😂Please critique my store.😂. Lionheart8.myshopify.com

[Tanjay]

I really am interested in two things, "First Impression" you have when landing and an overall critique of my store. I have what is called a "skinny" "baby" pixel. I will blame that for part of the reason I can't reach people with my ads. Hardly any clicks. I do $5/day ads. One sale ever and that was  "free+shipping". One carousel ad for shoes. I would appreciate your critique. Thanking you in advance.  Jan.  

[LuckyDanny · Accepted solution]

Hey there, @Tanjay! 

Let’s just jump right in.

First impression: What do you sell? There are a lot of different collections here, so it’s hard to say what you really sell. It’s missing that cohesive hero image (static, not rotating) that’s showcasing a collection rather than just jumping into the products. 

Breaking it down…

Homepage

• Put up a banner highlighting a sale or free shipping and make sure it’s linked. A lot of people miss the opportunity to drive sales by not linking their banners.
• Add a favicon. 
• Use a logo rather than just text. It’s going to add legitimacy to your store.
• As I mentioned earlier, don’t just dive into your products on your homepage. Use a static hero image with a great CTA to draw people in. If you can take your own in-house images, that’s even better. Test different combinations.
• Use click heatmaps (which show you where people click) to evaluate how they use your homepage. More importantly, where are they NOT clicking? As you get more traffic, you’ll be able to see patterns emerge.
• Evaluate your collections. Some of them are broad (i.e., Shoes, Jewelry, Home Decor) while others (i.e., Pet Lovers, Wine Lovers) may be better suited for a sub-collection rather than a top-level collection. 

In general, click heatmaps and scroll heatmaps (to see how far people scroll) are going to help you analyze the collections that get more clicks and less clicks. Continue to evaluate this and consider removing lower-clicked collections with low/no sales.

Footer

• About Us: Link to your contact page
• Shipping: There needs to be some formatting help here. Make sure you include shipping costs on here, if you can. Also, you’ve buried some important information about getting a $5 off coupon! I would use a poll to promote that information. 
• Refunds: Work on formatting and link your email address. 
• Contact Us: Again, link your email address. Also, remove the phone number field. It typically has a higher abandonment rate. 
• Social media links: Don’t forget about social media! Build that social community and link to your accounts (make sure they open in a new tab).

Navigation

You’re missing two very key parts of your navigation bar - Home and All Products. As I mentioned earlier, use click heatmaps to evaluate these collections more thoroughly. You may be able to condense it to your top-performing collections, moving those that aren’t as popular.

Session recordings, which act like a DVR for your website, would be helpful here as well. You would be able to watch as people move through your store. How do they get to your products? 

Collection Pages
For reference, I’m looking at the New Parents collection. Filters would really be helpful here. For example, one is for maternity, some are for older kids and some are for babies. It’s a mixed bag. Filters would be exceedingly helpful! 

Product Pages

• Make sure shipping isn’t just calculated at checkout. Customers don’t like those surprises. 
• Ordering isn’t consistent. On your Golden Retriever Low Tops, the sizes are included. On the Baby Countdown Maternity Shirt, there is no size option. The maternity shirt is also missing a sizing chart.
• For the Golden Retriever Low Tops, is it only available in women's sizes? If so, take out the Men's size chart. 
• Your descriptions are inconsistent as well. The Baby Countdown Maternity Shirt has bulleted specifications, but it could be updated to be more inviting. 

Overall, you have the start to a great store. When you’re looking for ways to update it, use visitor behavior to really drive it. You’ll be able to understand what to change and whether that change worked. Lucky Orange has heatmaps, session recordings and more with a free trial (no credit card needed) and plans that start at US $10/month.

I hope this helps! Good luck, Jan!

Cheers - Danny

[Tanjay]

Thank you very much for a thorough critique. I am obviously a newbie. I don't know what you mean by hero image. At one time I had the image of the lion roaring with the store name on top. Possibly that is what you mean. The lion would be construed as an "in-house" image then? Next, you called Pet Lovers a "sub-collection." Would "niche" be the same term? You mentioned using a poll regarding the $5 coupon. Not sure what you mean. The word "filters" was mentioned in regards to the collection "New Parents" in reference to maternity, babies and older kids. Would this be the same as creating sub-drop down menus off of New Parents entitled Maternity, Babies, Toddlers. How would I let a customer know what her shipping is going to be "ahead" of check out. Also, I installed a "pop-up" offer of 10% off if they entered their email and a code word would be supplied. Did it happen? I am trying to collect emails as I a whole "two." Thank you again DannyBoy. Much appreciated!!..Jan

[LuckyDanny]

We were all newbies at some point!

Hero image: Here is a great guide from Shopify on hero images. It’s a large image that displays on your homepage. It’s typically found at the top of the page in what we call “prime real estate” on the homepage. This is what visitors see when they first come to your site.

In-house: I was thinking more about your products. Instead of using the traditional promotional images  that come with drop shipping, take your own photos of the products in use. Instead of just using the promotional show image, you would show it on someone who looks like a real person in a pose that is more normal. It’s not always possible to take/use in-house photos though, so selecting a high quality product image instead would be fine. 

For filters: You want to use product tags for filtering. The main thing is to remain consistent. I’ve seen a lot of merchants accidentally set up product tags for things like both “shoe” and “shoes” when you don’t need to. Here’s a guide to get started. 

For shipping: There are many ways you can do this, but an estimate would suffice. You can use a shipping calculator to help you find out the initial shipping costs. You could offer flat shipping rates or calculate it in general. When you provide this information, you can mention that US-based shipping is typically $8, or something to that effect. 

For collecting emails: I believe it did pop-up, but there’s a better way to collect emails. When someone comes to your store for the first time, they aren’t sure they want to buy from you, not to mention get an email from you. Instead, I would use a poll. You would have the poll show once someone has viewed a product (or added it to their cart) that asks them if they would like to join your community to get 10% of their purchase by providing you with their email address. We’ve seen some merchants have success through utilizing a poll to collect email addresses rather than a pop-up. 

I hope this helps, Jan! 

Cheers - Danny

[Andrew]

Hi @Tanjay,

Hyde here from Shopify. Welcome to the platform!

Being a dropshipper there may be many people selling the exact same products as you but this doesn’t mean you can’t build a brand around your Dropshipping store. Showing your store as a brand that is an authority in a particular niche is a great way to set yourself apart from your competitors. Even though you may not be manufacturing your products, your brand can show itself to be the best curator in your niche.

To do this you should pick a niche that you are knowledgeable about and curate your products around it. In a saturated market, it’s best to be specific instead of broad. So I'd recommend picking just one of these niches and focusing exclusively on that:

To build a brand you should look at having

- a strong, relevant name.
- a visual identity (logo, color scheme)
- a mission statement (what makes your brand different
- a target customer (who is your customer? What magazines do they read? What social media do they hang out on? Who influences their decisions? Are they high or low tech?)

There’s a great guide to creating customer personas here. And some great examples of visual identities here.

Your visual identity is pretty important, and color is naturally a big part of that. There’s actually a pretty good discussion about the importance of color in this help doc. I'd suggest having a read of this before committing to a color like red, because you want to be sure you're striking the right tone with the right kind of customer.

Your brand's message and mission is essential, so it's great that you've got an about us page, but I'd recommend not hiding it away in the footer menu but bringing it up into the main menu!

Also, you'll want to craft a page that appeals to your target customer. So while it's lovely to hear your back story, don't forget to inform your customers about why they should be buying from you. Check out some great examples of About pages here:

- About Life is Good 

Life is Good show the backstory behind their brand, their history and lets their customers know who they are! They also show their mission statement to be uplifting and positive whilst encouraging their customers to engage with them on social media using the hashtag thisisoptimism.

- About Johnny Cupcakes

Johnny Cupcakes shows the roots of his brand and what drove him to create it. This personal story about seeing his parents struggle inspiring him to be an entrepreneur and his own struggle with learning difficulties speaks to his audience.

With your about page ready, your product titles and descriptions on point you’ll have experience writing and also know your target audience so you could start looking at creating content e.g. blog posts for your audience. Writing blog content around your business, your niche and also your products such as

- guides to using your products
- products that work well together
- your journey in starting this business
- commentary on a major topic within your niche
- interview with an influencer within your niche

*Creating good content gives your customers a reason to keep coming back to your site for more*.

There’s a great guide to building a blog for your business here. And here are some businesses leveraging blogs successfully to promote their brand.

- Afends Magazine

*Afends offers some insight into the behind-the-scenes at the brand and also interviews with people who would interest its target customer.* 

- Clif Bars

*Clif offers tips on nutrition and fitness which as a healthy snack is going to be relevant to its target customer.*

Here’s a guide to setting up your store's blog. You can use your content to help build your social media perhaps by using

- quotes from interviews on Twitter.
- graphics with product combos from your product guide on Pinterest.
- video interviews on Instagram or Youtube.
- having your interviewee share the interview on their social profiles

To sum it up;

- Build a Brand Identity
- Use it to Build Content
- Promote that Content
- Use it to Attract New Customers and Re-Engage Existing ones.

I hope this all helps!

All the best, Hyde. 

[DearMishuDad]

Hi @Andrew - "- interview with an influencer within your niche" -   What was the influencer benefits to allocate time for that?

Thanks!