and organize pictures you found all over the internet.

Pinterest has a massive user base and it has evolved as a platform. Pinterest can be a great resource for some eCommerce businesses. I say “some” because not all niches perform well on Pinterest which has a predominantly female audience over the age of 35.

Pinterest makes it easy for users to buy from their rich pin format and your Shopify can integrate your products seamlessly into Pinterest.

With Pinterest you can get a ton of free traffic if you know what you are doing and have the time to dedicate to it. This can translate into a lot of sales.

Pinterest also has a paid ad platform and you can buy ads in a very similar way to Facebook ads. It is a very different beast though and there is a learning curve to master paid ads on Pinterest.

Pinterest remains largely untapped in terms of eCommerce and there is still a huge opportunity.

36.Use Google Shopping Ads

Google Ads has been around since online advertising began. It is still Google’s core business and is a traffic channel that no eCommerce business can afford to overlook.

Everybody seems fixated on Facebook Ads because it is the “in thing” and much more sexy than boring old Google Ads.

The reason why I think Google Ads is by far the best place to advertise your products is because of Google Shopping Ads.

Not only does Shopping Ads get the prime spot (right at the top) in search results, the format of these ads get a lot of clicks and convert at least twice as well ad Facebook ads.

Unlike Facebook Ads, your Google Shopping Ads can be much more stable and does not require nearly as much maintenance as a Facebook ad campaign.

I’ve had Google Shopping Ads run virtually untouched for well over 9 months with the exception of a some early optimization and the weekly tweaks that usually take very little time.

Google Shopping Ads can offer a long-term stable flow of traffic and conversions to your Shopify store.

37.Offer A Live Chat On Your Store

Offering a live chat function on your store is not really about making it convenient for customers to get hold of you. It is much more about interacting with your customers 1-on1. It is the fastest and most effective way to really learn and understand your customers’ needs.

An added bonus you will get from doing live chats is that you will close a lot of sales when doing this. When customers can get their questions answered immediately they often end up purchasing.

It also puts customers at ease knowing that your store is “alive” and that they can quickly get the help and support they need.

The best app to use for live chats is Tidio and they have a free plan that is more than good enough to get you started.

38.Build A Community Of “Fans”

The future of ecommerce is all about creating loyal customers that buy from you over and over again. Making only one-off sales will most certainly not sustain your business long term (in most cases).

Look at Apple. They customers are not really customers at all. They are fans. They will line up and sleep on the street for days just to spend $1000 on the latest phone that is virtually the same as the one they already have.

Why?

It is because they love the brand. They can associate with it and having that new Apple phone represents more than just having a phone. It represents a lifestyle and a cultural identity.

If you are building a brand you want to go beyond just selling products. You should have a clear image and a clear message that customers can buy into. Your ultimate goal should be to turn customers into fans.

You can see this with almost all the big brands and in almost every industry there is at least one “Apple” – a brand that stands out above the rest.

39.Reach Out To Brick And Mortar Businesses (Wholesale)

This is a very overlooked strategy that can work really well. If you have products that are selling very well and you can match those products to local stores then you can potentially create great long term sales.

Brick and mortar stores have one big problem. They often buy stock that they can not sell. If you can approach them with a proven product and offer them great prices it will be a win-win.

A much better way to do this however is to find related businesses that may need your products. This works well if you sell any sort of consumable product.

One great example is with whitelabel tea and coffee brands. You can approach local cafes and restaurants and if you can land just one or two deals you can see recurring business for years to come.

40.Upgrade Your Shopify Plan

Fees can eat into your profits more than you can imagine. Most people start off on a Basic Shopify Plan and so you should. When you start seeing success with your store you need to start thinking about upgrading.

If you upgrade to Shopify Advanced you can cut your fees from 2.9% to 2.4% which does not sound like much. However, for using external payment gateways (other than Shopify Pay) you can cut the fee from 2% all the way down to 0.5%

Another fee you should also be very wary of with Shopify is when you sell mostly to a country other than your own. There will be currency conversion fees on top of all the Shopify fees.

Then there’s also taxes and VAT to consider but this all depends on your unique situation – where you are based and where you choose to sell.

Make sure you understand your fees. Every 1% in fees and taxes puts money in your pocket without any more work and it is usually something you just need to sort out once.

41.Explore Better Shipping Rates

Shipping costs can eat into your profits very quickly. Offering free shipping has become the norm and most people now expect free shipping. What this implies for your store however is that increased shipping cost means less margin.

Exploring different shipping rates can make a huge difference. Shopify now offers a lot of tools to help you plug into carrier based rates. This allows you to “shop around” in real time to find the best rates.

Saving just $1 or $2 on a parcel can go a long way if you ship thousands of parcels per month.

Another great way to deal with this is to offer free shipping on the cheapest carrier you can find – even if this makes for slower shipping. Then, offer customers the option to upgrade and get faster shipping at a cost.

42.Offer Free Shipping

If you are currently charging for shipping then testing out free shipping is a very worthwhile test. In most cases, free shipping will boost conversion rates.

People have come to expect free shipping thanks to Amazon. In the USA, free shipping is definitely the “new normal” but it is not unusual to be charged for shipping elsewhere in the world.

In many countries, especially in Europe, people are used to ordering products from other countries and this usually comes at a cost.

A more advanced strategy that many dropshippers use to great effect is to offer free shipping for orders over a certain limit. This often encourages people to order more and to add more to hit the free shipping threshold.

43.Charge For Shipping

Duh! I just told you to do free shipping…what’s this shenanigans all about!? It’s all about testing. The value of the product, the cost and your margins are all factors that will dictate whether charging for shipping is viable.

Free shipping is not always expected and sometimes you can offer low shipping rates while you eat some of the shipping costs. If you ask a $4.95 shipping cost then for most orders over $30 it will be acceptable.

Another great strategy is to offer free shipping but charge people $4.95 for “express fulfillment” – NOT express shipping. All this means is that you make sure you ship the product within 24 hours.

This is easy money and an option that almost 40% of my customers chose. If you use print on demand or dropshipping then make sure that you can actually deliver on these promises.

44.Explore New Fulfillment Options

Whether you are dropshipping, using a fulfillment center or fulfill yourself, there are always options to explore. If you are dropshipping you can look into warehousing. This often requires a higher upfront cost but it can double your profit margins when you order in bulk.

There are so many warehousing and fulfillment options available at the moment and you can simply get a better deal when you shop around. Changing can be a pain but if it adds an extra 5% to 10% to your bottom line.

45.Find A Better Supplier

This goes hand in hand with finding better fulfilment options. Most products from China can be sourced from several different suppliers – especially if you are sourcing products from Alibaba.

Alibaba suppliers are notoriously stingy and unless you negotiate you will not get the best deal. Having multiple suppliers will give you some leverage and often they will give you a better deal to gain your business.

If you have a proven order history and a supplier can see how much you order, their eye usually light up and they will offer you a better deal.

46.Offer Excellent Customer Support

Offering excellent customer service almost goes without saying but I would like to point out a few important issues. Not only does great customer service greatly reduce refunds and chargebacks, it helps you to gain trust with your customers.

Having repeat customers is incredibly important and having great customer service can most certainly help you achieve that.

Great customer service can also reduce your customer service. Huh? Here’s what I mean…

If you outsource your customer service on the cheap to the Philippines and they have no idea what they are doing then you will just get more and more support tickets piling up.

If your customer support is sharp, informative and resolves issues quickly then you will greatly ease the workload.

Consider using an app like ReAmaze that offers automation rules to help direct customers to answers before they get to lodge a new customer support ticket.

47.Build An “A Team”

This relates closely to the previous point about having great customer support. As your store grows you will need help. Essentially you have 2 options.

You can hire a remote worker for $8/hour or you can hire a remote worker for $20/hour. Generally speaking, someone with Shopify experience and/or customer support experience in ecommerce will cost you more.

Either way, you need to have a process to vet new staff members and an even better way to train them.

Your goal should be to build an A-team. A team that works like a well oiled machine where everyone is incredibly clear on their tasks, they do it enthusiastically and diligently. Don’t just go for a cheap option just to get the job done.

48.Expand The Countries You Are Selling To

One of the easiest ways to scale your Shopify store and to expand your sales is to scale your store to sell in different countries. If you sell internationally then you probably only sell to the top 4 English speaking countries. USA, UK, Canada and Australia.

The easy way is to expand to ALL countries where English is a prominent language. Ireland, New Zealand, South Africa (be careful with shipping) and Singapore.

However, there are many more European countries where english is not necessarily a first language but where a large percentage of the population can speak and understand it.

49.Use Currency Conversion

One big problem with selling your products in different countries is that customers will be presented with prices in USD (or your local currency). Often this scares customers off straight away. They see the USD and they immediately think this is a foreign sites and I probably can’t order from here.

If you present your customers with your products in their local currency it will immediately reduce the bounce rate. Customers can see the prices in their local currency and they don;t have to try and figure out how much it would really cost them.

There are a number of currency conversion apps you can use and Shopify has also come a long way to make this more efficient. The Currency Conversion app by Bold is free and works incredibly well.

The challenge is that your customers will still check out using your store’s default currency. This can lead to additional charges so make sure you let your customer know and make it clear where your products ship from and where your store is based.

50.Translate Your Store To Serve Different Languages

This is not ideal for many stores but it can work very well. If you have a one product store then this can be gold. By simply translating your entire store to any of the major languages like Spanish, German or French you can open up a whole new sales channel.

You will need to get this done professionally and you probably want to set up a parallel store and host it on a local domain (like .co.uk for the UK) if you can. You will also need customer support in the local language.

While manual translation is the best way to go, it can be very tedious and there’s a lot of room for error.

There is an alternative that makes the whole translation process a breeze. There’s an app called Weglot that can automate your Shopify store’s translation for you.

I know you may be thinking “Google Translate”, right? No. This is far more advanced and for the most part your store will appear as natural as could be to a native speaker. Their translations are based on machine learning and it is really good.

What I really like about Weglot is the fact that it is simple to translate your store into a number of languages by simply using their app. It also keeps everything updated so every time you make any changes or add any products it automatically adds it into the additional languages you chose.

51.Get Your Taxes And Business Set Up Properly

Most online store are oblivious to the impact of taxes. Taxes affect your sales- especially sales tax because it adds to the final product costs for your customers. It can often make the difference between getting a sale or not.

Setting up your business in an offshore account can be very tricky and does come with a lot of scrutiny. There are many agents that can set this all up for you which can allow you to minimize taxes.

Taxes vary greatly from state to state and country to country. I am NOT a tax expert and I strongly advise you to find one.

Minimizing the amount of tax your business pays, claiming the maximum amount of write offs and making sure your business is structured correctly can have a massive effect on your bottom line.

52.Run Your Business From A Credit Card

This makes a lot of sense if you run a lot of ads and if you buy a lot of inventory. High limit credit cards ($100k and over) treat customers like you very well. The main reason for running these business expenses on a credit card is two-fold.

I like to use this credit card only for 2 things. One is ads and the other is buying inventory. This makes it very easy to track transactions and get quick and easy access to figures without mining through general business accounts that are full of unrelated expenses.

Secondly, if you shop around you can get some incredibly credit card deals. The benefits and rewards on some cards are truly worth it and I know many people who only fly business class because of the credit card rewards.

Don’t overlook this. It is “free money”.

53.Protect Yourself Against Lawsuits

Once you have a successful business you need to start taking steps to secure your business. One of these steps that is incredibly important is to protect yourself legally.

This varies a lot based on the products you sell but if your product(s) pose any form of injury or harm then you could get sued. There are enough crazy people in this world who look for ways to sue others and shift blame.

Hiring a great lawyer to help you craft foolproof disclaimers is vital – especially if you sell health and beauty products that can cause harm to someone. You’d be amazed what people can get away with just because you did not warn them in advance.

You also want to protect your brand and your products. If anyone infringes on your copyright, you need to have a lawyer that can help you take them down.

I will also add one more important point. If you are dropshipping products from Aliexpress you need to be careful. They sell a lot of infringed products. Before you start buying Lambo’s and holidaying in the Maldives, make sure that what you are selling does not infringe copyright.

Often doing a simple reverse image search on Google will reveal a lot about the products that Aliexpress is selling.

54.Start A Blog In Your Niche

Is your Shopify store just selling products or are you building a brand and becoming a “voice” in your industry? Educating your customers and offering genuine help and advice is a great way to go beyond just selling products.

Most big brands are doing this now and the residual value of doing this is far reaching. If you can get people to associate your brand and your products to solving their problems then you will never have problems with selling products.

Another great benefit of attaching a blog to your store is that it will help you immensely with SEO (search engine optimization).

Just set up a blog through Shopify and start creating just 1 piece of content a week. After 1 year you will have a great blog and (if you do it well) start building a loyal following.

55.Make Full Use Of Email Marketing

Email marketing is hands-down the most profitable marketing channel there is. If you are not fully using email marketing in your ecommerce business then you are leaving money on the table.

Just look at your own inbox. If you bought anything from any major retailer in the last 3 months then they will email you at least once a week with their latest offers.

Learn from them, but do it better. With eMail apps like Klavyio you can create some pretty advanced email campaigns by segmenting your audience in so many different ways. You can customize offers to a “T” and get very granular in what and whom you target with emails.

If your store has a lot of sales history it gets easier simply because your email list is bigger but if you are a new store you should always do your best to at least collect a name and email from visitors – especially the ones who do not buy. You can do this with exit-pops.

56.Recover Abandoned Carts

Cart abandonment emails allows you to ‘recover’ potential sales of people who came very close to purchasing but bailed out at the last minute.

There are a number of reasons why someone would make it all the way to your checkout and not press the ‘purchase button’.

With cart abandonment emails you can lure these shoppers back. You need to act fast though – before they forget about you.

Set your emails to start running within 1 to 3 hours of them abandoning the cart. You can do the same with SMS or text messages with customers who where checking out via their phones.

57.Use Google Analytics

Google Analytics is the standard for measuring website data. Its free and helps you to truly see what’s going on in your Shopify store. Shopify does offer analytics but it is not included with the basic plan.

Shopify analytics is okay and has its uses. Google Analytics on the other hand is more of a universal tool and you can get some really great insights into your visitors and sales.

It has a dedicated eCommerce channel that allows you to see sales data.

Learning to use Google Analytics properly does take a bit of getting used to but yu will be glad you have it. It is also a must if you ever want to sell your store because showing a potential buyer your Google Analytics stats will go a long way.

58.Use Profit Metrics Apps

When I first started dropshipping in 2006 profit metrics apps did not exist. In fact, its fairly new and MUCH needed. If you run your Shopify store there are a lot of hidden costs that you do not necessarily factor into your daily or monthly profits.

An app like TrueProfit literally factors in ALL the expenses and profits to give you a true and accurate snapshot of your profit. It even has a mobile phone app which I love.

It takes into account Ad costs, Shopify fees, app costs, taxes, refunds, product costs, returns ec. Calculating this all manually is virtually impossible or will require some ninja Excel skills.

With TRueProfit you can see your entire stores financials on one screen and it is 100% accurate with all fees and expenses calculated automatically.

This allows you to instantly see where you stand every day, wekk, month or quarter.

Far too many Shopify stores are flying blind and have no real sense of their true ROI – until tax time comes around.

59.Attach Your Brand To Good Causes

This is a bit of a grey zone as it calls into question certain ethics. In my opinion this all depends on your intentions.

The idea is to associate your brand to certain good causes within your niche. If you sell dog products you could make regular donations to dog shelter charities and in return you can spray that charity work all over your store.

Many people market this by saying that a percentage of all sales goes to XYZ Charity. This often tugs at people’s heart strings and can help sales significantly.

These ‘donations’ are tax deductible in most countries and states which means it adds to your bottom line. Unfortunately many people abuse this strategy since no one will really know if you truly do make those donations. (the tax man is coming for you!)

However, if you do this legit, have the right intentions and truly want to make a difference with your business this is a good and noble route.

60.Manage Your Reputation On Social Media

Lets face it, social media has become a bit of a troll fest. There are so many trolls that hide beyond their screens and post only negativity. I challenge you to pick any great brand and go to their Facebook page.

You will see hundreds of “customers” venting and scolding the company and their products.

This is just the way it is. You could just ignore these people and delete their posts or you can use it as an opportunity and build bridges. This takes a delicate touch and a lot of work but it can do wonders for your public image.

What is of greater importance though is to manage any negative feedback that can really impact your business. As a dropshipper you need to manage your facebook Feedback score. If it drops below a certain threshold they can penalize you and even suspend you.

You also want to make sure that websites like the Better Business Bureau (BBB) has no strikes against your business.

61.Expand Your Product Line

The 80/20 rule most certainly applies for ecommerce stores. If 80% of your sales come from just 20% of your products then why expand your product line?

You are looking for more 80% products. By consistently adding and testing new products it allows you to remove products that are just not selling.

Dead products that hardly make any sales should be removed from your store. It tends to do more harm than good because people are obviously not interested.

In an ideal world you want your store to be filled only with products that your audience want to buy. Not only will this vastly increase your conversion rates but it will keep customers coming back.

When you expand your product line you will discover new hot products that can be added into your upsells, downsells and cross sells.

62.Peel Products Off Into Their Own Brands

This is a strategy that many ecom gurus promote: start a “general store” and fill it with 20 to 30 products. Get traffic and see what sells. Then, pick the best product and create a one product store around that product.

This is a great strategy but I would encourage you to always focus on a niche store as general stores have become too spammy and shoppers tend to run the other way.

When you take your best product and create a branded single product store you can easily double your conversion rates and your profit.

People do not buy things based on its true value. People buy products based on its perceived value and that is where marketing comes in.

63.Use Kickstarter To Launch New Products

Kickstarter and other crowdfunding websites are great places to test new product ideas. It allows you to fund your new product and greatly reduces your risks.

These crowdfunding websites are great if you are bringing something truly unique and different to a market. Products that are quirky, that solve common problems or that are just plain cool tend to do very well.

The way most new products do this is to use 3D models and prototypes to take the products to Kickstarter. That way you can test the idea with minimal expense and if it takes off you have the capital needed to develop the idea into a full blown product.

Kickstarter and GoFundMe is not just for unique and funky products. I’ve seen numerous people have success with whitelabel products from China. It’s all about how you market the product and how you present it to the crowdfunding audience.

64.Use Sales Very Sparingly

One of the biggest mistakes I see almost all new dropshippers make is that every product in their store is “on sale”. Apart from it looking incredibly spammy it’s just not realistic. If you are shopping online then this is a big red flag.

Using sales sparingly and strategically can make a big difference. You should always have a reason for a sale. Think about big retailers and when they have sales.

A stocktake sale – makes sense, they are taking stock and have to get rid of old stock. Balc Friday sale, End if Financial Year sales ec.

If you offer a great sale at strategic times and give people a good reason why you are having a sale then you will see a vast improvement in your conversion rates.

65.Make Full Use Of Urgency And Scarcity Tactics

Urgency and scarcity are two very effective strategies to push people to make buying decisions. People are naturally indecisive.

Urgency is when you put a time limit on sales or specific offers. These typically work with countdown timers where people would feel like they have to buy NOW because the sale will end in 6 minutes and 42 seconds.

Scarcity is similar and this is a strategy where you make customers aware of the limited quantity of products available.

People do not want to miss out and if they knew that you had only 6 products left in stock then they are far more likely to take action than if they knew you had a whole warehouse and they can come back any day of the week to buy the product.

Scarcity tactics can easily be integrated into your Shopify store through countdown timers and works well on product pages and in the shopping cart.

There are some ethical issues here though. Make sure that when you have a deadline that you genuinely will end the sale when you say you will.

Because of the abuse of countdown timers, urgency and scarcity many ad networks frown upon these elements on your Shopify store so proceed with caution.

66.Enable Alternative Payment Options On Your Store

If you are using Shopify then you are probably using Shopify Payments as your payment processor. That is great and it works well.

There are many more payment processors out there and Paypal is probably the biggest and best known. Many people prefer to use Paypal because they know that Paypal offers them buyers insurance.

By offering Paypal as an alternative payment method you could see a nice bump in conversions. Not everyone has a credit card and Paypal allows these people to buy from you.

Recently a lot of new payment options started getting tracktion. Afterpay, Kiva and ViaBill are all payment options that allow customers to buy from you and then pay it back in installments. This can work very well if your audience falls into a younger demographic.

67.Sell Your Products On Marketplaces

If you are selling on Shopify then you have a lot of channels available to you to increase your sales. Amazon and Ebay however still own a huge share of the ecommerce pie. They function in their own microcosm and has huge traffic volume.

Why not tap into that. Anyone can sell on Amazon and Ebay and if your products are unique to your brand then Amazon and Ebay can open up a whole new world for you.

If your products have some sort of handmade quality to it then you can also sell on Etsy which is a massive marketplace for handmade and authentic products.

There are also lesser known marketplaces like Wish, Bonanza and Storenvy and with the right products these marketplaces can be very lucrative.

68.Offer Digital or Information Products With You Physical Products

This does not work in all niches but adding digital products to your physical products can really set you apart. I’ve seen this being used very successfully in the fitness space. Selling a door gym is quite a dull product.

Adding 30 training videos to the purchase turns it into something completely different. Not only does this make your product unique it also gives people a real reason to buy.

Any product that helps people achieve some sort of result can benefit from having an eBook or some video series attached to it.

69.Send Discounts With Your Products (Plus Unique Link To Store)

This is not a new idea and is something that was very common with mail order businesses. When someone receives a parcel from you they are excited and (hopefully) very pleased when they open it.

If you offer them something exclusive and package it as a “gift card” and a thank you note then you can get repeat orders like clockwork.

Never offer people a percentage discount. That is too old and boring. You want to frame it differently.

“Thank you for your order and we hope you love your new pink handcuffs. As a first time customer we would like to offer you a $15 voucher towards your next purchase.”

Make sure you set a minimum order value for them to claim the $15 so that it makes sense in terms of your margins. Also, be sure to give them a link that they can use – preferably something short and easy to type.

70.Create Custom Packaging

Big brands spend big money on their packaging. The reason for this is simple: it comes down to user experience.

When you buy that new iPhone, opening that box and seeing the beautiful phone all wrapped up and fitting snug into that velvety interior makes you feel good about overpaying by at least $500.

Another product type that come to mind is fragrances. That is one business that is all about the packaging. The perfume itself costs pittance. The bottle and the box makes up for 80% of the cost.

Marketing is all about creating a perceived value for customers. Your branding and your packaging goes a long way towards achieving a sense of value and offering a great user experience.

The flipside to this is when your customer is excited by some great gadget they bought from you – only to receive some cheap bubble wrap from Aliexpress.

It makes them judge the product, the quality and your business before they even open the parcel.

If you are dropshipping, use a fulfillment service like CJ Dropshipping and make full use of their custom packaging. It is very affordable and will make a huge difference to the perceived value of your products and your brand.

71.Increase And Decrease Prices

There’s been a lot of studies around price points and the psychology of pricing is fascinating. Pricing is something you have to test all the time as there are many variables that could either work or backfire.

The first thing to test is to increase your prices. This goes against all logic but you’d be amazed how often this actually increases conversion rates.

Higher prices usually implies higher perceived value and people who want to buy something that is good quality want to spend more. The logic is that a higher price equals higher quality.

You also want to test lowering your prices and depending on your product you might have a lot of bargain hunters in which case it will increase conversion rates.

Other pricing strategies to test is to set price points in increments of $5 and end it is $0.95. These price pints are $19.95 or $34.95 or $79.95. The difference between $49.95 and $50 is only 5 cents but again it refers back to the psychology of it being “less than $50”

Depending on your audience you can also test simple pricing. This is a pricing strategy where you price your products at simple round numbers. $20, $50, $90.

The only way to know what pricing strategies will work for you is to TEST it.

72.Give Away Free Products

So-called tripwire products was a hot strategy back in 2016 when you could get very cheap products on AliExpress and offer them for free.

The catch was that you would charge $9.95 for shipping and handling. This would cover all your costs and you basically try to ‘buy a customer’ by breaking even on the front end.

You can then market to this email list of qualified buyers.

This strategy has since become far less effective because of the slow shipping times and the fact that many opportunistic marketers exloited it too much.

Another strategy with giving away free products is to try and attract free marketing from influential people.

By giving away free products to influencers without trying to hook up a deal in advance you rely on the marketing principle of reciprocity.

You lead with the giving hand. While this will not always pan out, you could potentially get a lot of free exposure.

73.Reduce Refund Rates

If you are running a dropshipping store and especially if you are dropshipping from China then refunds will be one of your biggest expenses.

Refund rates are high for products from Aliexpress mostly because of the slow shipping and/or the poor quality.

If you sell clothing then you have yet another problem and that is the fact that you can’t easily offer exchanges. You end up eating the costs of returns and these are effectively write-off costs.

Even if you sell great quality products that ship fast from the USA you will still have to offer refunds.

By reducing your refunds you can greatly improve your store’s ROI.

If you are dropshipping then you need to improve both your shipping speed and your communication with your customers.

You also need to implement better quality control to make sure that the products you send out to your customers are at an acceptable standard.

You also want to make sure that these products reach your customers in an acceptable state.

Many Chinese carriers handle parcels with very little regard for the contents and if your customers receive damaged parcels then it will result in an instant refund.

74.Spy On Your Competition

With so many ‘competitive analysis’ (also known as spy tools) tools available it has become very easy to spot trending products and best sellers.

In many ways this hinders you from exploring new products but seeing what is already selling can give you a lot of insight – especially if you have an established store.

If you have direct competitors in your niche then you can also use tools like Spyfu to look at their Google Ads.