my store feedback

[kahuna]

Hello

I have been running my store kahunabeards.com for 6 months and marketing with Instagram posts and a small amount of Facebook ads. I receive a few clicks to the site and a few followers but no orders to date. The focus is on beard grooming products for men 25 to  50 years of age. Based on my research this group is the primary target for my products. 

I would appreciate any help or insight that could improve the situation

[NikkiElizDeMere]

Hi @kahuna!

Love the look and feel of your store!

Here's some feedback...

Homepage

• Replace "your best beard brands" with a unique value proposition.
  
  “A value proposition is a promise of value to be delivered. It’s the primary reason a prospect should buy from you. It’s also the #1 thing that determines whether people will bother reading more about your product or hit the back button. On your site, your value proposition is the main thing you need to test—if you get it right, it will be a huge boost.”

Resources for value prop design

Value proposition worksheet
Value Proposition Design book

• Only have one call-to-action above the fold. (Shop instead of both Shop and Learn More.)
  
  
• It's confusing that Hydrate links to all collections but Clean and Groom link to specific collections?
  
  
• Update "Best Seller" to "Best Sellers".
  
  
• Update "Find the perfect thing" to "Find the perfect gift".
  
  
• It's confusing that there's both "Best Seller" and "Most Popular Products" on the homepage.
  
  
• It feels like there's too much on the home page. Some sections seem redundant or unnessary. 

Product pages

• Important: All product pages should have 100% unique copy, otherwise you're creating duplicate content issues, which is bad for SEO. I searched for some of your product descriptions and noticed that they're exactly the same as product descriptions on many other sites. This means that your site content is automatically competing with those sites and Google will have a harder time telling them apart.
  
  
• Add copy to each product page in the form of storytelling (in addition to the product description). This is good practice for both SEO and conversions.

For example: on this product page on David's Teas for raspberry mojitos, the storytelling on the page is: "Is there any way to improve on fresh mint and tangy lime? Just add raspberries! Our juicy Raspberry Mojito iced tea is about to become your new go-to drink. It’s a bright pink tisane that’s fruity, minty and utterly refreshing. Served over ice with a splash of rum, this caffeine-free infusion tastes like a summer afternoon on a sunny Havana patio. In short, pure heaven."

Joanna Wiebe and Alaura Weaver share 11 storytelling elements:

A relatable protagonist/hero (your target customer)
A world (the emotional motivators)
A call to adventure (goal or problem to solve)
The stakes/refusal of the call (nightmare scenario)
A helper (your brand)
A magical item (your offer)
Crossing the first threshold (CTA)
The belly of the whale (onboarding/lead nurturing)
Road of trials (split-testing)
The happily ever after (future pacing)
The return (testimonials & brand advocacy)

• Gather and share more social proof in the form of product video reviews written reviews, and photos from customers.

More than 50% of shoppers say online video has helped them decide which brand or product to buy (Google).
67% of shoppers turn to video at least once before making a purchase (Moz).

• Consider offering free shipping on all products and just work shipping into product pricing. Once you offer free shipping, provide details about it immediately beneath the Add to Cart button.

In a survey by Walker Sands Communications, 90% of people said that having an order ship for free is the biggest incentive to add more to their cart, while another survey found up to 74% of shoppers will abandon their cart if delivery fees are too high. More on that here.

• Ensure that you don't display any products that are sold out unless customers can share their e-mail address to be notified when the item will be back in stock.

• Ensure all photographs of products are in high-resolution. According to Justuno, 93% of consumers consider visual content to be the key deciding factor in a purchasing decision. 
  
  
• Show all products in context through photographs. For example, a t-shirt store would provide photography of people actually wearing their shirts instead of photography of just the shirts.

“About Us” page: 

• Talia Wolf shares 4 rules for creating a high-converting "About Us" page that I recommend double checking for your page:
• Make it about the customer
• Talk to your customer, not at them
• Tell the story
• Don’t just say it, show it

Social media

• If you haven't: create a unique hashtag and encourage customers to use it and tag your store on Instagram, etc.

SEO

• Ensure that your website meets the standards on Google Search Central.
• For on-page SEO, add original, creative content to your home page and product pages.
• For off-page SEO, get backlinks via partnerships, guest blogging, communities, social media.

Moz details Google SEO tips for 2021: 

• Favicon optimization
• Breadcrumb optimization
• Meta descriptions
• Numbers in titles
• <title> boilerplate
• FAQ and how-to schema
• Relaunch top content
• Increase internal linking
• Update old content with new links
• Remove unnecessary links
• Mobile link parity audit
• Invest in long-form content
• Use more headers
• Leverage topic clusters
• Bring content out of tabs
• Core Web Vitals
• Limit sitemaps to 10,000
• Leverage dynamic sitemaps
• Passive link acquisition
• Page-level link intersect
• Be the last click

Also, I shared 21 e-commerce trends for 2021 in the Shopify community in case you also want to check that out.

[EcomGeeks]

Hey @kahuna,

I've taken a look through your store, hopefully my feedback will provide some insight as to what is happening.

You sell beard grooming products made by Hillman Reid, Evan Alexander, Taby's and more. The problem with this is that these types of items can be already be purchased offline in retail stores as well as online through the brands themselves, Amazon and other online stores. So when a person is searching for a Hillman Reid product in Google, these big companies with massive marketing budgets are who is showing up in search results and who you are competing with for customers. A person can complete IF they give people a reason to purchase from them vs. the other guys. Compare your Hillman Reid listing to the one on the Hillman Reid website. What stands out to me is price (theirs is currently listed lower). Given, you do have a promo on that would make yours slightly less expensive, however, that isn't evident until you get to the checkout. I would think of ways that you can set yourself apart, reasons why someone should purchase from you vs. Amazon or the companies themselves and use that in the text throughout your website and in your marketing.

Speaking of marketing, another thing you can do is expand your sales channels and promote your products on Google Shopping using the AllFetch Google Shopping Feed app (it's free). It allows you to easily syncing your products from your Shopify store to the Google Merchant Center.

At checkout, there seems to be an error. It allows me to fill out my information but then tells it doesn't ship to my area (I'm in Canada). 

I will leave it at that for now but if you would like talk to us 1-1, we offer sessions where take a look at your store, identify the greatest issues holding you back, then provide solutions and advice. You can email us at ecomgeeksco@gmail.com for vmore information.

We hope our response was helpful, if it was, let us know by giving us a thumbs up and/or marking it as a solution!

Best of luck!

[AiTrillion]

Hello @kahuna, Sachin here, from the AiTrillion-an All-in-one Marketing Platform on Shopify. Thanks for posting! I've taken a look at your store, and see that your store's overall appearance is visually appealing, and must say you worked hard to make it live. However, here are some inputs from my side:

- Add testimonials or a review carousel on the homepage.

- Add multiple images of the products on the product page. 

- Your store lacks customer engagement. You need to make your store engaging and interactive. 

You should add a loyalty rewards program to your store. You can give loyalty points to your customers on activities like on signing up, leaving a review, allowing for push notification, visiting a store, on birthdays, on first purchase, follow/ share on social media. This will help you to entice customers and will increase the number of push subscribers, email subscribers. This will also help you in collecting the review. You can send an in-email review form to your customers. This can be sent automatically.

Integration of loyalty rewards program with web push notification, review, email marketing, and with full automation results in wonders for the eCommerce stores. It will help you in increasing conversions and sales on your store and retain the customers for the long term. 

- Add exit-intent popup. Track when someone is about to leave your website and show the visitor exit-intent popup with attractive offers and coupon code to complete the purchase.

- For getting more conversions and sales you can target your customers by sending automated emails that help to improve the relevancy and timeliness of your campaigns. You can use triggers and workflows to automatically send messages to consumers after they take a specific action. For some reason unknown to you, they leave without making a purchase but with email automation, you can make sure that this user receives an email shortly after they abandoned their cart, reminding them of what they left behind and asking if they need help completing their purchase. In this case, email marketing automation turns a missed opportunity into an opportunity to build a stronger relationship and make a sale.

- Run email campaigns & push campaigns.

Moreover, what helps you more is to use marketing automation tools that will help in better customer engagement automation. You must set up proper email marketing campaigns, loyalty reward programs, or affiliate programs to increase engagement, to implement this you can install the all-in-one Shopify app AiTrillion, a full-fledged marketing solution. It will help you to capture visitors coming to your store and will help in getting more conversions.

Hope this Helps! 

[CutOutWiz]

Hello @kahuna 

Hope you are doing well.

I understand how it can be frustrating to be doing everything right but still not getting your traffic converted to sales. You may find comfort in knowing that you're not the only one on that boat. Millions of Shopify store owners are facing the same problem. This is not because you are necessarily doing something wrong, but rather because Sales is an organic process, involving people getting to know you, visiting your brand, looking at your products, comparing them with others, and finally making the decision to purchase from you. So this takes some time, during which you have to hold on tight. But, you can't be just passively waiting for sales to grow, so I would recommend you look at these tips and see which ones you can use: You have great faith in your online shop, but why aren’t visitors converting?

Another Thing you could consider: Not all traffic is good traffic.

Traffic will only have any chance of converting to sales if they are being generated by the right consumer. If your product is for females under the age of 30, but your ads are being viewed by males over 50, that is a lot of traffic, but it will never convert to sales. So, before you spend on targeting, a good idea is to have a simple Google Trends search, that will tell you who is looking for the products you search, what is their age, gender and location. Then you can put forward some really targeted ads that are bound to generate clicks.

Here are some areas where you could consider working on

• Because this is an online store and people cannot touch and feel your products before buying them, they rely heavily on product images, which is why the images have to look top-notch. Especially for this kind of product, it is a good idea to have multiple images of the product, from multiple angles, so that the customer can have a feel of what they are buying. If you are looking for an image processing company that will solve all your needs, you can check out CutOutWiz.

• Customers read user reviews more than they read product descriptions. If they find that 50 other people have liked your product and have purchased from you, it helps your credibility and they feel safer buying from you. So try to add some reviews of your products and services to your homepage.

• A good idea is to have your newsletter as a popup so that it shows up when the customer enters the home page. This will make it more visible and attract more people to your newsletter from where you can target more interested people.

• Use a star rating widget to let website visitors evaluate your business. They create standardization, allowing customers to compare different or products easily. It also helps you get feedback about your products.

Hope this helps you. If you find it useful, leave a like to let me know! Happy Selling! Thank you and the Very Best of Luck to you! 

[kahuna]

Thank you very much for your input

[kahuna]

Thank you so much for your help

[kahuna]

Thank you very much

[kahuna]

I received 4 communications about improving my store and all were very helpful

Thank you