Are you new to launching your Shopify business? Know that at times things can turn out to be overwhelming for you. And to add to that, building your first venture on Shopify can turn out to be daunting.

We look at 20 of the most common mistakes you should avoid while starting
your Shopify store. Also, it explains How to overcome them in detail.

Here are the Top 20 Common mistakes to avoid while creating a Shopify store.

1. Thinking if You Have an Online Store, Traffic Will Follow.

The internet is one of the biggest technological platforms created. There are nearly 4.5 billion websites on the internet. The chances of your site getting lost are incredibly high. This is why your store needs a launch. It needs to be seen by its target audiences.

Instead, Try Soft Launch of Your Site.

The soft launch is where a store or website is made famous to a group of people through social media networking sites and word of mouth. This is equivalent to hosting a store in brick and mortar. The critical difference is, you’d be doing it virtually.

2. Not Knowing Who Your Ideal Customer Is

If everyone online buys from your store, it will be great. But, that’s not how the market works. You have to figure out your ideal customers. These are people who are bound to benet from your company. Anyone in the middle will be an overhead to your effort and budget.

3. Not Having a Solid Marketing Plan

Marketing plans are required to outline your target audiences, long-term goals, and even selling methods. The program is necessary to dene your overall selling cycle too.
Without a healthy marketing plan, you will not have a usp method for bringing together your goals nor a goal in the form of numbers.

4. Having Improper Branding

1. Include Logo

The logo is required to create an impression of your brand. Without a logo, you will end up not creating a reputable name at all. A good logo will help customers recognize what your brand stands for. In the long run, the logo can make a sturdy statement by itself. This means the extra effort you exert on the logo would never go in vain. Moreover, logos can be considered as a cost-effective way of grabbing the attention of potential customers.

2. Be consistent about Theme Colour.

Double-check on consistency around the store. It would be best if you were very picky about the theme and its shades.
For instance, all clickable content in your store should maintain the same color and styling. Likewise, the experience should remain the same when settings are modified.

Need a theme for your commerce site? Check out WordPress marketplace theme by Wbcom Designs.

3. Use Single Font

The talk about consistency remains incomplete without proper fonts. You have a thousand fonts to choose from. Indeed, the choices can be overwhelming, and you might be tempted with many more in the future. Still, the golden rule is to nd and later two fonts for your store. Always stick to these fonts for a consistent look and feel around your store. Fewer fonts will give your store a clean and polished look.

5. Having Non-Optimized Images Which Leads To High Loading Time

Search engine optimization has many rules and guidelines on how your images need to be. Well, picking the right image for your products can be difficult. Yet, it would be best if you handpicked pictures that would not result in high loading times.

Studies reveal that websites need to load within five seconds. Anything more than ve seconds can cost you plenty of customers. This is why you need to handpick images of high quality but wouldn’t compromise your site loading times.

Compress images using Apps.

As a part of compressing images, many developers tend to use third-party applications. This can do more harm to the overall quality of your store than any good.

Compressing images will have an impact on speed, quality, and user experience. You need to pay for every image that is compressed by the application. This will add to the operational cost of your
store.

6. Having Empty About us & Contact Us Page

1. Include story about your brand.

Many times, brands stuff their product pages with thousands and thousands of options. Yet, they forget to share details about their brand and their journey. This is a big mistake. Customers often buy from brands they can connect with. This means, sharing a great story about your mission and journey can make a big difference in the online market.

2. No Address details.

Just like any traditional business, customers look for address and contact details on e-commerce stores. Yet again, customers look for a connection with almost every place they interact with.

This is suitable for online eCommerce stores too. And this is why your business needs to quote address information. Address details will help your customers gain trust with your brand. It helps them stay in touch and even believe in what you do.

3. No Contact Email Address

Email addresses have grown by leaps and bounds.

Here, we focus on the use cases of email addresses. Like the physical address of your store, the email address serves as a contact point for customers.

It helps them gather details about their order and even share experiences. Not sharing email addresses can once again harm the reputation you build online. Contact email addresses can help customers communicate with brands.

7. Keeping SEO Options as Default

Configure SEO Options Correctly to rank higher.

SEO options are often set to default by many developers and entrepreneurs. This can be another big mistake. It would be best if you customized each meta tag to suit the content.

Meta tags are used by search engines to nd your site on the web; as the meta tags become more meaningful and informative, your products’ chances of getting listed increase.

Also, better meta tags can improve your page ranks.

8. Not using any payment methods

1. You can use Shopify payments

Shopify comes with in-house payment methods. Of course, you need to pay a nominal fee for using this service. Since the payment method comes from the platform, you don’t need to worry about integration or customization. You can accomplish all of these via the
dashboard offered to you by Shopify. When your store is in its early days, you will need the help
of Shopify payments.

2. You can set up Multiple Payment Methods.

Having multiple payment options for customers will impact your conversion rates. Why? eCommerce stores are likely to be accessed by people around the world.
Some of them may use Stripe, and others may use PayPal. To be more precise, some would want cash on delivery too. This is the reason why you need to incorporate as many payment methods as possible.
Without providing multiple payment options for customers, your store will suffer high abandonment rates.

9. Ignoring Mobile Visitors

1. You can use mobile responsive themes

Mobile devices are now an intrinsic part of life. Today, most online customers buy products via their smartphones. This is why brands need to spend more time on their mobile platform. It would help if you designed sites that work well on mobile and desktop devices.

Handpick themes that would appear well on mobile phones. Above all, your checkout options should be simple and user friendly. These are a few aspects covered in professional mobile themes. The CTA time and workflow become more straightforward with responsive themes.

Also, customers will not have a tough time scanning
through your store. Often, customers would leave a store
if its options are too difcult to nd and select.

2. You can create Mobile Apps

There is a reason why some brands choose to create mobile applications before building their desktop stores.
As mentioned previously, online customers tend to use their mobile devices much more than traditional environments. Having a mobile application will help you attract customers and even generate more leads. These leads are likely to become loyal customers for your brand.

When you build a mobile app for your e-commerce store, you need to ensure that it has all the professional store qualities, just like designing a desktop device.

10. Not showing Social Proof

1. Avoid Forged Social Proofs

As business owners, you need to accept the fact that your customers are smart. Never underestimate the amount of research a potential customer would do before making a buy.

This is an important reason why businesses need to think twice before creating a social presence or account. Always be genuine with your social media content. Never forge or boast about products that are not found in your store.

Remember, customers are only a few clicks away from figuring out what your store has.
On the other hand, you can use social media networking sites to solve customer problems. And, you can share experiences and create awareness about your brand online.

2. Use apps to display social proof on your store

You don’t need to be found on every other social media site to attract customers. Instead, you need to pick the relevant ones.

Shopify stores come with any third-party applications that can be used to display social worth. These apps gather data from various social media sites and can
integrate them with your store. These apps have tools for analyzing the presence your brand has in the online market too.

Most of the time, the apps will be free for a certain number of posts or users. There onwards, you need to pay a nominal fee.

11. Not setting up Google Analytics

Google is an essential player for any online business.

Why? Google is responsible for hosting algorithms that can display your store when a customer executes a search.

This means you need to be in line with the programs hosted by google. This could be anything like google analytics or the merchant center.
When you set your google analytics account, pay close attention to the details you offer. Ensure that the details are both accurate and meaningful.
Shopify has an exquisite guide for those who want to set up google analytics for the first time. This guide focuses on all the topics you need to be aware of.

12. Showing High Delivery Charges

The talk about online shopping remains incomplete without delivery times. Businesses need to cut down on the time required to ship a product. The longer a delivery takes, the higher are the chances of your customer canceling an order or choosing another store.

Never compromise on the time needed to ship products from the warehouse to the customer.

Why? There are many players like Walmart and Amazon to complete orders within a day.
Stay in touch with your regional carrier. Work together and form a plan where products get shipped on time.

13. Having a Complicated Check Out Process

No business wants an unhappy customer during checkout. This is a crucial reason behind a hefty abandonment rate too. Studies reveal that customers abandon carts when the checkout process is both long and complicated. For example, if you request the customer to ll a dozen fields before checkout, they will likely leave.
As a part of optimizing checkout, you need to ensure that fields are reused. Request for information like address, name, and contact number only once. Then, your system should nd a way of retrieving these details during every checkout.

14. Not Welcoming First-Time Visitors

First-time users are significant. These are users who turn into prospective and loyal customers. Hence, you need to impress them with a personalized email or even an offer.
Next, you need to pay close attention to the colors on your page. Ensure that the email pop-ups are in place and that you have engaging elements on the home screen.
Above all, the first time user should not have a tough time navigating around the store. (Once again, this is why you need a consistent theme and minimalistic design).

15. Not Making Use of Newsletter Subscriptions Wisely

As you sign up for a Shopify store, you will have access to the newsletters. Never omit this feature, which is readily available to stores. The newsletters can be used to share the most recent details with your customers.
It helps in keeping all your customers in-line with the store activities. This could be anything like a special offer or news about your business growth plans.

16. Not Adding Value to the Customers

Customers often look for businesses that can add more value. When you understand your customers’ needs, you must develop products and services that would resolve them seamlessly.
This could be anything like free shipping, or points, or coupons. Before you decide on a “strategy,
” ensure that it would add more value to your customers.

17. Not Optimizing important Landing Pages for Conversion.

When compared to traditional business pages, eCommerce stores are somewhat different. They need customized landing pages to ensure better conversion rates. When a store is optimized, based on the visitor-the chances of the visitor coming again are high!
An optimized landing page can “score” the customer’s email address, help in up-selling (or cross-selling) products, and even generate ideas for newer products.

18. Not Reducing Cart Abandonment Rates

Cart abandonment rates will be high if you leave it unattended. Several steps need to be taken to bring down this value. It would be best if you made the checkout process more straightforward.
And, customers should be given a good reason to check out your products. It would be best if you had a compelling CTA. Also, you need to provide the customer with multiple payment options. These are a few of the many ways of reducing cart abandonment.

19. Not Using Influencer Marketing Properly

Remember, word of mouth is always the best way of spreading the news about your store. And, people like hearing about products and services from others. This is why influencer marketing is the key to online growth. Your products should feature “some” who are famous.

It could be anything like a picture, where influential people use the products. Ensure that the influencer you choose is known and admired by the target audiences too. Time after time, this effort needs to be evaluated and narrowed down to meet your audiences’ up-to-date interests.

20. Not Taking Accounting Seriously

Finally, take accounting seriously. Shopify is a carefully crafted platform. Numerous tools are available to help you with accounting. Yet, the effort needs to come from you.
Accounting is all about keeping track of what you spend and make. Even though it sounds simple, each of these activities breaks down into many more subtasks.
Breaking down and identifying sub-tasks would be your first step.
Luckily, Shopify has many sophisticated solutions like Quickbooks to help with accounting. Tools will help in continuous tracking and updating of accounts.

Conclusion

Like other mistakes, these Shopify store mistakes will reduce your online sales instead of improving it. So, avoid these mistakes in your online business.

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