According to apocryphal legend, Napoleon once described the United Kingdom as a nation of shopkeepers. If he was around today, he could justifiably apply the epithet to any nation he chose. Depending on whose statistics you believe, there are anything from 15 to 20 million e-commerce stores vying for our hard-earned money online and the Internet is a more competitive selling environment than a city center or a shopping mall.
If you count yourself among these millions, you will be constantly on the lookout for ways to boost sales and stay ahead of the pack. That’s no simple task, particularly in this age of Shopify. The platform has gone from nothing to powering more than 500,000 e-commerce stores in a little over a decade and is the go-to app for entrepreneurs who want to get into e-commerce with minimal startup cost.
That’s great, but does it mean being pigeonholed with thousands of similar sites that use the same cookie cutter platform? Not necessarily, if you make clever use of the following optimization tools.
Streamline your order management
The problem with a one-size-fits-all approach like Shopify is that it must appeal to the lowest common denominator, which is a small startup. As your business grows, you can find yourself getting bogged down as you try to keep track of a growing number of orders on a basic spreadsheet. Shopify order management software streamlines processes and increases efficiency. That means it helps to reduce costs and process orders faster and more accurately.
Convert your leads
Turning lookers into buyers is the big challenge for any retail business, and even a small improvement here can have a big impact on the bottom line. There are a few software apps out there that can help with this, and one that has been making waves is Groovejar. Here’s the thing – a recent report suggests that less than three percent of visitors to an e-commerce site actually make a purchase. Groovejar automatically approaches the other 97 percent and asks them to supply their email addresses so that you can follow up. It uses popup tools that are fully customizable so you can add any incentives you might feel appropriate, such as discounts and giveaways.
Boost your reviews
Another market research survey found that more than 92 percent of consumers read reviews, and almost two-thirds are more inclined to purchase from a site that has a customer reviews page. Clearly, this sort of user-generated content is a powerful tool, and if you are not using it, you are damaging your bottom line. Again, there are a few apps out there that can help with this, but Yotpo stands out in terms of usability. It emails customers after their shopping experience and allows them to place their review there and then from the email, as opposed to having to go back to your site to do so. The app can also manage user-generated content across social channels like Facebook and Twitter.
