How to Sell on Shopify: 13 Ways to Sell on Shopify

Your big moment is finally here. You’ve just finished building your store and are now looking to learn how to sell on Shopify. Today, you might be starting at zero (we all do). But let’s build the right foundations so that months from now, you’ll be the proud owner of a successful Shopify store. 

How to Sell on Shopify: 13 Ways to Sell on Shopify

1. Facebook Ads

Facebook Ads is the most popular advertising platform, allowing you to advertise on both Facebook and Instagram. To sell on Shopify successfully, you’ll need to attract a relevant audience to your website through your ads. You can do this by targeting the audience of Facebook pages. So if you know that a big brand has the exact customer you’re trying to attract, you can include their page as an interest. Another thing to keep in mind is that you want to ensure that your audience is “Broad” to help increase your chances of conversion.

2. Facebook Groups

Facebook recently changed its settings to allow online retailers to post in Facebook groups as their business. It’s still in the early stages so not everyone is doing it yet meaning you can get a jump start on the competition. By posting as your business page, you can increase your brand’s visibility in popular, niche groups. Of course, you shouldn’t be using this opportunity to spam every group in your niche. That’s the quickest way to get banned. However, if you own a yoga online store, you can post in popular yoga Facebook groups engaging with the community’s posts and creating your own. If you sell on Shopify, Facebook groups should be incorporated into your strategy to help you grow your Facebook followers.

3. Instagram Stories

If you’re currently learning how to sell on Shopify, you should focus on building out your Instagram account. You’ll want to have at least 10,000 relevant followers to increase your odds of generating sales with Instagram Stories. With Instagram Stories, users can swipe up to visit your product page bringing them closer to making a purchase. You can also pair up with a popular Instagram account, such as a fan page, to do a sponsored Instagram story. For example, if you own a pet store, you can reach out to a dog fan page and pay to do a sponsored Story post, which will allow a bigger audience to visit your website. This is ideal for smaller brands who haven’t amassed big followings yet. 

4. Instagram Fan Pages

I’ve partnered with both influencers and fan pages in the past. When it comes to influencers, I find the rates tend to be higher and the conversion rates tend to be lower. So when partnering with influencers, it’s sometimes better to only offer an affiliate commission per sale to keep costs lower, at least in the beginning while you figure it out. When it comes to fan pages, the audience tends to be more targeted allowing you to find a page who shares a similar interest. You can find fan pages for fashion, pets, beauty, art, home decor, and more. You can send a Direct Message to these fan pages and ask for a shout-out in a post or story to drive traffic back to your website. As you execute this strategy in the beginning, you might also decide to start your own fan page around an interest (in addition to your store) to help you generate more sales at a lower acquisition cost. 

5. Work with Affiliates

One of the methods I’ve been executing on a lot lately to gain new customers is partnering with affiliate marketers. Take a look at a powerhouse like Amazon, they have one of the biggest affiliate programs in the world which have helped propel their online store to become the biggest in the world. While your affiliate program might not be as big, you can still amass a big number of affiliates. There are two ways to do this. First, reach out to your current customer list and ask them to be affiliates. Since they’ve already purchased from you, they’d be more willing to promote your products to their friends and followers. Second, you can do some backlinking outreach. In this case, you can reach out to articles for keywords like “best fashion websites” and offer an affiliate commission to brands who include your link on their article. You can also reach out to other fashion bloggers who are willing to write a sponsored review while being compensation through an affiliate link. 

6. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a slow and very long-term game so most stores who sell on Shopify won’t bother to do it. To do it right, in the beginning, you’ll need to go for smaller, long-tail keywords in your niche. You’ll write blog posts about niche topics that’ll interest your customers. For example, if you’re in beauty, you might write a blog post on how to apply fake eyelashes. The blog posts should be about 2,000 words each. You don’t need to write them everyday. You can start with one to two posts a week. A few months from now, you’ll be getting traffic from those blog posts. Using a retargeting ad, you can monetize your blog traffic for a better price than a traditional Facebook ad. Since you’ll have the right niche traffic coming to your website, you’ll be more likely to convert those visitors. As your blog grows, so will the number of sales you get. But it takes a lot of work with no results in the beginning, which tends to discourage a lot of people. You need to be persistent enough to work past that.

7. Bundle Apps

The one type of app that helped us sell on Shopify was the bundle app. You can browse the Shopify App store to find the bundle app that meets your budget and needs. Keep in mind that if you’re in the early stages with a small budget, you don’t need this day one. Once you’ve figured out your ads and start generating more Shopify sales that’s when you’ll want to invest in one of these. The beauty of the bundle app is that you can sell more of the same product without having to find more customers. For example, say you sell fake eyelashes, someone might be checking out with one, but at checkout you can upsell the same style or other styles in a bundle deal with a discount attached. The discount doesn’t need to be big and it’ll help you generate more sales than hoping that customer would come back to buy from your store. You’d be surprised at how many customers would buy more of the same product at checkout. This strategy worked really well for us. 

8. Partner with Influencers

No two influencers are the same so a partnership with one can be a massive success or a total flop. If you’re starting at a zero budget, you shouldn’t offer compensation to an influencer just yet. The best route is to start with affiliate commission to keep your risk low as you learn how to sell on Shopify. However, if the influencer is taking custom photos or videos with the product, you should compensate them so that you can use that content to create effective ads. Keep in mind that when partnering with influencers for sponsored posts, most of the time their audience isn’t an exact match with your target audience. For example, an attractive female influencer might post a photo in your dress but many of her followers may be male. You should use tools to analyze who the followers are for the influencers you reach out to, to ensure it’s the right match. 

9. Add a Call to Action to Every Page

If you really want to sell on Shopify, you need to optimize every page of your website. Not just the product page. People will browse your About Us page, homepage, and other pages on your website too. So add products to those pages. On your homepage, add your best-seller by adding a “Featured product” in the “Sections” setting of your theme. You can also add a featured product to your About Us page since people may be doing some research on your store before they’re confident enough to buy. By adding products to these pages, you put the emphasis on your products, making it easier for them to make a purchase without having to flip through multiple pages to make that happen. 

10. Drive Referral Traffic

When your website doesn’t have any traffic yet the best way to grow it is by getting help from other websites. You can use SEO tools to find the backlinks of your competitors. Then, by knowing who links out to your competitors, you can reach out to them and ask for a link in return. You can also look for defunct online stores in your niche, and reach out to brands that link to them telling them that the link is broken and to link to your website instead. Doing this will allow you to have steady traffic to your website in its first few days and this strategy can be free. Some may ask for compensation but you can always say no. You can also submit your online store to sites like Finder to be listed under competing niche online stores.

11. Host a Giveaway

Giveaways are a great way to build brand awareness and traffic to your website. After creating the giveaway, you can promote it in relevant niche Facebook groups (with the group admin’s permission), giveaway websites, or even partner with a prominent blogger or publication to capture the traffic you need to make it a success. After awarding the main prize, you can generate sales by offering a runner up prize to every person who didn’t win. The runner up prize? A $5 gift card to your online store. Just make sure that your products are priced high enough that you don’t lose money with this deal. Financially, the $5 off should work in the same way a discount would. So make sure your products are priced accordingly. 

12. Pinterest Group Boards

Pinterest group boards allow you to reach a bigger audience when your own is too small. Tools like Pin Groupie allow you to find group boards for popular niches. You can also search your niche for group boards on Pinterest. For example, searching “kitchen group boards” under Pinterest’s board section. Then, you can contact the owner of the group board to get accepted. Ultimately, it’s a numbers game so the more people you reach out to the more you’ll be accepted into. Not all users will accept you into their group boards but don’t get too discouraged because it is possible to join a few of them. You’ll still want to post on your own boards even after being accepted into group boards because that also helps you elevate your Pinterest traffic to your website. 

13. Import Product Reviews

When your online store is only a few days old, you might not have a lot of social proof. Every little bit of validation will help you generate sales. One way to get social proof in the early days is to import AliExpress reviews to your website. While the customers haven’t bought from your store, they have purchased the exact product from the same supplier so the product reviews are real. They may also include photos that’ll help your potential customers make an informed decision when browsing your website. By having product reviews on your product page, ads driving traffic to those pages will be more likely to convert as customers can see photos and learn more about the product they’re thinking about buying. Sometimes customer reviews provide better insight than a product description describing the same item. 

Conclusion

When it comes to running an ecommerce business, selling on Shopify is the best part. There’s nothing better than connecting customers to amazing products. And the joy of hearing the cha-ching never really goes away. By learning how to sell on Shopify, you can reach a bigger audience, help more people buy products they need, and earn some passive income in the process. 

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