13 Things To Put You in the Top 1% of Shopify Stores

Credibility and Trust

The importance of an about us page, logo and contact details

Trust is easy to understand but hard to get right. 4 things that can easily push users over the fence are a great about us page, a good bold - authoritative logo, trust badges and contact details that are clearly visible and not lurking somewhere strange.

The first thing you need to work on is your about us page - you need a message that will resonate with your audience but isn’t robotic and formal. You are talking to humans, be yourself and be human, know why you’re doing what you are doing and tell your customers. Write out your mission statement. Tell them your story. Extra points if you put in photos. For more tips on About us pages I highly recommend this post by Lindsay Kolowich (Hubspot)

Your Logo needs to carry the message of your about us page or at least look like you put in even the slightest amount of effort ! Not just something that has no relation to your brand, about us, products or message and just “looks good”. There’s tonnes of Studies and infographics behind the psychology of logo design. Here are some studies on the psychology of shapes as well as colors of logos. Make sure you stick to these to give your customers the right message through your logo.

Trust badges are proven to increase sales - and immediately increase the authority of your store. Make sure you include them. If you can’t figure out where to place them - put it in your footer - which is actually somewhere customers scroll very often (more later)

Last but not least in ensuring your Shopify store just exudes trust is contact details. Having no contact details visible anywhere is a big red flag, having just an email is better but the best way to gain trust is a phone number and/or a physical address. A quick tip if you don’t have any physical address is to get a virtual office which are available in so many locations around the world. You can also get a PO Box and enter the address of the post office where the PO Box is located as your address. Make sure any actual customers know to send any returns to the PO Box though otherwise you will have a nightmare of a time (unless you talk to your Post Office directly before hand about potential situations like this).

Our Themes take your logo to the forefront of your customers minds with a header that accentuates the logo perfectly no matter the colours you choose for it. The theme establishes trust through phone, email address and social media accounts as well as an optional address in the footer. We also show customers your trust badges at exactly the right time (when they are adding something to cart or when they are trying to figure out if they should buy - through the site footer).

Above the fold content

Focus on the first things your customers see on your site homepage.

‘Above the fold’ is a term used to describe the content of your page that customers see without having to scroll down. Something they see immediately which needs to say and do 3 important things: What are you selling ? Who is it for ? How can they get it ?

When answering the questions, be sure to use explanations that a 5 year can understand. Your “How can they get it” explanation will be the button or CTA (Call to Action) and it needs to be BOLD and CLEAR in its purpose. i.e Buy Now or Add To Cart

You need to limit the number of images you have on image/video sliders to 1.. maybe 2 if necessary - to focus the attention of the customer on your message. Make sure all your sliders follow the 3 important Principles above as well - your sliders need to explain what you’re selling, who its for and how they can get it. Otherwise you may as well have no sliders at all.

Here are some examples of great above the fold content - with a good CTA. They could have been better if they stuck to the one / two slide rule. [Example 1] [Example 2]

Product Display

Give customers as much information as possible for them to make an informed buying decision.

If your theme does not come with easily configurable product badges then you are missing out on a good bit of business. Having product badges helps draw attention to products and therefore increases sales. Product badges need to be used effectively though.. otherwise they really don’t make sense. If a store has everything marked as “on sale” it kind've defeats the purpose of having an “on sale” badge to begin with. Our rule of thumb for badges is : new products, best sellers, sale items (don’t make everything on sale) and best reviewed products are marked with their own special badges. This helps the user easily find what they think may be valuable to them.

Product pages need to have pricing clearly visible - and if it is on sale then either show the previous price and savings in percentage or dollar value. The customer needs to be completely aware of what they are paying for. A mistake lots of sites make is having the price with the same text style as the title or description. It’s hard to find and not very professional - almost like you are trying to hide something.. You can fix this up easily by making the price bold and the same size as the product title size.

Your product photos need to be clear and preferably on a white background. Take a look all the best selling products on amazon and you will notice - they have a white background. Most of the most popular stores on Shopify and on the web also stick to this principle too. Have a look at ASOS.com (one of the largest clothing retailers in the world)

As much as possible; use videos to show what's included in your packaging, an overview of the product, how to use it etc. an example is (if you have a clothes store) having a video of how a model looks wearing your t-shirt/ clothes from different angles rather than just a picture. Make sure to include as much other information as you can in your videos ! Putting a video in the description will work. But if you need more organisation then put it in your product tabs. If your store doesn’t have those then you need to get a theme that does (something like our Themes).

Make sure you add in as much information as possible to help the customers make an informed decision - FAQs about products need to appear in the product page - not in your FAQ page. Someone who has a question about your shoes won’t scroll through the entire FAQ just to find their answer on shoes - so make it specific. If a customer is on a page for a shoe then make sure that page answers their questions - about shoes.

Always make sure to include things like size guides (if you sell clothing) and Shipping times. Shipping times are the #1 question from your customer. Make sure you address that question. As a general rule of thumb - the faster your shipping times the more likely you are to sell. Nobody wants to wait too long. Always offer express shipping as an option unless its expensive and you’re shipping to an international customer.

Reviews are vital content to the product page - it helps to sell the product if you have reviews integrated into your store. The more reviews you have - the better your product page looks and contrary to popular belief - if you have all 5 star reviews and not a single bad score (we’re talking 2/3’s) then customers will actually trust you less. If you have a negative review - just make sure you always respond so customers can see you actually care. Anything with a 4 star or above is good for business. If you are struggling to find your first reviews for your products - try asking your suppliers if they have reviews for your specific product, ask friends and family to leave some etc. It’s not worth promoting a product through paid ads if you don’t have any reviews on your product(s). Infographic on reviews.

All these tips on products like product badges, tabs, clear pricing, support for videos in description, size guides and even reviews are FULLY integrated with our Themes. Lots of other themes lack all these features.

Upsells and Crossells

Serve the customer products that they may be interested in at just the right times

Picture this : You’ve just come into some money and want to buy this awesome pair of shoes that you’ve been looking at for some time. You go to the store and pick out the shoes and head straight to the cash register to pay. The sales person realises by speaking to you that you really really love these shoes and offers to help you keep them looking great with some shoe protection. Would you take that offer ? I’m going to say you probably would if you had more money. Let’s pretend you do have that money and accept that offer. The sales person then even says that that cleaner also comes in a combo back with some deodorising spray (so your shoes don’t smell) and some special polish to keep them dry when it rains. I’m sure you’d agree that .. If you had money - you would probably buy that too.

The first offer the sales person made you is a crossell - they recommended a product that would compliment your purchase. Then the sales person made you an upsell offer, which is the combo pack with the spray and polish. They increased your purchase value and probably made a handsome profit on the crossell/upsell. You’d be surprised how many business’ actually are ONLY profitable because of those kinds of offers. They sell you a product they don’t make much money on and then sell you addons that make them lots of money. These offers are powerful because they are relevant and they increase dollar value and profit for those stores that implement it.

You want that functionality in your eCommerce store - and you need the offers to appear at the right time - i.e when a customer adds an item to cart. You can then offer them things that fit in perfectly with their purchase - thats the formula for a good upsell and crosssell offer. Added these shoes to cart ? Why not buy our shoe cleaning solution ! You can do this using apps or with our Sails Theme Upsell & Crossell App to give incredibly targeted offers and messages to your customers at just the right time.

The perfect places and times for suggesting crosssells are when the customer adds to cart, in the cart page itself and using “related items” in your product page. Upsells are best presented in just the first 2 i.e when customer adds to cart and in the cart page itself.

QUICK TIP: Using this Upsell hack you can increase dollar value even without installing apps or buying anything. Add your Upsell products as bundles and create variants for your Shopify Products that have the product in a bundled option. eg. Buy 2 get 1 FREE (SAVE 33%). Customers can then select the upsell in the drop down list. All without you spending a single cent.

Set up Tracking PROPERLY

A few basics on Look Alike Audiences, Facebook, Google and Screen Recording Tools

Another thing people sometimes forget to do is add BOTH a Facebook Pixel and Google Analytics Tracking code to their site so they can capture the data and learn what to improve through it. There’s so much value in both these tracking tools and they can honestly be the only tracking tools you have and you’d be well sorted to optimise, scale and grow your store.

Some people like to include Hot Jar and other sort of “record the screen” tools which I am not against - they are user friendly and do the job, they help you figure out whats going on BUT they will slow down your site with all the additional calls they make to their server, ALWAYS have a plan to shift away from them eventually. They are absolutely brilliant for the early stages of your store and trying to understand your customers thought process though - and if you aren’t too familiar with Google Analytics then they are perfect tools.

Eventually once you get enough (Facebook) Pixel data you want to start creating Custom Audiences and Look alike audiences from your visitors so you can optimise your winning ads and audiences and not have to worry too much about interest based targeting. I will go through this in more details in another post but the LAA Audiences I always have set up are:

1%, 1-3%, 3-5% and 5-10% for each of the below :

1. PUR (Purchase) 180 Days 2. IC (Initiate Checkout) 180 Days
3. ATC (Add to Cart) 180 days
4. VC (View Content) 180 Days
5. VV (Video Views) 50%, 75%, 95%
6. LTV (Lifetime Value) > $50 and above purchases

ALWAYS Collect Emails

Give people a good incentive for their email. (Don’t be spammy)

Imagine this; I see a great ad for an awesome theft-proof bag. The videos and pictures manage to convince me to purchase it and I’m really excited to do just that BUT as soon as I click that ad and try to order it… I realise it’s out of stock.

That Sale is probably lost right ? WRONG - thats a customer you need to capture. You need to grab his email, he’s highly interested. Put an out of stock app on your store and make sure it doesn’t happen again. Thats what our Sails Theme comes integrated with and it explains the concept behind this tip well - ALWAYS Collect Emails (non spammy) !

Want examples of spammy ways to collect emails ? Ever see those popups that just come up for no reason. You just entered the page and you’re immediately greeted with a coupon or asked to give your email. Yeah - thats spammy. Don’t do that - especially if you are trying to build a brand. It will cost you in the long run.

Always have the popup on some kind of action or intent. Eg. If a customer has been browsing this page for longer than 30 seconds then chances are - that they are interested in this product or your store. The customer is leaving the page ? Make sure they see your final offer before they leave (exit-intent). That sort of email collection is non-spammy and recommended. I also like to suggest you integrated a newsletter sign up form into the footer to collect emails there (footers are highly underrated like I mentioned above).

Coupons are a good tool to lure customers into giving their emails - but turning the email collection process into a game is even better. Things like the App : wheelio do this very well. We want to release our own version of wheelio in an upcoming update so stay tuned for that !

Essentially you are trying to give the customer a good reason to give you their email. Simply saying “Please sign up to hear about our products” is not engaging - will not work and is not recommended but its not as bad as not having an email popup at all ! ALWAYS COLLECT EMAILS.