5 Mistakes to Avoid When Selling on Shopify

By Alex Turner 

You’ve thought about it for a while, and you’ve decided that it is time for you to become a seller on Shopify? Of course, you definitely haven’t made this decision on the spur of the moment, because you understand the amount of effort and the dedication necessary when running an online store. After you have, however, taken the time to get more info on e-commerce in general, and specifically on Shopify, you have probably decided that you’re ready to go for it.

This platform is quite a popular one, as it is accessible to all entrepreneurs, and makes running their online stores easier. But, the process of running the store and achieving success is certainly not without challenges. In other words, you can’t just expect to get a lot of sales immediately after setting up a store, and without doing anything else about it. You can’t expect to get results without putting in the effort.

The above means that you’ll definitely need to work towards achieving the success you are after. And, I am guessing you understand that already. Most people know this, and yet they still somehow manage to make certain mistakes in the process of selling on Shopify. Clearly, you don’t want to make those same mistakes and then wind up regretting them later, once you realize that they have had a negative impact on your entire business.

What kinds of mistakes am I talking about here, though? Well, that’s what you are here to find out. Put differently, below I will provide you with a list of some common mistakes that people tend to make in this process, and when you read it, you will have higher chances of actually avoiding those errors. Avoiding them is, of course, crucial for your success.

1. Not Creating Your Ideal Customer

First things first, when thinking about how to sell on Shopify, you will have to think about who to sell to. To be more precise, when getting started as a Shopify seller, you’ll need to carefully create your ideal customer, so as to understand how to appeal to them and how to ultimately make sales. Not creating the ideal customer is one of the first, and one of the most serious, mistakes that people make here. So, don’t do the same thing and, instead, do your market research, choose the right niche and then get a good sense of what your ideal customer looks like, and what their preferences are.

2. Ignoring the Need for Good Design

People often assume that nothing else matters except from the quality of product and service. While that may very well be right, and while you should keep that quality at a high level, here is another thing to know. If your store isn’t well designed, customers are highly unlikely to even give you the time of day, and let alone try your products and services and thus explore their quality. So, don’t ignore the need for good store design, and spend some time, instead, on making all the right choices. Go for a clean and professional theme, go for the right colors, and basically create an amazing store that will attract attention.

3. Neglecting User Experience

Speaking of the design, there is another thing to think about during the process of setting up your store. User experience is never to be neglected. That would undoubtedly be a huge mistake. So, make the website responsive on various devices. Then, remember to ensure fast loading speed, and ease of navigation, and generally do everything you can to improve user experience.

4. Not Caring About Product Descriptions and Images

Writing generic product descriptions and using low quality images on your store will put you on a sure path towards failure. You may not think that the descriptions are so important, and that could easily lead you towards making the wrong moves and thus not making enough sales. So, the descriptions should be detailed and engaging, aiming at informing people about the benefits of the products, as well as optimized for search engines. And, the images have to be of amazing quality, so as to catch the eye of the viewer.

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5. Not Investing in Marketing

Perhaps the biggest mistake that people make here is completely ignoring the role of marketing. As you should know by now, no business succeeds without investing in marketing, and the same goes for your Shopify store. Selling on Shopify requires you to first become visible and gain an audience, and then to engage them and sell your products, hoping that they will return to your store in the future as well. So, create the right marketing strategy for your business, remember to invest in SEO, SMM and any other techniques that could increase your visibility and help you establish yourself and become a successful Shopify seller.