Give your store love and boost sales

The coronavirus pandemic chased hordes of shoppers from brick-and-mortar shops to the safety of online stores.

This sparked a rapid uptick of growth that left many grateful ecommerce merchants scrambling to keep up.

Now, a year later, and at the tail end of gifting season, many merchants may finally have the time to sit back and take stock of their websites. What served you well over this chaotic period? And more importantly, which areas lagged, potentially losing sales and business support?

Identifying the pain points on your Shopify site is crucial. Use this time to reflect on areas that hurt business, and what you need to do to fix them. Be in a good position to keep those increased sales numbers!

Scrutinize analytics

The best way to determine where your site falls short is to look at the data.

• Shopify’s analytics and reports provide information on your store’s recent activity and insights into your visitors. It analyzes your site’s speed and the transactions made.
• Google Analytics also provides data on how customers use your store. Some of the information you’ll see includes how many users have visited your site and how long they spend on it. It shows the bounce rate and specifically which pages users bounce from. Google Analytics will also tell you how many of your customers are on mobile versus desktop.
• Heat map applications will track your customers’ movements on the site. You’ll be able to see where they get stuck.
• Your store’s payment gateway should also provide metrics. This would include the types of payment options used and their success rate, as well as the total time it takes to complete a transaction.

Scrutinize these metrics to identify problematic areas in your store. We take a look at some of the most common pain points experienced by Shopify merchants.

Shopping cart confusion and abandonment

Is your shopping cart process letting you down? Are you losing easy money?

According to Barilliance more than three-quarters of shopping carts are abandoned.

The most common reason this happens:

• Unexpected shipping costs.
• Nearly the same amount are put off by having to create a new user account to complete a purchase.
• Other issues include concerns about payment security,
• and a site’s trustworthiness.
• Almost 10% of shoppers drop off because of a long and confusing checkout process.
• A similar number abandon a sale because they couldn’t find a coupon code.

It’s vital to identify if your site has a high rate of abandoned carts. But it’s equally important to determine whether your abandoned cart recovery strategy (if you have one) is effective.

The Baymard Institute estimates that 69% of abandoned carts can be recovered with follow up offers.

Payment options

A high drop off rate at checkout could mean that your site doesn’t offer enough payment options.

• Some customers will favor a different store if yours doesn’t have the payment method they prefer.
• Or, if one payment option doesn’t work (maybe a card is declined), another payment option should be easily available.
• It doesn’t hurt to have trust seals to reassure shoppers that their personal payment information is secure on your site. If a customer feels like their credit card details may be compromised, they will definitely shop elsewhere.
• It’s become essential for stores to offer digital and mobile payment options, such as PayPal, to the high number of shoppers on mobile devices.
• And, if your store sells relatively expensive items, customers might require financing options to afford the purchase. These allow them to buy the item immediately and pay it off over a specified period.
• Another thing to consider is where your customers come from. If you make a lot of sales to people from countries other than your own, consider including payment options from those countries.

Unanswered questions

Have you checked whether you’re being asked the same questions repeatedly over the phone, emails, or through social media messages? If you are, then you’ll need to find a way to address this.

Some customers may become frustrated if they can’t find the information they need about a product, payments, or policies before they make a purchase.

If your analytics show a high bounce rate off product pages, it could mean that you aren’t displaying enough product information.

This would include:

• the dimensions of a product,
• the color,
• and any relevant accessories for it.
• Clearly displaying the price is also crucial.

It is important to see whether your frequently asked questions (FAQs) page provides enough detailed, but succinct information. Does it help customers to troubleshoot errors themselves? Does it answer the most common questions they have? This could include shipping information, returns policies, and business hours.

Some stores chose to have a live chat option which allows customers to get their questions answered in real-time.

Customer journey

Pretend that you are a customer when you analyze your store. See if it’s easy to find products and make a purchase. Is navigating the site intuitive or is it complicated with many steps? Is your store personalized and relevant to each individual shopper?

If a customer can’t easily find items they want to buy, they may turn to a different store instead.

According to Statistica, poor site navigation is an issue for 16% of online shoppers.

Another problem could be analysis paralysis. Customers who are faced with too many options might struggle to decide on a product and not make a purchase as a result.

When reviewing your store, see how fast it loads. Anything longer than two seconds and you’ll lose page visitors. Also, see whether your calls to action are very visible.

Users won’t trust a site that has technical errors or crashes. Customers will be hesitant to share their personal payment information and are likely to find a store that they perceive to be more trustworthy and reliable.

Mobile unfriendly

Most people own a mobile device these days and in 2020 half of all ecommerce sales in the US were made on mobile.

Despite this, nearly 86% of all abandoned carts occur on mobile devices, which is more than 12% higher than the rate for desktop sites.

It’s vital that your site is optimized and responsive for shoppers who use their mobile phones or tablets.

• Does the mobile site load quickly?
• Is it easy to do a transaction on it?
• Can customers tap and pinch to zoom into photos?
• Are the menus easy to use on mobile and the calls to action easy to spot?
• Is it straightforward to add additional items to the shopping cart?

Addressing pain points

Once you’ve identified the pain points on your Shopify store, you’ll need to find a way to rectify them. Luckily, many of these issues are common and sometimes only one or two changes can address a multitude of problems. This in turn can have a big impact on your turnover.

For example, the Baymard Institute found that just by solving checkout usability issues, a large ecommerce store can gain an impressive 35% increase in conversion rate.

While some of these issues can be addressed by you, it may be worth getting a Shopify expert to assist you to get the most value out of your site.

At ShopCreatify we’re used to dealing with these problems. We often do site redesigns to improve the customers’ journey on your store. We also implement other tactics aimed at boosting conversions, to ensure that you’re making the sales you should be.

Get in touch if you want to chat about how we can help you solve those pesky issues!

Photos by Mayur Gala, Tabea Damm and Nick Page