Starting a Shopify Store? 18 Do’s and Don’ts To Be a Success

The eCommerce market is growing rapidly and is forecasted to grow further, with big brands like Walmart establishing online stores on Shopify. As an entrepreneur, launching an eCommerce store is the most rewarding venture you can get into today. You get to be the boss, create your products, and work within your schedules to help people get certain products across the world. 

However, as the market continues to grow, starting an eCommerce store and succeeding is an all different story. Since many people now shop online, the competition is high, and small e-commerce brands have to compete with e-retail giants like Amazon.

Starting an online store is the least of your worries, especially if you’re a novice. A new online store comes with a handful of challenges, which explains why most online stores shut down within a year. 

The good news? These challenges should encourage you to start an eCommerce store. The big brands were once new stores, yet they made it to this day. But what makes Shopify enjoy such success? CONSISTENCY is the key: offering advice, sharing success tips, and interacting with customers.

If you’re ready to join the online community, Foundeck in this post provides you with insights to get you started online. We also provide you with tips on starting a Shopify store and the do’s and don’ts to be a success. 

What is Shopify and How Does it Work?

Shopify is an eCommerce platform that offers online stores a marketplace to launch and grow an online business selling different products. The platform allows you to:

1. Create an online store and personalize it to suit your needs
2. Sell your products in numerous places - the web, social media, online marketplaces, brick-and-mortar retail shops, and pop-up shops
3. Manage products, listing, payments, and shipping

Shopify is a cloud-based service, meaning you can expand without worrying about upgrading or maintaining software or web servers. The platform offers you the flexibility to run your business on the go as long as you can log in to your Shopify account. 

Starting a Shopify Store and the Do’s and Don’ts to Make it a Success

You can use an existing domain by linking it to your store admin. However, if you don’t have a domain, you can purchase one from Shopify or a third-party domain vendor and then open your store. 

First things first, let’s find out how to open a Shopify store.

How to Start a Shopify Store

Starting an online store is easy, but managing it to success can be daunting. However, with the right tools and guidance, it’s a highly rewarding venture. Whether you’re a seasoned entrepreneur or a novice, opening an online store gives you access to a wider audience. Here are the steps to follow when launching a Shopify store. 

1. Decide your target audience.
2. Find a business idea and the products you’ll be selling.
3. Design and customize your brand
4. Choose a business structure.
5. Create your eCommerce website.
6. Add a payment method.
7. Launch your online store.
8. Announce your online store to the world.

The Dos and Don’ts to Make Your Shopify Store a Success

You don’t have to be a professional web designer to create a Shopify online store. Once you sign up on the platform, you can customize your store using the online store builder and themes on Shopify, then add features and functionality to your store. 

However, if all this sounds gibberish, you can contact Shopify’s team for assistance or visit their expert marketplace to help you hire a professional for the job. Once you have built a flashy Shopify store, how do you make it successful? Here are the do’s to your store’s success. 

1. Identify a Gap in the Market and Device Ways to Bridge it

Before opening any business, you must find a need in society and how to provide a solution. As for starting an online store, you need to identify an underserved niche by conducting market research. Market research will reveal the trends, competition, demand, and potential customers. 

The idea of starting a business is exciting, but DON’T be tempted to jump in with researching and evaluating the market. Take your time to develop a unique selling proposition and what you’ll do differently to bring value to a competitive market. 

2. Validate Your Product

Before you invest time and money in creating your product, validate the demand to reduce the risk of failure and increase the chances of success. Validating your product will help you assess whether the product will meet the intended need and if the demand for it is high enough. You can ask customers for feedback in the initial stages of its development and request the changes they would want to be affected by. Here are various ways to validate your product:

• Make some sales
• Conduct competitive analysis
• Research existing demand 
• Create a feedback survey.
• Start a crowdfunding campaign.
• Gauge interest on social media
• Create a pre-launch landing page.
• Meet customers in person where possible.

3. Customer Always Comes First

As they say, “customer is king”. Without customers, why would businesses exist?

Customers are the life of any business, and putting them first means that whatever product you’re selling is curated with the customer in mind. Giving your customers a good shopping experience will bring them back and also increase referrals. 

The Shopify experts are always emphasizing that the “customer comes first mentality” can work as a backbone for continuous success for your online store.

Businesses that operate with the customer in mind mean putting customer needs first. Always thinking about the customer will help create a meaningful relationship and authentic connections through different avenues. Replying to social media conversations and partaking in discussions on threads only tells the customer that you value them and are ready to listen to their demands or act on their feedback.

Customer-oriented businesses strive to provide an engaging experience to customers and drop whatever doesn’t work. Creating engaging content about your products will help you establish a brand that customers embrace. However, if your customers can’t get value from your products, why will they click through to your online store? 

3a) What Experts are Doing to Catch the Customer’s Attention

Valuing your customers isn’t all about producing a great product you think they need. However, the great product needs to be presented to the customer in a way that oozes value to make the customer grab it. Here are some expert tips to get it done:

1. Collect customer emails. Follow up on your customer after the product has been delivered to ensure it was received in good shape. If the customer is disgruntled, find a way to calm them and, if possible, correct the mistake. Proper handling of customers can forge a lifelong buyer-seller relationship. 
2. Engage on social media. Create product pages on social media accounts and center the conversation around your products. Ask questions and let your audience answer, and then you respond to their comments. Being conversational adds personality to your brand, making it relatable.
3. Share posts of happy customers. When potential customers see an already satisfied customer, they’re likely to be won over. A brand that makes customers happy will also make others fall in love. 
4. Deliver on promises. Let your customers get what they see. If they need a refund, do so without asking questions. Also, if you promise to ship a delivery in three days, ensure it gets to the client on or before the promised date. 
5. Make yourself available to customers. Allow customers to get in touch with you easily through emails, phone numbers, messenger, chats. 

4. Make Your Store Mobile-Friendly

Mostly, people set up an online store and make it look good on a desktop. Hence, optimising a desktop or PC view comes by default and forgets mobile users, not Shopify. The app is highly responsive on mobile devices. 

Today, everyone owns a smartphone, which they use to access most stores online. When creating your online store, did you factor in mobile users? Shopify confirms that over 72% of eCommerce sales come from Oberlo, a mobile dropshipping app they own. 

Optimising your store for a mobile user experience should be a top priority to reach more potential customers. Once you’re done setting up your online store, please go through all pages on a mobile device and see how they appear or how long the pages take to load. 

A slow-loading web page doesn’t give a good user experience, and no one will stitch around while waiting for it to come up. As a result, prospective customers keep running away to the next fast-loading online store, meaning you’ll never reach your full sales potential. Ensure your site is as attractive and easy to navigate on mobile devices as it is on a desktop or PC.  

5. Have in Place Customer Service Representative(s) 

Having the right customer service reps will bring more returns to the business than you might imagine. When you hire customer reps, be sure to work with them until they know what you expect, and then leave them to work autonomously. 

As you’ll notice, Shopify mostly hires Filipino CS reps. WHY? Shopify experts say Filipinos have an American accent and good reading and writing skills. No one is saying you must replicate this, but hire people who can speak eloquently and can easily relate with customers. 

So what makes an amazing CS Rep? Amazing CS reps will give back your time in terms of sales and happy repeat customers. Here are some tips to consider when choosing your CSR:

1. Fluency in English is important since it’s the common ground for many sellers and buyers. A CSR doesn’t have to be native, but it must be close enough to understand the phrases and nuances of the language. A customer is comfortable talking to someone they feel understands what they want. 
2. Availability and contract length means you hire someone available to work for you during low and high seasons. Training someone who takes off in a few weeks isn’t favorable for any business. Training a CSR will take your time and resources, but before then, ensure whoever you choose to work with is available to stick around for a long time. As a result, your customers will experience stability and good service. 

But what should a good customer service entail? These tips will help you in developing the best customer service for your Shopify store:

1. A live chat 
2. Have an amazing refund policy in place
3. Use a customer service platform to discuss their experience 
4. Create a post of your FAQs addressing common issues and answer questions
5. Offer a 24-hour phone service support

6. Create an Appealing Brand

APPEAL is something your customers will find irresistible and unforgettable, unlike a generic, unbranded experience. Even if your product is excellent, the price is competitive, yet not appealing. You might be stuck with it for a long time. However, a brand appeal can make your product stand out because it speaks to potential customers differently.  

A brand appeal will draw your target customer to your Shopify store, and you’ll be making crazy sales. If your brand is appealing enough to a specific consumer, they’ll recognize your brand and relate it to other brands they like to buy. As a result, these customers will have no problem purchasing from your store.  

Since people don’t have much information about a brand when shopping online, your brand appeal can evoke quality to legitimize your business. In a brick-and-mortar shop, customers can touch and feel a product, unlike in an online store where they rely on a brand appeal. So, ensure your brand appeal is well-designed, oozing quality, is trustworthy, and has a consistent experience.

An appealing brand creates a memory, and when customers remember your company, they associate it with a certain style and voice. But what makes a memorable brand appeal?

1. Logo
2. Font system
3. Color palette
4. Messaging
5. Values 

These aspects should work together to culminate the overall brand experience. Use them consistently at all customer touchpoints on your Shopify store, from emails to social media accounts.

7. Increase Your Product Catalogue

Selling one product will only open doors for a small number of customers. However, when customers know your Shopify store has a wide range of products, they’ll show up more. 

It may sound like a no-brainer, but having a long list of products will contribute greatly to your Shopify store’s success. Launch new products regularly or new variations of existing products to make your customers come back. Every new product you launch is an opportunity to generate a buzz for your brand and new customers as well. 

While you can increase your profit margins by using upselling and cross-selling techniques, customers might not stick around when your prices continue to rise. However, the better approach is to install plugins that prompt customers to purchase an expensive item or a complimentary item before checkout. 

8. Customer Retention

No matter the business you’re into, retaining your existing customers is important. WHY? Retaining a customer who already knows about your brand or products is easier than winning new customers. 

Winning new customers means spending money to market your products or make adverts and hoping to catch their attention. However, reaching an existing customer and making them close is free. When you have customer email addresses and their permission to message them, you can send them consistent marketing emails. 

If your existing customers love your product, they can become evangelists of your brand, especially when they have a good shopping experience. 

The Don’ts You Must Avoid to Have a Successful Shopify Store

Launching a store on Shopify is a dream come true as the platform is easy to navigate and has a huge customer base. The best part is that you can start and manage your online store with minimal funds in only a few clicks. Shopify allows you to create an online store and design it using the eCommerce tools they provide.  

However, with all these resources, many business owners continue to fail on the platform. Why? They’re unable to maximise the resources on the platform or catch up with Shopify’s errors that affect conversion rates. Let’s discuss some of the mistakes that hinder success on Shopify. 

1. Failure to Modify the Checkout feature

Checkout is important for any eCommerce store. On Shopify, if you don’t customize the checkout process, your customers might abandon their shopping halfway. How do you maximise the checkout feature? Upload your store’s logo, change the colors and fonts, and do more by following these steps: 

1. Go to Settings 
2. Click on Checkout 
3. Select Customize Checkout 

Now, you can customize the appearance of your Shopify checkout page to your liking, but remember to keep the customer in mind as you do so.

Ensuring that your checkout procedure and design match the other parts of your Shopify store is crucial. Besides using blending colors, make the checkout page unique like the rest of your shop. 

2. Failure to Delegate

It may be tempting to try to do everything when you launch your new store. However, this is not advisable as it will leave you exhausted and burned out. Taking on all tasks will only make you too thin, and you might miss some important details. 

So, how do you keep your business running while you find new products to sell and grow your online store? Delegate, Delegate, Delegate. 

Don’t burden yourself with looking for new products, designing on canvas, launching new products, replying to emails, vetting new products and running marketing ads. However, you can hire a professional for each job or add automated systems to your eCommerce store to ensure you use your time effectively.

3. Don’t Ignore Shopify Apps for Value Addition

The Shopify app is fantastic; you should utilize every app in your store. That is a grave mistake! Shopify stores can locate other apps to increase sales, enhance the store’s appearance, or scale a procedure. A good example is Cartloop, a fantastic tool that any Shopify store can leverage. 

The app sends your visitors personalized SMS messages to retarget their abandoned carts. Each message is customized based on their orders, which can persuade them to bring them back. Apps like Cartloop are risk-free in terms of pricing since you only pay after earning from their services. Hence, the app is free; you can find many more on Shopify. 

4. Don’t Hide Shipping Charges

Make it a rule of thumb to give your customers what they see. Don’t sell your products at competitive prices and then slap them with an extra charge for shipping. Let the shipping charges be transparent and not a surprise as customers check out. 

Charging a flat rate fee for shipping or being transparent about the charges will put your shoppers’ minds at ease. An extra charge after shopping feels like a reap, and many customers might not like it. 

You can also incentivise customers by offering free shipping for goods worth a certain amount. You’ll be surprised at how many customers will shop to reach the target of free shipping.

5. Don’t Ignore SEO

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a big player in making your online store more findable. Marketing giants understand that SEO is the backbone of successful online stores. Hence, it would help if you found someone who can deliver on the good SEO practices to make search engines notice your store. If you’re easy to find on Google or other search engines, customers will also find you with ease. Here’s what SEO can do for your store:

1. Increases online findability. When marketing your online store, use SEO in your content and product descriptions to make your product visible. Proper use of keywords related to your products and embedding links to your online store where possible will increase findability. Growing organic traffic is one of the best ways to leverage SEO without spending any money. 
2. The effects are long-lasting. Whether you use cash or not to implement good SEO practices, its impact on your online store will last a long time. Unlike paid adverts that disappear after you stop paying, SEO will positively affect your online store sales for a long time.
3. Hire a professional. Don’t waste your time trying to do SEO if you know nothing about it. Hire a professional to get the job done, and you’ll be pleased with the result. 

6. A Complicated Payment System

Cart abandonment is one of the rampant Shopify mistakes you should watch out for. According to experts on the platform, a challenging, complex checkout process can push customers to leave shopping carts towards the end. 

If you notice abandoned carts are on the rise, you need to sort out the issue immediately. Revise your checkout process and see what adjustments can make a change or take the actions below:

1. Specify the minimum number the consumer takes during the checkout
2. Only collect necessary information and discard what is not so important
3. Always test any modifications to a payment processor to find out if they’re useful or not
4. Rearrange the entire payment process and place account creation at the tail end

7. Ignoring Abandoned Carts

NEVER ignore abandoned checkout carts. Customers who abandon carts are known as “warm” or “hot” consumers. They shopped for a reason and also abandoned the cart for another. So, you need a strategy to convert them into purchasing consumers.

In the eCommerce purchase funnel, customers who have already finished shopping but won’t check are the easiest to convert. They only require a small prod to make them complete the purchase, as opposed to those who have never heard of your company before.

So, how do you push them to the finish line? You can use email marketing to re-target the audience to become your new customers. You can also use SMS marketing to help you recover, if not all, most abandoned carts and increase your Return On Investment (ROI).

8. Avoid Typos and Grammatical Errors

The last thing your customers will expect to see in your store is text they can’t read or understand. Typos or grammatical errors give a negative experience to the customer or anyone reading. 

A Shopify store with wrong grammar or spelling mistakes is undoubtedly unprofessional and worth no one’s time. Such a store will only lower your prospects’ confidence, lower conversion rates and raise bounce rates, which is not what you want for your online store.

Fortunately, there are apps to counter this problem, such as Grammarly. Ensure that everything you write goes through Grammarly for corrections. Grammarly is akin to a human assistant who checks and fixes the errors you can’t find. The app has a basic plan, which is free but limited. But if you need more perfection, pay for the premium account to access more features to verify your writing. 

9. Using Low-Quality Images

Who can stand an online store without high-resolution pictures? Unlike a physical store, an eCommerce business has no provision for you to touch or feel the product, but you only get to see it. Thus, your website’s images must be convincing and adequate to give customers an almost real picture of the product.

Using low-quality pictures can be fatal to your online store. Why would a customer struggle to verify a blurry image when there are other sharp and clear photographs of similar products? NO CHANCE, right? If anything, they’ll doubt the product you’re selling, thinking it’s low quality as it appears in the images. 

Ensure that the photographs on your website are excellent and of high resolution to catch the attention of potential customers. Plus, you should share images captured from various angles to give a better view of the product. 

As you take pictures, ensure the room has appropriate lighting and background. If taking pictures isn’t your forte, hire a photographer to assist you in creating eye-catching images for your online store. 

10. Incomplete Product Descriptions

On your website, high-quality images are the products you’re selling, while in your eCommerce store, product descriptions are your sales representatives. Thus, whatever your customers will read about the product, they can click ‘Buy Now’ or decide to pass if the pitch isn’t convincing.

A perfect product description should be engaging and precise to register in the customer’s mind. If you can’t write, hire a freelance content writer who specializes in writing product descriptions.

Perfect images provide information about a product’s appearance and colors, while the description gives details of the contents. Don’t use technical or sophisticated words, but simple words that the reader can fathom easily. Use the producer’s copy to create a unique, engaging detail of the product. Describe each detail about the product and incorporate SEO (headings, bullet points) to make the text easy to read. 

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Frequently Asked Questions

Where do Shopify customers come from?

Shopify customers come from social platforms like Google ads, Facebook, and Instagram. Marketing your online store on these platforms is the fastest way to drive sales to a Shopify store. A single campaign on these platforms can drive a few hundred visitors to your new Shopify store.

Is it difficult to get started on Shopify?

Starting a store on Shopify is easy; the process of establishing the store is straightforward, and all you have to do is follow the onscreen guidelines, and you’ll have a store in no time. After your first product is listed, rinse and repeat the process for all products or services. 

Why is my Shopify Store getting views and no conversions?

Your Shopify store will get views and not conversions if no ads are showing for the right audience. However, when you practise with precision, ads will display in your store, and you’ll hit the bullseye when ads start showing back to back. 

In Summary

Selling on Shopify is easy, and so is creating the store. If you’re new to the platform, find a mentor to guide you in everything you do to ensure success. A mentor will help vet your ideas and emulate their systems to help you get to the success levels of Shopify experts.

As you start your entrepreneurship journey on Shopify, be confident because you’re unique, and you know something someone else doesn’t. Therefore, don’t be afraid to reach out and sell your products to anyone who might need it. 

Use Shopify’s resources to build a successful eCommerce business and adhere to their guidelines while you limit errors, and you’ll be moving in the right direction. 

Remember that Shopify provides you with the tools to create an eCommerce business, but they’ll not sell your products. A well-designed store will not drive or guarantee sales. You still need the know-how, motivation, marketing skills, creativity, and time to win over potential buyers to your store.  

However, worry not; Shopify has hundreds of successful businesses that have begun from the ground up. So, by starting a Shopify store and implementing the dos and don’ts above, you’ll be heading for greatness. For now, go ahead and conquer the online community. Do you have questions on how to start a Shopify store? Kindly contact one of our experts here for help.