How to Increase My Shopify Sales
Shopify has quickly become one of the world’s most popular eCommerce platforms. It powers more than one million businesses across the globe.
In fact, Shopify controls 31% of the total eCommerce market share in the United States.
It’s the most searched for eCommerce solution on Google, and the fastest-growing eCommerce platform in existence at the moment. If you’re currently using Shopify to sell online or within your app, you’ve definitely made the right choice.
As a Shopify store manager, it’s your responsibility to make sure that products are selling.
Having an eCommerce website is a good start, but it’s not enough to maximize the potential of your store. A website alone, even if it’s mobile-friendly, is just the tip of the iceberg.
It doesn’t matter what you’re selling or what industry you’re in; your Shopify store needs a mobile app.
There is a common misconception out there that mobile commerce apps are only used by enterprise stores and global chains. That’s a myth, and couldn’t be farther from the truth.
The market dictates mobile app usage, and consumers worldwide prefer to shop via mobile apps. So any small or medium-sized business will benefit from a mobile commerce app as well.
You may not realize it, but your Shopify store is competing with big brands like Amazon. These companies have set certain expectations in the minds of your customers. So to stay competitive and reach as many people as possible, your Shopify store must adapt and launch an app.
Push Notifications
One of the most significant advantages of a mobile commerce app is the ability to stay in contact with your customers. Communication is limited on a Shopify web store on its own.
At the moment, you’re probably relying on email to reach shoppers. But lots of factors need to go your way in order for an email campaign to be successful.
First, you need to turn website visitors into email subscribers. That’s easier said than done. It usually requires a visitor to take at least a couple of steps to complete the process. If someone buys a product from your Shopify store, you might give them an option to automatically opt-in to emails, but some customers won’t go for that.
Once someone joins your email list, communication still isn’t promised. Your emails need to be delivered and opened by the recipients.
That’s where push notifications come into play. To communicate with customers via push notifications, all they need to do is download your app.
In terms of engagement, push notifications beat emails in every category.
That’s because push notifications appear on a user’s mobile device similar to a text message. The chances of them reading it and opening the message are much higher than a promotional email buried in someone’s inbox.
While you should definitely be using push notifications to drive Shopify sales, just make sure you do so with caution. Sending too many messages can be annoying, and it’s one of the reasons why users mute push notifications.
As a Shopify store owner, you should only send push notifications that add real value to app users. Such as:
Flash sales
Discount codes
Delivery notifications
These are ideal examples of what you should be using. Just saying hello or sending a weekly newsletter as a push notification won’t be effective and could ultimately backfire.
Loyalty Programs
A loyalty program gives people an incentive to spend more money and increase their shopping frequency. Both of these metrics will boost sales of your Shopify store.
Can you have a customer loyalty program without a mobile app? Absolutely. But an app will really take your program to the next level.
For starters, it’s unlikely that your customers will visit your website on a daily basis. Even your best customers may only online buy from your Shopify store once or twice per month.
They probably aren’t eager to check their loyalty status if they need to land on your website, log in, and navigate to their customer profile. So the program almost becomes an afterthought.
However, your customers use their phones every day. Your app is just a click away at any given moment. This makes it easy for them to track their status and gives them an incentive to reach the next level.
Flexible Payment Options
With a mobile app, you can give your customers more choices when it comes time to collect payments. Don’t assume that everyone buying from your Shopify store has Visa or Mastercard.
You need to offer as many different payment options as possible. This will improve your conversion rates at checkout.
More than half of all checkouts on Shopify come from a mobile device.
But 30% of mobile shoppers won’t complete the purchase process if the experience isn’t optimized for their device. An app is by far the best way to optimize mobile checkouts.
If you create an app for your Shopify store, it’s much easier for you to add different payment options to accommodate the preferences of mobile shoppers.
All major credit cards
All debit cards
Gift cards
PayPal
Venmo
Apple Pay
Google Pay
Lots of users already have these payment apps on their mobile devices. You can integrate your checkout process with the apps, which allows users to checkout as fast as possible. Sometimes they’ll just need a fingerprint to convert.
One-Click Purchasing
Mobile apps have changed the way people shop with one-click purchasing.
Think about your current checkout process. What steps does a customer need to take if they want to buy something?
General process:
Find product
Add product to cart
Navigate to cart
Enter name
Provider contact information (email, phone number)
Enter email address
Provide billing information
Enter shipping information
Finalize checkout
That’s a lot of steps. With each added step, it gives your customers an opportunity to change their minds, get frustrated, or make a mistake causing them to abandon the process.
We have already established that nearly 60% of all Shopify sales come from mobile devices. So if you don’t have an app, then you’re forcing your customers to buy from your mobile site.
Going through this checkout procedure on a small screen is tedious, and won’t result in high conversion rates.
The solution is simple—one-click purchasing with a mobile app.
Amazon was the pioneer behind this trend. But it’s now widely used by eCommerce retailers worldwide. All you need to do is put some form of a “Buy Now” button directly on your product pages.
This skips the complicated checkout and need for customers to enter tons of information into form fields, which is a hassle from mobile devices. Users will already have their name, contact info, shipping details, and payment method saved on their customer profile within the app.
Checkouts can be completed in a matter of seconds, which will increase your conversion rates and decrease abandonment rates.
Referrals
Lots of eCommerce businesses have some type of referral program. But not all of those programs are successful.
The best way to implement a customer referral program is with a mobile app.
First, you need to offer an incentive for your customers to recommend your brand to other people. Monetary benefits will likely be the most successful. Something along the lines of a “give $10, get $10” campaign usually works. Obviously, you can customize this to fit with your brand image.
Once the promotion is determined, you need to figure out how customers are going to share the offer with their friends. Without an app, this is complicated.
From a website, users will be forced to manually enter the names, phone numbers, or email addresses of people who they want to refer to. That’s not very practical, and most people will probably skip it.
The majority of customers are willing to give referrals, but only a fraction of them actually do it.
Mobile apps make it much easier for users to give referrals because an app can integrate with a user’s contact list. All they have to do is select the names of people that they want to refer.
This also increases the chances that customers will send out mass referrals.
Mobile apps also integrate with social media platforms, so your customers can share promo codes directly on their profiles as well.
At the end of the day, optimizing your referral program can drive a considerable boost in your sales.
Location-Based Promotions
The most successful promotions are relevant. You might be offering a great deal or discount, but if it’s not closely connected or appropriate for your customers, then it’s useless.
You can use Shopify's geofencing technology to deliver relevant promotions.
You can set up your app to integrate with the GPS on a user’s device. So when a user enters a predetermined barrier within a location, you can automatically send them a push notification with a relevant offer.
In addition to push notifications, you can also use a customer’s location to personalize the content they see when browsing on your Shopify app.
Using location-based services can improve the user experience and deliver relevant promotions in real-time. This increases the chances that mobile users will buy from your Shopify store app.
Improve Customer Convenience
Every decision you make to improve your Shopify store needs to be based on the customer.
The number one reason why customers like apps better than websites for retail purchases is convenience. Beyond that, the other top benefits on the graph above are related to:
Speed
Stored settings
Benefits and rewards
Personalized content
Better deals
You can’t recreate these benefits from a website or even from a mobile site. The customer experience will always be better from a mobile app.
When customers are happy, their shopping frequency increases and they spend more money per purchase. Mobile sales can easily cover the initial investment of creating an app for your Shopify store.
Enhanced Customer Service
Customers can track the status of an order directly in the app once they complete the purchase process. They’ll see updates on when the order has shipped, and have access to the tracking information as well. You can even send them a notification when the shipment has been delivered.
Without an app, tracking a delivery can be a pain. You’re forced to send a separate email with the third-party tracking number. Customers must open that email, copy the number, open a new tab for the carrier’s website, paste the number, and then search for it. This isn’t practical.
But from an app, they can view the status of an order and shipment in just seconds with a couple of clicks.
Beyond that, you can also offer enhanced customer support directly in the app. If a customer has a question, your app can facilitate live chat with a customer service representative.
Customers can submit inquiries or start support tickets within the app as well.
You don’t want to encourage customer returns. But with that said, returns are just part of being in the eCommerce business. So you might as well make them as easy as possible for your customers.
If your return process causes headaches for your customers, then they probably won’t buy from you again. But if you make this process simple, people will still be willing to buy from your Shopify store in the future, even if they weren’t satisfied with their initial purchase.
Personalization
Most customers want personalized recommendations from retailers.
Your Shopify mobile app will be the best way to give people exactly what they need. Apps make it easy to leverage AI technology.
This type of technology will monitor the actions of users as they interact with your app. Based on their browsing behaviour and purchase history, your app can automatically recommend relevant products to each unique customer.
When a customer sees a relevant product suggestion, it increases the chances that they’ll buy it. Personalized recommendations are a great way to sell and cross-sell mobile app users.
Next Steps:
Even if your Shopify store is doing well right now, it hasn’t reached its full potential if you don’t have a mobile app.
The majority of Shopify sales come from mobile devices. So if you can’t adapt to this trend now, it could create big problems for your eCommerce business in the future.
A mobile app gives you more opportunities to drive sales than a website ever could.
You’ll be able to communicate with your customers using push notifications and location-based promotions. Loyalty programs and referrals are easier to implement on an app as well.
Apps optimize the checkout process and make it easy for customers to buy using their preferred payment method.
You’ve already made the right choice by using Shopify to power your eCommerce platform. Now it’s time to take that strategy to the next level by building a mobile commerce app using Appily App Builder and the Shopify plugin feature.
