If you’re anything like me, you love just about everything the digital age of communication has brought the world of entrepreneurship. From calendar management and teleconferencing to social media and search engines—there’s never been a better time to work for yourself.
That said, though surrounded by a host of game-changing positives, there’s but one thing the digital realm regularly force-feeds guys like me that drives me bonkers—buzzwords.
The following are a few of the worst:
- Big Data – I crave numeric brilliance, but come on—it’s marketing, not “Star Trek.”
- Millennials – I blame Snapchat for marketing’s obsession with the young and entitled.
- Deep Linking – Don’t you have to be 18 years or older to learn about this SEO strategy?
- Brand Storytelling – What annoys me most about this one is that it’s not even new …
- Thought Leader – Hey, have you seen Thought Leader’s best friend, anywhere—Guru?
Still, though I’m vehemently opposed to buzzwords and the routine headaches they cause me and my team, there’s one of them of which I’m a bit of a closet fan: “hack.”
Spawned from “growth hacking,” at least out on the marketing front, hacks are an entrepreneur’s greatest ally. Basically, hacks are insanely clever solutions to widespread problems.
For example, if your business is looking to grow its Twitter following overnight, before investing in expensive social automation tools, consider this simple, three-step process to get things going:
- Step #1 – Search for accounts with #FollowBack in their profile bios.
- Step #2 – Follow 2,000 of them in one sitting. Once you’ve followed them, mute them.
- Step #3 – With a larger following of your own, follow your competitors’ followers.
The result? Not only will your audience grow, but it will be highly relevant to your niche, too.
Simply put, hacks are awesome. Making them even better, though, there are more than enough of them floating around on the Internet’s most obscure forums to meet your business’ needs.
As such, if you’re running an online store, learning to hack Shopify is one of those things that’s high on your list of priorities. You’re in luck—that’s exactly what we’ll be doing in today’s post.
Below, you’ll find four of my favorite, tried-and-true Shopify hacks:
* Hack #1 – Play With Price
The price of your store’s products is incredibly important. Why? Well, if you think about it, price is what either adds to or takes away from the bottom-line of every order you process.
In the past, to test price on Shopify, it was required that changes be made to a product, thus justifying the alteration. Needless to say, taking into account things like undulant traffic and seasonal trends, this made comparative efforts a time-consuming undertaking …
Nowadays, using tools like the Quant Price app, split-testing products that produce high revenue is easy. By so doing, you ensure that price positively impacts profit as much as possible.
Mercy, that was some hefty P-usage …
Anyway, to make the most of Quant Price, you’ll first need to identify your best-selling products. Remember—products with 100 or more sales per month are the ones best-suited for testing.
To find them, take a look at your product performance report in Google Analytics. Then, filter the report by unique purchases or quantity. Use enhance e-commerce analytics to set this up.
With everything in place, Quant Price is capable of working its magic.
* Hack #2 – Try Your Hand at Free Shipping
Buyers love free shipping. As such, when you offer it up as a perk, you’re bound to see an uptick in placed orders. The only problem, though? Free shipping chomps away at profit margins …
The solution to this problem is to provide free shipping over a minimum amount. With this in mind, however, if your products are of the one-off variety, free shipping might not work well.
On the flip side of things, if your store sells complementary products, it’s much easier for you to make up the shipping difference with more shopping cart items come checkout time.
Don’t crunch the numbers on this by yourself, though—use the In-Cart Upsell app. And if this app doesn’t meet your upselling needs, there are plenty more just like it to lend a helping hand.
* Hack #3 – Strengthen Shipping and Value Propositions
Sure, offering up free shipping during the checkout process is bound to improve sales performance, but believe it or not, there’s an even simpler, more effective way to do this …
Make any and all shipping and returns guarantees a site-wide affair.
Yes, the last-minute excitement of learning that free shipping is only a few extra dollars away is entirely done away with, but your store’s value propositions are better internalized by customers.
Unlike the MooseJaw example featured in the previous hack, have your “Tech Guy” build in a permanent banner at the top of every page in your online store—that way, nobody misses it.
And as far as value propositions are concerned, test variations of the following options:
- Free Shipping
- Free Gift-Wrapping
- 365-Day Return Policy
- Lowest-Price Guarantee
- Free Worldwide Delivery
You know what makes your store unique—tell people about it.
* Hack #4 – Stop Talking About Influencers—Work With Them!
Working with influencers isn’t the “latest and greatest” of growth-marketing hacks. Truth be told, both online and offline, this method has been around for quite some time …
There’s a reason for it, though—overnight, it’s capable of producing thousands of sales.
The logic here is simple—influencers already have an engaged audience. When they recommend a product to their audience, a sizable number of “brand fans” willingly bust out their credit cards.
Due to its well-known efficiency, there’s a good chance you’ve heard about the benefits of working with influencers. Instead of just listening, though, team up with one or two of your own.
Last year, Conversio published a blog post with a few great examples of e-commerce brands who’d used influencers to sell their products—click here to see what all of this looks like.
Interested in doing something similar? Here’s how to maximize your influencer ROI:
- Step #1 – Armed with a buyer persona, learn where your audience spends time online.
- Step #2 – Now, with an outlet or two, begin researching niche-specific influencers.
- Step #3 – Next, look at the types of content they produce—what best earns engagement?
- Step #4 – With a target influencer and content type in mind, dig up a few past examples.
- Step #5 – Using social media, contact forms and email, develop a working relationship.
* Note: For a more detailed account of how this is to be done, click here.
It’s Time to Kick Things Up a Notch …
By themselves, hacks are little more than a painfully annoying buzzword. When put into action, however, they’re a means through which money is quickly (and predictably, mind you) made.
Forgive the 90s cliché, but are you ready to “kick things up a notch” with your Shopify shop?
If so, starting today, try your hand at each of the above hacks. Having used them both for myself and long-standing clients, I’m more than happy to put my word behind them—best of luck!
