If you’ve ever tried to update multiple products in Shopify, you’ve probably used the built-in bulk editor.

At first, it seems useful.

But once your store grows, it quickly becomes… frustrating.

In this guide, we’ll break down:

• What the Shopify bulk editor does well
• Its biggest limitations
• And a better way to bulk edit products using Google Sheets

What Is the Shopify Bulk Editor?

Shopify’s bulk editor lets you:

• Edit multiple products at once
• Update prices, titles, inventory
• Edit product translations
• Modify some basic fields in a spreadsheet-like view

It’s built directly into Shopify, so there’s nothing to install.

Sounds great in theory.

The Problem: Why the Shopify Bulk Editor Falls Short

As soon as you start doing real work, the cracks show.

1. It’s Not a Real Spreadsheet

• No formulas
• No autofill logic
• No bulk transformations
• No easy copy-paste workflows

If you’re used to Excel or Google Sheets, it feels extremely limited.

2. Metafields Are Painful to Manage

Metafields are essential for:

• Custom product data
• SEO enhancements
• App integrations

But in Shopify’s bulk editor:

• They’re hard to access
• Hard to edit in bulk
• Often missing entirely

This becomes a major bottleneck.

3. No Collaboration

• No real-time collaboration
• No comments
• No version history

You’re stuck doing everything manually.

4. Slow and Clunky at Scale

• The editor becomes slower
• Filtering gets harder
• Changes take longer to apply

Managing 500+ products becomes painful.

A Better Way: Bulk Edit Shopify Products in Google Sheets

Instead of fighting the limitations, you can move your workflow to something built for bulk editing:

Google Sheets

Google Sheets gives you:

• Real spreadsheet power
• Formulas & automation
• Fast editing
• Easy duplication & scaling
• Collaboration with your team

How It Works (Simple Workflow)

1. Sync Your Shopify Products to Google Sheets

• Products automatically appear in a structured spreadsheet
• Each row = a product
• Each column = a field (title, price, metafields, etc.)

2. Edit Everything in Bulk

• Update hundreds of prices in seconds
• Use formulas (e.g. increase all prices by 10%)
• Edit descriptions at scale
• Modify metafields easily

3. Sync Changes Back to Shopify

• Click Sync and all updates are pushed back to Shopify
• No CSV imports
• No manual work

Real Example

Let’s say you want to:

• Increase all prices by 15%
• Update product descriptions for SEO
• Add a metafield for “season = summer”

With Shopify Bulk Editor:

• Manual edits
• Time-consuming
• Error-prone

With Google Sheets:

• One formula
• One column edit
• Done in minutes

Shopify Bulk Editor vs Google Sheets (Quick Comparison)

Final Thoughts

The Shopify bulk editor is fine for small changes.

But if you’re serious about scaling your store, you need something more powerful.

Google Sheets + a sync tool gives you full control, speed, and flexibility.

Want to Try It?

If you want to:

• Edit products faster
• Manage metafields easily
• Automate your workflow

Try SheetSync and turn your Shopify store into a fully automated spreadsheet workflow.

The post Shopify Bulk Editor Is Too Limited — Here’s a Better Way to Edit Products appeared first on icg # tec.

Managing product translations in Shopify can quickly become time-consuming—especially if you’re selling in multiple languages and markets.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to bulk translate Shopify products using Google Sheets, making localization faster, scalable, and SEO-friendly.

Why Bulk Translation Matters

If you’re expanding internationally, translating your store is not optional—it’s critical.

You need to:

• Provide localized product descriptions
• Translate metafields and content
• Optimize product handles for SEO
• Maintain consistency across languages

Doing this manually inside Shopify is inefficient and doesn’t scale.

Step 1: Connect Your Google Account

Start by connecting your Google account to the app.

This allows you to:

• Export product data into Google Sheets
• Edit translations easily
• Sync updates back to Shopify

Step 2: Create a Product Info Spreadsheet

Navigate to the Product Info tab and click:

👉 Create Spreadsheet

Before generating the spreadsheet, you can:

• Select which fields to export (title, description, etc.)
• Include product metafields for localization

Once created, open the spreadsheet.

Step 3: Understand the Spreadsheet Structure

Your spreadsheet will contain:

• All Shopify products
• Organized by enabled languages
• Each language in a separate sheet

This makes it easy to manage translations at scale.

Step 4: Translate Product Content

Now you can start translating.

For example:

• Edit the German product description
• Update titles and other content
• Translate metafields

You can also translate the product handle, which is especially important for:

• SEO
• Localized URLs
• Better search visibility in each market

Step 5: Sync Translations Back to Shopify

Once translations are complete:

👉 Go back to the app

👉 Click Sync Now

The system will:

• Process your spreadsheet
• Apply translations to your Shopify store

⏱️ Processing time is typically around 1 minute, depending on your product count.

Step 6: Monitor Sync Progress

You can check the sync logs to:

• See processing status
• Estimate completion time

Keep in mind:

• Larger catalogs take longer to process

Step 7: Verify Translations

After syncing:

• Open a product in Shopify
• Confirm the translated content is updated
• Check language-specific versions

Step 8: Enable Automatic Sync

To fully automate your workflow:

👉 Enable automatic syncing

👉 Set your preferred interval (e.g. every 8 hours)

This ensures your translations stay updated without manual work.

Key Benefits of This Workflow

✅ Translate hundreds of products at once

✅ Use familiar Google Sheets interface

✅ Support multiple languages easily

✅ Improve international SEO

✅ Save hours of manual work

Who This Is For

This solution is ideal if you:

• Run a multilingual Shopify store
• Sell in multiple regions
• Have a large product catalog
• Want to scale localization efficiently

Conclusion

Bulk translating Shopify products doesn’t have to be complicated.

By combining Shopify with Google Sheets, you can create a fast, scalable, and SEO-friendly translation workflow that grows with your business.

The post How to Bulk Translate Shopify Products Using Google Sheets appeared first on icg # tec.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to use Shopify bulk pricing update with SheetSync app using a simple Google Sheets workflow.

Why Bulk Pricing Matters

If you’re selling internationally or operating across multiple markets like the Eurozone, pricing isn’t just a one-time setup.

You often need to:

• Adjust compare-at prices for promotions
• Localize pricing per market
• React quickly to competitor pricing
• Run time-sensitive discounts

Doing this manually inside Shopify is slow, error-prone, and doesn’t scale.

Step 1: Connect Your Google Account

Start by connecting your Google account to the app.

This allows the system to generate and sync spreadsheets directly with your Shopify store.

Step 2: Create a Product Pricing Spreadsheet

Navigate to the Product Pricing tab and click:

👉 Create Spreadsheet

Once created, open the spreadsheet.

You’ll see:

• All your Shopify products
• Their price and compare-at price
• Data segmented by each enabled market

⚠️ If you have a large catalog, the spreadsheet may take a bit longer to populate.

Step 3: Bulk update Shopify pricing by market

Now comes the powerful part.

You can directly edit pricing inside Google Sheets.

For example:

• Update compare-at prices for the Eurozone
• Adjust pricing for specific variants (e.g. Black variant only)
• Run bulk discounts across selected products

This gives you full control with the speed of spreadsheets.

Step 4: Sync Changes Back to Shopify

Once your edits are done:

👉 Go back to the app

👉 Click Sync Now

The system will:

• Process your spreadsheet
• Apply updates to Shopify

⏱️ Typical processing time: ~2 minutes

Step 5: Verify the Changes

After syncing, check a product in your Shopify admin.

You should see:

• Updated pricing
• Market-specific changes applied correctly
• Variant-level updates reflected (e.g. Black variant pricing)

Step 6: Enable Automatic Sync

To fully automate your workflow:

👉 Enable automatic syncing

👉 Set your preferred interval (e.g. every 8 hours)

This ensures your pricing stays up to date without manual intervention.

Final Result

You’ve just completed a bulk pricing update across your Shopify store in under 2 minutes.

No manual edits.

No repetitive work.

No delays.

Who This Is Perfect For

This workflow is ideal if you:

• Sell in multiple Shopify Markets
• Manage hundreds or thousands of products
• Frequently run discount campaigns
• Want to automate pricing operations

Key Benefits

✅ Massive time savings

✅ Spreadsheet-level flexibility

✅ Market-specific pricing control

✅ Automation with scheduled syncs

Conclusion

Bulk pricing doesn’t have to be a bottleneck.

By combining Shopify with Google Sheets, you unlock a fast, scalable, and flexible way to manage pricing across your entire store.

The post Shopify bulk pricing update for international markets (Using Google Sheets) appeared first on icg # tec.

Expanding your Shopify store to international markets is one of the fastest ways to grow revenue—but most stores do it wrong.

They translate a few pages, enable shipping, and expect results.

The reality?

Without proper localization, international traffic rarely converts.

In this guide, you’ll learn how to scale a Shopify store globally using:

• Market-specific pricing
• Localized product descriptions
• Schema.org optimization
• Hreflang tags
• Local payment methods

Why International Expansion Fails for Most Shopify Stores

Before scaling, understand the common mistakes:

• Using one global price
• Relying on basic translation only
• Ignoring technical SEO (hreflang, schema)
• Offering limited payment options

This leads to:

• Low conversion rates
• High bounce rates
• Wasted ad spend

1. Use Shopify Markets for Custom Pricing Per Region

Why Custom Pricing Matters for International Shopify Stores

Different markets have different:

• Purchasing power
• Competitor pricing
• Tax expectations

Using currency conversion alone is not enough.

Best Practice:

• Set manual prices per market
• Include VAT for EU customers
• Adjust margins based on shipping costs

SEO keyword targets:

• Shopify international pricing
• Shopify Markets pricing strategy
• Custom pricing Shopify

2. Localize Product Descriptions (Not Just Translate)

Translation vs Localization in Shopify

Translation converts words.

Localization converts intent and trust.

Optimize Your Product Pages:

• Use local units (cm vs inches)
• Adapt tone and messaging
• Reflect local use cases
• Add region-specific compliance info

Example:

“Waterproof jacket” in the UK vs Germany may require different context and expectations.

SEO keyword targets:

• Shopify product localization
• Translate Shopify store properly
• Localized product descriptions ecommerce

3. Implement Localized Schema.org Markup

What is Schema.org and Why It Matters

Structured data helps search engines understand your store.

For international SEO, it becomes critical.

What to Localize:

• priceCurrency
• price
• availability
• areaServed
• shippingDetails

Benefits:

• Better rich results (price, reviews)
• Higher click-through rates
• Improved local rankings

SEO keyword targets:

• Shopify schema markup
• Ecommerce structured data SEO
• Local schema.org Shopify

4. Add Correct Hreflang Tags for International SEO

What Are Hreflang Tags?

Hreflang tells Google which version of your page to show in each country/language.

Why It’s Critical:

• Prevents duplicate content issues
• Ensures correct regional ranking
• Improves indexing accuracy

Implementation Tips:

• Use proper format: en-US, en-GB, de-DE
• Include self-referencing hreflang
• Ensure all versions reference each other

SEO keyword targets:

• Shopify hreflang implementation
• International SEO Shopify
• Hreflang tags ecommerce

5. Offer Local Payment Methods to Increase Conversion

Why Payment Methods Matter

Customers trust what they recognize.

If your checkout feels unfamiliar, they won’t complete the purchase.

Examples by Market:

• Netherlands → iDEAL
• Germany → Klarna, SOFORT
• Poland → BLIK
• Nordics → Swish, MobilePay

Best Practice:

• Add region-specific payment providers
• Display them early (product page)
• Match currency with payment expectations

SEO keyword targets:

• Shopify local payment methods
• Increase Shopify conversion rate checkout
• Ecommerce payment localization

6. Optimize Shipping, Duties, and Delivery Transparency

Reduce Cart Abandonment:

• Show delivery times per country
• Clarify duties and taxes
• Offer local return options

Transparency builds trust—and trust drives conversion.

7. Create Market-Specific Experiences

Scaling globally isn’t just technical—it’s experiential.

Advanced Strategies:

• Region-based product bundles
• Local promotions
• Market-specific upsells
• Dynamic product customization

This is where Shopify apps (like the ones you’re planning) can create a strong competitive advantage.

8. International SEO Checklist for Shopify

Use this as a quick implementation guide:

✔ Set up Shopify Markets

✔ Define custom pricing per region

✔ Localize top-performing product pages

✔ Implement schema.org structured data

✔ Add hreflang tags correctly

✔ Enable local payment methods

✔ Optimize shipping messaging

✔ Test conversion rates per market

Conclusion: Scale Smart, Not Wide

Expanding your Shopify store internationally isn’t about adding more countries—it’s about converting each one properly.

To succeed:

• Price like a local
• Communicate like a local
• Optimize for local search
• Remove checkout friction

Do this right, and you won’t just grow traffic—you’ll grow revenue.

The post How to Scale a Shopify Store to International Markets (Step-by-Step Guide for 2026) appeared first on icg # tec.

Let’s break down why both matter – and how they directly impact conversion, retention, and long-term brand trust.

1. Market Pricing: Same Product, Different Reality

Using one global price for all customers seems simple – but it’s almost always wrong.

Different markets have:

• Different purchasing power
• Different expectations of value
• Different tax structures and duties
• Different competitor pricing landscapes

What Happens If You Don’t Localize Pricing?

• Underpricing in high-income markets → lost margin
• Overpricing in lower-income markets → lost conversions
• Currency friction → customers abandon carts when totals feel unfamiliar

For example, a $50 product might feel:

• Cheap in the US
• Expensive in Eastern Europe
• Suspiciously low-quality in Switzerland

Same product, completely different perception.

2. Psychological Pricing Is Local

Pricing isn’t just math – it’s psychology.

What works in one country may not work in another:

• €49.99 vs €50 (Europe often tolerates round pricing more than the US)
• VAT-inclusive vs VAT-exclusive expectations
• Shipping expectations (free vs calculated)

If your pricing doesn’t match local norms, customers subconsciously distrust your store.

3. Currency ≠ Localization

Many merchants think currency conversion solves the problem. It doesn’t.

Currency conversion:

• Converts value
• Does NOT optimize value perception

Market pricing, on the other hand:

• Lets you set intentional prices per region
• Aligns with competitor benchmarks
• Accounts for logistics, taxes, and demand

This is where Shopify Markets becomes powerful—but also where most stores underutilize it.

4. Localized Product Information: The Trust Multiplier

Even if your pricing is perfect, poor localization kills conversions.

Customers ask themselves:

“Is this really meant for me?”

If your product page feels foreign, they hesitate.

What Needs Localization?

• Product descriptions
• Units (cm vs inches, kg vs lbs)
• Materials and compliance info
• Use cases (climate, culture, lifestyle)
• Tone and language nuance (not just translation)

5. Translation vs Localization

Direct translation often fails because it ignores context.

Example:

• “Lightweight jacket” in one market might imply summer wear
• In another, it might still need insulation

Localization adapts meaning, not just words.

6. Conversion Impact: Where It Shows Up

When pricing + localization are done right, you’ll see:

• Higher conversion rates
• Lower bounce rates
• Increased average order value
• Better return customer rates

When done wrong:

• Traffic increases but revenue doesn’t
• Ads become unprofitable
• Customers drop off at checkout

7. Competitive Advantage for Small Stores

Here’s the interesting part:

Most Shopify stores don’t do this well.

That creates an opportunity:

• You don’t need more traffic
• You need better alignment with the traffic you already have

For a solo founder or micro-SaaS builder, this is huge:

Localization is a force multiplier, not a cost center.

8. Where This Fits Into Your Shopify Stack

If you’re building apps or tooling around Shopify (like your roadmap suggests), this space is full of opportunity:

• Dynamic pricing engines per market
• Localization-driven product metafields
• Region-based customization logic
• Market-specific upsells or bundles

Especially interesting:

Your product customization app idea could evolve into:

• Market-aware customization flows
• Region-specific options (materials, sizes, add-ons)

9. Simple Starting Points

You don’t need a full system to start seeing results.

Begin with:

• Top 2–3 international markets
• Adjust pricing manually per region
• Translate high-performing product pages
• Localize units and shipping expectations

Then iterate based on data.

Final Thought

Global selling isn’t about reach anymore—it’s about relevance.

The stores that win aren’t the ones that expand the fastest, but the ones that feel local everywhere they sell.

Market pricing defines value.

Localization defines trust.

You need both to scale profitably.

The post Importance of Shopify Market Pricing and Localised Product Information appeared first on icg # tec.

Let’s start. Zara has always tried and succeeded in bringing the latest fashion trends to the mass market. And sometimes the more high fashion you go, the more experimental and reckless your designs get. In my opinion though, when it comes to technology and especially eCommerce user experience, you have to respect traditional UX practices in order to keep your conversion rates optimal. I’m sure Zara is doing good, however, I’m also pretty confident they might win a lot more in terms of CRO (conversion rate optimization) if they had their eCommerce websites much more client-oriented.

So let’s start!

Home page

You can notice a blurry banner on the homepage. And there are some other concerns I have about the banner, besides its quality (which can be a bug, CDN issue, or something else):

• The banner is very contrast to the ocean of white around it.
• Why is this banner sized this way? It is neither matching the size of content container, nor the size of the viewport.

And then the SALE caption below looks like a heading and I expect to see some items from this collection below, but when I scroll down… Nothing. Just “Join our newsletter” block that’s aligned left and looks like it’s positioned out of the content container (the expectation about container width was based on the blocks above).

Fonts and Accessibility mode

And under the Newsletter subscription block, we see the links to some legal pages and links to Zara’s social media accounts. The text of the links is extremely small (9px to be precise). It’s like Zara wanted to hide this info. I can totally understand the reasons you would hide your return policy (however I’m an advocate for an explicit and client-friendly return process), but social media accounts should always be seen clearly and be easily accessible, in my opinion. Zara is actually using tiny fonts everywhere. I know their target audience is young and fresh, but even the youngest of us may have vision problems and tired eyes.

And then I notice a small Accessibility Mode icon in the bottom right. But unfortunately, this feature is messing things up even more. Let’s say I want to change the background of the page. Voila! I don’t see the banner now:

And I couldn’t find the option to increase the font. Only text magnification tool, but you have to manually use it for each element. So, I reset the Accessibility settings and move on. Or back to the top.

Zara logo is also aligned left and that gives me the understanding that the actual container starts here and it matches everything below the banner. Does a client care about the container width and positioning? No, but he sees that something is not right here. It’s like the CSS file was not loaded to apply the styles to the website, or the client has a bad internet connection. Somehow this way it feels for me.

Navigation

Zara’s home page is a free workout for your eyes, I should say. First you see the huge bold Zara logo on the top, then your focus slides down to the SALE heading, then you notice the banner (only now, yes, because it’s small and doesn’t give you any meaningful information:

It’s always great to use some nice stock graphics. But I think it should always deliver a message or serve as a CTA (call to action). Remember, you don’t have a lot of touchpoints with your eCommerce client and you cannot afford to publish meaningless content. Use all of your chances for eye-catching!

Unfortunately, the homepage of Zara’s website looks like it was designed only to fill the emptiness and meet the deadlines.

So we continue our eye exercises and start looking for a way to leave this page and finally start shopping. Mobile-first, right? So I’ll include the screenshot of the mobile version:

The menu icon is pushed to the top, left to the big logo, so it doesn’t capture your attention. I would suggest it should be middle-aligned vertically. But we see “Man” and “Kids” arrows on the east and west sides of our lovely banner. My first thought was it’s just to duplicate the navigation for the base categories. So I click “Kids” and realize these buttons are actually the slider navigation controls. What do I do next? I still want to scroll down for content, but I find out I have to click the banner itself to open the menu with the pre-selected “Kids” parent category. That one is good!

I personally do not like the black-on-yellow, but it’s a matter of taste. According to this research, black on yellow works well for people with dyslexia, however, the general recommendation by the British Dyslexia Association is black-on-creme, which I think would do even better for Zara.

The navigation for the Kids section is clear and well structured by gender and age. I select Boy | 6-14 Years because I have one at home. Then I’m offered the selection of clothing types. Let’s try t-shirts.

Product listing

The product listing is fine, however, I don’t see the need for the sliding control which changes the size of product blocks and allows you to see more items on the screen. 1 or 2 items in a row for mobile devices would perfectly do. Additionally, it has margins on top and bottom, so it takes much vertical space, that can be better used for promotion blocks, for instance. Generally, I would make the header more compact.

Filters are implemented very well. I always recommend using the right-side navigation (sliding sidebar) for filtering options on mobile devices. It’s very intuitive. Good job here.

Zara has used a very counter-intuitive navigation approach when you open a product and try to see additional images. Most of the websites use horizontal scrolling or a small gallery close to the main image. But when you do what you are used to, you see the next product in the category. To see additional images you have to scroll vertically. Seems easy, yes, but it’s another irritating thing that was reported to me by some of my friends buying at Zara. And this matters, since I don’t believe all other merchants would follow this practice.

Another annoying thing is that you have to swipe up to see the description of the product. Maybe it’s me, but I tried scrolling down, tapping the title. And I even thought that Zara products do not have descriptions at all, but then I managed to open it. Accidentially.

Overall, the product presentation is not engaging. You have to be a big fan of Zara to go through all of the challenges and learn more about the product, like it and eventually buy it. Every unnecessary second or click on your website increase the bounce rate dramatically, the same way slow page loading does. You have to fight for it and stop messing around here.

The desktop version of the product category listing either lacks structuring or Zara is using some innovative approach again.

The whole product grid looks like a Tetris-game. You can see big blocks, small blocks, full width grid, content container width grid, some gaps. And again: tiny font everywhere. When you open the product page, you see some bits of information and and a small black Add to cart button.

Purchase

Let’s buy this T-Shirt! I click “Add to cart” button and I am pleasantly surprised. Instead of showing a small red error saying “Please select product option” you might have seen on other websites, Zara asks me to select the t-shirt size in a much more user-friendly way:

In the cart section I haven’t found any option to estimate the shipping costs or add the promo code. Zara might not have promo codes, but it’s another omission, in my opinion. And you don’t see any explicit information about the shipping on the pages. Zara is not using one-page checkout, so you only see the shipping options and costs after spending time filling the checkout form. Good for Zara, if they use your info for retargeting or abandoned cart recovery, but bad in terms of customer experience. When I proceed to checkout, I had a bug on my Iphone 12, however I could not reproduce it in emulator:

Alright, I continue as a guest and I start filling my delivery info. The website requests my location, when I start entering Address, but it has no use, since I cannot change the region anyway (My location is Latvia, but it still shows the UK). The postcode field is case-sensitive and gives me an error when I try to enter my postcode as LU1 5ex so I have to switch to caps and spend my time re-entering it. Seriously, capitalization can be done on Zara’s side and improve my buying journey. After giving Zara my delivery info, I finally see the shipping options.

UX concerns:

• The left padding is bigger than right one
• You always want to zoom out to reposition the checkout
• The sticky “Continue” button should always be visible, not only when you scroll down. Current setup produces an strange behavior of the button. It appears and disappears.

Returns

As mentioned before, there’s no explicit return policy declaration and you can only find it by going to Menu -> Info -> Help -> Returns and Exchanges. And you find out that the return link can be found in the transactional emails they send to you. Now open your inbox and go through another challenge Zara has prepared for you.

Final words

While Zara has some really good solutions here and there (product filters, “Match with” recommendations, size/option select on “Add-to-cart”), this is still the most impractical eCommerce website I have ever seen. I mean big brands, of course.

I’m pretty sure Zara has paid a lot for this website. And I’m sure Zara is still doing well not because of, but despite their website. Conversion rate optimization is critical for eCommerce business and it translates to revenue directly, and you can clearly see, there are a lot of ways to improve it for Zara.

Get in touch today and we’ll review your shop:

The post eCommerce website review: Zara appeared first on icg # tec.

Luckily, Shopify provides REST API and SDKs that allow you to build the app or integration on top of their core eCommerce ecosystem.

If you are reading this post, chances are you asked yourself if your business needs a custom Shopify app.

Basically, Shopify apps are created when you need to utilize Shopify REST API for your business needs.

The apps can be:

• Private (unlisted) Shopify app
• Public Shopify app

Private Shopify Apps

Private apps are normally developed to be used by a single merchant. Consider it a custom Shopify integration. The common use case is Integration of your Shopify store with 3rd-party services like:

• Shipping & Logistics (carriers and your local warehouses)
• Accounting (custom solutions, since most of the established accounting software has its own public Shopify app)
• CRM (Customer Relation Management)
• ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning software)
• Discounts and promos (when you have special needs and apps available on the Shopify marketplace are not the best fit)
• Product configurations and customizations that are not possible with default Shopify setup
• Deeper Data Analytics
• any other idea that can be implemented using existing Shopify REST APIs

Public Shopify Apps

Public apps are developed for global use and are available on the Shopify Apps Marketplace. The apps can be free, paid, and subscription-based.

The most demanded and top-grossing Public Shopify Apps at the moment are those that help merchants with CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation). And there’s a simple reason behind that. CRO directly impacts the revenues and your client is always happy to share the profits you help him to get.

CRO-focused apps are: Shopify abandoned cart recovery apps, upsell apps, discount layering apps.

The hardest challenges are faced by the apps that offer features that do not increase revenues directly or in an obvious way. One of the lessons we learned developing an app for Shopify shipping rate management (our debut public app on Shopify Marketplace) is that it is very hard to sell this kind of app using the subscription model because it doesn’t optimize conversion rates. The best thing you can do with shipping to increase your conversions is to set it completely free. And you don’t need an app for that, right?

Both service providers/platforms and eCommerce merchants can benefit from creating their own Shopify app.

Now if you are a SaaS company or a platform you can create your own Shopify app that would:

• Simplify the integration with your service
• Ease the life and operations of your clients
• Bring in new clients searching for similar apps on Shopify Marketplace
• Promote your services via the app (Banners, Push notifications)

Use cases for own Shopify app

Affiliate network

So let’s take an affiliate network as an example. Typically, when the merchant setups the affiliate campaign with some of the popular networks, like CJ (Commission Junction), Pepperjam, Daisycon, Adcell, Rakuten, and others, he needs to integrate some pixels, conversion scripts, or extra data layers for GTM. You might create a comprehensive guide on how to add those scripts to Shopify pages, Cart, Checkout, and Order Confirmation Page. But considering it’s not always the case of copying and pasting code, combined with the fact, that Shopify owners rarely have sufficient tech knowledge, it may lead to incorrect setup with the neverending debugging process. And that eventually leads to slow onboarding, which means your network and your client miss the potential profits.

That situation can be easily resolved by creating your own Shopify app that will do the configuration for your client in the background.

Another Shopify app use case for affiliate marketing platforms is the validation of transactions. What if the affiliate order was refunded and the affiliate network does not have an integration with Shopify? We’ve seen a lot of Shopify merchants manually declining and approving the transactions on their affiliate networks. Believe me, it takes time.

Again, this can be sorted out by developing and publishing your own Shopify app.

Fulfillment center / Warehouse / Shipping company

Now let’s say, you are a fulfillment warehouse and you know that a significant chunk of your clients use Shopify. As a fulfillment company, your “tech-communication” with the merchant involves:

• Shopify shipping rate management
• Order export from Shopify store to your warehouse
• Order tracking information import from your warehouse to client’s Shopify store
• Stock update

In my experience, I’ve dealt with warehouses using FTP to exchange all this data. But that implies some costs for their clients since they have to develop custom Shopify apps or scripts that use Shopify REST API to receive and process the order data before creating some CSV or XLS files to upload to the warehouse FTP server. Depending on the merchant’s IT team size and skills that may take time, delay the integration, or the store launch in worst scenarios. And bugs of course.

Accounting software

Bookkeeping… Argh. Even the best accounting software fails to deliver stable solutions for Shopify stores. Intuit Quickbooks still doesn’t have its own Shopify app, for instance. You have to use some third-party services like OneSaas, A2X, or Bold. And these services normally integrate with many other platforms. As the result, the solution is not flexible, not particular accounting software focused, and sometimes you have bugs that cannot be resolved by the aggregator-app team because of their load and the number of integrations they have.

The key functions of the integration would be:

• Correct tax rate mapping between your accounting software and Shopify
• Order/Invoice/Transaction export from Shopify to accounting software
• Order/Payment status syncronisation
• Product / Stock sync
• Customer export from Shopify to accounting app

Things to consider before developing Shopify app

There are 5 questions to be answered to clearly understand if you need a Shopify app for your business:

1. Does a big part of our clients use Shopify as an eCommerce platform?
2. Do our clients have some challenges that could be worked around if we created a Shopify App?
3. Are there obvious ways custom Shopify app can increase our existing clients’ LTV or bring new clients?
4. Do we accept Shopify is one of the most popular eCommerce platforms showing ±100% growth year-over-year? If so, do we think we need the custom Shopify app to stay relevant and be in pace with the market?
5. Will the efforts and investments in Shopify app development pay off (directly) within 6-8 months?

If your answer is “yes” to most of these questions, I highly recommend developing your Shopify app now. You can outsource this task from a reliable Shopify app developer, even if you have your in-house engineers. I imagine you have the roadmaps and sometimes it’s not that easy to squeeze in the development of the plugin, which is actually a standalone application, meaning it’s a dedicated project to allocate your human resources for.

Shopify App Development Costs

The costs of developing your own Shopify app may vary and depend on the developer you hire: the freelance developer may charge you 2000 EUR for a small app, while big US agencies may bill tenfold.

It’s always good to hire someone having experience developing Shopify apps (no matter the platform is used: Angular, React, Ruby or PHP) and who is patient enough. Shopify REST API is not always sufficiently documented. Sometimes you have to dig deep, make bets and guess. There are times, Shopify returns a general error or irrelevant error message and it may take hours just to figure out that the problem was not related to the output error. Shopify Access Scopes was another strange thing. In some cases, you have to request certain scopes that you don’t think you need in the first place (e.g. write orders when you only need to read orders).

I also highly recommend hiring someone creative. Let me explain this. Out-of-the-box thinking is critical here since there are certain limitations in existing API methods and you have to be good at problem-solving and finding creative solutions.

Example: Shopify carrier service does not send any discount or promo code information to a 3rd-party shipping rate calculator. And it keeps sending your store’s main currency no matter what currency your client has selected on your storefront. Why would that matter? Well, if you set your Shopify shipping rates based on cart total or you want to give free shipping for all orders over 100 EUR, this rule will be applied even if your customer has a 50% OFF promo code… And the currency sent in the request to a shipping rate service is always the same. Why did they include this redundant data in the payload at all?! So you cannot set up currency-based shipping rates. We’ve come to a workaround in our Shopify Shipping Rates App by capturing the checkout using a webhook. So by the time our app gets the request to provide shipping rates, we can match the checkout with the payload sent to our app. And the checkout object has all the information we might need for the most accurate shipping rate calculation.

I keep telling my team: never tell clients that something is not possible to implement. Come on, we are engineers. Everything is possible: it’s just a matter of time and money. And you should always suggest a solution and let the client decide whether the costs of Shopify development fit the budget.

Get in touch today!

We’re not a high street Shopify agency and we don’t have long-term contracts with Big Names. What would that mean? That means we can guarantee you the top quality, the best care, and our full focus on your business needs.

Get in touch today! And we’ll give you a detailed quote for your future Shopify app:

The post Does my business need a custom Shopify app? appeared first on icg # tec.

Livegate suggests a solution. Unlike many popular “link-in-bio” services that allow you create a micro-profile page with some buttons that act as the links to your content, Livegate also provides a solution for those who posts frequently. Instead of making your followers scroll down the clickable feed copy or the endless lists of buttons, you just share the numeric code in your post. This way your nine hundred seventh link is accessible as easy as your four hundred thirty fourth post 😉 Your follower just dials 907 or 434 on your gateway link and that’s it.

I started this project in 2016 as an iOS/Android app that helps to share links on Instagram. If you are involved in social media marketing, I’m sure you know about the pain you go through when it comes to sharing any external content with your audience.

Initially, I made a tool for myself. As a seasoned affiliate marketer, I absolutely needed a way to share external content with my posts and more importantly, make it easily navigable. Now there are many solutions on the market serving this exact purpose, but back in 2016, there were just a few. And it didn’t work for those posting very frequently.

This year I decided to exit Apple/Google app stores and go for PWA (progressive web app) instead. I believe that would give me more flexibility in terms of delivering frequent updates, bug-fixes and features for my lovely users.

So, there are 2 main types of “link in bio” services today.

1. Micro-profile pages – basically a page with a logo or photo, brief information, and the buttons which serve as links to some external content
2. Clickable Instagram feed copies – they look exactly like your Instagram feed, but you can assign a link to any of your posts

Both solutions have pros and cons of course…

A micro-profile page is a must, I agree, but the “button” solution for the links is quite limiting if you share frequently. I suggest you add 3 to 6 links to your TOP content or resources. It can be your latest webinar, your pricing page, blog, or appointment/calendar page. You won’t add all of your eCommerce products there, right?

Clickable Instagram feed copy is a fancy tool, but the initial user-friendly implementation is no longer relevant if you need to scroll all the way down to find the old post. Imagine the situation, you have found an older post of your favorite blogger which reads “more tips and tricks and the main surprise in my blog post – link in bio” or “you can order this brush by visiting a link in bio”. You click the link in the profile and… Now you have to scroll down to find this exact post you found earlier by scrolling the original Instagram feed all the way down. Conclusion: This solution only works well for the latest 10-20 posts.

So what do I offer instead? I offer the way to share thousands of links, which remain easily accessible within seconds even if it’s the very first post of Kevin Systrom…

Now I want you to open Livegate landing page and hit “Try Now” in the top menu. It’s free and you don’t even have to register until you realise you need the Tool.

Done. Your account is automatically created. Now if you don’t enjoy the app, just leave it. No personal data is associated with this account until you change your password, email address and username is Settings. If you need to change your password, you’ll need the temporary one, that was created for you automatically. You can find it in the red notice above the “Add new link” section:

Take your time to play around and test the app and when you’re ready to sign up, all you have to do is change your password, username and email:

Now, before diving into link sharing, I suggest you fine-tune your Public profile. Your public profile URL is www.livegate.me/{{username}} (www.livegate.me/ceo in my case). This link is supposed to be your one and only Instagram bio link that serves as a gate to your content.

First, add your photo or logo in Settings/General and add some brief information about yourself or your business in Settings/Info section:

Now it’s time to add links to other social networks you are active in. Please note the difference in Clubhouse link format. We are using clubber.one service for deep-linking your Clubhouse profile, so make sure you put your @username

Well done. Let’s check our updated micro-profile page -> open “My gate” in the menu.

You can edit your public name, occupation, and cover image by clicking on the corresponding pencil icons. The inline text editing is used here, so just edit the value and click somewhere else to save.

Now let’s add some of your top links, the buttons discussed in the beginning of this post. Let’s add 3 buttons: Blog, Website, Shopify Training. Scroll down to “My TOP Links” section and hit “+” icon in the top right corner of the box. Then click “Options” next to the newly created button and customise the item:

Click “Save” and repeat the process for 2 more buttons. I am not limiting you though, feel free to add more:

We’re done with profile page customization now. You can check how it looks by visiting livegate.me/username

So nothing new at this point, right? What about the easy way to share thousands of links? Yeah, let’s go to “Links” section in the menu and add our first links:

Every time you create the link, Livegate creates the corresponding code you can share with your followers. It doesn’t matter how many links you have or had, it doesn’t matter how old is your post, all you have to write is “Visit the link in bio and enter code 2”. Your follower then clicks your public profile link, then “Enter link code” button at the top of your Livegate page, enters the code, and voila – redirected to the external resource you wanted to share (see the video below)

That’s basically it!

We aim to deliver a fast and quality service and are always happy to receive improvement suggestions from our users.

If you like to support and contribute, feel free to share a word about our service. We appreciate any contribution!

The post How to make most of your Instagram bio link? appeared first on icg # tec.

Sometimes the benefits of using extremely optimized non-open-source solutions come at a price though. 

 Website speed and SEO issues are normally addressed on various levels:

• Content (images, image/text ratio, etc)
• Code (optimization, lazy-load, the asynchronous loading of the scripts, etc)
• Server-side (caching, redirects, compression, package versions, etc)

Considering Shopify SEO, you lack the ability to control server-related optimization. The company’s reps keep explaining that the software and infrastructure are already optimized for best performance and best SEO, however, this is where I have to disagree. And probably accept this is the case when you try to adjust and get most of the possible improvements applied. 

In this post, I’ll make a recap of mostly specific Shopify SEO practices. So let’s start with the least platform-dependent recommendations. 

Content 

If SEO is the language you speak with the search engines, then schema, markup, structure, and stuff like CLS is the body-language, while your text and visual content represent the verbal interaction. 

Your goal is to use the well thought and unique metadata for as many products as possible

It’s also a good idea to include the reassurance in meta-description: tell your client about the free shipping offer and your friendly money-back policy. Only make sure it takes no more than 20-25% of the whole meta-description to keep most of it unique.

The product-related meta-tags can be edited by going to Products -> All products -> Edit product ->  Search engine listing preview (scroll down)

Do not forget about collections and pages metadata

For the homepage and collections meta-title and meta-description, aim to be less product-specific yet keeping it unique and avoid being spammy. 

Collection SEO is changed by going to Products -> Collections -> Edit collection -> Search engine listing preview (scroll down)

Shopify home page SEO settings can be found in Online store -> Preferences:

Shopify an Open Graph tags (og-tags)

Open Graph, as well as other meta-tags, are normally added to the <head> of a website. In Shopify, Open Graph tags are mostly wrapped in Liquid tags. This is just one example of how it may look in your theme:

{%- assign og_title = product.title | strip_html -%}

With Shopify, many custom and premium themes compile these tags into a separate snippet included in the head of the theme.liquid file.

Some themes use the standard if/endif conditions like this:

Open Graph tags affect how your page previews being shared on social networks.

Do not forget to test if the result looks as expected with Facebook Debugger

Images

I’ve seen it many times in my career: people fail to compress and optimize their graphic content for WEB. Yes, today most internet connections allow you to download megabytes of data within seconds, but mobile internet can sometimes be unstable while the mobile experience of your customers should be one of your top priorities. 

Just follow these simple steps when you add pictures to your website:

• Always compress your images (TinyJPG and TinyPNG are good tools that serve the purpose)
• Use Image Optimizer app to compress your existing pics
• Do not forget the alt attribute with the descriptive “text version” of your image
• Avoid resizing the picture with HTML or CSS

More tips about the images SEO best practices can be found here.

Navigation

I have already mentioned it in my previous post. Navigation seems simple but it’s often messed up on many eCommerce websites. Avoid mixing the product category grouping criteria. Choose a single approach and keep it simple as it should be. Make it easy to navigate your content for both users and search engines. 

Sitemap

This is a tricky one. In Shopify, sitemap.xml is generated automatically, but you have to remove password protection from your store (in case you’ve not gone public yet) before you start trying to find it where it should be: at yourdomain.com/sitemap.xml (even if you’re logged in or entered the password before).

Chances are, you are now reading this post because you googled “edit shopify sitemap”. The short answer for this query would be: you cannot. 

There are several options though, depending on what you want to change in your sitemap.

However, if you need full control over your Sitemap, I recommend:

• Using a 3rd-party Sitemap app from Shopify Marketplace 
• Having your Sitemap generated using the API

Both options would give you an external link with a new sitemap that you can then submit in your Search Console.  

If you need help submitting a sitemap in Search Console, please get familiar with this instruction from Shopify.  

Shopify SEO and Robots.txt 

The robots file is another thing you cannot edit if you decided to enjoy the most known eCommerce platform. Just in case you’re not familiar with SEO at all, robots.txt is a file where you specify rules that tell search engines if you want to allow or disallow indexing of certain content.

I should say this is not something to worry about, since robots.txt file generated by the platform does not do any harm to your Shopify SEO efforts. It’s pretty standard and the rules in this file make perfect sense. 

However, in some cases, your SEO agency may give you a fancy presentation with the list of recommendations they want you to apply to improve your ranking. It’s my humble opinion, but in most cases, you will never hit the perfect 100% here. So do not worry if you cannot access the actual robots.txt file to add all of the rules your search optimization specialist wants you to apply.  

What you want to do here, is to tell search engines to skip indexing of certain URLs differently. Instead of modifying robots.txt file (which is much easier, but you don’t have this option anyway…), you would set the following tag for some URLs:

<meta name="robots" content="noindex" />

I’ll cover the most reported URLs here. So when your SEO consultant asks you to add the following rules to your robots.txt:

Most of these things can be addressed by using the Shopify indexing management app like Sitemap & Noindex Manager

Shopify support would not give you any solution here and will probably suggest you try adding a rule in a liquid file like:

The problem is ‘pr_prod_strat’ is not a part of a handle. This approach works with some of the URLs you want to disallow but is not universal at all. 

If you still do not want to install and pay for the 3rd-party app and want to do this filtering manually. Should me a DM on Instagram and I’ll help you out!

Pagespeed and Shopify SEO

Page speed optimization is a service that’s becoming very demanded lately. I attribute it to the fact your speed score is on the surface, especially with Shopify, where your speed score is always displayed in Online Store -> Themes -> Speed Score section.

More details as well as historical speed score can be found in Analytics -> Reports -> Behavior -> Show more -> Online store speed

It wasn’t the case before. Business owners and particularly solo eCommerce entrepreneurs have normally found out about the issues with their site speed after receiving reports from consultants or just out of curiosity. Now everyone is using tools like Lighthouse and GTmetrix and fight for the A grades.

Now, this is just my personal opinion and my industry-mates might disagree with me on this one… It’s much more efficient to focus on delivering quality products and content and providing exceptional customer service. This is what makes your brand unique and demanded.

If you find yourself in a red zone of under 49 (on Google Pagespeed), you are in a good company…

However, it doesn’t mean you have to neglect the speed and performance of your website. Not at all. But your primary focus should be user experience. Your speed score can be 10, but the website is still working super fast for the actual user. I do not try to say you should not aim for a better score though. If you can hit the higher one at the low costs, go for it. But if you have to sacrifice or wait for the perfect score to go live, postpone… That does not bring you the profits, but quicker actions and hypothesis testing do.

We’ve noticed some intermitted issues with Shopify CDN in certain locations (primarily Eastern Europe) which were not related to the internet connection of the client (different countries, e.g. Latvia and Ukraine, both on a stable 100Mbps+ internet). We’ve noticed that happening on multiple merchants. And switching to Shopify Plus doesn’t help here, since it is still using the same infrastructure.

I highly recommend using external CDNs like Cloudflare. That would also contribute to your speed score.

Another thing I recommend digging into is the so-called CLS or Cumulative Layout Shift. Sounds nerdy, right? Remember those sites where the content is jumping up and down while the page elements are loading? Or, here’s the example. You are buying a product so you want to click the “Add to cart” button and then when you’re just about to do it the button shifts just below your cursor because the product rating widget above loaded with delay. Even if Google hasn’t made CLS a part of Core Web Vitals, I can hardly imagine a person saying that button running away from you is what we call a good user experience.

Schema

Get familiar with Schema.org to make use of the benefits rich snippets may provide. With Schema you can include some extra information that may help you get featured within search results. 

I highly recommend starting collecting product reviews as soon as possible. Not only it builds trust, but it also gives you a yellow advantage in the search results.

And just in case you need to add an extra hreflang tag

You can add an additional hreflang tag in your Shopify theme’s head liquid file. The idea is to hardcode the replacement of the domain name for another localized version of your store:

<link rel="alternate" href="{{ canonical_url | replace: shop.domain, 'www.us.store.com' }}" hreflang="en-US" />

In the scenario above we want to let engines know that the US version of the website is available at www.us.store.com, so we replace whatever our default shop domain is (shop.domain variable) with www.us.store.com.

The post Shopify SEO best practices appeared first on icg # tec.

I see local offline boutiques going online. I see friends of mine start successfully selling stuff on Amazon and other marketplaces without any background in eCommerce.

Most likely the trends will strengthen in 2021 and we’ll see more and more fully online and remote businesses all over the world.

I wouldn’t say eCommerce hasn’t suffered at all. We’ve seen a 15-25% drop in sales amid general panic in March-April, however, most of the merchants we know eventually recovered by June. Things got more complicated mostly because of the issues in the supply chain.

If I started dropshipping or selling online in 2021, I would go with one of the following categories:

• Sports (outdoor and bodyweight minimalist solutions particularly – gyms are still closed in many countries and lots of people enjoy calisthenics, resistance band training, running, hiking, etc)
• Wellness (self-care, meditation, stress relief)
• Hygge lifestyle and home stuff (aromatherapy boomed last year, for instance. people stay home and try to make this experience enjoyable)
• Home office setups (people saved some bucks eliminating the commute and ready to invest in their home workstations. See #setupinspiration on Instagram )

So let’s compile the eCommerce checklist for those starting up in 2021. Some of the recommendations would seem obvious for those in the industry for a while, but for some reason, even big brands choose odd solutions (Sorry Zara)

Platform

We normally offer our clients one of the following platform options:

• Magento 2
• Opencart
• Shopify

The first two options are both Open-source and that’s where it would be appropriate to compare. Depending on the projected load, budgets, and the number of SKUs I normally recommend the client the most adequate solution.

Magento is most suitable for large merchants with thousands of products, but the development and maintenance costs are much higher compared to Opencart, where you can get your eCommerce website up and running for as little as 5K EUR. It has some limitations though and would not match Magento’s multivendor capabilities and scalability. Both solutions have marketplaces, where you can find addons virtually for every need. But we’ll stop here and I’ll make a dedicated post about the cons and pros of each platform soon.

For those starting their first eCommerce business, I would recommend Shopify. It’s absolutely the best in terms of:

• Time to market (when you don’t need serious customization you can launch your eCommerce store within few days)
• Recurring tech expenses are almost inexistent
• UX and Shopify Checkout particularly are brilliant and optimized for conversion out of the box

Mobile-first

You have probably noticed Facebook’s desktop version now looks like you accidentally opened a mobile version. The huge mobile app on a 4K display.

Back in 2015, we did very well with a minimal care of website mobile readiness. Most of our traffic was “Desktop” and we haven’t seen significant improvement in sales developing a proper mobile commerce solution. Things rapidly changed in 2017, the share of the mobile traffic (mobile and tablet combined) grew significantly and we had to react fast to maintain the conversion rates.

If you’re on Magento and struggle to fight for an optimal mobile experience, I suggest considering switching to PWA storefront (VueStorefront or ScandiPWA: Vue-based and Angular-base respectively). That saves development time a lot. As the result, you have the power of Magento backend and the speed and flexibility of javascript. Additionally, it will be much easier to find engineers for your frontend needs.

Long story short, starting July 1, 2019, Google has enabled mobile-first indexing by default for all new websites. That affects your SEO rankings. But what’s arguably more important than how Google’s robot sees your online store – it is how your client does. Remember, in 2021 most of the traffic is mobile. Period. 

Navigation

I want to stress this one. I still see a lot of websites messing up navigation. It should be simple right? Let’s try to understand the basics. When we speak about navigation we immediately think about the main menu. The menu normally represents a set of parent product collections, their child groups, and static pages like “home” and “contact“. Easy right? The parent product collections can group your products by their unique characteristic (men/women/unisex or shoes/accessories/outerwear) or by action (read/listen) for instance. We had a healthcare merchant and the products were grouped by their function – acupressure, decompression, massage. In the previous versions of the website, we used the pathologies our products address. You got the idea. What you don’t want to do is to mix the approaches and confuse the visitors of your shop. Although it may seem a bit old-school, in my opinion, it’s still a good idea to use filters instead of sub-categories where possible. 

But navigations are not always on the main menu. We got a footer menu which frequently acts as a place where we put the links we have to put (Terms and Conditions, Return policy) but hope nobody will ever find them. I suggest adding customer reassurance blocks in the footer (Trustpilot, Partner badges, Awards) and make sure it’s visible. No point to have them if you have the infinite scroll and lots of content to keep your client busy scrolling all the way down. 

I’ve seen a lot of shops neglecting the breadcrumbs. In extreme cases, you won’t see the breadcrumbs at all. Not only it possibly harms your SEO (hard to tell how much exactly though…), it also leaves your client with options: click “Back” and in some cases, it sends you straight to the homepage (one-page web-apps), and going through the whole navigation voyage, where experience is directly related to how conscientiously the main menu was implemented.

The main menu should be accessible, clear, and always visible. The only moment you can hide navigation is checkout, where you do not want to distract your customer from finishing the purchase. 

Basic SEO

Most of the eCommerce platforms have built-in SEO tools. The starter option normally represents the meta-tag editor. It’s a must, but not enough in 2021. Nowadays, search engines want us to deliver quality content. Make sure you provide unique product descriptions for as many products as you can. That should include a detailed description of the product benefits and value it brings to the customer. Ideally, it should demonstrate the product in use by the human being (where applicable. e.g. if it’s a watch, show it on a human hand in additional images). 

Don’t forget the rich snippets. Get familiar with Schema.org to make use of the benefits rich snippets may provide. With Schema you can include some extra information that may help you get featured within search results. 

I could leave this without a note, but just in case. Always make sure your website is open for search engines. 

Shopify + SEO deserve a dedicated post and I promise you’ll get it. I guess there are still a lot of merchants googling if Shopify allows editing robots.txt file. Short answer: no it doesn’t. 

Reviews

Make sure you show reviews for as many products as you can. If you don’t have enough product-specific reviews, showcase reviews for your brand. According to BrightLocal’s local consumer survey, 91% of consumers between 18 and 34 believe online reviews a lot and the effect is comparable to that of personal recommendations.

If you just start selling online, make it your priority to collect as many positive reviews as possible. As soon as possible. 

Returns

Make your return policy your advantage. Many merchants try to avoid returns at all costs. Don’t sacrifice the reputation of your company. The only way you can minimize the return rate is:

• Provide quality goods
• Work with reliable carriers 
• Provide exceptional customer service and post-sales support

You can iron the negative experience in many cases if your brand speaks to the customer.  

Free shipping or flat rate shipping

Offer free shipping if you can afford it. I work in eCommerce for quite a long time, but I still hate to pay for delivery. When I land on the website I’m not a loyal customer for, it’s always a hidden and unexpected fee for me. Alternatively, you can make an adequate flat rate shipping.

In any case, set the expectation in the very beginning. Let your customer know free shipping is offered. Or make a sticky badge like “Only $10 Worldwide”. Believe me, this simple measure cuts the number of abandoned carts!

Taxes

Always show products with VAT! Nothing disappoints your client more than a 15-25% extra charge after the goods are already added to cart. Only 15-25% VAT charge and unexpected shipping fees combined…

Clear communication, tracking numbers

Speaking about communication, transactional emails is an absolute minimum for an eCommerce website. And this is the absolute minimum of the emails to be sent to your customer considering you allow guest checkout:

• The order confirmation (order is confirmed and ready to be shipped)
• The order has been shipped (should confirm the shipping company it was shipped with and the ETA)
• Shipping update (tracking number if wasn’t known before)
• Review request and return instructions

If a tracking number was not available when the customer was initially notified that the order was shipped, please make sure you send it as a separate mail! This is a part of the customer experience and it makes the client feel he’s not forgotten after he paid. And again it gives clear expectations. 

Again, I emphasize you should remind your client she has the right to return the product. Just accept the fact, you won’t avoid the returns. And at the end of the day, it’s just a metric in your business. Believe me or not, you can get your returns as low as 3-5% by providing exceptional customer service, even if you keep your return policy explicit.

LiveChats – another good way to communicate with your clients, but in some cases, it’s really hard to implement (high load & human resource-wise). If you can afford a good Chatbot – definitely go for it. If your chatbot is not AI-driven, forget about it. Imagine a pissed-off buyer who has a question in the middle of checkout and the bot keeps saying “Sorry I didn’t quite understand..” just because its interlocutor doesn’t respect the syntax…

Checkout

If I am asked to mention just one reason for my love for Shopify, I would say, it’s checkout. 

With Magento and Opencart we played a lot with different checkout layouts, modules, custom solutions. One thing was obvious – the only adequate solution, since Amazon first offered it, is one step checkout. No more accordion checkouts and other wrist trainers. And once again, with one step checkout, you set the expectations and leave no bad surprises for the customer. 

Shopify doesn’t offer the pure one-stepper anymore. But somehow it’s still minimal, smooth, and less demanding for your clicks. 

Stay tuned

That’s just a second post in this blog, but if you found this article any useful, feel free to subscribe, that would be a good signal I should keep posting:

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