Why do most Shopify Stores Fail?

There are many different ways to have a business fail using Shopify, it can vary from marketing, promotional and pricing, lack of mobile applications, bad customer service, supply chain issues, quality of product, and many more. With good due diligence, you can reach success in avoiding these types of issues, however, some aren't so obvious in getting the information you need to make a wise decision. Below we will highlight some of the top 10 drivers of failure, in the hopes that it helps find ways to avoid and plan for your success.

Wrong Drop Shipping niche market

Advice: Do not jump into a trending niche demand where an incumbent is seeing success in that trend. This is a highly competitive area, and usually, the audience isn't large enough for additional vendors.

Recommendation: Do your own groundwork to explore the next trending niche demand. There will be less competition and a large audience with supply chain issues not in play.

Choice of bad products

Advice: Not all products are a good idea since matching a product to market demand has to have qualified market research to understand the dynamics of the right product, price, and the right timing with the business model to support it.

Recommendation: For being a unique seller, unique products are to be shown on your online store. With this in mind, use social media to highlight your uniqueness for them to visit, and enjoy good customer service while engaging with your business. Search engines can be in tune with the unique product as users search for their needs, which gives you a better SEO click-through rate.

Lack of Mobile Application for users

Advice: With Shopify Themes, you must ensure mobile responsiveness to access your products and services. This includes customer service experience as well when interacting with your business. Some of the audience are mobile-only users, which therefore sets the stage that if the experience is not flawless, they will move on to a better eCommerce website.

Recommendation: Choosing an Online Store 2.0 Shopify Theme will give you a solid mobile user experience. You can start a new free trial store to explore this and pick up one of the Shopify Free Themes and use the website builder to explore the mobile features. Additionally, you will enjoy some of the new merchandising and custom features of this architecture.

Low-quality Shop

Advice: Presentation and high-resolution images and fonts should be employed, and be checked in a mobile setting as well. Spelling, grammar, and better yet, using the right keywords for SEO will boost confidence in purchasing.

Recommendation: Everything on your eCommerce website should be reviewed with attention to detail. Images have to be optimized between high resolution vs. load speed. The fonts need to work with your brand image and need to be legible on a mobile phone (regular size). Social media which uses both imagery and content, need to be checked on as well. Additionally, to differentiate from fake sites, your spelling and grammar need to be polished to assist with your conversions.

Customers not returning to your store

Advice: In an ideal setting you have recurring customers wanting more of your goods. A good customer experience from arriving on your website, finding the right product, and having the confidence to purchase from you is the first step. Selling products with promotional discounts helps the conversion, and ensuring that the experience is kept up when you ship the product is also important.

Recommendation: Providing the service that satisfies their expectations and requirements is key to succeeding in returning customers. Have a well-organized way of replying to inquiries within a reasonable timeframe to keep up the engagement and customer satisfaction.

Shipping Issues

Advice: Don't be caught out in the second biggest Shopify Store Fail - where your logistics will arguably make you sink your business in delivering the goods in a timely manner. If it is a popular product that isn't available locally, then customers will have a better understanding and have greater patience in receiving their product purchased online. However, if your suppliers have issues in delivering their goods to you or your clients then that in itself can create a business-killing situation.

Recommendation: Charge-backs are the worst kind of transactions that vendors will face. It costs money to process and you get the bill, plus the amount of the transaction removed from your account. Financially this will take your business in the wrong direction, as well as give you a bad reputation for non-delivery, leaving you with a tarnished brand.

Poor Customer Service

Advice: As with most businesses, standing out with customer service being a forefront and focused engagement with clients is easy to spell out, but not so easy to execute. This requires planning, while organizing the methods of engagement, and providing good information easily and quickly.

Recommendation: Having layers of information such as FAQs, a knowledgebase of information, forums to interact with, and even 24/7 easy-to-contact/chat with the business has shown great success. Depending on product complexity, as well as business type, your methods may vary - having customer groups give you feedback always helps to adjust your methods of handling clients' questions and requests.

Product margins are falling

Advice: Razor-thin margins can put the business at risk since any issue arising will put you in the negative. Your product mix must put you in a good margin position, loss leaders are viable as long as the upsells keep you in the healthy margin pool. Poor product pricing and lack of upselling can make your business take a large hit.

Recommendation: Have a good product strategy, and ensure your margins are competitive yet at the higher end of the market, or risk having a product issue, and have margins fall. This level of understanding is critical when dealing with many products, and close attention to customer purchasing behaviors needs to verify how your margins are being kept in good standing.

Poor Marketing Funnel of your Shopify Theme

Advice: Checking the flow of your customers and how they shop is very important for conversion. The Call-to-actions need to be in the right places, with the right content for engagement. If your Shopify Theme does not get the engagement, you won't see good conversions which will lower your potential revenues.

Recommendation: Review your Shopify Themes, Call-to-actions, and language for maximum engagement as well as product promotions to be in place to help convert customers. You should be reviewing the customer flow and seeing where they might be leaving your pages or leaving their baskets without transacting.

Lack of Marketing or Promotion

Advice: Your voice to the audience is critical for awareness - if they don't hear from you, they won't shop with you. This does require investment and tactics using social networks. Advertising within these social media platforms is well targeted today and has metrics to measure and budget your ads.

Recommendation: Using both advertising and promotion together will get you the conversions you are looking for. How you do this can vary, but advertising a promotional event always gets more interest and engagement. You have to find ways to get your voice out, either with partners or straight out in the marketplace.

Conclusion

These are only 10 of many pitfalls that Shopify Stores fail, however, it isn't just unique to Shopify stores, it is relevant for any business for the most part. Having a plan and strategy to ensure that your goods are relevant, properly priced, given incentives to purchase, and avoiding bad experiences are all part of the recipe. Customers are happy to engage with their credit cards when a business delivers that solid experience and customer orders are processed and shipped in a timely manner. Social media marketing and promotions engage well with a good experience behind them. Finally, good SEO always will boost your voice - so if you need to cover that angle, we are happy to assist - just reach out to us at wish@thegenielab.com