10 Key Elements for Shopify Store Growth in 2021 (and Beyond)

Running an eCommerce shop with a reliable backend operator is a blessing in disguise! 

Having a store managing software that has you covered over every single need for establishing your business comes in handy and helpful. Now, when we talk about such platforms, Shopify is the one that tops the list. 

With its extensive list of functionality and features, the platform empowers businesses to establish themselves without relying on a team of techies to develop and run the store. 

While Shopify comes with its own set of benefits that makes it super easy to use, certain aspects need to be taken care of. While you are managing your store, you must master a few marketing elements for improved performance.

Every Shopify store needs to be optimised to help visitors navigate through the store quickly. Proper optimisation also gives way to improved sales and conversions. 

However, the key to your store growth remains with individual elements that need to be mastered. 

Curious to know more? Let’s have a look! But before, let’s get along with a few basics.

What Is Shopify?

In technical terms, Shopify can be defined as cloud-based software that serves different eCommerce businesses as their reliable backend provider, providing them with reliable means to run their business effectively. 

Shopify allows businesses to upload their products over its cloud storage and process all of the orders based on monthly subscriptions. To wrap it in a nutshell, Shopify is your one-stop solution to develop and run your eCommerce store from scratch. 

One of the most reliable eCommerce platforms to run your business, Shopify is the third-largest proprietary platform that supports more than 600,000 companies worldwide. 

Home to thousands of companies, this platform covers companies on every end, ranging from marketing and shipping to payments & customer engagement, with the help of specified ecommerce marketing tools over the Shopify App store.

Further, it allows your business to connect with eCommerce giants like eBay and Amazon, allowing you to execute operations and connect multiple sales inputs from Shopify.

Now that you know what Shopify is, let’s find out how it serves you differently over other eCommerce platforms. 

Why Should You Use Shopify Over Other eCommerce Platforms?

What if we told you that there’s not one but plenty of reasons to use Shopify over other eCommerce platforms? 

Yes, it’s true. 

The primary of all of them is that the platform is a hosted solution. In a situation where you have just begun your eCommerce business journey, hosting is one of the most significant challenges you will encounter. 

However, the list of benefits doesn’t end here! Check them out below:

Provides you with powerful inbuilt tools for marketing: Let’s accept it; different eCommerce tools make us hassle-free. However, getting access to all of them over one single platform can be a problem if you don’t have a reliable provider.

Interestingly, things are different at Shopify!

Shopify provides the eCommerce vendors with a vast toolkit to help them across every phase of their business. Thanks to the Shopify App Store, users can easily access a wide variety of tools that are either free or super affordable. When you use the inbuilt toolkit, you can also integrate its services with different social media platforms, providing you with an opportunity to market your store without hindering the process.

Reliable technical support: Being the owner of an eCommerce store, you never know the problems you might encounter on the verge of your business. While waiting for your providers to address your issue might sound okay, chances are that you will lose potential business in the process. 

However, things are different with Shopify. It provides its vendors with 24/7 assistance, allowing you to easily reach them and address your issues to get them resolved in real-time.

Site speed: The rules of SEO demand you to have a web page that loads fast enough! The faster your eCommerce website loads, the better are your chances to retain your customers. Now, while there might be many eCommerce providers, most of them fail to provide you with the dedicated site speed. 

Further, this is what makes Shopify stand out as it comes with an in-built speed checker to help you analyse your website speed and keep you updated on the speed required.

Advanced functionalities: Nobody likes to have limitations in designing their eCommerce store as per their likes. Similarly, you would certainly not like the idea of having a website that can’t be edited or customised as per your requirements. 

Interestingly, things are different over Shopify! This platform’s advanced functionalities allow the vendors to utilise applications to enable complete customisation, installation, and downloads onto the site.

14-day trial for free: Now, there is no better way than trying out everything before you have to pay?

Yes, Shopify allows users to take a 14-day free trial to try out all Shopify features with ease. This platform also allows the users to utilise the advantage of Shopify’s payment gateway, allowing you to deal with lower fees and almost no transactional fees over sales. 

With the 14 days free trial, you can pretty much get a complete idea of all the activities to ensure that this platform is the perfect fit for your eCommerce store. 

Now that we know all the relevant reasons to make the right switch to Shopify, it’s time to look at how this platform works for your business. 

How Does Shopify Work?

How Shopify works for you is simple. It is a cloud-based software that rolls out monthly subscriptions to access its features and set up their eCommerce store, using a wide variety of Shopify themes and store templates free for purchase. 

Besides providing the users with different themes and store templates, Shopify also allows them to edit and customise them with extensive editing tools. This way, you can work your way to make the eCommerce store stand out from the crowd. 

Further, Shopify also allows users to select their web hosting and enable businesses to move smoothly during those peak hours. Shopify’s platform also enables you to access SSL certificates and utilise an uptime of 99.98%.

This way, Shopify focuses on being a one-stop solution for your eCommerce business to help you develop your business from scratch. 

Now that you have seen all the aspects of how Shopify works, it's time to have a look at ten key elements for Shopify store growth in 2021:

10 Key Elements for Shopify Store Growth in 2021

1. Messenger Marketing

Messenger marketing allows you to run your marketing campaigns with different social media chat apps as the name suggests. It allows you to smartly drive your conversations with updates, reminders, and statuses of orders, among other such notifications.

It is one of the most efficient marketing tactics for pushing customers closer to conversion in the sales funnel. 

One of the most effective ways Messenger Marketing works is by reminding the customers every time they leave something in their cart. This way, this tactic also helps decrease cart abandonment rates. These reminders that go via Messenger marketing are helpful in improved conversions.

Benefits of opting for Messenger Marketing

The Messenger Marketing feature allows easy integration of Facebook Messenger with your eCommerce store, allowing you to access all the recent interactions, along with a seamless customer experience. 

This way, you can easily chat with your customers over different social media platforms.

With this Shopify element, you can also browse carts, abandonment, welcome messages, polls, and status updates for customers.

Want to implement it over your store? Here’s how you do it:

• Step 1: Click on the Store option in your Shopify panel.
• Step 2: Click on the ‘Add channel,’ present next to the Sales Channels.
• Step 3: Tap on Messenger to include it in your store.

Here’s an excellent example of Messenger marketing. Every time you purchase something out of either McDonald’s or Starbucks, they try to connect over the messenger. The same can be seen every time you use the Uber app.

2. Cart Abandonment Recovery Options

Cart abandonment has been an eternal nemesis of every eCommerce store owner, so much so that the industry loses over $18 Billion in sales and revenue every year. 

Considering the rate at which it affects store owners, it is one of the most alarming factors that need to be dealt with. However, very few apps present in the Shopify store allow you to recover any abandoned carts. 

Therefore, you must use the cart abandonment recovery options to win back potential buyers who were on the verge of opting out from your store.

Why should you enable cart abandonment recovery options for your Shopify store?

Cart Abandonment Recovery functions by sending reminders to potential customers that have left items in their carts, trying to entice them to complete the purchase. This way, you can quickly reduce your cart abandonment rates and increase your revenue by at least 5 to 10%.

Sounds interesting, right? Here’s how you can implement the cart abandonment recovery options for your store

• Step 1: Move to the ‘Orders’ section of your Shopify store, followed by a click on ‘Abandoned Checkouts’
• Step 2: Select the Checkout number which you would like to recover.
• Step 3: Click on ‘Send’ to send a follow-up recovery email for the abandoned cart.

Here’s an example of how companies utilise Cart abandonment recovery options

When you shop for a shoe or any such item over Jimmy Choo and leave the website without completing the payment, the website sends you a friendly reminder over your registered email to complete the purchase. 

3. Minimal Design

The third Shopify element on our list is the minimal design feature present over multiple templates present in the Shopify store. Now, while you might want to bring forth your creativity and uniqueness to stand out from the crowd, the chances are that all your visitors might not like the resultant heavy design.

Remember, when designing your Shopify store, you want to keep the look subtle and impressive to drive more sales. Therefore, you should always stay focused on developing a design that can integrate seamlessly with your eCommerce website, making it easy for you to sell your products and entice more customers.

The benefits of mastering the ‘Minimal Design’ element for your store

The multiple themes and template options present over the Shopify store allow you to choose from a wide variety of tried and tested templates that have worked for other stores. When you curate your design from the suggested templates, you have better chances of receiving similar excellent reviews and maximum returns from different brands.

When you match the store vibe, you can easily understand the designs and create similar visuals to entice your audience.Here’s how you can implement the minimal design element

• Step 1: Under your Shopify store, head for ‘Theme Settings’ → ‘Layout.’
• Step 2: Select the ‘Enable Wide Layout’
• Step 3: Time to save your settings

Some good examples of stores that have a minimalist design feature include MBK and Handy. Notice how they use a single colour format over their website and keep it subtle. 

4. Eye-catching Visuals

One of the most crucial elements, the visuals present over your eCommerce store, provide you with a chance to stand out from the rest. Having enticing visuals in your store is the key to impress more visitors and make them visit your store more often.

Why do you need eye-catching visuals for your eCommerce store?

The answer is simple: a product’s visuals are the first thing a visitor lays their eyes on. Therefore, having excellent visuals over your store results in creating an eCommerce shop that is appealing and inviting for the visitors to explore the product options. 

While there are numerous ways to provide your store with visuals that stand out, you should always remember to include high-definition images. One’s that work best and give an obvious idea of what the product is like. 

Your visuals tell your story! 

Here’s how you can implement visuals in your Shopify store

You can choose from the many layouts available and hire a graphic designer to customise your Shopify elements.

5. Mobile-friendly Shopping Experience

Another significant aspect that you should consider while developing your Shopify store in 2021 is to create a mobile-friendly store. Mobile-commerce has been one of the rising trends as over 83% of shoppers prefer to use mobile for their online shopping. 

Considering the stats in the picture, we are sure that you would not want to miss out on a majority of the traffic over your Shopify store! 

Benefits of opting for a mobile-friendly shopping experience

One of the most significant benefits of having a mobile-friendly shopping experience is improved revenue and sales. Once your visitors can access your store over both desktop and mobile devices, they can easily purchase products at their convenience. 

Further, checkouts in mobile-based shopping are faster when compared to the likes of desktops.

Interestingly, Shopify allows its users to make their stores mobile-friendly over a matter of clicks.

Here’s how you can implement a mobile-friendly version of the Shopify store:

The setting is automatic! Shopify allows you to implement mobile optimisation while you are working at the backend of your store. 

Remember, before you check out with your back-end settings, you can click the mobile optimisation option before publishing the settings.

Some good examples of mobile-friendly website stores include E-Liquid, District, and luxe.

6. Product Videos

Selling your products over an eCommerce store is not easy; you need to thoroughly educate your customers and provide them with enough reasons to purchase a specific product from your store. No matter what you sell, you need to convince the customer that it is helpful and useful. Only once the customer can trust the product will they go ahead with a purchase.

How do you do this, though? 

It certainly isn’t possible for you to demonstrate your products’ benefits over individual means to every visitor on your site. 

The reliable method?

Product videos are your answer to educate the mass of different products!

Product videos make it easier for visitors and potential customers to understand more of the product by educating them around it. This way, you can easily highlight your products’ practicality, enticing the customers while educating them!

However, before you are developing product videos for your store, you should try to ensure that you cover up every benefit that revolves around a product. Only once you highlight all the benefits of a product, your video will sell the highlighted product. 

Here’s how you can embed product videos to your site

• Step 1: On your Shopify Admin page, navigate to ‘Products’, followed by a click that allows you to see its details.
• Step 2: Here, you can either add a video, 3D model or image by selecting the ‘Add Media’ option.
• Step 3: Now that you are done, it’s time to check the selected option’s dimension before finalising the option.

Some good examples of websites with product videos are Lazy Oaf and Heinz.

7. Product Referral Rewards

Yet another element that helps you increase your chances of improving conversions. By enticing different customers with some form of incentive to use your products, you better your chances of retaining them over a long period. 

Referrals are one of the most proficient ways of improving your customer base. Therefore, you should always encourage your new customers to refer your brand to their friends to return some incentives over successful sales and signup.

How Product referral rewards help your store

When you start generating referrals, it allows you to gather new customers without much fuss. The program ends up creating a chain of referrals, giving you new customers on board! 

Further, the vast your customer base, the better are your chances of initiating a long-term relationship with them. 

Tip: Try offering rewards to your customers when you see the number of users going up.

Want to implement the product referral rewards for your Shopify store? Here’s how you can implement it

• Step 1: Under the ‘Campaigns setup’, start by creating a campaign for your referrals.
• Step 2: Create your first campaign and add it.
• Step 3: Include customers in the program
• Step 4: Check out the campaigns from the Dashboard to check out for changes.

You can check out some good referral programs at websites like Rothy’s, Onyx x Rose, and Amuse.

8. Understanding & Addressing Customer Concerns

Customer experience is one of the essential factors that either makes or breaks your Shopify store. 

When dealing with your customers, everyone should feel like their queries are being managed thoughtfully. Being the owner of an eCommerce store, only you can manage and address your customers’ questions.

Benefits of addressing customers concerns

Customer experience is ideally one of the most critical factors that influence running a product’s popularity and forms the base of your reputation - paving the way for more visitors to trust your brand. Addressing your customer helps build trust for your brand, ultimately adding to the goodwill of the store. 

Another great advantage of understanding your customers’ queries, and resolving them quickly helps them get their questions settled faster. This way, you ensure a quick sale with no backlog.

Want to implement the customer experience element? Follow the steps suggested below: 

Doing this for your Shopify store is easy! All you need to do is download any suggested product review app around the Shopify store and add it to your store. This way, your customers can quickly address and receive answers to their queries. 

To check out some useful websites with excellent customer experience, check out this website design agency in London

9. Real Customer Reviews and Personal Testimonials

Moving on to the last element of our list, you need to develop trust among your first-time visitors to feel safe while purchasing from an unknown website. When your visitors can’t trust your website, they’ll never proceed with sales.

How do you win the trust of your customers?

Well, the answer is simple; all you need to do is ensure that your store highlights genuine customer reviews and testimonials, backing up a claim. No matter how exclusive your products are, all of them will be moot if you can’t prove the quality via honest customer reviews and ratings. 

Benefits of opting for customer reviews and testimonials: 

One of the most significant benefits is that it allows you to show proof of quality for your products, ultimately increasing sales and enticing more customers. Further, customer reviews are your best shot at improving the authenticity of your brand online. 

Tip: Every time you receive a customer’s testimonial, make sure that you highlight it in your store. 

Interestingly, Shopify allows you the option to highlight testimonials in your shop to build a brand presence.

Here’s how you can implement reviews and testimonials:

Go to the Shopify Admin backend tab and enable the customer review section over your store. 

Some examples of websites that use positive customer reviews are Crabtree, Sunday Somewhere, and Evelyn.

10. Set a Budget With Your Online Accounting Software 

Setting a marketing budget for your eCommerce store is vital if you want to succeed. This budget can be empowering with knowledge that allows you to make better business decisions and can eliminate wasted ad costs. 

But how do you create a budget for your business?

Fortunately, cloud accounting softwares like Quickbooks and Xero can let you forecast your budget and show you how many sales you need to make to cover the costs. Unsure how to set out your budget, why not use a specialist cloud accounting service to guide you in the right direction?

Conclusion

Test the above ideas on your Shopify store and grow your business in 2021. The suggested tips are focused on improving your sales and conversions. However, to witness results, you need to make sure that your products and services are updated regularly. 

Guest Post Contribution from AdNabu

Creating an approved Google Shopping Feed & running profitable Google Ads is a multi-step process. AdNabu’s app helps you to easily create a Google Shopping feed & run profitable Google shopping Ads. All changes from your Shopify store are fetched and updated automatically in the feed. New Paragraph