5 Shopify Hacks to Growth Hack Your Store to Peak Sales

Everything else is done; but that's not enough for you. You're looking for an edge, one weird trick that'll instantly skyrocket sales. You're looking for Shopify hacks to turn your store into an overnight success.

That's not how reality works, and you won't find any magic beans here.

Our Shopify hacks are more like regular beans - they take a bit of effort to set up and a bit of time before they start paying off, like compound interest. But they'll keep paying off and setting off virtuous cycles each time to help you get ahead of the pack and give you that special edge over other shops.

Let's get hacking:

5 Shopify Hacks to Growth Hack your Store to Peak Sales

1. Help New Customers Find Your Product (By Helping Google Find Your Store)
2. Set Up For Two Sales with a Referral Program
3. Help Your Customers Do Your Marketing For You With Branding or Hashtags
4. Ask for Reviews, Especially When You're Doing Customer Service
5. Bring Them Back Again After Each Sale -- or Abandonment

Help New Customers Find Your Products (By Helping Google Find Your Store)

There is so much content on the Internet that it's impossible to get around without searching - so why not write product descriptions that get easily picked up by search engines?

When searching for products, 56% of consumers start on Amazon, according to a survey of consumers in the US, UK, Germany and France. But, an even larger proportion of customers (85%!) consult Google at some point in the purchase journey:

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A separate survey of US consumers found that while most consumers still visited Amazon first (49%), Google and other search engines were increasingly narrowing the gap (36%). Consumers rarely visited retailers' websites first (15%).

Since a majority of consumers will research products on Google before they buy, making your products and store easy-to-discover by search engines will give them a better chance of finding your store.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) might sound scary and confusing, which is why we created a guide for Shopify SEO with everything you'll need to know about it. It's as simple as being more descriptive in the product title and description, helping users who are looking for leggings with a "high waist", "pocket" and "mesh fabric".

Adding more details are also a great way to write product descriptions that sell. In the same way, you can also help your store become more discoverable, especially if you cater to a specific niche.

Read Also:

• The Ultimate Guide to Shopify SEO in 2018 [With Templates!]
• Adding Keywords for SEO to your Shopify store - Shopify help center

For those more familiar with SEO, Shopify keyword research will help boost both traffic and sales.

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Set Up For Two Sales At Once with a Referral Program

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If a customer loves about your product, they'll talk about it and make recommendations to others who like it.

A referral program makes sharing sweeter by rewarding both the advocate (existing customer) and the friend (new customer).

If you choose the right referral reward, setting up a referral program actually pays off with two sales - a new sale (for the friend) and a repeat sale (as the existing customer claims their reward). That's why we encourage merchants to be generous with the referral reward: it's advertising, new customer acquisition, and remarketing all at once.

Two sales is a modest number, of course; a successful referral program pays off in terms of exponential growth and sales.

At ReferralCandy, we've built our program to allow for social sharing as well, so anybody in the advocate's social networks can get the reward.

Referral Programs work because an existing customer makes a product recommendation to a (likely) new customer.

Read Also:

• Infographic: Why Referral Marketing is Awesome
• Oberlo: The Ultimate Guide to Referral Marketing
• Referral Marketing Works -- here's 74 (and counting) brands who made use of it

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Help Your Customers Do Your Marketing For You With Branding or Hashtags

Social media is a powerful marketing channel for eCommerce brands to draw traffic and drive sales. The best tactic for your brand is the one that works best with your budget of time, money and resources.

At a minimum, you should create an account on popular social media (Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) and publicise your hashtag on your store.  Make them distinctive, memorable, and instantly recognisable, because your customers will be using them.

At the time of writing, there are 4.2 million posts on Instagram with #loreal. Some, I'm sure, are from the official @loreal handle or brand ambassadors, but all of the top posts come from individuals: satisfied with their shampoo purchase, attending a workshop, and constructing their own flatlay.

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You probably won't have the same reach as l'oreal (#garnier has a paltry 470k), or Coke but having a handle they can tag you on or a hashtag makes it easier for them to do your marketing for you, by name-dropping your Shopifty store and hashtag.

Plus, this will help you easily discover loyal fans, future brand ambassadors, and help you discover user generated content for marketing in the future.

Social media marketing is an expensive game to play, but there's plenty of rewards to be reaped by just showing up.

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Read Also:

• Why User-Generated Content Works Best for Marketing
• 8 Creative Hashtag Campaigns that worked - check out #WhatsInYourBag
• The Share a Coke Story -- Coca Cola UK

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Ask for Reviews, Especially When You're Doing Customer Service

Adding product reviews to your Shopify store can make your products much more appealing, and help you sell more.

According to a 2018 ReviewTrackers survey, 63.6% of consumers check online reviews on Google before patronising a business.

Reviews have such a big impact that Shopify has its own Product Review app for free on the App Store. And you know it's a good app because it has almost a thousand reviews, and most of these are five stars.

(We've previously detailed some ways to get reviews for your eCommerce store, and how to harness reviews in order to boost eCommerce sales.)

Positive reviews help your store; but what about negative reviews? Actually, they contribute value in several ways:

• Negative reviews make your store look more authentic: Nobody's perfect, and it seems consumers recognise that. From the same survey, more consumers filtered for four-stars and above (35%) than five-stars only (10%). A store with only perfect five-star reviews could be an indicator of bought (or bot) reviews.
• Negative reviews give you a chance to respond... More than half of consumers expect a response from the business about a review. A majority of them do not ever receive a respond, which is a shame, because...
• ...and improve the perception of your store. 45% of consumers say they are more likely to visit a business if it responds to negative reviews.

At the time of writing, our Shopify app has 254 five-star reviews (87%!). Our little hack is to ask for a review when we're providing customer service.

Most customers reach out for CS when they're feeling frustrated or confused. Thanks to our stellar CS team, the end of that conversation sees them impressed and happy, and more inclined to take the extra effort to leave a positive review. This is something you can adapt and adopt for your eCommerce store.

Read Also:

• 2018 ReviewTrackers Online Reviews Survey
• Shopify: Why Online Store Owners Should Embrace Online Reviews

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Bring Them Back Again After Each Sale - or Cart Abandonment

If you're reading this on a browser, this probably isn't your only tab. If you're reading this on a phone, you probably have notifications waiting.

The modern world has plenty of distractions that your customer will also be susceptible to. Little surprise then, that the Baymard Insitute estimates an average cart abandonment rate of 69.89%, based on 40 different studies.

So, bring them back. Send them a notification of your own to complete their purchase; you can easily set up an automation for this email so it runs by itself.

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(Shopify hacks: Plenty of abandoned cart apps on the Shopify app store)

Taking this idea a little further, another series of emails you can easily automate are win-back emails. Customers who haven't made a purchase in a while can be lured back to your site with an alert about new product offerings, a discount to get them back to shopping, or even an "I Miss You".

Cart abandonment and lapsed purchase are examples of how customers can leak through your purchasing funnel. Rather than dealing with every case individually, setting up these email automations will plug the gap and give you an inflow of sales.

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Read Also:

• Shopify: 13 Amazing Abandoned Cart Emails (And What You Can Learn From Them)
• Pinterest Board: Re-engagement emails for Lapsed Purchase

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Conclusion

Albert Einstein once described compound interest as the eighth wonder of the world. A small net positive effect, compounded over many cycles, will result in amazing growth equivalent to hitting the jackpot - just not overnight.

There are no magic beans here; we've simply detailed Shopify hacks simple-to-execute, high-reward tactics that will pay off in the long run with more sales and growth.

If you are a real completionist, though, then check out our ever-growing list of eCommerce best tools, as well as guides, success stories, and case studies for more great e-commerce tips and ideas.