How Can I Improve SEO and Customer Engagement on My Shopify Fancy Dress Store?

[thefancydressuk]

Hi everyone,

I run a UK-based online fancy dress store called thefancydress.co.uk, focused mainly on Halloween costumes, accessories, and themed outfits for all ages. My store is built on Shopify, and I’m currently looking for ways to improve both SEO performance and customer engagement ahead of the Halloween season.

I’ve worked on optimising product pages and blogs with relevant keywords like Halloween costumes, Halloween accessories, and fancy dress, and I’ve also integrated a few apps for reviews and social proof. However, I still feel there’s room to improve—especially when it comes to increasing organic traffic, reducing bounce rate, and improving checkout conversions.

I'd love advice from other store owners or Shopify experts on:

• What’s worked for you in driving seasonal traffic?

• Are there specific Shopify apps or themes that helped with Halloween or holiday sales?

• Any tips on balancing visual content (costume images) with fast load speeds?

• How can I make my blog content more SEO-friendly and engaging to readers?

Any feedback, suggestions, or ideas from your own experiences would be massively appreciated. Thank you in advance!

[Mathew1]

Thanks for sharing detailed info about your store — it’s great that you’re already optimizing for seasonal traffic and working on SEO and engagement ahead of Halloween. Here are some tailored suggestions based on what you’ve shared:

Driving Seasonal Traffic

• Google Search & Shopping Campaigns – Running targeted ads with long-tail Halloween keywords (e.g., “kids vampire costume UK”) can bring strong seasonal traffic.
• Countdown Popups / Banners – Apps like Ultimate Special Offers or Hextom can create urgency around seasonal deals.
• Pinterest & TikTok – These platforms are ideal for showcasing costume ideas and can drive highly engaged seasonal traffic with low spend.
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+2348028345092

[ElijahGold]

Hi @thefancydressuk 

Halloween stores do well with early prep. SEO guides like ‘Top 10 Costume Ideas’ work wonders. TinyIMG helps keep images fast-loading. Apps like Ultimate Sales Boost add urgency. Happy to share more if you’d like!

[thefancydressuk]

Sure ok.

[Jenny6]

Hi @thefancydressuk

I feel very lucky to see your shared issue here when viewing the content in this community and fortunately, I have some ideas to share with you which used on my store before and you can check what I collected here below for reference:

1. Ensure your store page speed under a good status. I prefer using Google PageSpeed Insights to see the store speed scores and after my testing, your store is not under a very good status. The score on desktop is 60 and the score on mobile is 48, which are lower than normal store condition very much. The Largest contentful paint element (LCP) blocks your store from running faster very much. You can know about LCP from here directly and also it is recommended to seek help from developers to reduce the influence of LCP specifically.

2. There are 2 pages in Google Search Results which have excessive length of meta title and meta description. It is recommended to shorten the length of meta title within 50-70 characters and the length of meta description within 120-200 characters, so that they can have a better display after updating. The related two pages URLs are attached here by me below meanwhile, you can double check and optimize them properly.

https://thefancydress.co.uk/?srsltid=AfmBOoqIvolGQkcFXF45n4WYJhCNGfzVqywFd8ExP1qP63HNDzM8M-Ib

https://thefancydress.co.uk/collections/dancewear?srsltid=AfmBOopmPk1DqBCj1euyV5pVjATcbElkiHBkKCl0qA...

3. There exist missing alt text contents also on your website after further checking. You can add them directly from Shopify admin page or use this method I used on my store before to detect store SEO status and find out all the related missing alt texts directly. I have listed some of them below and you can do the best to add the missing alt text properly and it is good for Google to know image contents and have a better understanding for search results.

https://thefancydress.co.uk/cdn/shop/files/TFD_-_Mobile_Banner_TFD_-_Festival_Looks_Fancy_Vibes_Main...

https://thefancydress.co.uk/cdn/shop/files/TFD_-_Festival_Looks_Fancy_Vibes_Main_Website_Banner_A_co...

https://thefancydress.co.uk/cdn/shop/files/bdc234d3-680f-4b0a-942d-f834ad5f783d.png?v=1744816919&wid...

https://thefancydress.co.uk/cdn/shop/collections/f4da7bc4ad37abf399150d285a4f0cb7_jpg_720x720q80_jpg...

[thefancydressuk]

Thank you so much for all your suggestion.

[Jenny6]

@thefancydressuk Very welcome here and may they work on your store also. Cheers!

[onescales]

although it is seo, because of the seasonality i would recommend running ads for your content and for your products.

and until the season, continue to write better and more frequent articles on your blog. and lastly, guest post on other sites so your brand gets out there on the web

[Kim_Liang]

I totally understand your situation. Have you ever considered about improving your post-purchase services and do some upsell activities to retain your customers? Many Shopify merchants overlook the upsell opportunities after customers purchase. But we can turn the one-time buyer into a repeated buyer or every loyal customer through marketing during your workflow as this article mentioned: https://apps.shopify.com/stories/guide-customize-order-status-page 

Good shopping experiences bring your customers back again. I will suggest you give Parcel Panel Order Tracking a chance, as it will cost nothing to you and if you choose the free plan. Also, you can try it with a 14-day free trial Here. An all-in-one post-purchase solution automatically syncs order data from Shopify and Carriers, then sends shipping notifications to your customers, which will really make your customers aware of every step in the delivery. Also, you can set up and design your shipping notifications, personalising the services.

For the upsell, what Parcel Panel helps with is promoting your product collections and increasing sales in every shipping notification. As we know, every customer will check their order status 4-6 times, so it will be a great opportunity to trigger the buying interests. You can use the post-purchase services to engage with your customers more frequently. 

Hope this information help and I'd glad to help if you have any questions.

[Juju-Tim]

Hi @thefancydressuk,

@Jenny6  gave great suggestions on ways to increase SEO by making best practice improvements to your store. Another aspect of SEO and engagement is ranking for the correct keywords. Asking ChatGPT and searching Google about "keyword research" will give you a lot of content on how to do it as well as several free tools. Here's a couple free tools to get you started:

• Neil Patel
• Mangools
• Google Ads also has a free keyword research tool

Keyword research is a bit of art and not pure science, where you need to take into account several factors such as customer demand and competition.

Customer Demand

You want to have a good fit between what you sell and what the people coming to your website want. What I mean is, imagine if customers came to your website searching for a dress for a cocktail party and find your party costumes. Ranking for the wrong keywords would not help your cause.

There are several methods and data sources for gathering customer feedback to understand what keywords would be optimal:

1. Your sales data will tell you which of your products are most popular. Simply doubling down on what has been working well is a straight forward strategy. You can create blog posts around or adjust the wording of your product categories according to what has been selling most.
2. Your product search bar is a great place to see what words and phrases your customers search for. You may find frequently used words/phrases that you should focus more on, or alternative words/phrases that can be considered for long-tail keyword strategies. I believe you can find this data in your Google Analytics. Let me know if you need help with it.
3. Your customer support live chat, similar to search bar, is another source for seeing what words/phrases your customers use. More importantly, it is a great source for understanding your customers needs and pain points. When your customers are asking questions like "do you support this payment method?", "do you ship to our location?", or "do you have this category of costume?" - they are telling you their needs and concerns. You can add content to your product description pages based on common support questions, add blog posts around them, or potentially discover new costume ideas. If you improve the customer experience and better align with what your customers are telling you they want, then you should see improvements in bounce rate and checkout conversions. SEO will naturally improve as well!
4. Utilize surveys to gather feedback similar to the customer support live chat concept. You can use pre-purchase survey widgets to ask your customers if they are having trouble finding what they want. You can ask what costumes they'd like to see next and display image options. You can ask an open ended question asking for feedback and places to improve. Similar to the live chat, you can take the words/phrases your customers use. Also, by addressing your customer's needs you can increase engagement and build a better fit with your customer demand which will naturally connect to better SEO.

Using Competitor Data

You may be earlier in your business journey and not have much data to work with. A strategy for getting around this is to take advantage of competitor's data. Even if you did have lots of data to work with, researching competitors is a practice you should be doing. You can type your competitor's URLs into the keyword research tools listed above to get an idea of what has been working for them. You can also look at their product reviews on their Shopify store or their Amazon store. Using the same concept in the previous section, you can try to find words/phrases for keyword ideas, and you can learn what potential customers care about around needs and pain points. 

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Overall customer feedback is a great source for ideas in a wide range of topics including SEO and user engagement. I hope this helps and let me know if you have any questions!!