Did you know that up to 97% of e-commerce fails, according to Key Person of Influence data? Other studies are more optimistic, lowering this percentage to 80%: 8 out of 10 online stores fail, still a very discouraging figure!
The good news, however, is that the failure of the majority can inspire and contribute to the success of a chosen few. That’s why we encourage you to find out what the most common Shopify errors are and how to avoid them.
These mistakes in Shopify could ruin your e-commerce – avoid them!
Shopify is part of the life of brands like RedBull, Herschel or Tesla, not just startups and entrepreneurs.
When Tobias Lütke, Daniel Weinand and Scott Lake faced the challenge of creating an online snowboard shop, they discovered an interesting gap in the demand for e-commerce platforms. Your decision? Start a project called Shopify in 2006, which today has 3000 employees and impressive growth prospects.
Although Shopify helps to launch an online store quickly, that doesn’t guarantee success. Choosing the right design, optimizing it for SEO, creating effective product cards, offering competitive delivery and other features are essential for success. But most entrepreneurs make countless mistakes in this regard. Would you like to know them in depth?
Making a bad choice of theme and design
One of the Shopify taglines says, “Your mark, your way.” This platform has advanced customization options, not being necessary to know CSS, HTML or other programming languages.
Most of its themes or templates are visually appealing, and it seems that anyone is valid for e-commerce, regardless of its sector or branding. This is a big mistake.
The problems begin, however, when we must adapt the design to the branding of our e-commerce. This is not an easy task. The different themes offered by Shopify look good because their colors, typographies, and other elements harmonize with each other.
But what happens when we have to change the fonts to match our logo or alter the colors for the same reason? A small change can force us to change everything. When modifying any of the pre-designed templates, the more changes, the more unsightly the result.
Why? Because on the average Shopify customer is not a professional web designer. But if our e-commerce does not offer a professional image, we will have negative conversion rates.
How to avoid this mistake? Carefully select the topic and limit the changes to be made, especially if we are not familiar with web design and branding.
For example, changing fonts from Serif to Sans Serif will not excessively alter the chosen theme. But even in this case, we must make sure that the different texts (paragraphs, H1, H2, etc.) have changed to Sans Serif.
Use product cards with little information or images
Another mistake in Shopify to avoid is to publish badly optimized product files. It is no coincidence that the best-sellers of Amazon, eBay, and other marketplaces have impressive product sheets. However, most Shopify sellers don’t take care of this aspect in their stock.
The result? Low visitor traffic, due to the absence of SEO-optimized text, and minimal conversion rates, due to the absence of quality images and videos that stimulate sales.
How to avoid this mistake? You must include texts that have been carefully written and optimized for SEO. Each item should be accompanied by a technical sheet, with all its details and details. And when it comes to audiovisual content, you have to prioritize quality over quantity.
Forget SEO
From the previous point, it can be deduced that organic positioning in search engines is relevant to the success of our e-commerce. It is true that Shopify’s web architecture is optimized for SEO. Its speed is excellent. Nor does it use Flash content or other problematic resources for user usability.
But everything else depends on the vendors of this platform. Most of its stores, however, do not use keywords and other SEO techniques in their categories and product sheets.
These bad practices seriously damage your organic visitor traffic and therefore your business performance. Undoubtedly, other such errors in Shopify should be avoided.
How to avoid this error? Optimize category texts and product sheets including keywords and long tails. Compress the images and fill in their title, alt, and description tags. Get backlinks from relevant websites in our niche market.
Do not offer multiple payment options
Several studies have shown the importance of offering multiple payment options. We know: more than half of consumers pay by credit/debit card or bank transfer. But offering payment by cash on delivery, PayPal, Stripe or other e-payments has a very positive impact on conversion rates.
Most Shopify sellers, however, do just the opposite, and therefore have high cart abandonment rates. How to avoid this mistake? Implement as many payment methods as possible. It should be noted that some payment gateways require the payment of a monthly fee, so they may not compensate until you have a high volume of sales.
Having long delivery times or an overpriced delivery
Last but not least, offering uncompetitive delivery is one of the most common Shopify errors.
Do your products take more than 2-3 days to reach buyers, do they tend to make the final price more expensive? If in both cases the answer is yes, your e-commerce has much to improve.
Customers want immediate product delivery! This is an added value for e-commerce. Amazon, Walmart, and other popular marketplaces offer same day delivery and even 2-hours delivery. Follow their example!
How to avoid this mistake? Include various shipping options in your e-commerce. Contact your local carrier to offer at least same day delivery. Incorporate shipping costs into the final price of the product (whenever possible).
