We’ll be back monthly to tell you more about what’s going on behind the scenes at Root & Roam.
Selling on Shopify – As the world is ever-changing, more and more people are doing their shopping online. From basic necessities to clothing and groceries, just about everything is available for purchase through the World Wide Web. Perhaps you have a brick and mortar store or you’re just getting started and seek only to sell online, but you just don’t know where to start. There are numerous ecommerce-specific platforms available, but the ecommerce experts here at Root & Roam agree that Shopify is the gold standard.
Shopify is a full featured, robust platform that handles the most nitty gritty of online selling. They have made it simple to process payments, create shipping labels, and design the actual look and feel of your website all in one place. Shopify has even built in various high-powered and highly effective ecommerce marketing tools. Gone are the days of confusing, clunky, hard-coded ecommerce websites. So, just how do you set up a Shopify store? Read on for our expert guide.
Selling on Shopify
How to set up a Shopify store
Utilize ecommerce marketing
Shopify offers several free themes, as well as third party paid themes in their Shopify theme store. The free themes are definitely enough to get you started. However, if you want more styling options and features, you’ll want to browse through the paid themes. Shopify’s themes are all mobile-friendly, and you won’t have to worry about configuring for mobile devices. Once you’ve chosen a theme, you can start customizing it and plugging in your content as you see fit. Don’t forget to develop your navigation, customize your checkout pages, and add legal pages like a privacy policy and terms of use.
Adding your products is relatively straightforward. Shopify has all of the necessary fields within their product listing sections. Be sure to complete as many fields as possible and use thorough, keyword-heavy product descriptions. Add high-resolution images that showcase different views of each product. Input pricing, skus, inventory, etc., for each product. You’ll also need to categorize each product into the appropriate “collection.” The collection a product belongs to will determine how the products are displayed on your website.
What payment methods do you plan to accept? You’ll need to set this up in Shopify settings. Will you accept all major credit cards? What about Apple Pay, Google Pay, Amazon Pay, or PayPal? It is during this step that you will also need to provide your business information so that you can receive payouts.
The possibilities are endless when it comes to your shipping terms. Do you plan to offer free shipping, flat rate shipping, or calculated shipping? Are you able and willing to ship internationally, or do you plan to only ship domestically? Will you use multiple carriers or stick with one tried-and-true option? It is imperative to determine your shipping structure up front and configure all options to match. If you plan to offer real-time, calculated shipping rates at checkout, you will need to shop and install a third party app from the Shopify app store.
Depending on the types of products you sell, where you are shipping them, and where you are physically located, you will need to configure the tax section in Shopify settings. Obviously, it is important to comply with all state and federal tax guidelines.
Once you have set up your Shopify store, it’s imperative that you test all aspects. Click around the front side to ensure all links are properly configured. Check to be sure your products are categorized in a way that makes sense and your product listings and individual product pages appear as you want. Add products to your cart, and walk through the checkout process, paying close attention to shipping options and the collection of taxes. Essentially, do anything and everything to try to “break” your site or the rules you’ve set in place. If everything operates as it should, you’re ready to go live!
Another simple marketing tool that Shopify offers is abandoned cart emails. These emails are sent out at a specified time if a shopper places items in their cart but does not complete the checkout process. Shopify offers basic abandoned cart emails, but to really make the process more robust, it is recommended to use a third party service like Klaviyo. According to Shopify Partner Ezra Firestone, “Ecommerce customers who receive multiple abandoned shopping cart emails are 2.4 times more likely to complete the purchase than those who receive only one follow up email. And customers who receive multiple abandoned cart emails have a multiple transaction rate 44 percent higher than those who didn’t.”*
Shopify integrates with several other platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Google to boost your efforts to the next level. You can use these integrations to build ad audiences to retarget and upsell your current customers, build like audiences that would be interested in your business based on the profiles of those who are already your customers, and re-engage users who visited your website but did not complete a purchase. Use a free Shopify app like Kit to build targeted social media ads and campaigns. (Kit is free, but you will pay social media platform fees for running ads.)
The ecommerce marketing options are truly endless. However, anything beyond basic needs will require the use of a third party app. When you find the one that fits all your needs, the cost is well worth it!
Resources
Heading tags serve several different purposes.
Let’s start with the content creator or the web designer, the person writing and determining each heading tag. Here, heading tags act similarly to an outline of the content being created. They establish how the information and the content surrounding that information are to be structured.
To search engines such as Google or Bing, heading tags act like labels or signs. They help point search engines to the specific places within web pages to quickly locate the content that people are searching for. Heading tags inform the search engine robots about the hierarchy of the information that they’re processing – a heading tag helps delineate what is the most important content and where it is located.
Finally, to someone visiting a website to read the information or content, heading tags are topic signifiers and points of interest – by reading the “What are HTML heading tags?” above the previous paragraph, a reader can easily determine what the overall topic being presented will be and can deduct what to expect in the post. Heading tags are also an important accessibility feature that helps accessibility software like screen readers parse and categorize the most important information on a page.
We use our crawler to scan your article pages and determine the correct headlines for your content. Follow our best practices to help us display the correct title from your content:
Google HTML Rules
Match the anchor text that points to your article in your section pages to your article/page title.
Avoid using the article title, or a substring of the title, as an active hyperlink on your article page.
Do not include a date or time in your article title.
Article titles should be at least 10 characters and between 2 and 22 words.
Do not include a leading number in the anchor text of the title to make sure your article title displays properly on mobile devices.
Use only one H1 tag per page.
Keywords should be aligned by the rank of importance corresponding to your tag hierarchy.
Keep your heading tags concise and keyword specific.
H1 headings should be approximately twice as large as your body text.
There’s plenty of reasons to use heading tags, and it mainly comes down to structuring your content in a way that makes it coherent and legible for every interaction with them. They are also an important part of your overall on-page SEO efforts, especially when you consider how it impacts your entire audience’s ability to find and digest the information you put out there. A quick summary of why using heading tags is important:
Heading tags structure your content
They help make your content more accessible
They are an important part of SEO best practices
They enhance readability and improve accessibility
They play a part in enhancing the overall user experience
You may have heard the terms “Owned, Earned, and Paid Media” tossed around in the past and could be concerned that they are new types of media that you must have to optimize and create a well-rounded online presence for your business. However, there’s a strong likelihood that you already have developed and are using at least a few of these types of media already!
Owned, earned, and paid media all play a strong role in your company’s SEO, and all work together to provide a clear overview of your company to a customer. Let’s dive into the differences between earned, owned, and paid media.
Your owned media is just that – any content or platforms your brand owns. If you have complete control over the media, you “own” it. Owned media is great because you control the entirety of the messaging and branding. The more places your brand can be found online, and the more engaged on these platforms your audience is, the better your website will rank on a search engine results page (SERP).
Examples of your owned media include:
Website
Ebooks
Blogs
Podcasts
Apps
Social media accounts
Owned media allows your brand to shine. If you have a branding kit, make sure that you’re referring to it consistently to so your messaging, brand personality, color scheme, and fonts are all on-brand. It’s important to show consistency across all of your owned platforms to increase your brand awareness.
Whether you’re working to develop all your owned media platforms or you’re continuing to grow them, now is the time to do an audit. Make a list of all of the owned media your company has, and make sure that you’re utilizing them all to their fullest potential. This is a prime way to get seen by current and potential customers, so make sure you are putting your best foot forward and providing up-to-date and engaging for your audience. Create a plan to monitor and engage with your social media accounts. If you have a social media account you’re not currently using, consider whether or not you have the bandwidth to re-engage with this platform.
Root and Roam Tip: There are many types of owned media, but you do not have to use them all. Focus on the owned media platforms that resonate with your audience.
Earned media is any mention your brand has earned through work of your own. You’ve heard before that “nothing good comes easy,” and your earned media is a prime example. Over time, your earned media grows exponentially. Putting in the hard work to develop customer relationships, loyalty, and provide excellent customer service pay off for you with earned media.
Examples of earned media include:
Blog posts about your product or service others have written
Press mentions
Online reviews
Social mentions
It may feel uncomfortable, but the fastest way to gain earned media is by asking. Check in with your most loyal customers and ask them to write a review on your Google My Business page, an online business review site, or even your social media platforms. You can do this in person or through an email.
Root and Roam Tip: It may feel easier to ask a customer to leave a review in exchange for a discount or small token of appreciation. Resist this temptation. Doing so can inadvertently be considered to be bribery. Your company is great and your organic reviews will show this!
Your paid media is any content or brand mention you’ve paid to have. They may fall anywhere on the cost spectrum, from just a few dollars to the largest paid campaign that you could dream up.
Example of Paid Media Include:
Google search ads
Streaming ads
Google display ads
Banner ads on a website
Network display ads
Paid articles or advertorials
Your paid media is an important part of your overall marketing strategy because it expands your reach. Paid media allows you to get your company seen by potential new customers. Targeting options allow for you to hand-select who your audience is, and there are multiple ways for you to do so. You can target your search and display paid media in many different ways, including geographic location, specific keywords or searches, demographics. You even have the option to do a retargeting ad to follow up with those who have already visited your website or Facebook page.
Your paid media also includes any ad buys that you make on any online industry publication and streaming TV or radio ad.
Root and Roam Tip: There are many places you can use paid media. The opportunities are endless. Start off simple with platforms that you know your current audience or target audience are utilizing, and do some A/B testing to see what resonates best and provides you the most conversions.
As we talked about the differences between earned, owned, and paid media, you may be thinking “How do these all work together to give me a well-rounded digital marketing strategy?” The combinations of earned, owned, and paid media is the key. All types of media play a pivotal role in your SEO strategy but also in your overall brand strategy.
Some examples of owned and paid media combinations include:
Sponsored social media advertising
Boosted social media posts
Influencer partnerships
Some examples of owned and earned media include:
Testimonials on website
“As seen on..” Sections of the website
More branded searches for your business
Engagement on your owned media from influencers or social ads
Website conversions through paid advertising efforts
Increased web traffic on a dedicated landing page to capture leads through an ad
Each option of the type of media you choose, if leveraged alone, can achieve a company goal. However, when combined with another type or better yet, when all three are utilized, you’ll see much better results regardless of if you’re targeting brand awareness, lead generation, lead nurturing, or transactional opportunities. Interested in learning more about how these three types of media can improve your business, get in touch with a marketing strategist at Root & Roam!