Shopify Help – 5 common problems and tips to solve them

Shopify is one of the largest eCommerce platforms out there, with over 1,700,000 businesses using it. They make it easier than ever to create online stores, market and fulfil orders.

Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, more people turned to online shopping than ever before. Savvy entrepreneurs and everyday people saw this opportunity and hopped on the bandwagon. In 2020 eCommerce revenue surged 27.6%, reaching approximately $4.28 trillion in revenue globally. It’s forecasted that eCommerce will account for more than $6.5 trillion in revenue by 2023.

Here’s where Shopify plays a key role.

However, there is a lot of work that goes into a successful eCommerce store. Many first-time users run into similar problems that we’re going to address here in the article.

When you first take on creating and managing an online store you’ll be wearing lots of hats and juggling many tasks. Eventually, you’ll learn to lean on plugins to alleviate some of the grunt work, find systems and processes that meet your needs and be able to streamline business operations.

If you want to free up your time, help optimise your store, or have a specific problem that needs fixing with your eCommerce store, check out our e-commerce solutions and get in touch with us. Our services are quick, affordable, and tailored to your specific needs.

1. Shopify Help – Finding Customers & Increasing Sales

Noah asked God, where would he get all the animals for the ark and God replied: “Build it and they shall come”. Well, this may have worked for Noah, but this method alone isn’t going to work for you.

I’d suggest having a more “All roads lead to Rome” approach. Your eCommerce store being ‘Rome’ and all the ‘roads’ are different marketing channels that lead your visitors to your site.

Although this may be two different matters, finding customers and increasing sales. You can’t have sales without customers, but you can have customers without sales.

You know, the ones that are “just browsing”.

So where to start?

Here are 5 action points you can start today to help your customers find you:

1.SEO

Set up and understand your analytics software

Shopify has built-in SEO features and Google Analytics you’ll have to integrate into your website. The software collects data to give you the information you need to understand what’s working well and what isn’t.

Keyword research

Is determining which keywords and phrases are the best to target for your specific product or service. Google keyword planner is a good place to start looking for these.

On-page SEO

This focuses on your specific URLs and website pages. You’ll want to include the keywords and phrases from your research in the appropriate sections of your headers, title tags, meta descriptions, website copy, image optimisation, PPC ads, and especially on your FAQ page. You want the search engine that’s analysing all of these elements to know exactly what’s on your page and what keywords and phrases to rank for.

Off-page SEO

This is what refers people to your site from other channels. This can be back-links, guest blogging, and social media.

2. Utilize your social media accounts

Social proof

If a user is interested in what you’re selling, they will most certainly go to the reviews of the products and services. Encourage customers to leave reviews on your Google my business, social media platforms, and website. Address any negative reviews professionally. Social proof is a great way of building trust in your product/service.

Set up & Utilize Instagram

81% of Instagram users use the platform to search for products or services. Instagram can help you grow your audience, increase engagement and brand loyalty. Overall an excellent platform to generate interest and leads, so make sure to set it up and start scheduling posts.

Set up & Utilize Facebook

78% of American users say Facebook is where they have found products. More people are turning to social media platforms to search for products or services and Facebook is no exception. When users visit your Facebook business page, messenger can pop up and suggest common questions that can start a conversation. Users will be able to see reviews and your recent posts. People are more inclined to trust a Facebook business page if all the fields are up to date, have regular posting activity, and have reviews and testimonials.

3. Pins on Pinterest

It’s the 14th most used social media platform; however, for eCommerce, it’s worth tapping into. Eight out of ten Pinterest users have purchased products based on what they’ve seen of the brand or product on Pinterest. More and more marketers are utilizing Pinterest as a means to generate leads and entice customers.

4. PPC advertising

This is pay per click advertising that will help get your website, products or service in front of people that are searching for or have those particular interests. We’ve written an article specifically on ‘What’s eCommerce PPC?’ which will provide greater detail on the subject. Google, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, YouTube and many more all offer paid advertising on their sites.

Here are 5 action points you can utilize to help convert visitors into customers:

1. Fast website

Site speed and user experience is crucial. On average people will wait no longer than 3 seconds for a site to load before exiting.

First, start by testing the speed of your site.

PageSpeed Insights by Google is a great free tool. They also provide ‘Opportunities’ to improve site speed. These can be quite technical so either research is required or reach out to our team and we can help you with any technical issues you face.

It’s worth doing your research on all of these ‘opportunities’ if they apply to you, but other ways to improve site speed are to choose a responsive theme, review your Shopify plugins, compress and reduce image quality and size and fix broken links. Check out this article for ‘10 actionable tips to optimise yout Shopify website speed’.

2. Know your audience

The goal for most businesses when it comes to their audience is to foster loyalty, trust and long-term relationships with customers. Your website, content and user experience should reflect this, as well as, empathising with their problems and providing the solutions they’re looking for. Loyal customers will also advocate for your brand to their communities.

Start by reviewing your analytics data. What historically has worked well and what hasn’t? Review your audience statistics on the visitors that purchased from your site and if there is a correlation between them, target this niche.

We also can’t stress enough the importance of addressing customer feedback, comments and queries with the appreciation it deserves. A bad rating or review can destroy sales, even more so if left to fester without a professional and considerate response from the business. Feedback in all its forms is worth its weight in gold to help you improve your product, service and business operations to make for a better experience in the future. Send follow up emails to customers after purchase to encourage them to leave a review and give their feedback.

3. Social proof

As mentioned previously, social proof is crucial as visitors want to hear the experience of others. This can be a major determining factor in whether they buy the product or not.

Highlight some of the best testimonials on your website’s homepage. As well as, making them easy to find on each product page.

4. Abandon cart notification

There’s nothing worse than seeing someone put something in their cart and then leave the website. Abandon cart plugins can help capture the user data and retarget them with an SMS, eMail or a notification of sorts.

Currently, there are 752 abandoned cart apps on the Shopify app store to choose from. At Lime Digital, we’ve been a fan of the Rivo Abandon Cart Recovery plug-in.

5. Exceptional offers

Offers can help make purchasing more persuasive. For example, to qualify for free shipping 52% of consumers would add more to their cart to get this offer. Additionally, offers could come in the form of special discount codes to previous purchasers or subscribers to your emailing list. It’s said that 20% of your customers will attribute to 80% of your sales. More often than not this is due to repeat purchasing. So utilize your email marketing to send offers to your loyal customers, to encourage more repeat purchases.

2. Shopify Help – Customizing my website

First thing first, before acquiring a theme, you need to know the functionality required for your eCommerce website. Not all themes are capable of handling massive catalogues of products and not all changes you desire can be done. So having a list of non-negotiable features is a must.

If you’re not keen to play with eCommerce website development contact us.

Steps you can take:

Make back-ups before installing plug-ins and making big changes to the website. This is in case something goes wrong, you have a backup website that is functional and can cover you until the issue is resolved.
Contact the theme developer – if there’s something you want to change or add, the best person to contact would be the creator of the theme. They may be able to assist or guide you to someone best suited for the job.
Hiring a third-party developer – there comes a point where it’s advisable to hire an expert when it comes to coding and managing your website. Having an expert who is capable and reliable is an invaluable tool while operating a business online. There are many avenues to go down, so do your research diligently. We at Lime Digital have helped many clients with their Shopify websites and built custom templates to meet their needs. If you have any questions, we’ll be sure to answer them.

3. Shopify Help – Understanding Analytics

Shopify comes with built-in analytics. Then it’s recommended to integrate Google Analytics and any alternatives you may be using into your website. These are relatively painless to install and a quick google search can provide you with the steps to set these up.

Analytics are wonderful tools to help capture real-time data, track your KPI’s and guide you to optimise website performance. The biggest issue most face is making heads or tails of the information they provide and where to begin.

The first actionable step you can take here is to educate yourself. Even if you decide it’s easier to hire an agency to take over management of your website and PPC advertising. It’s advantageous to you to be able to understand what the data is telling you.

There are many avenues you can go down to educate yourself, YouTube videos, podcasts, courses, etc. Google offers free courses in their Google Analytics academy and Shopify has a beginners guide blog post that makes sense of how to use the data from your analytics.

Some plugins claim to help consolidate the data from these analytics tools however they fail to deliver actionable insights.

Additionally, with Shopify’s more expensive packages like ‘Advanced Shopify’ and ‘Shopify Plus’, offer all insights available and customizable reports designed to your specific needs. However, equipped with the knowledge of understanding the data produced from analytics, you’ll be able to optimise and make positive changes on Shopify’s basic and standard packages.

4. Shopify Help – What apps and plugins are worth your while?

We’re going to keep this part short and sweet. Each eCommerce store is unique and will require different plugins. So here’s Lime Digitals 8 most commonly used plugins for our client’s Shopify stores. Hopefully, a few of these can make your eCommerce store experience easier.

Xero Bridge by Parex: Syncs your Shopify data with your Xero account automatically.
Floatton: Create sticky floating link buttons for easy access to your website content throughout the store, e.g. social media links, chatbot, contact page, etc.
Variant Option Product Options: This is for e-commerce websites only. This app allows you to have a custom image for each variant giving users the best preview of the product based on the variant selected.
Calculator Builder by Calconic: An interactive calculator that engages visitors to your site to calculate their specific needs. Great for working out square footage, custom pricing, quantities, and more.
Wishlist Plus: This is for e-commerce websites only. Customers can bookmark their favourite products, leave the website and return to still have their favourite product saved.
CM Commerce Email Marketing: Create your own branded emails to send to your email subscriber list.
Flexify: Facebook Product Feed: Syncs your Shopify store to your social media accounts so that customers can buy right from where they are viewing the product. Connects with Facebook, Instagram, Google and Pinterest.
PageFly Landing Page Builder: For building high-quality landing pages that can optimise your store and convert more visitors into customers.

5. Shopify Help – Importing Products and Inventory

A common problem people face with Shopify is issues with uploading their products and inventory.

The process is simplified down to exporting your products and inventory list to a CSV. then import this file to Shopify. However, if the CSV is not exact, Shopify will return to you with an error message.

There are a few things you can do before having to contact someone to help. If an error message presents itself during upload, Shopify has an article regarding solutions to common product CSV import problems.

Additionally, if you have a high turnover of products, find yourself constantly sifting through spreadsheets and overall finding product inventory a full-time job in itself. You will benefit from a product management plugin or software.

One’s we have found to be useful are:

Robo product importer – Costing only $6/month, this app will take your product list and import it into Shopify. No more manual imports. The only drawback is that it doesn’t support product variants.
Matrixify – Starting from $0/month, with 3 further pricing tiers. You can upload bulk collections of products from any data source.
Cart2Cart – If you have an existing store or are thinking of selling products on multiple channels this is a great app for transferring product lists. It works on a multitude of sites. It’s free to set up but the true cost of it depends on how many products you’re looking to migrate.

So to summarize, knowledge is power, leverage the right plugins and software to work smarter not harder and know when to ask for help.

Shopify is an amazing tool that’s allowed over a million people to start their eCommerce businesses. It’s an exciting time, to start your own business and Shopify makes the barrier to entry easily accessible to all.

If you do need support, feel free to reach out to our specialist eCommerce team at Lime Digital and we can help you in the right direction.

We hope that this article has been able to help you tackle or foresee any problems that could arise.