eCommerce

6 Essential Shopify Apps For Medium Size Retailers

October 24, 2018 by Dabrian Marketing Group 1 Comment

If you’re an online store owner using Shopify, there are so many ways you can make your life easier.

There are plenty of Shopify apps to help you with all aspects of ecommerce entrepreneurship, but with so many to choose from that it’s hard to know where to start.

Luckily for you, we’ve come up with a list of 6 essential apps to have if you’re a Shopify store owner. Check out our list below to get inspired.

Recommended reading: The 5 Questions Everybody’s Asking About Shopify

Mailchimp for Shopify

Email marketing is an effective way of connecting with your customers — once you’ve got them subscribed to your mailing list, you can grab their attention with awesome offers and direct them to your store.

Having an email subscription tool like Mailchimp is super handy if you’re a medium size retailer. By now, you’ve climbed a few rungs up the entrepreneurial ladder, grown your store a bit more, and now you’re looking at ways to maintain existing relationships and build new ones.

Email marketing is a great way of doing this, and Mailchimp is the best of the best when it comes to email marketing tools.

The Mailchimp for Shopify app lets you integrate your Mailchimp account with your Shopify store easily. From here, you can import your customer information and use purchase data to create targeted email and ad campaigns that boost sales.

Facebook Store

You’re definitely missing out on potential leads if you leave out social media as a selling platform for your store. Facebook isn’t just good for advertising you know!

If you’re an established medium size retailer, then the Shopify Facebook Store app is perfect for you.

Sometimes people just won’t want to click through to your site. This is detrimental to your conversion rates — you’ve spent the time generating leads, and now you’ve fallen at the last hurdle.

Facebook Store lets you showcase your products or services on your store’s Facebook page and post collections to your timeline to highlight products. You can also build engagement around your items by tagging them in photos, which shoppers can click on to buy.

It’s an awesome app because it lets you reach more potential consumers, drives more traffic to your store, and provides an easy online shopping platform. Shoppers love it because they can browse, share or buy directly from your Facebook store.

Yotpo

Yotpo is a cool — and free! — Shopify app that helps store owners to generate and leverage product reviews.

The majority of US customers consult reviews or ratings before making a final purchase. In this digital age, consumers want to know how they can trust online retailers, and how the quality of the product they are purchasing will be guaranteed. It’s fair enough — after all, you can’t physically inspect the product until you’ve received it, and that’s after you’ve parted with your well-earned cash.

That is where customer reviews and testimonials come in. They’re essential to building trust, and help to advise customers on the details and quality of your items. Yotpo helps you collect reviews, photos and Q&A from your customers, and compiles it into content for your site. This is essential for building trust in your store and increasing your online sales.

ReferralCandy

Apparently, every happy customer will tell nine more. Using a referral app to make the most of this lead generation opportunity saves you from missing out!

ReferralCandy is a really interesting Shopify app which you can use to incentivize customers to refer their friends to you. You decide what your referral incentive is — whether it’s coupons, exclusive offers or cash.

The app contains a dashboard where you can track referral information and metrics, as well as optimize your referral program. They’ll also chuck in automated reward delivery and referral reminder emails for good measure. (ReferralCandy integrates with Mailchimp so that you can track emails and referral campaigns).

Plug in SEO

This free Shopify app is essential to any medium size retailer. Maybe you’ve started up your own small online business, or you’ve bought a Shopify business and you want to scale up?

Plug in SEO is the difference between your business successfully growing or stagnating as a small online store.

You might sell the most awesome products at an incredible price, but unless your online store is search-friendly, you’re not going to generate enough web traffic to your site to make a decent profit.

Luckily, PIug in SEO can help to optimize your site to ensure that you’re ranking as high on the search engine results page as you can..

The app automatically checks for SEO problems with your page titles, descriptions, structure and much more, and flags them for you. They then give you clear and simple explanations, fix instructions and code to sort the problems out. A must-have for any medium size retailers out there.

Data Export - Reports

If you want to be successful in ecommerce, then you’re going to have to invest in a decent accounting app for Shopify.

As a small business owner, you’ve probably downloaded Xero or QuickBooks Online to sync your orders and refunds and run some financial reporting. These are brilliant for small retailers but can quickly become expensive for medium size retailers because of extra costs such as payroll services.

If you want to up your accounting game, then try out Data Export.

Data Export has received many great reviews on the Shopify app store. It’s got some great accounting and reporting features, and you benefit from setup and customization by Data Export’s reporting experts. For scalability, it’s a lot more friendly than other apps, and has a load of awesome features perfect for midsize businesses.

As you can see, there are some amazing Shopify apps available to you as a medium size retailer. These are 6 of the best — ones that we think are essential to your success as an ecommerce entrepreneur. They can help you with everything from SEO to accounting to marketing and more — all things that you need to get right as a midsize store owner.

Are there any that you’d add to our list? Let us know in the comments below.

Victoria Greene is a freelance writer and branding consultant who is passionate about sharing her knowledge and helping store owners get the best return on their ecommerce businesses. For all the latest on developments in ecommerce, marketing, and design, check out her blog, Victoria Ecommerce.

The 5 Questions Everybody’s Asking About Shopify

September 26, 2018 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Increased internet access means one thing for your business: it’s easier than ever to make money online. A variety of ecommerce platforms are now available to connect merchants with potential customers. Popular choices include WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce, and X-Cart, but which one is the best for you?

The most popular ecommerce platform on the Internet is Shopify. Shopify is great if you’re just starting out in ecommerce. The platform makes setting up your online store simple and painless. With Shopify, anybody can become successful selling products online. Here you can find the answers to some of the most common questions people have about Shopify.

How Shopify Works

Unlike other retailers, the Shopify merchant (you) doesn’t need to have their own inventory. Instead, you’re able to buy a product from another retailer after the customer places an order for it. This is a model called drop-shipping. This is great if you are starting out with little in terms of money or products. The retailer ships the products to the customer without you ever coming in contact with them. Shopify then pays you the difference.

What if you already have an existing line of products you want to sell? Great! Shopify can still work for you. Also, if you’re worrying whether or not the platform is secure, worry no longer. Shopify uses the most advanced security features in the industry, meaning yours and your customers’ money is safe. Shopify is a fantastic platform for getting a website up and running to give your business an online presence.

What To Sell On Shopify

The most important decision you will make for your Shopify store is picking a product to sell online. If you already have products, you can use what you know about your business and transfer it to ecommerce. If you’re going with the drop-shipping model, we recommend choosing a specific niche. For example, sell men’s golf clothing instead of all kinds of men’s clothing. This will keep your store from being buried under all the others selling broad categories of products.

How To Make Money On Shopify

You need to take the different products and prices of your competitors into account when running your ecommerce store. You should also put your best foot forward in terms of marketing. This is in order to attract enough clicks and impressions to keep your sales numbers up. Social media, SEO and Google Ads are all good ideas in terms of marketing since competition in ecommerce is high.

How To Set Up A Shopify Store

The Shopify platform makes it very easy and intuitive to start building your store. After creating your Shopify admin account, the first thing you need to do is start adding products. You add a product by going to the Products page, clicking “Add Product,” and entering a title and description.

Once all your products are added, you then need to pick a theme for your site. Pick a theme that you think best represents what you’re selling. For example, you don’t want to use a black-on-black theme to sell flower seeds. Finally, you must choose a URL that your customers can reach your store from.

DaBrian Marketing recommends that you use words in your URL that are relevant to what you are selling. If you want to sell flower seeds you should include either “flower” or “seeds” in your URL. This is so customers who click on a link to your site know what they’re getting into. There are detailed instructions on all of these steps on the Shopify website.

From this point, it’s all about organizing your ecommerce store for the customer. You should make your site as easy to use as possible so customers can find exactly what they’re looking for. This is an extremely important aspect of your online store. You’ll miss out on a ton of sales if the customer can’t find what they’re looking for.

You also have to think about making your website mobile responsive. A mobile-friendly design is extremely important in today’s market. Nowadays more people surf the Internet on their phones than on a desktop! Making your site the best it can be requires knowledge of web development and design. You can find free tips and resources for these areas in other DaBrian blog posts such as our recent articles on WordPress and Content Management Systems.

How To Find Shopify Stores

For the potential customers reading this, there are countless stores on the Shopify platform that sell a variety of products. You can find anything from clothing, watches, and eyewear to teas and electronics — and that’s just for starters. There are plenty of blog posts and resources available to help you find the perfect store for your needs. If you want to open your own store, it’s also a good idea to check out others that are successful. Shopify even gives out awards for the stores it considers the best in specific categories.

In conclusion, Shopify is a great option for people new to ecommerce. It’s simple, effective, and popular with people looking to shop online. With good marketing and strategy, you too can become an ecommerce success story!

Still have questions about Shopify or ecommerce as a whole? Contact us today or leave a comment below!

Three Considerations When Building an Ecommerce Website

June 19, 2017 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

Building an Ecommerce website requires extensive planning to account for every detail; the product feed, the filtering system, and just the right amount of bandwidth to power a large site. From personal experience, many unknown issues may arise especially depending on the size of the business’ inventory. So, plan for the known and for the unknown you can’t control. Understand what you are diving into and what vital pieces that will make or break your Ecommerce website before you dive in head first.

The Three Ecommerce Website Considerations:

Product Feed:

The product feed is by far the trickiest piece of the puzzle unless you are lucky enough to be given a properly formatted one. Unfortunately, you most likely to need to scrape and reformat the file. To make things more difficult, you may need to build a product feed from scratch! Regardless, this can be a very complex process. It may involve stripping out unnecessary code. Any unused categories, tags, and images must be removed to speed up the site. This can take a significant amount of time depending on the size of the file but it’s mandatory to revise it.

Filtering System:

A filtering system won’t always be necessary depending on the amount of variations. I recommend a filter once you reach about 25 different products or variations. A filtering system can make for a much better user experience (UX) because it gives the consumer the ability to slim down their search to exactly what they’re looking for. In most cases, I like to rely on the product tags and categories to build filters which connects directly back to the product feed. Tagging should start with high-level categories and break down to very specific attributes of the product to ensure they can use the filter effectively.

Bandwidth / Power:

So, you have a couple hundred products and feel ready to build it on the first low-cost option. Will this work?

What seems like a simple build can easily blow up exponentially. Consider which platform is the best option for your Ecommerce site. You could start with Woocommerce, BigCommerce, or Shopify, also consider your website host. A few options you could use are WPEngine, Rackspace, or Amazon. With many products and variations, you will find that you don’t have enough power through certain databases to load the products fast enough. With slow load times, you are ruining the UX and in turn, your sales numbers.

To Wrap Things Up:

There are so many unknown issues that can arise when building an Ecommerce site. We, as developers, designers, and decision-makers, need to prepare and plan for the unknown as best we can. Do your research and study before you bite off something bigger than you can chew. If you do, you may end up hurting your own reputation as well as the others involved in the project.

What are the biggest issues you have with Ecommerce websites? Let us know in the comments below!

Gk Elite Case Study – Conversion Tracking Using Google Adwords

January 17, 2017 by Justin Miller Leave a Comment

You Can't Improve What You Can't Measure (Accurately)

Recently, DaBrian Marketing Group wrote a case study on one of our Pay Per Click (PPC) clients. When we first reviewed their Google Adwords accounts, it appeared they were receiving several conversions. However on further review, their conversion configuration did not align with actual online transactions. After establishing new conversions that lead to and track online sales, DaBrian Marketing was able to measure return on ad spend (ROAS) and optimize our client’s PPC to increase transactions and their bottom line.

To learn more about this case study, watch the video below and download the full case study. If you have any questions, or would like DaBrian Marketing Group to take a look at your PPC, give us a call at 610 743 5602.

What problems are you having with your Pay Per Click advertising? Tell us in the comments below!

Mobile Design Tips For Your Ecommerce Business

December 12, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

What’s the first thing that pops into your head when developing your company’s Ecommerce website? Are you concerned about the design aesthetically? Or, is it the content on the pages? While these are certainly important, your primary focus should be creating a mobile-friendly site with a quick and easy purchase process.

The Rise of Mobile Shopping

Since last year, shopping related searches on mobile have grown more than 120%. At the click of a button, you can find and buy anything from your mobile device. This is changing the Ecommerce industry as we know it. According to Think with Google, 30% of all online shopping purchases happen on a mobile device. Knowing this, websites must be designed to be both mobile and desktop friendly.

The Customer’s Purchase Journey

An effective mobile design guides a user through the purchase process quickly and efficiently. The path to a potential sale should require the least amount of clicks as possible with fast load speeds. To accomplish this, you must put yourself in the customer’s shoes to think about what may impact them on making a purchase.

First Thing’s First: Load Speed

When a user first connects to your mobile site, the initial concern is load speed. If your site isn’t fully optimized, people will leave before it even finishes loading. Last year, 54% of all holiday shoppers said they plan on shopping in their spare time during the day, like when they are commuting (but, don’t shop and drive). This gives your a smaller window of time The clock’s ticking! get your customers to check out as quickly as possible.

Give Them Personal Space

Once someone visits a site, a commonly used tactic is collect personal information…STOP! Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Often when asked to register immediately, a user will close the window and look for another option. You haven’t given them time to check out your site yet, pump the breaks. If you insist, try giving them third-party options like Facebook, Twitter, or Google+.

Product Search and Filter Functionality

Make your products easy to find and give your customers a positive shopping experience with search bars and product filters. These enable users to find specific items they’re looking for. Most users expect this to be as easy as Google makes it, so try not to disappoint!

When it comes to online shopping, most users are hesitant to pull the trigger. Allow for an easy decision by providing customers with the ability to extensively view the product. Give them the freedom of pinch zooming in and out to know for sure it’s what they want. Also, be sure to include all the product details, any discounts, in-store availability, shipping, and user reviews. A great way to help further assure them is to use Youtube videos for reviews and product overview. 50% of smartphone video viewers say they use videos to help them make product decisions in-store or on a company’s website.

All this information gives the user peace-of-mind in knowing they made the right purchase. For good measure, sneak a few related items in the bottom of the page to encourage more sales!

A User-Friendly Shopping Cart

The user now has the products he or she wants and is ready to check out. Include easy options to add and remove items from the shopping cart without leaving the checkout page.

Once everything is set, the user will press forward to fill out shipping and billing information. Simplify the process by allowing them to continue as a guest and by offering third-party payment options such as Paypal, Apple Pay, or Android Pay. This helps speed things up. For added reassurance, drop a note under the payment information affirming this is a secure checkout process. Now is a great time to offer special promotions and coupons! Once they submit the order, follow-up with a confirmation page and email with a full-detailed summary of their purchase.

Wrapping It Up

The user experience needs to be the forefront of our thought process when designing mobile sites. It needs to be a friendly, smooth-sailing, information-packed adventure that step-by-step leads them to that conversion. Think with Google says 82% of mobile users turn to their mobile device about a product while in the store. Having a well-designed mobile site can make all the difference between “I’m just looking.” to “I’m ready to checkout.”

Using the information provided here will give you valuable insight and great tips on what to include when setting up your mobile ecommerce website.

As a user, what do you look for on a mobile Ecommerce website? Tell us in the comments below!

Email Marketing Strategies That Will Increase Your Ecommerce Sales

December 5, 2016 by Dabrian Marketing Group Leave a Comment

As a fellow marketer, I bet we both can agree that it seems like we can never get caught up with emails. Our inbox is flooded with random people or businesses trying to gain our attention. As we skim past every subject line and choose which emails to open, which ones to actually read, and which ones to simply delete, we quickly determine the ones worth our time. If we do it, your consumers do, too. Your email marketing efforts need to be focused on what’s going to attract your consumers to open, click, and buy your products.

Connect your Ecommerce Store

To do this, integrating your Ecommerce store to your email marketing platform correctly is the first step. The data you need to increase your sales will then automatically populate. You’ll begin capturing their purchase history, following their path to your website, and learning more about the people they are such as their demographics, geographic location, and interests. Before you start seeing an impact on your ROI, you need to learn what to actually do with the information you now have.

Segment Your Email Lists

Sending emails to your potential or current customers is a great way to continue the communication between the two of you, but it doesn’t mean they are interested in what you have to say. By segmenting your lists, you can distribute emails directed towards that particular customer.

Types of Customer Segments:

Potential Customers – Those who’ve shown interest, but never purchased should get an email to ensure you both stay connected.
Recent Customers – If they recently purchased an item, you now have an idea of what they like. Send them a follow-up email with other similar products.
First-time Customers – These new customers might enjoy a “thank you” email to feel more welcomed and appreciated.
Repeat Customers – They have purchased more than once already. Make sure they stay your repeat customers by sending them a special offer or coupon.
Lapsed Customers – Lapsed customers haven’t purchased anything in months. Become top-of-mind again by sending them a deal on the last product they purchased.
Seasonal Customers – Say some customers only buy during certain months of the year. When this month rolls around, be the first name they see. Send them an email with images of what they usually buy.

This segmentation can get you started with sending out the right emails, but there many other ways to segment your lists, also.

Test your Content

Simply because you sent out an email, doesn’t mean you will actually get every customer to open it– We know this. Find out what makes them more inclined to open and interact with your email. A/B testing is the perfect way to do so. This is when you change one variable of an email and see which one performs better. You can test the sender’s name, subject line, send time, copy inside the email, and imagery (videos, gifs, etc.). Does a more blunt, factual approach work for your customers or do they enjoy more humor? Whichever email generates the most sales is your winner!

Click Here for A/B Testing Ideas

Rely on Automated Emails

In a study completed by eMarketer, it was found that B2C marketers who leverage automation have seen conversion rates as high as 50%. Automated emails are reminders and follow-ups of a recent consumer interaction. One of the most important automated emails is an abandoned shopping cart reminder. eMarketer also reports that an email notification about an abandoned shopping cart receives a 40.5% open rate. You know they’re interested, so tell them they need it and don’t let them forget.

Track What You’ve Earned

Whether you’re sending an individual email or an entire email campaign, it’s important to analyze the results. How do the open rates and click percentages compare to industry averages? How many unsubscribed from receiving your emails? How many sales did it generate? What was its average dollar sale compared to your other emails? Find out why a certain email performed better (or worse) than another. Constant analysis allows for constant improvement.

Perfect your email marketing now so you can start the New Year with just one more way to improve your ROI.