How to Grow Shopify Store: Exploring 11 Essential Strategies

Are you an aspiring e-commerce entrepreneur looking to turn your Shopify store into a thriving online business?

If this question resonates with you, you’re in the right place.

According to BuiltWith, Shopify, a leading eCommerce platform, is utilized by more than 4.5 million businesses globally due to its user-friendly and powerful features, enabling the creation of visually appealing storefronts.

In this article, we will set off on a journey through the complex world of e-commerce, offering you a comprehensive guide on how to grow a Shopify store, and, ultimately, strategies to unlock its full potential.

Table of Contents

• What is a Shopify store?
• Importance of growth for your Shopify store
• 11 proven strategies on how to grow Shopify store
  • 1. Optimize your website
  • 2. Improve search engine optimization
  • 3. Develop content marketing
  • 4. Utilize paid advertising
  • 5. Use customer reviews and testimonials
  • 6. Collaborate with influencers
  • 7. Offer discounts and promotions
  • 8. Implement referral programs
  • 9. Offer client support
  • 10. Review your data
  • 11. Expand to marketplaces
• Develop & grow your Shopify store with Mageplaza
• Final thoughts

What is a Shopify store?

Shopify, launched in 2006, is an e-commerce platform that offers tools like website templates, payment processing, inventory management, and marketing for entrepreneurs and businesses.

Shopify stores offer simplicity and user-friendliness, with professionally designed templates and themes. In addition, the platform handles hosting, security, and payment processing, allowing entrepreneurs to focus on core business operations.

Furthermore, Shopify stores are highly scalable, and suitable for small and large businesses, offering various plans and product types. It’s a top choice for online business growth with strong features and plenty of support materials.

Importance of growth for your Shopify store

Growth is essential for the success of your Shopify store for several reasons. It is a key indicator of your store’s health and can significantly impact your business’s long-term sustainability and profitability.

Here are some of the reasons why growth is important for your Shopify store:

• Increased revenue. The most evident advantage of growth is higher income. Your income will rise as your store attracts more customers and makes more sales. This revenue can be reinvested into your business for further expansion.
• Market expansion. Growth allows you to reach a broader customer base. Expanding into new markets, both geographically and demographically, can reduce your reliance and create new revenue streams on a single customer segment.
• Competitive advantage. In the highly competitive e-commerce industry, those who don’t grow risk stagnation and obsolescence. Growth helps you stay competitive, adapt to changing market conditions, and keep up with your competitors.
• Brand awareness. As your store grows, so does your brand’s visibility. Increased brand awareness can lead to more word-of-mouth referrals, social media mentions, and organic traffic, further boosting your growth.
• Operational efficiency. Scaling up can lead to improved operational efficiency. You can often reduce costs per unit as you produce or sell more. This can include better supplier deals, bulk shipping rates, or reduced customer acquisition costs.
• Diversification. Growth can enable you to diversify your product offerings. Expanding your product range can attract a wider audience and mitigate risks associated with relying on a single product or niche.
• Data insights. As your store grows, you gather more data about your customers, their preferences, and buying habits. This data can be used for better decision-making, personalization, and targeted marketing.
• Partnership opportunities. If you’re seeking external funding or partnerships, growth can make your business more attractive to investors, lenders, and potential collaborators.
• Long-term sustainability. Sustainable growth can contribute to the long-term viability of your business. It’s important to balance growth with profitability and manage it wisely to ensure you don’t overextend yourself.
• Customer trust. A growing business can be seen as more trustworthy by customers. People are often more comfortable making purchases from a well-established and growing brand.
• Employee engagement. Growth often creates opportunities for your team to advance and develop their skills. This may result in more happiness at work and reduced turnover.
• Community impact. A thriving company can have a good effect on the neighborhood by generating jobs and boosting the local economy.

As a result, managing growth carefully is important to avoid operational challenges, financial strain, and customer service issues, requiring a well-thought-out strategy and adequate resources and systems.

11 proven strategies on how to grow Shopify store

1. Optimize your website

Optimizing your website is important in growing your Shopify store and increasing your online presence. A website that is optimized enhances user experience but also improves your site’s visibility in search engine results.

Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to optimize your website for a Shopify store:

• Make sure your website is user-friendly and responsive to mobile devices, as many shoppers prefer to browse on smartphones.
• Optimize your website’s speed by compressing images, browser caching, and a content delivery network.
• Enhance your website’s search engine visibility by implementing both on-page and off-page SEO techniques.
• Develop attractive product descriptions, blog posts, and landing pages to engage visitors and offer value.
• Focus on user-friendly navigation, intuitive layout, and clear calls to action to enhance the overall shopping experience.
• Use an SSL certificate to guarantee the security of your website, and regularly update your software to protect against cyber threats.
• Compress and properly format images to reduce load times while maintaining visual quality.
• Promote and showcase client testimonials to establish trust and reliability.
• Collect visitor email addresses and use email marketing to engage and nurture customers.
• Implement strategies to recover abandoned carts, such as offering rewards in a follow-up email.
• Track the performance of your website with tools like Google Analytics to assess website performance and A/B testing to refine your site for better conversion rates.
• Simplify the checkout process and offer various payment options for a consistent purchase experience.
• Keep your website content and products up to date to stay relevant and competitive.

2. Improve search engine optimization

How to grow a Shopify store? Improving SEO is the second important step. You may rank better in search engine results with SEO, increase visibility, and ultimately drive more potential customers to your online store.

Here are some effective strategies to boost your Shopify store’s SEO:

• Use Google Keyword Planner to identify relevant keywords for your products and industry, and incorporate them into product descriptions, titles, and meta tags.

• Enhance product pages with keyword-rich titles, meta descriptions, and alt tags for images, and produce original, high-quality content that enhances visitor value.
• Make sure your Shopify store is mobile-friendly and loads quickly to improve its SEO performance.
• Optimize your site’s loading times by optimizing images, utilizing content delivery networks, and reducing unnecessary plugins or code.
• Improve user experience by enhancing navigation with a clean design and clear call-to-action buttons.
• Utilize guest posting, influencer partnerships, and content marketing to build high-quality backlinks from popular websites.
• Consistently publish valuable and engaging content like blog posts and videos to boost organic traffic and enhance your store’s SEO.
• Ensure your website has a sitemap, uses schema markup for product information, and is free from technical issues like broken links or duplicate content.
• Optimize your Shopify store for local searches by securing your listing on Google My Business and providing exact business information if you have an offline store.

3. Develop content marketing

Shopify store owners may use content marketing as an effective method to draw in, interact with, and keep customers. You may increase traffic to your store, create authority, and increase brand awareness by producing insightful and timely content.

To help you get started, here is a quick summary of the essential steps:

• Identify your target audience’s needs, preferences, pain points, and interests to create content that appeals to them.
• Define your content marketing objectives to guide your strategy, aiming to boost brand awareness, drive traffic, convert conversions, and build customer loyalty.
• Develop informative, engaging, and valuable content addressing your audience’s needs.
• Optimize your content for search engines by using relevant keywords, meta tags, and best practices to enhance your store’s visibility on search engines.
• Make sure you post on social media on a regular basis by creating a calendar and engaging with your audience to encourage sharing.
• Use email marketing to effectively promote your content to your existing customer base by sending newsletters and updates to maintain their engagement.
• Utilize analytics tools to monitor content performance, focusing on metrics like website traffic, click-through rates, conversion rates, and social engagement.
• Refine your content marketing strategy based on analytics, focusing on the most effective approach and adapting it accordingly.

4. Utilize paid advertising

Making proper use of sponsored advertising is a great way to expand your Shopify store. You can grow your audience, boost brand awareness, and eventually increase traffic and sales by using paid advertising.

To make the most of paid advertising for your Shopify store, follow these steps:

• Define your objectives, whether it’s increasing sales, driving website traffic, or boosting brand awareness.
• Understand your ideal customers and create buyer personas to customize your ads to their preferences.
• Consider platforms like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, and others based on where your audience is most active.
• Craft compelling ad copy and eye-catching visuals that are consistent with your brand and speak to your target audience.
• Use tracking tools and conversion optimization techniques to measure the effectiveness of your ads and make necessary adjustments.
• Establish a budget that fits your objectives and test different strategies to find the most cost-effective approaches.
• Continuously experiment with different ad variations to identify the best-performing ads.
• Monitor key metrics like CTR, conversion rates, and ROI to adjust your strategy based on data.
• Use retargeting campaigns to re-engage potential customers who have shown interest in your products but have not yet converted.
• Keep up with changes in the advertising platforms’ analytics and industry developments so that you may modify your approach appropriately.

5. Use customer reviews and testimonials

In general, using client endorsements and reviews helps you create a positive brand image and boost sales by providing social evidence and fostering trust among potential buyers. It is an essential step in the guide on how to grow Shopify store efficiently.

Here’s how to carry it out:

• Encourage customers to leave honest reviews and testimonials using Shopify-integrated apps or tools to showcase them prominently on product pages.
• Use diverse content types such as written reviews, photos, and videos to enhance customers’ comprehension of your products.
• Show high ratings and numerous reviews prominently to build trust and encourage more sales.
• Respond to both positive and negative reviews to foster a relationship with your customers.
• Display reviews that highlight the key benefits or distinctive features of your products to enhance potential customers’ comprehension of your offerings.
• Create a Shopify store page dedicated to customer testimonials to provide a central hub for potential buyers to view positive experiences.
• Employ customer reviews in marketing materials like email campaigns and social media posts to create persuasive testimonials.
• Send follow-up emails to customers a few weeks after receiving their product, allowing for a more comprehensive assessment.
• Offer rewards like discounts or loyalty points to encourage customer reviews, while adhering to ethical and legal guidelines.
• Regularly review feedback to identify trends and areas for improvement, and adjust your product offerings or customer service accordingly.
• Ensure that reviews are genuine, and address negative feedback with politeness and a commitment to improvement.

In closing, incorporating customer reviews and testimonials into your Shopify store’s strategy can significantly impact your growth. They provide an authentic and compelling way to build trust with your audience and convert potential customers into loyal brand advocates.

6. Collaborate with influencers

Working together with influencers might be a successful growth strategy for your Shopify store. Influencers are essential partners in spreading the word about your products and reaching a wider audience because they have built credibility and trust with their following.

Here are steps for how to use influencer collaborations to boost your Shopify store’s growth:

• Understand your ideal customers and the type of influencers they follow.
• Research and connect with influencers whose audience aligns with your target market.
• Examine their content and engagement rates to ensure they have a genuine following.
• Communicate your goals and what you can provide in return through social media.
• Clearly outline expectations, deliverables, and timelines in a contract or agreement.
• Establish genuine connections with influencers to build trust and strengthen partnerships.
• Let the influencer showcase your products naturally within their content to maintain authenticity.
• Evaluate the most important performance metrics such as sales, website traffic, and social engagement during and after the collaboration.
• Leverage the influencer’s content to engage your audience and encourage them to visit your Shopify store.
• Evaluate the collaboration’s success and learn from the experience to refine future influencer partnerships.

7. Offer discounts and promotions

A successful Shopify store involves more than just offering great products. It also includes effective marketing to attract and retain customers, with discounts and promotions being a powerful strategy for this.

Here are some suggestions for efficiently providing sales and promotions:

• Determine your objectives for discounting, whether it’s to boost sales, eliminate outdated inventory, or attract new customers.
• Know your target audience’s preferences and buying behavior to create promotions that appeal to them.
• Use various types of discounts, such as percentage-off, fixed amount, buy-one-get-one deals, free shipping, or limited-time sales.
• Create unique promo codes to track the success of specific campaigns and reward loyal customers.
• Capitalize on seasonal events and special occasions to create special promotions.
• Offer a cheap package that includes comparable products to motivate clients to purchase more.
• Send reminders with discounts to customers who abandoned their shopping carts to win back potential sales.
• Implement loyalty programs with tiered discounts to reward repeat customers.
• Use email campaigns to give subscribers access to promotions and establish a feeling of uniqueness.
• Suggest complementary products at a discount when customers make a purchase.
• Create a sense of urgency by making some discounts time-bound, pushing customers to act quickly.
• Regularly monitor the performance of your promotions by analyzing sales data, customer engagement, and conversion rates to improve your strategies.
• Experiment with different discount strategies to find what works best for your store.

8. Implement referral programs

How to grow Shopify store? Implementing referral programs is one of the answers. It makes use of the persuasive power of word-of-mouth advertising and provides benefits for your current customers to recommend new clients.

Here’s a quick rundown of the procedures needed to put in place an effective referral program:

• Choose a Shopify app that focuses on referral marketing, such as ReferralCandy, Smile.io, or Growave, and install and set up the app on your store.
• Determine incentives for referrers and friends, such as discounts, store credit, or exclusive products, to encourage loyalty and promote the business.
• Customize your referral program’s appearance, messaging, and rules to match your brand’s aesthetics and business goals.
• Utilize visually appealing banners, pop-ups, or email campaigns to inform current customers about the referral program.
• Employ the app’s tracking tools to track referrals and rewards, analyze data to identify the most effective strategies, and make necessary adjustments.
• Allow customers to recommend friends with ease by offering one-click sharing options via email or social media.
• Recognize and reward your top referrers to motivate them to continue promoting your store.
• Continually test different referral program elements, such as reward amounts and messaging, and refine your strategy to maximize results.
• Ensure your referral program adheres to legal and privacy regulations, including data protection laws like GDPR and FTC guidelines.

9. Offer client support

Growing your Shopify store requires offering excellent customer support. In the competitive world of e-commerce, exceptional service can set your brand apart and encourage customer loyalty.

Here’s how to implement it:

• Respond promptly to customer inquiries via email, chat, or social media, making use of automated responses and chatbots to efficiently handle basic queries.
• Refer to clients by name and make personalized product recommendations based on their browsing or past purchases.
• Create and display clear return, refund, and shipping policies to build trust.
• Install a live chat function to help clients immediately and address problems.
• Create a comprehensive FAQ or knowledge base to address common questions and provide self-service options.
• Enable order tracking for customers to monitor the progress of their purchases.
• Send thank-you emails, ask for reviews, and offer loyalty discounts to encourage repeat business.
• Gather client input and take appropriate action to make ongoing improvements to your offerings.
• Engage in social media interaction with your customers, promptly answering their messages and comments.
• To ensure favorable evaluations and recommendations, make sure your items satisfy or exceed the needs of your customers.
• Give customer service across various channels like email, chat, phone, and social media.

10. Review your data

Expanding your Shopify store requires you to review your data. In particular, data analysis offers insightful information about consumer behavior, business results, and possibilities for development.

The following is an easy-to-follow guide on how to efficiently examine your data to drive the growth of your Shopify store:

• Regularly assess your sales reports and website traffic data. Identify trends, popular products, and high-converting pages.
• Analyze customer data to comprehend their demographics, behavior, and preferences, allowing you to tailor your advertising and product offerings.
• Keep an eye on inventory levels and reorder products on time to avoid stockouts.
• Enhance your checkout process and website design to boost conversion rates by testing various elements to determine the most effective approach.
• Address issues by actively seeking and considering customer feedback through reviews, surveys, or social media, and making improvements based on their input.
• Monitor your competitors’ strategies and identify areas where you can improve to enhance your store’s performance.
• Analyze the ROI of your marketing initiatives, choose the best distribution channels, and set your budget appropriately.
• Keep track of expenses, profit margins, and overall financial health.
• Continue testing different elements of your website, including headlines, photos, and call-to-actions, with A/B testing to see what works best for your audience.

11. Expand to marketplaces

Adding Shopify stores to online marketplaces is a smart move if you want to build your e-commerce company. With their larger consumer base, better exposure, and inherent trust, marketplaces can help you expand your client base and attract new markets.

Follow these strategies to expand your marketplaces:

• Choose marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Walmart, and Etsy that are suitable for your products and target audience.
• Create seller accounts on selected marketplaces and ensure your branding and product listings align with your Shopify store.
• Customize your product listings to meet each marketplace’s requirements, including titles, descriptions, and images.
• Sync your Shopify store with marketplace platforms to streamline inventory management and prevent overselling.
• Consider adjusting pricing strategies and running promotions or discounts to stay competitive in various marketplaces.
• Select suitable fulfillment options, such as handling the process yourself, using a fulfillment center, or utilizing a marketplace’s fulfillment services.
• To keep up a good reputation, deliver first-rate customer service.
• Monitor performance on each marketplace using analytics tools and gather customer feedback to make continuous improvements.
• As you establish a presence on multiple marketplaces, analyze which ones provide the best ROI and consider expanding to new platforms to further grow your sales.

Read more: Top 15 Powerful Upsell App Shopify for Your Store

Develop & grow your Shopify store with Mageplaza

With a suite of powerful extensions and a commitment to innovation, Mageplaza can play a pivotal role in helping your Shopify store grow and thrive.

Here’s how Mageplaza can assist you in growing your Shopify store:

• User-friendly interface. Mageplaza’s extensions are user-friendly, accessible to those with limited technical knowledge, with a straightforward setup and configuration process, allowing full potential utilization.
• Customer support. Mageplaza is committed to providing excellent customer support. In case you run into any issues, our support team is readily available to assist you.
• Cost-effective solutions. Mageplaza provides a cost-saving solution for your Shopify store functionality enhancement, allowing you to choose extensions that align with your budget and business needs.
• Regular updates and improvements. Mageplaza regularly updates our extensions to keep your e-commerce store competitive and secure, offering ongoing improvements and enhancements to help your business evolve properly.

• Access to powerful dropshipping apps. With the connection with Avada Commerce, whose Shopify app store offers a vast library of apps for businesses to customize their operations, Mageplaza extends our capabilities to help you grow your Shopify store.

So, with a commitment to innovation and excellent customer support, Mageplaza is a valuable partner for e-commerce businesses seeking sustainable growth and success.

On top of that, Mageplaza is currently offering a free 1:1 consultation and a 30-day all-app free trial. Don’t miss out on this opportunity to supercharge your store’s growth. Try our services today and watch your Shopify store thrive!

REACH OUT TO US RIGHT NOW

Final thoughts

So, how to grow Shopify store? Hope you’ve got your answers after all the strategies we have provided above.

In conclusion, growing a Shopify store requires a strategic and multi-faceted approach. By focusing on aspects such as product selection, website optimization, marketing, and customer engagement, you can create a successful and thriving e-commerce business.

Also, it’s essential to continually adapt to market trends and customer preferences, analyze data, and stay committed to providing value to your customers.

Remember, the journey to growing a Shopify store is a lasting process, and with dedication, creativity, and a customer-centric mindset, your e-commerce store can achieve long-term success.