Rethink your Shopify Growth: The enterprise-level weapon you’re missing

The main goal of this article is to help you focus on what matters most for your e-commerce growth based on a core strategy.

Spoiler Alert: If you are aiming for controlled growth at an enterprise level, you need to treat your online Shopify store as an enterprise-level tool. It's time to stop using ineffective widgets that hinder your users'
experience and invest in custom Shopify development solutions to drive profits.

Step 1: Decide what matters for your e-commerce store, with 3 to 5 key points max

Chasing a limited number of goals and metrics at first will help you lay a simple yet efficient strategy. While the reasoning can vary between merchants and industries we can point to a few examples to get you started.

What are the main products or product lines you want to sell the most? Should you select your top priorities based on sales volume or profit margin? What other product or service truly makes sense for your customers when it comes to upselling for instance? Is the conversion rate of your main products great, if not why?

The list goes on and on but you get the idea. We can help you identify 3 to 5 key objectives and the metrics you want to monitor and take a snapshot of the current situation. Measuring your success as you deploy your bespoke strategy will be key to your e-commerce growth.

Step 2: Time to do some housekeeping and develop the tools you need in your Shopify store

The Shopify App store is full of claims a Shopify merchant can hardly resist trying. The appeal of a magic bullet is real but the outcome rarely lives up to the hype.In 95% of the stores we inspect, the code is cluttered with poorly developed apps, greatly impacting speed, customer experience, design, and brand image. You do not need to be an engineer yourself as a business owner but you need to keep in mind technology matters a lot in e-commerce.

Many merchants aim to boost conversion rates and upsell products, but sometimes they end up harming their store by drastically increasing loading times and adding confusing user interfaces to key pages. Most of the time, it is impossible to prove the percentage of gain claimed by the app, especially when it is combined with data and signals from other apps, along with various marketing and advertising efforts.

Running a quick test on Google PageSpeed Insights will likely convince you that your store’s "App Soup" is significantly impacting your store and conversion rates.

Step 3: Shopify tailor-made theme development to the rescue

Now that you have identified your objectives, it is time to remove all the apps that are harming your store and have not proven to have a truly positive impact. With experience, they are easy to identify. The first good news is that you will save money by stopping their monthly subscriptions and making your store get a second wind right away. Your SEO team and customers are already thanking you!

Some Apps are equally valuable for your store, this is a good opportunity to identify them and make sure you make the most of them.

How do we typically proceed from there? Based on our discussion with the merchant to define their key objectives, we provide tailored solutions to give them the control they need in their Shopify store and theme configurator. We always prioritize native Shopify development solutions to ensure that the design and UX/UI align perfectly with the branding and the desired customer experience. This also ensures the solution is viable long-term and does not hurt your store's loading speed in any way.

We pride ourselves on giving our clients the control they need to apply their online strategy effortlessly. This is the first step to controlled and sustained online growth for your Shopify store.

Step 4: Measure, Adjust, Expend

Now that you have the tools in place for each of your online growth objectives it is time to look at the KPIs, the key metrics we helped you define in step 1. Shopify analytics and Google analytics will be your tools of choice when measuring the success of each of your objectives. It is a unique opportunity to identify what works, and what does not and adjust accordingly. This often leads to invaluable discoveries about your online customers, on how they perceive certain products and offers, opening the door to more product page refinements, and better service descriptions,...

The more you strategize and control your growth and the real reasons behind it, the more it will open the door to refining your online offer. Executing a plan based on a well-thought-out strategy allows you to effortlessly enter a positive growth circle in just a few guided steps.

Now that you're in control and can measure your progress week over week and month over month, it's time to expand your growth strategy with new objectives. Some of these objectives may focus on the core bottom line, aiming to achieve specific numbers from your initial strategy. Others may be secondary objectives, such as reducing the return rate. Additionally, there should be purely qualitative objectives, for example, focusing on improving customer satisfaction.

Conclusion on growing your Shopify online revenue

It should be clear by now that taking control of your store growth is key to your long-term online profitability. One shoe does not fit all and silver bullets are rarely available in the real business world. Your brand, your design, and your offer are unique in one or many ways, so should be your store and online experience.

It can sound intimidating or like a lot of work but in most cases it is not. The tip we give to all our clients is that their key objectives (3 to 5) should easily fit on a Post-it. Don’t worry, we love to brainstorm with
you and help you get to the business core, with a clear definition for each objective.

One more tip before you go

The goal of “selling more” often seems like a vague wish. It's a hard one to achieve without specific metrics and smaller objectives. A good starting point is to shift from asking "how to sell more" to asking "how to sell better."

Here are some ideas to help you get started:

• Which items have the highest profit margins?
• What items have the lowest Inventory Turnover Rate and need a “little help” to leave your warehouse?
• What are the goods with the lowest Rate of Return you should promote?
• Which products need to be sold before the next season begins?

These types of questions will help you achieve specific objectives, making it easier to set goals for your merchandising, upselling, and cross-selling strategies.

Authors Bio
Former IBM employee with a double education in Computer Science and Business administration. My experience in retail and e-commerce covers various aspects including manufacturing, quality control,
shipping, and inventory management. Bluedge USA is a Shopify Development Agency based in Los Angeles. Our team is composed of highly skilled and passionate individuals.