10 Most Common Shopify Mistakes
This piece is a follow-up to our previous piece on Shopify basics. If any of these apply to your business or if you have one to add, hit us up!
1. Not having a primary domain.
Setting up your site’s primary domain should be one of the very first things you do. You do not want customers to see your “...myshopify.com” URL. It looks unprofessional and diminishes your brand value. If your brand doesn’t command value your products won’t either.
2. No About us page.
People buy as much because of who you are as what you sell. An authentic connection is central to building a great e-commerce brand so tell customers about you, your team and why your brand exists. Shopify makes it so easy to set up an eCommerce site, that it’s tempting to jump straight to selling and skip over telling customers who you are.
3. Weak product descriptions.
Product descriptions are key to growing your business. If they’re unclear or weak, or repetitive, your site’s ranking in search results will suffer. If people can’t find your site, they won’t be able to shop there! Descriptions are also one of your most powerful sales tools. Once a buyer has landed on the product description, chances are they're pretty far along the sales funnel. A great description is what will make them click “add to cart” driving revenue for you. So what makes a product description great?
First, make sure it’s clear, concise and unique. Don’t get lazy and use similar (or the same) language for every product. It’s bad for search and useless to buyers.
Use bullet points. Everyone loves easy to read digestible content. Put the buyer’s needs first. What sort of questions could they have that make them hesitant to buy? For example, if it’s a pair of pants, fit, measurements, and care are top of mind concerns. Do some research on your buyers, identify the common questions and address those. For clothing and apparel, USE sizing charts!
4. Bad images and graphics.
Blurry, incorrectly sized images, logos and other graphics make your site looks amateur (at best) and untrustworthy. Thanks to cognitive association, poor quality images will translate into bad product quality in shopper’s minds.
5. You don't do your app homework.
Thoroughly test and research any Shopify Apps (marketing, email, etc.,) before adding them. Remember they are built by third parties and Shopify doesn't vet them for you.
6. You try to manually upload your inventory.
Beginner's mistake. Take advantage of the batch upload feature (via .csv file) to load your initial inventory, which can save hours over adding products one-by-one.
7. Not testing on multiple devices!
Make sure to test your site on multiple devices. Quality assurance (QA) is vital to your brand value and your site’s success. Skimp out on testing and your site is guaranteed to look janky or flat out not work. A dysfunctional site will cause you to lose customers and your brand reputation will be damaged.
8. If you build it they will come.
True, if you’re Kevin Costner in Field of Dreams. For the rest of us, marketing is key to growth. Competition is steep and standing out is tough. Call on experts to help you create a solid, meaningful brand and a marketing strategy to take that brand to the next level.
9. Pop-up overload.
Brands love them because they’re great for collecting critical data. Shoppers hate them because they’re intrusive, disruptive and fundamentally annoying. All of these negative feelings are compounded exponentially when a pop-up appears too soon after landing on a site. A shopper may, in theory, be quite willing to share their info with your brand but after they’ve determined that your brand is interesting to them. Put yourself in your shopper’s shoes and use caution with pop-ups.
10. Not using collection pages.
Collection pages are how Shopify helps users categorize products making it easy for shoppers to search and find what they’re looking for. They’re also great for ranking in search for high volume search terms. Collection pages are a default feature so not leveraging them is a waste.
