Is a large social media following essential for E-commerce success?

[Wilson-42]

Hi everyone, I hope you all are doing fine. I’m new to E-commerce and I’m learning as I go, which I’m the person that kinda person that learn along the way.

I just opened my store today and I haven’t started marketing as yet. Somehow I have this notions that I need to have a certain amount of followers on social media plots forms to make my business look really to make sales and get customers.

the freelancer on Fiverr that designed my store told me there are two packages that he recommended me to choose from to get followers to my social media accounts

To drive bot 1k followers is $230 each
Real and organic followers is $300 Each

fb,Instagram, Pinterest and tiktok

I don’t like the idea because he want me to do The transactions outside of Fiverr and in that case I won’t be able to get to refund if anything goes wrong.

So now I ask, is this really true ? Do I need to do all that make sales on my store.?

Anyone can refer me to some good sources or marketing that knows about marketing and know what they are doing? I can’t afford to get ripped off with dishonesty.
Please help thank you

here is my store address. www.korrten.com

[oscprofessional]

@Wilson-42 ,

Yes I will help you.

Can you share the password?

[SpeedyDev]

@Wilson-42

I will Don’t do any fake promises,

This is not the right way To get sales, In my opinion you don’t have to do this, You have to make your online presence,

You don’t have to buy fake follower and all, you have to make it by organic,

You can do On page, off page SEO, Social Media Marketing, Facebook , Google, TikTok, ads.

By the way your Store is Password protected,
But here is some tips which you have to follow to get sales.

1.Make your Store trustworthy
2.Add trust badges
3.Add discount in your Slideshow like Hurry! 10% off Buy Now.
4.Add Email Popup or sign up form
5.Use klaviyo for email marketing
6.Have a clear and CTA button on the banner
7.Showing customer reviews on the product page
8.add discount Announcement Bar or make it more attractive.
9.Add testimonial
10.Add Social Media Share icon.
11.Use the review Apps to display reviews on your Collection page
12.Make Social Media Posting to attract More client
13.Make your header Sticky
14.Provide at least one separate cross-sell section that suggests only supplementary products.

thank you,

Let me know if you need any more help,

[Wilson-42]

My mistake, I forgot to remove the password. Let me move it now and you can look at it right away. And please tell me what needed to be done.

im not a social media guy that will go online talking and doing all that. I’m a stuttering person so I stay away from doing those things.

[Wilson-42]

I removed the password now.

[SpeedyDev]

@Wilson-42

Your banner is cutting off fixed it,

. too many Blank space in footer,
. Add testimoinals

.low quality font-text,

.Add free Shipping bar on top,

.Display discounts to attract visitors.

And there for many issues are their in your Store,
Follow the Steps to get organic sales.

[Wilson-42]

When I look at the banner I don’t see where it’s cutting off as you mentioned. If you are talking about that brown edge around the frame of the banner that’s how it was made. All the pictures are showing all the around the edges. I’m pretty sure the freelancer that designed this store may want to charge more to fix his mess. Is it possible that someone from Shopify design teem will fix those issues if I hire one of them.

[Ivy_4]

Hi there, @Wilson-42 .

Congrats on your store and welcome to Shopify! You’ve done an excellent job with your store so far. My answer would be that no, it is not true that you need to hire t someone to carry out your store’s marketing. This is something you can certainly do yourself, once you have the know-how.

The key here is having an excellent marketing plan - I have a guide here that will help you create a marketing plan that works. A piece of advice I’d also give you is to figure out EXACTLY who it is that you think your ideal target customer is; who are they? what age are they? Why would these products appeal to them & how are they currently going looking for these products? This podcast, ‘Using Customer Profiles as a Filter for Making Better Business Decisions — Podcasts’ gives you a brilliant example of how to approach this.

My favorite resource is our huge online learning portal called Shopify Learn. Here you’ll find a huge amount of free online courses, that help to empower you to be able to drive this forward without needing hiring outside help. I would definitely recommend having a read through it, I have learned a lot from these courses myself! I hope this helps.

[Wilson-42]

Thank you very much for your advice. I’m just now getting started and so I’m still in my jobs and have little time to do more research which is what I really need here, was thinking of getting someone to do my marketing and once I started to earn enough cash that will help out my bills I can quit my jobs and spend more time on my store and doing more like research and such. Is my banner cutting off or the fonts have any issues.?

thanks a lot

[FinleyCarter]

I would not pay for followers - bots, real, whatever. Because those people are not going to engage or convert later down the line. It’s better to have ten people who are genuinely interested in what you do than a thousand all wondering how they got there and who you are!

There are other ways…

[Rayshuggs]

Hello Wilson, the first thing I would like to say is that doing interactions outside of a freelance platform is not a good idea in my opinion. There is no need to task that risk. You could as well find seasoned and trusted social media influencers on platforms such as Instagram and Tik Tok then reach out to them to help build your business in a sure organic way. Secondly, to get sales I think there are a few improvements you could make in your store.

1. Make use of a sticky header. This would allow it to be easy for your customers to scroll through your store, knowing that they can still access the menu and search button without having to scroll back up.

2. Create a section for best selling products just like the one you have for latest arrivals. This would help separate them from the crowd for the benefit of your customers.

3. A great way to increase sales in your store is to show customers what others are doing in your store. This would help to motivate them to carry out activities when they see other people doing likewise in the store through the updates. You can do this by downloading the Show Recent Orders App here https://apps.shopify.com/show-recent-orders

4. Put the different methods of payment that are accepted in your store on the bottom of the homepage. This would allow customers to know whether they can pay through mediums such as Pay Pal, Payoneer, bank cards, etc.

I wish you and your business the best of luck!

[Wilson-42]

Thank you Rayshuggs. Here is my store information. www.Korrten.com you look at it.

[flareAI]

Hi @Wilson-42 ,

As you are new to e-commerce, I suggest you don’t spend too much on social media and on ads.

In general, organic search is more cost-effective in the long run. If you have an organic search result that gets the same number of clicks as an ad, the organic result will have a better ROI. By tapping into free sources of traffic, you’ll start generating a good amount of sales on your Shopify store.

You can follow the below strategies to drive organic traffic to your Shopify store.

1. Optimize your Shopify store for search engine traffic
   One way to optimize your store is by adding Keywords which are the search terms that people use with the search engines and will be what guide you in your search engine optimization. Add the keywords into your content, including page titles, descriptions, and image alt text.
2. Attract customers with content marketing
   Just like your product descriptions will help attract visitors to your Shopify site, so will any other content on your website. A simple paragraph at the bottom of each category page with a lot of keywords that are likely used on search engines will do the trick. Also, encourage audience contributions and feedback.
3. Write guest posts for sites within your niche
   The websites on the top of the search engine results pages likely have a lot of other websites linking to them. The more links pointing to your website, the better. Rather than wait for other websites to direct traffic to you through a link, it is easiest to offer to write a guest post for other blogs within your niche.
4. Write blog post features of influencers in your market
   Another way to get more links and increase traffic to your online shop is by writing a blog post that features influencers in your niche market.
5. Integrate social media
   Integrate social media into your website which is a great way to grow your business, allowing you to tap into new audiences and gain more customers. Posting on social media can be a good way to promote your online store and connect with customers. You can create social media accounts for your business to help build your brand, improve your SEO, and increase traffic to your store.
6. Showcase your products with powerful text, images, and video
   Your product description should be detailed and evocative. Include vital product specifications as well as a powerful story about the product. Commerce is built on great storytelling.

Also, I’ve some feedback for your store.

1. Add a favicon to help users remember your site while browsing through multiple URLs. Also, it will add overall branding consistency and their absence might be seen as unprofessional. See this documentation for more details.
2. Contact Us page
   Add your contact information like phone number, email address, and office address prominently on the Contact Us page for creating trust in your visitors. Also, replace the placeholder shown below with the respective content.

3. Add a FAQ page and add in the footer
   Adding FAQ will provide quick information to help customers make a purchasing decision and also reduce the time your employees need to answer simple questions.
4. Add blogs
   Adding blogs will increase sales and traffic to your store. Blogs will create authority and build potential relationships with customers.
5. Add a section for writing product reviews on the product page
   Most of the customers read the review before purchasing the product. Mostly by reading reviews, customers will understand whether your product will suit them and make the decision to purchase the product.
6. Add testimonials on the Home page
   Testimonials are a great way to build trust in visitors. Get testimonials from your customers and add them to the Home page.
7. You can add a sticky header to help users quickly access the navigation, search, and utility-navigation elements without scrolling up to the top of the page.
8. Consider adding a CTA button in the Home page header banner
   You can add CTA (Call-To-Action) buttons like “Shop Now”, “Buy Now” in the Home page header banner. CTA lets the user know what to do next. Without a clear CTA, the user may not know the next steps to take to purchase a product or sign up for a newsletter and is likely to leave the site without accomplishing their task.

It is an amazing strategy for gaining visibility for your brand and ultimately increasing sales without having to rely so heavily on doling out money for a large marketing budget. You will get more organic sales when your products are found on free sales channels like Google Search and you will start getting order conversions for virtually zero cost. flareAI is a bot, so unlike traditional stuff, you don’t need to do a thing. Apps & tools need you to learn skills, hire people and dedicate time to get stuff done. A bot is different, it does stuff for you saving you time & expense. flareAI works every day for you, tapping into Google Search and 20+ of the world’s best & biggest free sales channels.

Hope this was helpful.

Gina
Add flareAI Shopify App today!

[Wilson-42]

Thank you for the heads up. I do appreciate it a lot.

I have a question, I’m trying so hard to set up my best to set up my Tax setting for Texas but I’m not seeing Texas in the drop down box menu. What can I do to fix this.? I don’t want to start sell without fixing that.

[Ivy_4]

Your tax settings can be accessed by going to settings > taxes and duties from your store’s admin. You should see the USA there as a country option as long as you have it added as a shipping zone in your shipping settings. If you click into USA, then click on the “collect sales tax” button a drop-down menu for every state should appear here like this:

Is this option appearing for you like this? If not, can you share with me a screenshot of what you see here, please? Thanks!

[Wilson-42]

I went through all that but I’m not seeing. My state show up in the drop down menu where I should check my state. Sorry for the late reply..

[Wilson-42]

Hi everyone, it’s been awhile since I posted this question. I appreciate all your feedback towards my concern.

Thank you.

I lately I’m thinking of putting up my store for sale.

Any advice from anyone will help regards pricing the store and what’s the steps needed doing so.

My store name take a look and let me know whats best. www.korrten.com

[popsmash]

Two things:

1. Never buy followers, they are low quality and will hurt you in the long-term
2. Focus on getting your social followers onto your email list so you can consistently drive sales long-term. It’s also easier to track, nurture and convert over email.

[ReubenRubio]

When it comes to social media followers, this is a common goal because a large number of followers is the golden ticket to success. While having a presence on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and TikTok is crucial, how you can engage with your audience is crucial. Interacting with people who are interested in your products is the key to success. For reliable marketing advice, check out the Digital Media Marketing Agency mentioned by others here. They’re known for their expertise and ethical practices. And hey, since we’re on the topic, I recently stumbled upon getlikes.com they have some interesting insights on organic growth. Give it a look when you have a moment!

[zanoogo]

This is no way a criticism of anyone here offering advice, as some of this is really helpful. It’s just a general observation that applies to guidance, growth strategies, apps, etc., for startups and those new to eCommerce.

As one of those myself, it’s frustrating when the reviews app, Judge.me, for example, tells you how amazing it will be for your business to show the reviews on this page and that page, show trust badges, and so on. Or how using tools to glean usage stats and habits from your customers will help shape your website. But none of that applies when you have no or low sales. In fact very little applies or is of any direct use when you have no/low sales because you have nothing to work with and no data. All that’s really important in the early stages is making sure your website provides no barriers whatsoever to customers buying (exactly as some of the advice given here is suggesting) and marketing, marketing, marketing.

It’s a numbers game, and in the early days it’s painfully painful, trying to persuade people who know nothing about you that your products are great and that they can trust you. It’s also a chicken and egg situation - how do you get people to trust you enough to buy from you when you have no reviews telling people they can trust you. But you need sales in order to generate the reviews.

My advice is take and implement every bit of advice that is relevant to your situation to make your website the best it can be - something you would want to buy from. That means painstaking attention to detail, acccuracy, honesty, being informative, overly helpful, and fair. It’s a bit of a sweeping statement, but people buy based on value, not price, so if your products look like they offer value, the price is relatively unimportant. And I’m only saying this as a driver to make sure your products look better and website delivers more than your competitiors.

Ask lots of people to critique and feedback on your website (don’t take it personally!) and the entire customer journey and experience (they are very different) - and ignore everything else for now. Then get back to marketing.

And yes, it’s tempting to buy your audience. Yes, it’s tempting to fake reviews or testimonials, but a single trip-up with the latter especially could crush everything you’ve built in one go.

I wish you the absolute very best of luck - you, me, and everyone else trying to build their dream and change their lives for the better.