is my store ready?

[skreem]

How do i know if my store is ready to make sales and not make mistakes?

[hori_tran]

Hi @skreem ,

As a fellow store owner who also struggled at first, here are my personal recommendations for you. Just make sure:

1. you have a winning product.
2. Your store is professional-looking and high-converting

- add a best seller category
- The slide banner with great visuals with your products and the "call to action" button. the slide banner should show the benefits of your products ( you can choose the best sellers to describe), your events, your discounts (Black Friday is coming, right?)
- Show promotion and a great shipping policy on the top
- add realistic product images
- make videos to attract customers and increase time on site
- pop up chat and discount pop up
-  Add reviews for each product (some Shopify review apps can help) and a lower price next to the original one or to attract customers (on both the homepage and the product page)

- And don't forget to add JSON LD to your site to display your reviews on Google search by SEO app. (This SEO app I use 1 year: https://bit.ly/2YxoOYC)
- SEO: your mobile version is not good. Heading tags, Meta tags, keywords are not optimized. To handle this I usually use the above SEO app.
- Add Google Analytics to track customers visiting your site
- add favicon

- Footer: add factors that make your customer trust, such as:

+ add your social media

+ "Our Company": About Us, Contact Us, Terms Of Service, Privacy Policy, DMCA Request

+ "Help Center": Size Charts, Payment Methods, Cancellation & Modification, Shipping, Delivery, Track Your Order, Returns and Refunds, FAQs

+ "Get In Touch": mail, support time, warehouse,...


- One thing I noticed while on your website, was that you have Powered by Shopify in your footer. here is how you can remove that:
Step 1. Navigate to your Online Store > Themes section of your admin.
Step 2. In the Action drop-down menu next to your current theme, select Edit Languages.
Step 3. In the Search Translations bar next to Filter please type in "power".
Step 4. Under Powered by Shopify, in the text bar, just put in a single space. This will erase the Powered by Shopify.
In the top right corner, select Save.

3. Effective and diverse marketing strategies including ads, email marketing, SEO, etc

For me, step 3 is where most people including myself could go wrong. My advice for small stores starting out with a limited budget would be to invest 80% on ads and 20% on SEO. At first, you need to prioritize ads for quick sales but never miss out on SEO as it helps you grow your online presence sustainably with an affordable strategy. By the way, there's no need to hire a costly SEO expert as there are some free SEO apps that offer good service.
Just my personal recommendations. Hope it helps

[Dropshipmate]

@skreem ,

Can you provide Store URL?

[PaulNewton]

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@skreem wrote:

How do i ... not make mistakes?

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This fear is understandable and normal, lets recognize that type of fear can be a mistake in and of itself.

Left unchecked it can become a self-fulfilling cyclical   issue in a new business.

Face it head on and examine that thought process.

If this is your first store recognize you have no basis for knowing if a store is "ready" or even what a mistake looks like before they happen.

 ironically this type of self-awareness about unknown unknowns can be an incredibly useful internal-feedback tool in avoiding mistakes with a lack of experience.

Shorterm aside from bringing expensive expertise , there are some actionable items every new merchant can do so that a minimum quality is met:

Such as using generalized launch checklists:

https://www.shopify.com/blog/shopify-store-launch-checklist 

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/intro-to-shopify/initial-setup/new-to-shopify-checklists/general-... 

Or only opening your store to a limited audience to gather customer feedback. Do so by using the storefront password, a tool like locksmith, etc.

How do i know if my store is ready to make sales

In the most reductive sense, place a test order and literally do all the fulfillment steps like you're your own customer, or have family/friend place the order.

https://help.shopify.com/en/manual/checkout-settings/test-orders 

Embrace these facts: everyone makes mistakes and you will too, and perfection is the enemy of good.

Technical term for this is analysis paralysis, worrying about mistakes so nothing is done to avoid not making mistakes.

The main way to avoid mistakes is experience with mistakes. Go make mistakes.