Hi friends 
I am switching my store over from Wix to Shopify and I am looking for your best tips, tricks, advice, literally anything you have to offer for someone new to Shopify!
I am a designer/artist and sell prints, tote bags, stickers, and other things featuring my art. I had my previous store active for ~8 months and I have a decent following on Instagram, but my biggest struggle was growing an audience, so anyyyy tips there would be greatly appreciated!
Excited to be joining this community and also open to forming new connections! TIA
Hi @sevenpctsarah ,
Hi friends, welcome to the Shopify community.
If you have any questions or concerns you can ask on this Shopify community, we will be happy to help you.
If you find this answer helpful, please mark it as a SOLUTION.
Best regards.
Hey @sevenpctsarah
That is awesome to hear you are moving over to Shopify, you are most welcome here!
First things first, we have a great introduction to Shopify page here that I would highly recommend checking out first. It explains the basics on getting started and includes a handy YouTube video too! You can sign up to a free 14-day trial at any time, which will give you a chance to get a feel for the platform before you commit to a monthly charge.
You mentioned that you would be moving from Wix to Shopify - we actually have a whole section in our help center about migrating from various platforms, so I would recommend checking that out here.
Your product selection sounds great! Do you currently manufacture and ship all of those products yourself? Are you familiar with Print on Demand services? That is a popular way for merchants to create/design things like t-shirts and have them manufactured & shipped directly to your customers from the POD supplier. It’s a low risk way to sell, because you are not sitting on any stock or having to spend large amounts of money starting out. Check out this blog post all about print on demand here.
I can see that growing an audience has been a concern of yours in the past, and that is totally understandable. You mentioned that you had a good following on Instagram - social media presence can really help for increasing your audience so that is something I would encourage you to continue with. We also have the Facebook Sales Channel integration on Shopify that you can use to sell and place ads on Facebook and Instagram!
Building your brand can sometimes be tricky, as there are a lot of moving parts and things to consider. On Shopify, there is a whole section in your admin dedicated to marketing that you can use for creating marketing activities and automations. This is effective for getting more traffic to your store which can improve your conversion rate. Check out our docs on marketing and promotions here to learn more.
A couple of extra tips for building a strong and recognizable brand include:
- Come up with a strong and relevant store name. A custom domain to reflect this adds to the professionalism of your store.
- Try to create a cohesive visual identity which includes consistent logos and colour schemes etc.
- Have a clear mission statement that explains what makes your brand different to others.
- Understand your target customer - who are your customers? What social media platforms do they hang out on? Who influences their decisions?
Hi @sevenpctsarah Welcome to the community!
First of all, congrats on starting your own store
Growing an audience isn’t that easy. Been there. I’d suggest going through the blogs and resources that Shopify offers on https://www.shopify.com/blog/topics/sell (Check out their Sales & Marketing section - a bunch of useful tips around growing ur audience there! )
I’d also suggest investing in SEO and Content if you are new in the business. More than the products you sell, it’s about the stories you tell to your target audience. If you are a newbie there, Shopify also has a bunch of relevant apps- check them out here.
Once you are good with that, the next step would be to shift your focus to making more sales.
Wishing you best of luck!
-Saif