By the end of this article on 'How To Promote And Launch Your Shopify Store', you will be ready to launch a full-fledged eCommerce store and soon, start a Dropshipping business too.
And as always, for any one-on-one consulting and assistance, you may mail me at tariq@bloggersbloom.com
This article (and a series of upcoming articles) will help you understand some of the channels, social media platforms, etc., to promote your online store.
And eventually, promote and launch your Shopify store.
Day #6: How To Promote And Launch Your Shopify Store
We are on Day 6 of this 7 day series. I do hope you have checked my previous articles in this series on Shopify.
The topics covered so far are,
- Day #1: How To Create An Online Store With Shopify
- Day #2: How To Add Products And Collections To Your Shopify Store
- Day #3: How To Design Your Shopify Store
- Day #4: How To Set-Up Payment And Shipping on Your Store
- Day #5: An Understanding of Taxes, Billing And Shopify Settings
And most importantly, I hope you have started your free 14-day trial with Shopify.
In this article, we will understand some of the channels, social media platforms, etc., to promote our online store. And eventually, launch our Shopify store.
How To Promote And Launch Your Online Store
What will we be covering in this article?
- How to add a Sales Channel
- How to add an App
- Shopify Analytics Overview
- Marketing Overview
- Offer Discounts
- Launch Your Online Store
How to Add a Sales Channel
You’ve put in all the hard work, created your online store and now, you need to announce it to the world. You need traffic, and most importantly, you need sales.
Shopify makes it easy to promote your product(s) using the sales channels. A sales channel gives you various options to sell and promote your product(s).
Apart from your main channel (your web store), you can integrate with social media channels, Amazon, etc.
To begin, click on the (+) plus sign besides SALES CHANNELS on the left-hand side. You will get the following window,
You’ll notice the top sales channels recommend for your business.
Click the plus icon beside the sales channel you want to add. When you add a sales channel in Shopify all of your existing products are automatically available on the channel.
Review the terms of use for a sales channel before you start using it.
If you don’t want to sell a product on a particular channel, then you need to remove the channel from the product’s availability.
You will require a separate account for the sales channels you select. For e.g., to integrate Facebook, you will need a Facebook account. For Amazon, you need an Amazon seller account.
You may be eager to go ahead and add all the various sales channels available. However, it would be a good practice studying where your target audience exists and then, accordingly, go ahead and add these sales channels.
How to Add an App
While the Shopify store provides you with all the core features required to start and grow your online business, you may require some specific features that are not yet available on Shopify.
And that is fulfilled by the Apps. Apps are programs that when added to your Shopify store, enhances the functionalities of your store.
The Shopify app store has thousands of apps developed both by Shopify as well as by Shopify Partners. The Shopify apps are either available free or paid. The paid apps have a monthly fee, a one-time fee, or a fee every time you use it. Most paid apps offer a free basic plan or a free trial period, so you can try the app before you buy it.
Let’s go ahead and install an app.
From your dashboard, click on ‘Apps’.
Shopify will consistently recommend apps based on the stage of your business, which will appear on the App page (as shown below).
Click on ‘Visit the Shopify App Store‘ button.
It will take you to the Shopify App store as shown below.
One great App to install is the Product Review app.
You would appreciate and agree on the fact that reading reviews does help customers decide to go ahead with their purchase or not.
Let’s search for ‘Reviews’ in the search field as shown below.
You will find a list of Apps in the search results page.
Go ahead and click on ‘Product Review App’.
You could view the demo video to understand how the App works. If you are convinced about the App, go ahead and click on ‘Add app’.
You will notice this App provides a ‘Free plan’. It also has a 14-day free trial.
Once you click on ‘Add App’, you will be asked to confirm on the installation.
Scroll down and click on ‘Install app’.
Once installed, you will be prompted to select the products for which you would like to include the Product Review App.
As you keep using Shopify, you will become more familiar with the various apps and which apps will help you in succeeding online.
Shopify Analytics Overview
As a business owner, analyzing and optimizing your marketing activities will be an ongoing process. By analyzing your reports and your store analytics, you can channel your resources and spending on tactics that are working.
As a Shopify store owner, you have access to detailed analytics and reporting that can help you make smart choices on how you market your products and services.
To begin, click on ‘Analytics’ on your Shopify dashboard. You will notice the Overview dashboard, Reports, and Live view.
Let’s look at the Overview dashboard first.
The dashboard shows Total sales orders, Online store sessions, Returning visitor data, etc. You can see at a glance how your store is performing across all your sales channels for any date range.
The dashboard shows the most valuable metrics to give you an insight into the performance of your store and the behavior of the visitors on your site.
Next, let’s view our sales report. Click on ‘Report’.
Shopify reports are divided into categories, such as sales, acquisitions, customers, and behavior to help you better understand your store data and how visitors are interacting with your site.
You can the reports based on date or by product.
Since our store is new, we don’t have any data yet. Take some time to familiarize yourself with this dashboard, so you know what Shopify can track for you.
Additional insights can be discovered by using Google Analytics on your Shopify store. It’s enabled from within the online store preferences.
Depending on your Shopify plan, you have access to different types of reports. When you upgrade your plan, you will automatically have access to past data for the new reports that are made available to you.
There are three main categories of reports you should look at when you’re just starting out.
These are sales, acquisition, and behavior reports.
Now let’s look at the Live view.
The Live view gives you a real-time view of the activity in your store. You can use live view to monitor activity on your store and see a quick view of today’s sessions, orders, and sales.
This is especially helpful during high traffic periods like sales, so you can see the results of your marketing efforts.
Marketing Overview
Every business needs a marketing strategy. So where do you begin?
Shopify makes it easier for you to manage your marketing activities in the Marketing section of your dashboard.
The Marketing section exists to help you improve your marketing strategy. From the Marketing section of the admin, you can create marketing activities and track how they perform.
For example, you can create and manage Google and Facebook ads and more marketing from within the Marketing section.
Let’s start a marketing campaign.
From the Shopify dashboard, go to the Marketing section. To start a marketing campaign, click on ‘Create campaign’.
Here you can create a promotional campaign or choose a recommended option. To start a campaign, choose the platform where you’d like to start marketing.
Whichever method you choose, you’ll be prompted to get setup. You can create a marketing campaign, and group marketing activities together to work towards a specific objective. You can also edit, pause, delete, or archive existing marketing campaigns.
Offer Discounts
Offering discounts is a great way to build the initial interest in your customers. When you are starting off, it would help to offer a discount or a freebie to announce your new store.
Shopify allows you the option to create discount codes & offers.
Click on ‘Discounts’ in your dashboard. And then click on ‘Create discount‘.
There are two ways in which you can offer discounts to your customers.
- By offering a discount code, which the customer can enter during checkout.
- An automatic discount, which will be automatically added in their cart during checkout.
Launch Your Online Store
Alright. It’s now time to launch your online store.
By default, your website is password protected. It’s time to remove the password page and launch your own store.
In the dashboard go to ‘Online store’, then go over to ‘Preferences’.
Scroll to the bottom and you’ll see ‘Password protection’. To remove the password, you will have to select a plan at this stage. Select a plan that best suits your requirement while starting off now and proceed.
That’s it. Your store is live once you’ve removed the password page.
Congratulations on officially launching your Shopify store.
Go ahead and share the link of your Shopify store on the Bloggers Bloom Facebook page. We’d love to see it! 😉
I hope you found value in this article.
Please do share your views and feedback in the comments section below. It will only help me improve and in turn, help me in bringing out quality content for you.
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