If you’re a D2C brand and other online brands that want to offer a personalised and one-on-one experience to your customers, Shopify is a Godsend for you! It’s all so easy to create an online store and implement via this all-inclusive platform.

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Apart from designing an appealing, useful, and enjoyable online store, Shopify offers the resources required to launch, manage, and expand your ecommerce business. But there’s a catch to it as well! Things can go incredibly wrong even if you have innovative products and an exceptionally good marketing plan. To your surprise, many businesses have experienced such a downfall.

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Luckily, you have access to an in-depth resource that can help you avoid multiple mistakes that can kill your sales and hinder customer loyalty.

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In this blog, you will learn the most common and not-so-common mistakes Shopify store owners should avoid under any circumstances to drive sales and business success.

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What are the top 15 mistakes to avoid on your Shopify store?

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Here is an in-depth list of the mistakes you must avoid in order to achieve business success:

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1. Neglect the quality of your product pages

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Product pages are your one shot at persuading online shoppers that your product is the one they need to buy. If you don’t do that, shoppers will come and go without making a purchase.

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Here’s what you need to focus on:

• An engaging headline
• A compelling Call-to-Action (CTA)
• Content-rich product descriptions with clear features, benefits of the product and elaborative product specifications
• High-resolution images from multiple angles
• A short video giving a 360-degree view of the product
• Include dynamic and easy-to-understand size charts

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2. Forsake the functionality of your Shopify store

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If the page load time of your Shopify store is slow, it can severely hamper the customer experience and make shoppers leave. Other than that, you can no longer ignore the mobile experience.

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Here’s what you need to do:

• Optimise page load speed by limiting the use of social plugins and poorly implemented meta tags
• Reduce ad network trackers
• Make your Shopify store responsive as customers use their mobile devices for shopping

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3. Do nothing to increase the discoverability of your Shopify store

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Search engine optimization (SEO) is the ultimate way to drive organic traffic to your Shopify store. While paid advertisements are a great way to boost the discoverability of your products and business. Not doing so means you’re missing out on potential customers and sales.

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Here's what you need to do:

• Use Shopify’s built-in settings to create SEO-friendly pages
• Update meta fields like title, description, URL slug, automatically generating sitemaps, 301 redirects, and canonical URLs
• Run ad campaigns on Google, Facebook and Instagram
• Leverage digital marketing like Pay-Per-Click (PPC), social media ads, influencer marketing, banner ads and ad retargeting
• Use Facebook, Pinterest, Whatsapp, Instagram and other platforms to build a strong online presence and attract customers
• Use email marketing, SMS marketing and push notifications
• Collaborate with social media influencers and celebrities via paid advertising or shoutouts

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4. Offer slow shipping and order delivery

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98.1% of customers say that shipping impacts brand loyalty. So why offer standard shipping let customers wait 7-10 days to get their orders?

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Here’s how you can increase Shopify sales by providing fast shipping:

• Offer same-day, next-day and other express delivery options
• Improve last-mile delivery and split inventory in Eshopbox's multiple fulfilment centres across India to reduce transit time and provide same-day shipping or 2-day shipping
• Introduce automation in the order fulfilment process to ensure fast order processing
• Follow a Standard Operating Procedure (SOP) to streamline routine operations and achieve desired shipping speed

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5. Not utilising trust badges

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Online shoppers are very cautious when it comes to avoiding scams, so they are always on a lookout to find reasons to trust the online store they’re shopping from. That’s where trust badges come into play.

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Here are some examples of trust badges that you can display on your Shopify store:

• Guaranteed safe checkout
• Fully Secured SSL Checkout
• Secure payments
• Accepted Payments badges like Debit cards, Credit cards, UPI, and more
• Accredited Business and rating badges
• Google Customer Reviews and Trusted Store badges
• Free shipping
• Free shipping over a minimum purchase
• Free returns
• Easy returns and exchanges

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6. Have a strict returns policy

Shoppers don’t buy from stores that don’t provide easy returns and exchanges. In fact, 72% of customers want a hassle-free return experience in order to shop from an ecommerce brand again.

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Here’s how you can increase Shopify sales with an ideal returns policy:

• Frame a customer-centric returns policy that also ensures profitability for you
• Highlight your returns policy on your home page, footer or link it on your product page
• Determine and display a timeframe for making returns
• Offer multiple refund options like store credits, the original mode of payment and more

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7. Neglect customer support

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What if your customers have confusion about the product they’re interested in? Even after providing images, descriptions, and videos, online shoppers can still have questions and after not getting the answers, they can leave and shop from another store.

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Here’s how you can provide customer support in real-time:

• Offer live chat support via chatbots
• Allow email enquiries about the product
• Give a toll-free contact number for support
• Include FAQ (frequently asked questions) section

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8. Go out-of-stock often

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Being low on stock or out of stock can put you at the risk of losing a sale. Orders can roll in any day, any time—you must be ready to take orders and have sufficient inventory at hand to fulfil your orders at all times.

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Here’s what you can do to avoid stockouts:

• Track and maintain your inventory levels
• Ensure on-time inventory replenishment

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9. Have a disengaging and time-consuming checkout process

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A long, complex checkout process often casuses frustration among customers. At worst, it can persuade shoppers to leave at the final stage of purchase.

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Here’s what you can do:

• Ensure a fast checkout process with 3-5 steps—the shorter, the better
• Give a guest checkout option without making ‘creating an account’ necessary
• Provide multiple options to edit their carts such as delete, add or subtract to change the quantity of an item, adjusting shipping options, and more
• Be crystal clear about all costs associated with the purchase upfront
• If you charge any shipping fee, display it upfront
• Don’t include any hidden costs that are displayed at the checkout process
• Offer multiple payment methods like debit cards, credit cards, UPI, digital wallets, and more depending on the demographics you're targeting

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10. Let shoppers abandon carts and do nothing

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A sad truth about ecommerce is 67.91% of all shopping carts are abandoned across the world in a year. But it’s up to you if you want to let them pass or make every attempt to reduce your shopping cart abandonment rate.

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Here’s what you can do:

• Provide an estimated date of delivery so that customers have clarity of when will their order arrive
• Use exit-intent popups to recapture the attention of customers that are abandoning their carts
• Re-engage with customers and give them incentives like coupons and discounts
• Send recovery emails including images of the item they selected, reviews or customer testimonials

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11. Offer a standard experience to every shopper

Shoppers are in search of a personalised experience but if you treat them the same, they might not like it. Instead, you can collect consumer data and use personalisation to your advantage.

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Here’s what you need to do:

• Provide product recommendations on your product page and your checkout page
• Give special discounts on occasions like birthdays, independence day, and more for a limited time period to get customers to shop again
• Give suggestions for ‘frequently bought together’ items
• Display products ‘you may also like’ based on customer preferences

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‍12. Not rewarding loyal customers

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Rewarding and retaining customers is the oldest trick in the book. If you’re not doing that, you may fail in the long run.

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Here’s what you can do:

• Introduce loyalty programs and grant special privileges to customers that are willing to spend more
• Give points on every purchase that can be redeemed on future purchases

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13. Give no discounts or offers to boost Shopify sales

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It’s the gospel truth—discounts, sales and offers attract shoppers the most! While, running sales can boost sales in a jiggy, not doing so can result in low sales velocity, slow-moving inventory and limited cash flow.

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Here’s what you can do:

• Run festive sales and flash sales on your Shopify store strategically

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14. Disregard Customer Experience (CX)

We live in the age of the customer and they want it all—a stellar customer experience. If you don’t know how to delight your customers, you’ll surely risk your business and lose out to those who do.

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Here's what you need to focus on: ‍

• Offer real-time order tracking with a branded page
• Send proactive shipping notifications
• Ensure high order accuracy
• ‍Curate an exceptional unboxing experience with custom packaging
• ‍Offer product kits, combos and bundles to increase Average Order Value (AOV)

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15. Handle Shopify’s ecommerce and fulfilment operations on your own without any expert help

Shopify store owners often face alot of challenges, and the biggest mistake they commit is trying to solve it on their own. Disregarding the need for an expert, can do alot of harm—more than the challenge itself.

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That’s why is important to avoid it and do the needful:

• Partner up with a tech-enabled 3PL who has extensive experience with Shopify fulfilment. With Eshopbox, you can easily scale your Shopify business and get access to everything and anything you need to succeed online.

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Wrapping up

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Starting a Shopify store holds limitless potential for ecommerce brands. Even though it is a thrilling endeavour, a substantial amount of risk is always present in the pursuit. It is crucial to be aware of all the hazards that can reduce the chances of your new store’s success. To your rescue, a 3PL for your Shopify can enable you to leverage robust technology, infrastructure, and experience to drive you to success.