How to Get Sales on Shopify: 10 Strategies to Increase Revenue

by The MNTN Team

8 Min Read

You’ve established an e-commerce business and set up a custom Shopify store. You may even be selling on other platforms, too. But if you’re like many new Shopify store owners, chances are you’ve run into an all-too-relatable issue: you still need more sales.

In such a case, you have two options. You can either wait and hope for more sales to flow in naturally or learn how to increase Shopify sales by planning and executing a strategy for boosting your revenue. The former approach almost never works, though, especially when compared to the latter.

As such, if you’re wondering how to get sales on Shopify, check out these ten proven strategies:

1. Optimize Your Shopify Store for Conversions

Getting customers to visit your store is half the battle. Even if they’re aware of your brand, have taken the time to actually visit your site, and are considering making a purchase, if your store isn’t optimized for conversions, you’re all but throwing away that opportunity.

With that in mind, these are some of the most effective means of optimizing your store for conversions:

Include clear and simple calls-to-action (CTAs).
Include Shopify checkout to make the purchase process easier.
Include pop-ups (“Want 15% off? Enter your email!”) for offering discounts and / or collecting leads.
Include a “Hello Bar” at the top of the page to inform visitors of promotions and offer other useful information.
Include “smart” search bars that suggest products or product categories.
Send emails to customers who abandon their shopping carts.
Use “heat map” programs to suggest the best places for CTAs.
Optimize your page load speed.
Make sure your site is mobile-friendly.

To guarantee the changes you make are working as well as they should, you’ll need to continually A/B test them. However, bear in mind that A/B testing is most effective with larger sample sizes, so it works best if your site already gets a significant amount of traffic.

2. Utilize Email Marketing

Emails can be a great way to keep shoppers engaged and boost your sales. You can create custom email campaigns for your business’s needs, of course, but these are some of the most common kinds of emails Shopify store owners use:

Abandoned cart emails
Welcome emails
Emails that include discounts and other promotions
Emails to highlight new product launches
Emails to re-engage with customers who haven’t made a purchase in a long time

Many email marketing integrations offer generous free plans. But if you need more features, you’ll find that most paid services have surprisingly reasonable rates.

Social media marketing, both paid and organic, can be a great means of building a following and driving sales. However, it’s important to have a plan before you dive in. For a social media marketing campaign to be successful, you need to be able to consistently post quality content and regularly engage your customers.

If you manage to build a decent following, your social media accounts will be a great place to promote new products, offer discounts, and improve your Shopify sales.

4. Invest in Paid Advertising

Organic growth strategies can be very effective, but they take time. If you want to quickly expand your reach, you might consider pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, paid search ads, and other types of advertising. These tactics can give your campaign a swift boost while you wait to see the results of organic strategies.

A key benefit of paid ad campaigns is that they can target a specific demographic. For example, if your online store primarily caters to Gen Z, you can design an ad campaign that will only be shown to users in that demographic.

Paid campaigns also come with analytical tools that you can use to track metrics like ad reach, performance, and conversions.

5. Offer Discounts and Promotions

If your site receives a significant amount of traffic but your sales are lagging behind, you may have a large number of would-be buyers who could be convinced with the right kind of discount. Lowering the prices of your products might cut into your revenue in the short term, but if it earns you even a handful of repeat buyers, it will more than pay for itself.

6. Optimize Product Pages

Your landing page is the first impression a customer gets of your company, so most Shopify store owners understand the importance of its quality. However, the job doesn’t end with a strong landing page. Each product page should be optimized for conversions, too.

Here are some of the best conversion rate optimization strategies:

Include high-resolution, high-quality photos of each product. You might even consider including 3D views or demo videos.
Create product descriptions that are thorough yet concise. Make them scannable with bullet points and similar elements.
Include reviews, testimonials, or other kinds of social proof.
Make sure your brand voice comes through and that it’s consistent across all product pages.

If you aren’t sure where to start, it can be helpful to look to a successful competitor in a similar niche and check out their product pages. Don’t copy them, of course, but you can certainly take some inspiration from them as you optimize your own.

7. Implement Upselling and Cross-Selling Techniques

Upselling is a technique used to encourage a customer to upgrade their purchase to a more expensive version of the same product. And cross-selling is one in which you convince the customer to purchase related items, as well. Both of these techniques can nudge customers to spend more in a single transaction. But it’s crucial to keep in mind that the two aren’t the same.

Upselling, in particular, works well if you sell customized products or otherwise let customers upgrade their purchases. For example, if you sell guitars, you might include a pop-up asking a customer if they want to upgrade to higher-quality picks or better build materials.

Cross-selling, on the other hand, works with just about any kind of purchase. Before a customer checks out, consider showing them a few products that have been commonly purchased alongside their item(s). Going with the guitar example above, you might suggest they purchase a strap, picks, guitar stand, or other common accessories.

It’s important to not overdo it with these techniques. If you’re constantly trying to get your customers to spend more, they’ll get annoyed, and your brand’s reputation may suffer as a result.

8. Engage With Your Audience

Many business owners who wonder how to increase Shopify sales focus on their sales techniques and site optimization. That’s a wise approach, but they (and you, by extension) shouldn’t discount more indirect strategies, such as building and maintaining a loyal following.

A recent survey from Bank of America suggests consumers are going to be buying online more than ever for the foreseeable future, and the proliferation of online stores reflects that. That said, the more saturated the market becomes, the harder it is to stand out. Therefore, if you can replicate the kind of interpersonal connection customers get in physical stores, you stand a better chance of winning over new customers and keeping the ones you have.

When you post thoughtful replies to comments and deliver the content your audience wants, your customers will feel heard. Just remember to maintain a clear brand voice. When your brand personality comes through, customers will feel less like they’re talking to a company and more like they’re connecting with a friend.

9. Test and Optimize Your Campaigns

Testing your ad campaign is crucial to evaluating its effectiveness and fine-tuning it accordingly. A simple yet effective method is A/B testing, which is when you separate your target audience into two random groups and show each group a slight variation of the same ad.

For example, you could use bright colors in one ad and use a muted grayscale palette for the other, each color scheme targeting a different emotional response. If one version performs noticeably better, you would probably use that one going forward.

While it might sound like a complicated process, A/B testing platforms can make it simple, even if you’re relatively new to advertising.

10. Streaming TV Advertising

Unfortunately, many small business owners make the mistake of thinking TV advertising is only for major companies. That was true at one point, but with services like MNTN Performance TV, running a streaming TV ad campaign (also known as CTV advertising) is just like a paid search or paid social campaign.

However, not all streaming TV advertising strategies are the same. There are two primary ways to advertise on TV: with either a focus on brand awareness or a focus on performance marketing.

Brand awareness advertising is often less targeted, and there’s no need to stay laser-focused on your analytics. The point is to make potential shoppers more aware of your brand. This is a top-of-funnel marketing approach.

Performance TV advertising is just what it sounds like. Its primary purpose is to drive conversions at the bottom of the funnel. You can target the audiences most likely to make a purchase, and even more importantly, you can track your results. Many shop owners have a limited budget, and through detailed analytics, you can rest easy knowing you’re spending wisely.

You also have options for further customizing your efforts. When you’re creating a campaign, you can choose to optimize for return on ad spend (ROAS) or increasing sales.

How to Get Sales on Shopify: Final Thoughts

Increasing your Shopify sales is possible, but in most cases, it takes more than just a single strategy to do so. Whether you’re a solo entrepreneur or one member of a larger marketing team, planning your approach before executing it is essential.

When you make a concentrated effort to reach new customers, implement discounts and other incentives, and optimize your store itself, you’ll be well on your way to a more successful, sustainable store.