Shopify is one of the leading platforms for generating and managing ecommerce stores and is currently used by over 1,700,000 million merchants across 175 countries.
Although Shopify is equipped with numerous features to help you manage your ecommerce store, failing to pay attention to some of these key factors when building your Shopify store could present challenges in the near future.
Here are 5 key things you should think about to keep things organised.
Shopify SEO audit for your online store TODAY ⬇1 Set up your Shopify domain
In the early stages of setting up your Shopify store you are given a free myshopify.com domain, e.g. “https:// new-fashion-brand .myshopify.com.”
From a user perspective this doesn’t look great plus this prevents your business from building a strong brand. Your brand is more likely to be remembered when you have a unique domain (explained further in this article about building trust and authority).
You may look to purchase your domain via various online platforms such as Google Domains. Or if you are under time constraints you can work with a Digital Marketing agency who can assist with your domain set-up.
One thing to note is that when you follow the steps to update your domain you may see an error where it tells you that your domain is not connected. This is completely normal as it can take up to 24 hours for the domain name to be updated.
2 Have good quality media assets
Preparing and finalising any form of media is a lengthy process as it requires a lot of collaboration, planning and reviewing. Having a library of good quality media assets pre-arranged before your Shopify build will not only help bring your store together but save you valuable time later on down the road.
The visual assets you need are:
- Product images
- Branded images
- Selection of stock images
- ESP, JPG and PNG logos
- Style sheet
- Branded graphic motifs
- Icons
- Video files
This may sound like a lot but you are better off having a wider library of assets to select from when building out your Shopify site than not.
Another good tip for any branded images that you may have, (namely photography with your logos placed on top), is to create a version without your logo so that you can use these across your Shopify store or for other marketing projects. To help you might consider using simple design tools like Canva or for more dynamic content you can use apps such as Video Background.
3 Map out the mobile version of your site
Even in 2022, you will come across some businesses who do not spare a thought for their mobile version of the website. Our advice is to simply NOT be that business!
Why is this critical? According to our blog How Site Speed Impacts The Customer Journey we found that 79% of customers who are dissatisfied with a site's load speed are less likely to return, which can be a significant chunk of revenue that you are not capitalising on.
One of the advantages of Shopify is that you can tweak your settings to make your website appear better on mobile. But it would be a good idea to run several site speed tests via platforms such as Google Page Speed whilst checking if your website has any broken links. Eastside Co’s Easy Redirects app may be utilised to track and repair broken links.
Site speed is only one of the factors that you need to pay attention to, other things such as image or CTA placement, pop-up minimisation or optimising your site on different browsers may also have an impact on the performance of your mobile version of your Shopify site. This would be a good opportunity to share your mobile web design to a UI/UX designer for feedback.
4 Consider a chatbot or link to direct messaging on social media
As technology advances this enables businesses more than ever before to reach out to its target audience in new ways. According to smallbizgenius 1.4 billion people are using chatbots to help answer simple questions or gather feedback.
By having a series of answers pre-written for your chatbot, your customers can get instant answers, thus saving time and operational costs for you as a business. However, if you prefer to answer separately via social media, you can integrate Shopify with Facebook Messenger. Effective communication is always great but allowing a better customer experience via your Shopify store is even better.
5 Understand the fundamentals of SEO
There is a lot of information out there on optimising your SEO strategy and we suggest that you do spend time getting familiar with the basics. Shopify does offer a range of tools for you to improve the SEO of your Shopify store, and once you know how to utilise these tools you are one step closer to building an effective Shopify Store :
- Produce a sitemap
- Edit and optimise your images for site speed (you may want to use platforms such as Pixlr or Canva)
- Include relevant keywords to corresponding pages
- Always feature unique title and meta tags to every page
Building out your Shopify store’s links and promoting these links will improve the visibility of your site. But, continuously working on your SEO strategy from the start will enable Google or other search engines to make your site more accessible.
These are our 5 key things that you should think about before building your Shopify store.
If you’re looking to get started on Shopify, drop us a line - we have solutions to design and develop your store quickly, with marketing and business strategies available to support your brand on its journey.
