Request for Evaluation and Help!

[MSRetreat]

Hi all, 

mindspringretreat.com

I recently took my first Shopify store online about a week ago - I'm doing Print-On-Demand in the inspirational/motivational niche.  It's a relatively saturated niche but I reckoned I had a few fresh ideas and that if I could just attract the right people then things would prob work out.  I've been following a few series of How-To Video Tutorials so I think that I've probably got most of the basics down at least.  Haven't had any sales yet but I don't think that's an extraordinary experience for a newbie, and that they will come eventually.  But I just wanted to take the opportunity to reach out to those with infinitely more experience than myself and try and see if there's anything especially egregious I'm doing wrong. 

Also, the majority of my advertising so far has been via Facebook ads.  One ongoing problem I've been having is that Facebook has decided to repeatedly and without warning (or explanation) disable my account - it happened about 2 or 3 times on consecutive days 1-2 weeks ago; all I had to do was go through a bot check and I got the account back.  But then a couple days after I started my ads the account suddenly got disabled again and it's still down, and all I can do is wait - as far as I understand.  So I'm looking into alternative sources of effective advertising.  I'm currently working on SEO but given that that's a long-term strategy I'm wanting to figure out some more short-term forms - I'm not a social media person at all, and the tutorial series I'm using mostly just say SEO + Facebook/Instagram, so I'm at a bit of a loss here!

All help and advice greatly appreciated

Thanks very much,

Sam

[AiTrillion · Accepted solution]

Hello @MSRetreat, This is AiTrillion- an All-in-one Marketing Platform on Shopify. Here are some suggestions that you can work on:

- On the homepage, add a section of product recommendations.

- Add testimonials or review carousel on the homepage. It helps in building trust with other visitors.

- You can create a section of blog posts on the homepage. Blog regularly and it will help you in SEO.

- Add a call to action button like 'Shop Now' on the banner image. Also, you can add a short title to the banner image which describes what you are selling.

- You should add reviews on the product page. Reviews are very important in an online business. 90% of people read reviews before making a purchase.

- Add a loyalty rewards program. Give rewards to your customers. By offering rewards for completing actions like making a purchase or following you on social media, you show your customers that you care about how they engage with you and want to thank them for it. This encourages them to do it again in the future, transforming them into valuable repeat customers.

- Add web push notifications, it will help you to retarget your customers even when customers are not in your store without getting their email address. You can send back in stock and price drop alert notifications to bring customers back to your store. It also helps to reduce the abandoned cart rate.

Maximize customer engagement in your store by adding customer engagement tools In your store. If you would like to implement the above features/ customer engagement or marketing tools in your store you can install the all-in-one Shopify app AiTrillion. If you have any questions, feel free to ask.

[PageFly · Accepted solution]

Hi @MSRetreat,

It's PageFly - Shopify Page Builder App  here and I'd like to share some of my initial thoughts when first browsing through your online store. I hope that these comments can be somewhat beneficial to you in improving your site performance. But first, you can check out this article on how you can optimize your conversion rate of your homepage.  

I/ Homepage

1. Make the Header and Free Shipping Banner sticky. As the search bar is in the Header, you can consider make it sticky so that customer can reach for it anytime they need to find anything. As well as the Promotion Banner for obvious reason, repetitive display of the offer will eventually push the visitors towards taking action.

2. An About US section would also help you to differentiate from other sweet store.

3. Add CTA button for Product Lists. CTA buttons serve as a guidance to your customers to know what to do next when browsing through your store.

II/ Collection Page

1. Add Secondary Hover Image. This will help your customers understand more about the products regarding sizes, style or how it looks like when being worn on models, which helps them decide whether to buy the product more easily.

2. Make the Price more prominent. 

3. Use Load More instead of Pagination. The majority of the merchants would prefer Pagination but the feature itself poses some difficulties if they want to compare 2 products from 2 pages. 

Overall, this is a very clean layout website and you must have put a lot of time and effort into this. You can always opt for PageFly Page Builder to build more customized and high-converting landing page. If you find this comment helpful, please give it a like and mark as solution. Wish you all the best! 

[MSRetreat]

Hi @AiTrillion Aitrillion, thx for all the help.

I'm a new store and don't have any sales yet, and I do Print on demand, so I can't really add testimonials yet.  

Product Recommendations though...could I write something above my Homepage Collection? Maybe "TOP SELLERS" or something like that?

I'd like to add CTA buttons all over the place but I have no idea how I coudl do that.  Aer there any good free apps for that sort of thing?  Also I don't think my Theme (Simple) allows for a horizontal banner; just the logo on the left.  What I'm using as a "Banner" is a slideshow.  

I'm currently doing Free Shipping for all of USA.  When I get established might it be a better move to remove that so that I can offer a sort of conditional Free Shipping (at a certain $ threshold) instead?  Would that drive more sales in the end?  

Thx again for the help

[MSRetreat]

Hi @PageFly PageFly, thx for all tyhe help !

I've been trying very hard to make both my logo at top left, and the Free Shipping announcement + Search bar sticky, but I haven't been able to find how.  I'm using Simple theme, and every tutorial/walk thru I follow seems to be suited for other themes, and weird things always end up happening when I follow the instructions. 

I have an About Us, thinking of expanding it a bit when I get a moment; should the link be somewhere more prominent? Currently its on the main sidebar to the left. 

I would love to add CTA buttons for each homepage collection item but I don't know how !!

I also would like - as you suggest - to make the price more prominent but can't quite manage that either.  Can't find a way to selectively increase fontsize/bolden it without affecting other text too. 

How on earth would I add a hover image?  That seems like a tremendous idea.  

And how can I shift from pagination to Load All?  That occurred to me earlier and I tried to implement it, but couldn't ifnd a way to. 

Thanks again for all your help !

[AiTrillion]

@MSRetreat, 

Yes, as a product recommendation you can add a Top Sellers section, trending or new products on the homepage. You can add trending, new arrivals, and recently viewed products with the help of the app AiTrillion.

Yes, the slideshow image is good. Refer to this link to add CTA button: https://www.shopify.in/partners/blog/building-a-clickable-call-to-action-button-for-your-shopify-the...

Yes, definitely that's a great idea of free shipping as you stated. 

Thanks