How Does Shopify Work

Shopify works by helping store owners build a complete online store from scratch at a very high quality and with no code. This is part of the reason why they are becoming so successful.

It is time to wake up and smell the flowers, e-commerce is a booming industry and you are missing out. The first and best objective you can set to elevate your business to a new level is integrating an online shopping function. The best option out there is Shopify because they allow you to build a complete store from scratch and starting selling all over the world. They cover your shipping, marketing, financials and anything else you can think of.

E-commerce in comparison to traditional brick and mortar business is way more efficient and highly competitive. In order to take full advantage of the growth potential of e-commerce, our goal should be to go from physical to digital and from digital to international. The scale and magnitude of the e-commerce industry is well understood. It is also the most economical business development you can make. The digital age is all about how you market your product and how you reach them. Fortunate for us, the number of people who actively use the internet is at a new unprecedented level. 

Lets say that you wanted to start your own business online, and wanted to use e-commerce for its huge potential. Branding and exposure are important for new businesses, so you will need some digital marketing skills. This is exactly why digital marketing is becoming a highly influential industry with numerous businesses emerging from thin air. You can reach millions of people with digital marketing that's why its so highly relatable to e-commerce or Shopify. Shopify also makes it possible for smaller business to start as well because of their public size.

If you wanted to start your own Shopify Store, this is what you should expect.

Keys to Success

Functionality and the User Experience

The customer always expects a smooth and well designed website. Anything short of this could potentially cause harm to your brand image. The functionality of your website is the face of your business and forming a positive impression is vital. When we say User Experience, what we mean is everything the visitor experiences when roaming your store. You would be surprised by just how impactful a bit of color is on your competition. There are endless ways you can improve stores performance just by analyzing your competitors and finding ways to edge them out of picture. So marketing research is also a very important, all you really need to do is start focusing on the layout and design of every website you visit.

Having visitors engage with your website is your best possible outcome. Engagement can be translated to mean that you viewers are actually understanding your website and product. That means they understand and took the effort to learn about your offer. This is typically reflected in things like bounce rates, followers and reviews. 

Tips on keeping your website on target:

1. Keep your copy simple and informative, make sure that the main idea is relayed clearly and briefly. Brevity is a must but beware of over simplified language that could also be counter productive. Employ images and infographics if necessary to get the message across.
2. Think about the quality of your visuals and videos, having sharp images and well edited videos can help you stand out. While images are important for branding your business, you also don’t want them to slow down your website's performance. Take note of your file sizes and speed of your website.
3. Carefully build your site map and make sure that website structure fits the customers preferences. There should be a reasonable flow of information, to do so we must envision the customer journey throughout the website which includes navigation and layout.
4. Include plug-ins and integrations to give your customers more reason to engage with your store. By maximizing the time they spend at your website you have greater reason to believe that your message is getting through to them and that they are remembering your brand and store.

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Using an Omni-Channel Approach

When we say omni-channel marketing strategies, what we mean is using more then one social platforms and tools to capture leads. When it comes to the internet, all news ventures are in a state of obscurity so creating opportunity is an important step forward. Omni-channeling is the best way of creating value for your business and driving new and unique visitors. By omni-channeling you are able to push your content and reach unique visitors across platforms. This may include using Facebook, LinkedIn, News Articles, Instagram, Magazines.

E-commerce requires that you understand the customers needs

Product qualities and brand Image are not necessarily the same. There is always an element of creativity in how you market your business. Appealing to your customers in an eye catching way has a lot to do with how well you manage the intentions of your shoppers. Purchase intent can be influenced by both brand and perceived value of your product or service. The internet is a perfect place to build this image and how well you know the customers intentions is reflective in how you brand your business.

Building Trust and Reputation

It is a matter of fact that your marketing is only as effective as the quality of your product. It is also common knowledge that trust is extra important when your dealing with buying and selling something you haven't seen in person. Reviews are a major part of product promotion and the after purchase sentiment of your consumers is highly relevant. That's why we say that its easier to market a high quality product because expectations need to match the actual receivable product. Reviews may not always reflect the true quality of a product but we can say with relative certainty that they do in fact affect how customers choose between their options. Reviews are widely considered to be important in e-commerce because they reassure the customer.

Apps or Integrations

Just like there are prominent market players in website builders and e-commerce platforms, there are also apps that can help create value with simple installations. Shopify is a major public company but they also have a bunch of separate companies building additional apps. These apps are constantly evolving and they have genuine value to them. These apps are part of the growing e-commerce industry and serve countless e-commerce businesses. Its highly recommend that you do some research into the sort of apps are available in the Shopify App Store. They can span categories, like dropshipping, marketing and logistics or apps for accounting automations and handling invoices.

Keyword Analysis

A major part of building a successful website is identifying keyword intent and optimizing for keyword competition. Although it’s a less glamorous topic, we still need to optimize the flow of traffic to our website by using the correct wording and phrases in our copy, titles, meta descriptions and url tags. Many keywords are overly saturated and commonly used making it difficult for us to rank on the top page for these search results, especially if we are new. A major portion of all web traffic originates through search engines and so it’s important to understand how we can work the system to place our store in the customers feed.

Websites can rank for a broad variety of keywords but their relevance is very important. Some websites can rank for thousands and thousands of keywords, but unless these keywords are relevant to that website, there is no utility in it and their ranking will only suffer if the customer leaves immeditalty. Next time you search for something in Google imagine a number alongside each search result that begins from the first item and continues as you move through the pages. By default each page has 10 results and it is common for a website to fall out of relevance by page 2.

Loyalty Programs

A loyalty program is a prime example of a high impact integration that can create the sort of customer engagement that you strive for. Shoppers will often investigate the value of rewards program to see what sort of advantage or discount may be available. While tiers are a way to retain these shoppers in the long-term through progressively favorable rewards. The value of the rewards are often compared by potential shoppers, with the most advantageous program often being chosen by shoppers for their discount value.

Discounts and other price reducing promotions are highly effective in creating purchase intent. Communicating the possibility of price reduction can be done on-page or through secondary mediums such as SMS, Email and Push Notifications. The combination of lower prices and intrinsic quality prompts sincere consideration for a store or specific item. This checks the basic objective of consumer engagement and increases the chances of the customer returning to your store and completing a purchase.

Paid Adverts

When it comes to expansion which requires greater exposure, the internet is uniquely positioned for maximum visibility through paid advertisement. Once a business is capable of facilitating greater volume; platforms like Facebook and Google can be used to increase web traffic to your store. These ads are constantly growing more effective and better attuned to consumer demand. Often adjustments are made depending on requirements by the merchant for productivity. These ads grow more effective the more refined the overall marketing strategy becomes.

These are the things that you should expect when using Shopify. In order to benefit from using Shopify you will need to understand how ecommerce works in general. You will need to know basic Digital marketing skills and have a clear agenda. But its defenitly a good idea to keep on going because the world is growing more and more digital by the day.