If you’re one of the 1 million plus businesses currently using Shopify, you already know that the platform handles much of the heavy lifting of e-commerce for you. With Shopify, the details that can make e-commerce a real headache to manage—shipping, fulfillment, payment processing, discounts, point of sale, integrations—are all built into the platform, so that you have access to everything you need from your dashboard. (Read our thoughts on the platform here.)
Despite those powerful, baked-in capabilities, we often see store owners miss important opportunities to optimize their websites and leverage those essential features. We’ve compiled a list of our simple tips and tricks to make sure you’re not missing out on the benefits of Shopify.
Our strong belief at Good & Gold is that if you sell products on your website, you should create easy access to those products on your homepage. Yes, it's important to use prime real estate on your homepage to establish your brand’s mission, values, and differentiators—but it’s also important to let the people shop. Whether you include a particular popular product, products within a featured collection, or a selection of primary product collections, create an easy, appealing entry point for those visitors that are ready to purchase.
Dynamic checkout buttons display on product pages as an alternative to “add to cart” buttons for single products. These buttons allow customers to skip the cart and go directly to checkout, giving them the option to speed up the checkout process if they’ve already made their purchase decision. What’s more, depending on your payment settings and the customer’s browser and device, the dynamic checkout button will show the logos for third-party “accelerated” checkout methods, like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, etc.
The reason it’s so important to toggle on this feature is twofold: 1) Customers appreciate a quick checkout when they already know what they want, and dynamic checkout makes that possible. 2) It’s quite common for shoppers to leave products in their cart, get distracted, and forget to check out. Dynamic checkout helps to mitigate the “abandoned cart” phenomenon by skipping the cart altogether, and guiding customers swiftly from product page to checkout.
Most Shopify themes give you the option to show similar products below your individual product details on product pages. Do it! These sections are extremely effective at generating interest and encouraging further exploration. They also create a helpful tool for recapturing interest if the specific product viewed isn’t quite right for a particular customer—rather than allowing them to move on and search elsewhere, show them some additional options that might be just right.
Customer reviews build “social proof,” which is a powerful force in the world of e-commerce. We highly recommend amplifying the voices of your customers, turning them into an army of brand advocates however and whenever you can. If you’re not up for spending money to enable product reviews on your website, you can opt for Shopify’s free Product Reviews app, which is extremely simple and easy to manage. For more advanced features like review request emails, photos, and a customizable onsite widget, we recommend the Yotpo Product Reviews & Photos app.
This one is simple, but easily missed, because checkout settings for Shopify are configured in a different area than settings for other pages. To avoid a default, off-brand checkout flow, be sure to visit your checkout settings under “Theme settings,” add your logo, and customize the typography and colors of your checkout flow to match the rest of your website. A checkout sequence that doesn’t match your brand will diminish trust in your website, and likely lead to frequent abandoned checkouts.
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Of course, these five tips are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the available features in Shopify, and our thoughts about how to best optimize your store. If you’re seeing a low conversion rate on your Shopify site, or wondering why your store isn’t performing the way you think it should, we'd love to help out with conversion analysis and UX audit.
