Why Your SHOPIFY Store Will FAIL... Top 5 Mistakes

Over 90% of Shopify stores will FAIL! It's a painful statistic so in this video we go over the top five mistakes I see Shopify store owners make that can lead to them failing.

Plus I give you tips on how to improve things on your Shopify store so that you have a successful business and don't become part of the statistic.

LINKS MENTIONED IN VIDEO:

• Video on Product Photos- https://youtu.be/0h_Ez3Jp8xY
• Video on Writing Product Descriptions- https://youtu.be/l7Usi5AGeS4
• Video on Designing your Shopify Store in 30 Minutes- https://youtu.be/qMv24ilTzrg
• Video on Designing for Mobile Devices- https://youtu.be/9OD_g3svA0w
• Our Traffic Blueprint Online Course- https://www.curiousthemes.com/traffic

View the Full Video Transcript Below

Hi there. I know it's not fun, but a lot of Shopify stores will fail. So in this video, we're going to talk about how not to fail.

Let's be real. Nobody wants to fail. So in this video, let's talk about the top five mistakes that I see new Shopify store owners make and how to avoid them for your Shopify store so that you don't fail sounds good. Right?

Mistake #1- Bad Products or a Bad Niche

The first mistake is that you have bad products or just a bad niche overall. So I've seen so many times where people have a general store where they are selling so many random things, that it is very clear that they don't know who their target audience is.

They're trying to just market to everyone. And when you do that, you end up marketing to no one.

So you really need to think through of exactly what your niche is and who your ideal customer is. You want to make sure that you're being really targeted with that. So you're targeting a niche like pet owners, and you're maybe further niching down like dog owners and selling dog products.

You really want to make sure that you have an overall view. Yes, you can do a general store and yes, maybe it is successful, but nine times out of ten, you're really going to see the most success when you actually niche down.

Also, you really want to make sure that you have quality products. That you're going to actually be selling good quality products in your store, and that you have great product images and descriptions and even videos to help support that.

It's a lot easier to actually advertise and to promote a great quality product if you have great quality images and descriptions that are really selling the product for you.

A lot of times, if you're using, like for example, dropshipping or print on demand, you're just using the mock-ups or the images that are provided for you, and you're not going and actually ordering the product yourself and taking some sample images.

So you really want to make sure that you're doing that so that you have images that you can use for your own social media, for your ads and that you can actually start stylizing it in more lifestyle photos so that it's more kind of convincing and looks more like a real product and builds some credibility for your store.

So we have some different videos all about how to take product photos for your store, as well as how to beef up those product descriptions so that they sell for you. So if you're interested in that, check out the video in the info cards above or in the description below where we talk all about specifically how to create product images (https://youtu.be/0h_Ez3Jp8xY) and descriptions (https://youtu.be/l7Usi5AGeS4) that sell your product for you.

Mistake #2- Your Store Design Sucks

Okay. So the second reason why your store may fail is to be completely honest and as nice as I can be your store design sucks.

Yep. I said it, I cannot tell you how many times I have gone to a Shopify store for review and the design itself is garbage.

It looks super, super, just basic. You can tell there wasn't a lot of time spent in customizing the store. There's no branding. There's really no like cohesive style and design, and it's just not aesthetically pleasing.

And to be honest, people can tell if you're sending traffic to your site and your site looks kind of just basic, it really doesn't add a lot of credibility for you. And it makes it seem more like it's a scam or that they're not going to actually get their product.

Design Matters!

People on average only have about seven seconds that they are spending on your site and making a quick snap decision if they want to continue on your site, or if they think that you might not be so credible.

So having a great quality site design as well as great branding can really help out in terms of boosting your credibility and speaking more to your ideal customer.

You want to make sure again, that you're not designing for you, but you're designing for your ideal customer in mind.

So I know that designing is not something that everyone knows, and it can seem really overwhelming. I get that believe me, but it can actually be a lot easier than you think to design a really well designed store.

So I have a 30 minute long video tutorial showing you step-by-step how to customize your Shopify store design. So make sure to check that out in the info cards above or the description below we'll link it there as well, because you really want to make sure that you're spending time on your store design. (https://youtu.be/qMv24ilTzrg)

Now, along with that, you also need to make sure that you're thinking about your mobile design.

Don't just design your store on a laptop or desktop computer and go, okay, I'm done. No, you got to think about the mobile design because over 50% of shoppers now are shopping on their phones.

If your site looks great on desktop or on laptop or even iPads, awesome. But if they go to your site on a phone and everything is just misshapen and things are running over in different areas, guess what?

They're going to leave because they're even more distracted being on their phone. And there's a lot of other things that they could be doing. So you want to make sure that your site looks good on mobile devices.

And guess what? You're in luck. I have another video tutorial that tells you all about how to make sure your site looks good on mobile devices that I will link up there and down there as well. (https://youtu.be/9OD_g3svA0w)

Mistake #3- No Money Invested

So the third reason why your Shopify store may fail is because you don't have any money invested in it.

Let's be real. You cannot launch an online store with $0.

I know you've seen tons of YouTube videos all about how you can launch a store with $0 and instantly make money. And if you go on YouTube, you can see a lot of those.

Hell, I even made a video similar to that, talking about these startup costs. However, in that video, it was still around $150 in startup costs that you just can't avoid.

You have to put some skin in the game, you have to put some money in.

Your business is not a slot machine and I think that's a big problem is that people don't even think of an online store as a business.

They just think, okay, I can quickly launch this store. I can put in a couple of dollars and boom I'm then making thousands of dollars.

No it's not an ATM, it's not a slot machine. You need to actually invest some money to begin with to start actually marketing your store.

So on average, I recommend having around $500 to $1,000 of initial investment. This will cover things like your domain, your Shopify expenses, any advertising that you're going to be doing with paid ads, turning on an email marketing provider and things like that. Maybe even doing influencer marketing.

You need to make sure that you're thinking of your online store, like a business and that you have a little bit of money set aside to actually market that.

I would love to tell you that creating an online store is easy and you can get started with $0, but that's just not the case. And if I did that, I would be setting you up for failure, which this video is clearly not doing.

So make sure that you have some money set aside and you're thinking through all of your expenses ahead of time. Again, you may want to actually outline all of the different costs that you have that will be necessary for getting started.

Your startup expenses in terms of platform, cost, domain, all of that stuff, I would estimate around $100 for, and then maybe set aside another $300- $400 for beginning photography, ordering some samples of your products and some paid advertising, just to get some initial traffic to your site.

Mistake #4- No Marketing Strategy

Moving right along and right into number four of why your store may fail is actually kind of tied into the last one, but it's that you have no marketing strategy.

So I've heard so many times of, okay, I've launched my store and there's crickets and nobody's there. Nobody's coming to my store.

Well, honestly, they probably don't know that it exists. You need to make sure that you are thinking through of exactly how to get your ideal customer to your store.

Yes, you can share it on your Facebook page or Instagram page. But if you are just sending all of your friends to your site, they probably aren't your ideal customer. Maybe your mom will be a great person to do your first order for you, but she most likely is not your ideal customer.

So you want to make sure that you are thinking through, again, exactly who your ideal customer is and how you are going to get them to your site.

Build it and they will come is not true.

You need to make sure that you have a plan in place. You need to know what social media platforms that your ideal customer is hanging out on, where you can target them there, what ads or imagery is going to work for them in terms of getting some paid advertising to your store or what influencers you could work with to actually send some traffic there.

You also want to make sure that you are building out some streams to do some organic traffic. So search engine optimization or email marketing, you need to make sure that you have a plan.

Setting up your store is just the beginning.

Yes. It's important to make sure you have a well-designed store and that your products are really nice high quality, but if you don't have a plan to actually market them, once your stores launched, then all that first initial work is going to be for nothing.

You have to have a plan of how you're actually going to get your ideal customer to come to your store and hopefully turn it into a sale.

So I'm not going to go into that in this video, but if you're interested, we do have an online course called the Traffic Blueprint. It goes step-by-step through how to market your online store.

We go through everything that I just mentioned in terms of paid advertising, social media, email, marketing SEO. So if you're interested in learning more about our online course, make sure to check out the link in the description below and see if it's a good fit for you. (https://www.curiousthemes.com/traffic)

Mistake #5- Not Focusing on the Customer Experience

Okay. So the last mistake that I see Shopify store owners make is to not focus on the customer experience. You are so focused in making just the one sale, which is helpful. Yes, but repeat sales and repeat customers are even more valuable because they're more likely to actually refer you to other people as well and that helps increase your value.

Yes, it is going to be great to pay some money for paid advertising and send traffic to your store, but that costs money. So think about, if you can then send that traffic to your store, they sign up for your email list, they purchase from you, and then they come back a month later and purchase from you again, that time you hopefully didn't have to spend any money to remind them about you. You already have captured their email through email marketing, and you are able to then continually market to them organically without spending the money.

So you want to make sure that you have a good customer experience, that your products are high quality and that you are providing a good experience from the very beginning. So as soon as they get that order placed, you are sending them order notifications, letting them know when their product has shipped.

They know exactly what they're getting when they're getting it. And you have a great follow-up system for potentially capturing some reviews as well.

You want to make sure that you also have a great support system in place in case there is an issue with their order, that they get timely responses and they don't feel like you've just disappeared on them. Once you've built this relationship with your customers, it's then a lot easier to again, get them to purchase again from you and to actually upsell them on other products.

So selling them a complimentary product. If you already sold them, some shoes, maybe upselling them on some socks or some shoe cleaner as well, like a month later, if not on the checkout process already, that's where you actually are going to really maximize your average order value and your cost of customer acquisition.

Once you're able to get multiple purchases from them, but if they're not having a good customer experience, if you ghost them and your product comes and it's just really haphazardly package, then they're less likely to give you a good review and come back to you to purchase again.

So you really want to make sure that you are thinking about that customer experience from beginning to end.

Okay. So that is our top five mistakes that can lead to your Shopify store failing. And I would love to hear from you, is there something that you think that we've missed or something that maybe you've done that we've listed out in our top five mistakes?

I would love to hear, so make sure to comment below and let us know. And if you're not yet subscribed to this channel, Hey, consider subscribing. We post new videos all about Shopify and how to launch and grow your online store every single week.