Online sales have become a survival solution for businesses, both small and large, whose activities are threatened by confinement measures. It’s no secret that Shopify is a powerful tool for digitizing sales through an online store. Thanks to its affordable cost, ease of use, and wide range of features and apps, Shopify is a suitable digital platform solution for most merchants looking to sell products online. So, how can you start and accelerate your e-commerce sales with Shopify?
Whether you’re an expert or a beginner in e-commerce, here are some fundamental principles to follow to generate online sales.
Create and manage your online store
If you don’t have an online store yet, this is where it all begins: Shopify.
Simply click on “Start” and fill in the required fields to access the 14-day free trial offer.
At this stage, you’ve likely thought about your project, chosen a name for your store, secured product inventory (or have a partner supplier), and reflected on your target audience, visual identity, and logo. Shopify will guide you step-by-step in launching your online store.
Here are some important points to consider:
- Carefully choose your store name, as it will become your domain name.
- Ensure harmony between your products, brand story, theme, typography, graphic design, and logo.
- Choose a theme that fits the nature and quantity of your products.
- Don’t hesitate to remove an item or option that isn’t performing well. Focus on what works, understand why, and consider applying it elsewhere.
- Your blog must adhere to SEO standards; basic SEO tools are built into the backend. Content, descriptions, and images must be original and of optimal quality (meeting SEO and customer readability requirements).
- Don’t forget essential pages like “About Us,” “Our Story,” “Products/Services,” “FAQ,” “Contact,” and the legally required pages such as Terms and Conditions, Privacy Policy, and Data Protection Policy.
- Be responsive to customer satisfaction, be clear and accurate about payment methods, shipping fees, delivery times, and return policies.
Promote your E-commerce and make your products visible
Once your store is created, it needs visibility, as do the products you sell!
Shopify’s features help you gain visibility online and allow you to launch various advertising campaigns to target the right buyers.
Regularly analyzing data such as traffic, tracking, recurrence, and conversion rates will help you create an effective marketing strategy.
In the “Marketing Campaign” section, the admin interface offers various options: email campaigns, Facebook ads, Snapchat ads, etc.
With just a few minutes and clicks, you can create marketing campaigns. You can also implement marketing automation, such as sending personalized messages (e.g., follow-up emails for abandoned carts).
Social media advertising is essential, and Shopify helps you select the most relevant Facebook audiences for your brand and products. Guidance is available at every step to reduce uncertainty and improve your performance.
Additionally, Shopify’s App Store provides access to numerous apps to enhance your online store’s performance.
Here are some interesting apps:
- Live Chat: Shopify Chat / Tidio Live Chat
- Customer Reviews Integration: Ali Review, product reviews (for AliExpress products)
- SEO Tools: Smart SEO / SEO Booster – SEO Marketing
- Conversion and Email Capture: Sales Pop Ups, Spin Wheel, SMS
- Retargeting: Ads & Retargeting (Facebook and Instagram)
Install Facebook Pixel to track customer journey and ensure effective, targeted Ads
With over 2.6 billion daily users, advertising on Facebook, which also reaches Instagram and Messenger users, has become essential.
Facebook allows precise targeting that can enhance the performance of online stores at every stage of the sales funnel—from brand awareness to customer acquisition, i.e., from awareness to purchase.
The Facebook channel is a powerful marketing lever you can’t ignore. Ensure that you’ve set up the Facebook Business Manager tool associated with your business beforehand. By activating a Facebook Pixel, the channel collects and shares data between your online store and Facebook.
You’ll be able to choose the level of data sharing:
- Standard: A Facebook Pixel tracks users’ browsing behavior on your online store, collecting valuable data about your customers and ad performance.
- Enhanced: This option provides additional information, such as names, geographic locations, email addresses, and phone numbers of your customers.
- Maximum: The Conversion API complements the Facebook Pixel, with data exchanged between the client’s browser, Shopify servers, and Facebook servers. Customer personal information and Facebook user data are combined.
You can generate a Facebook Pixel from your Facebook Business Manager account, which you’ll link to your Shopify store, or via the “Channel” tab by selecting “Facebook,” then “Settings,” or through “Online Store,” then “Preferences.”
Once this pixel (a line of code) is integrated into Shopify, you’ll be able to set up ads with Facebook. The Facebook Pixel gives you crucial insights about internet users and your customers and helps you measure ad performance. The data collected helps create lookalike audiences, optimize your Facebook ads, and enable retargeting.
Set up events to track user actions
You’ll need to configure events to record and measure user actions. Among the 17 standard trackable events are common actions such as purchase, add to cart, search, contact, customize product, view calendar, subscribe, etc. You can also create custom events to obtain additional information.
Now, you’re ready to create successful ad campaigns! If you encounter any difficulties installing a Facebook Pixel or a Conversion API on your site, you can always contact a Facebook Ads agency. The Facebook Audience Network article covers various marketing objectives and ad formats available on Facebook.
Test different strategies and make Data-Driven decisions
To optimize your conversion rate, you’ll define custom audiences, which will be the main targets for your ads. These custom audiences are created from data collected on your store’s traffic and what you know about your customers or buyer personas.
Once the Facebook Pixel is activated, an interesting strategy is to collect as much data as possible by testing the same ad (your flagship product) with audiences differentiated only by their interests (such as specific activities, hobbies, or preferred competitor brands).
This distinction and precise targeting will quickly separate the good audiences from the bad ones, helping you better understand your typical customer and their actions. You can test several specific parameters in isolation. Relevant lookalike audiences can then be produced, along with effective retargeting.
In terms of finances, since e-commerce needs to be profitable, the key indicators to watch for social media and SEA (Search Engine Advertising) advertising will first be the average CPC (Cost Per Click), which is more relevant than the number of views (“impressions”), and ultimately, your Facebook ROAS—the return on ad spend.
With these strategies, you’re well on your way to boosting your Shopify store’s performance through Facebook ads.
