3 Things A Boutique Needs to Know Before They Start Selling On Shopify

Today we talk about:

• Plugins!
• Testing everything
• High-quality photography

Christian: [00:00:17] What'sgoing on? My name is Christian, and this is Aaron over here. You can't see him,but he's in front of me. Today we're going to talk about three things that aboutique needs to know before they start selling on Shopify. We're talkingabout plug-ins, testing, and photography. It's going be a cool episode. Werecently just finished a pretty big boutique website on Shopify. It's the firsttime that I've done a full website on Shopify, and let me tell you, it waspretty good. And I learned a lot.

Aaron: [00:00:47] Iwas going to say it was- I think we're still doing some stuff like back-endand, you know, fine-tuning and stuff. So there's a lot with it that hopefully,this will alleviate some of the issues you could possibly run into before youstart selling on there.

Christian: [00:01:02] Yeah.Let me tell you, I mean, if you're thinking about starting a boutique or aclothing company and you're thinking about using Shopify, I would definitelyrecommend to you Shopify. I mean, we designed this website. If you're on yourown and you don't have the money to hire someone to design it and do all theback-end stuff, Shopify is easy enough that you can go in there and figure itout. There's a lot to it, but we're just going to give you three little thingsthat sort of to me stand out when you're making that Shopify website. We're nottalking- I mean, I feel like this is just a little bit more in-depth.Obviously, you need a good template and a good design and all that, and you shouldhave your products and taxes and shipping and all this figured out. But we'retalking maybe things that you might forget to know or do before you startselling on Shopify.

Aaron: [00:01:56] Right.So the first thing here is plug-ins. They have, much like Wordpress, they haveplug-ins, and something that can be a little overwhelming and you just have to,you know, understand it, is that there are a lot of them. A lot of them arefree. Some of them are paid, but they are- You have to figure out what's goingto be beneficial to your business and pick a few of those to use for yourbusiness that absolutely could make or break- Not make or break. Sorry. Canmake a lot more sales for you. Maybe Christian can break down some examples oftypes of plug-ins that just makes sense, but he's shaking his head.

Christian: [00:02:33] I'mjust kidding. No, for sure. I would say to everyone launching a Shopifywebsite, right off the bat when you're launching your site, make sure thatyou've already installed some plug-ins. Maybe you've researched a few plug-ins,and you're using them because there's very powerful plug-ins out there that youcan use right now that will double or triple the amount of sales that you do onyour website which is huge. Some examples are loyalty programs. I mean, bigcompanies are doing this like, you know, Macy's, JCPenney, and Walgreens andall that stuff. They have, you know, their points programs, and you can do thesame thing for free. There's one that's called Beans. Just how it sounds.Beans. B-E-A-N-S. And it allows you to create certain rules for the times thatpeople get points. Obviously, when they make a purchase, they get points, butyou can set automatic rules where if someone purchases something in Novemberand they haven't visited your website for a whole month, it automatically sendsthem an e-mail saying hey, here's 10 free points for you to use this month. Fortheir birthday, you can create automatic e-mails that will send them points. Imean, that's just one plug-in right there.

Aaron: [00:03:53] Wasthat one free?

Christian: [00:03:54] Yes.I mean, to start with yes, it is free. They have a paid version where you cancreate unlimited set of rules, and you can, I mean, you can customize ithowever you want. I mean, that's just one of them. Another big plug-in that youshould definitely have is cross-selling and up-selling software. Right now theone that I came up with or stumbled upon really that was free, it was LimeSpot,and the cool thing about LimeSpot is they don't start charging you until youstart making money off of them which I thought was a really, really cool. Andthis allows you to basically set out, you know, automatically actually productsbased on what people are searching on your website, previous search history onyour website, featured items, popular items within other people. And then itallows you to put it under the cart. Whenever they're ready to checkout, boom.It pops out right there. Hey, you might be interested in something like this,this, and this. Amazon does a really great job at this, and with LimeSpot youcan do the same thing on your Shopify website.

Aaron: [00:04:59] Thatis extremely powerful. I mean, really I don't know unless you had a completelycustomized website and a coder and you just knew exactly what you want to dowith your site, it would not make sense to use anything else except forShopify. I don't know of anything else like that has as much power with theirplug-ins and, you know, just so many opportunities to automatically get thoseupsells.

Christian: [00:05:24] Yeah.And like I said, those are just two plug-ins that we talked about that aresuper powerful. Now like I said, just familiarize yourself with the plug-insthat are available. Search and see. I mean, they have a really good marketplacewhere you can even see some of the most popular ones and see what other peopleare using because it will definitely boost yourselves.

Aaron: [00:05:43] Cool.So the next thing is to getting on local directories for more reviews will pushthe business in- Sorry. That's completely the wrong notion. Wow. I switchedover to the wrong stuff. So obviously, they'll boost up your reviews, butanyway. It's to test everything. The page layout, navigation, how people aregoing to search on your site, the messaging, which a really cool new feature isFacebook within the last couple of weeks is adding a messaging feature - whichShopify has as well - to take them directly from your website and start havinga conversation on Facebook Messenger.

Christian: [00:06:20] Yeah,that's still on testing. I did see that, and that looks really, really cool.But yeah, you definitely want to make sure that you test everything before youtell the world that you launched a website. I mean, it's not like people aregoing to come flocking down on your website and, you know, overwhelm the serveror anything like that, but you definitely want to make sure that you testtransactions. Very important. Page layout. When we talk about navigation, we'retalking about all the links on the top and the footer. Make sure thateverything is going where it's supposed to go. I mean, that's a huge thing. Ifpeople can't go and check out from your website, you're not going to get anysales.

Aaron: [00:06:58] Well,and one thing that I see a lot of boutique businesses or like clothingbusinesses forget - and you would think this would be kind of obvious - is thatthey don't connect their social icons. So the social icons will be there basedoff their template, but they will not connect the social icons like to takethem to Facebook or Instagram. So make sure to double check those. I've seenthat a lot in the last few weeks where it takes them back to the home page, andthat's not what I was trying to do. I was trying to go to your Facebook page.

Christian: [00:07:24] That'strue. Yeah, I have seen that a lot. And yeah, if you're not going to use them,just turn them off. You can definitely do that in the theme settings, and thenwhen you're testing, make sure that you get your friends, your family to alsolook at the website, look at it on mobile devices, look at it on tablets,different web browsers, Chrome, Safari, Internet Explorer which we definitelydo not recommend. Anything like that. Make sure that you have multiple eyeballslooking at this website not just you because you might miss something.

Aaron: [00:07:54] Right.You start to get kind of blind to seeing the same things over and over again.All right. And this last thing here is to make sure that you have good photography.We've talked about this on multiple episodes of the podcast, but with aboutique, it's all about the photography. Be sure to invest in high qualityphotos, and you also want to make sure that you have like variations of theproducts. So like a picture from the front, from the side, from the back, andthey all need to be high quality photos. Otherwise, it's just going to turnthem off. If they're super grainy, it just, you know, kind of- It just kind ofmakes the boutique look like it's not as professional, I guess.

Christian: [00:08:39] That'svery true. In my professional opinion, I think the high quality photographywill either make or break a website, and this is something that I feel everyboutique or any- If you're selling anything online, you need to have good, highquality photography. Otherwise, people are not going to be enticed to buy that.Even thinking about photography, also think about videos. A lot of people aredoing this and these, you know, 360 videos or just regular 10 second videosshowing- You know, if you're a boutique, I guess showing the dress or the pantsor the shoes. I mean, that right there, it's- You're at one percent of all theboutiques that are on Shopify right now because nobody's really doing anythinglike that.

Aaron: [00:09:25] Andyou can add that kind of like video down bottom?

Christian: [00:09:28] Yeah,yeah. I mean, you can do anything and everything on Shopify.

Aaron: [00:09:31] Okay,I would highly suggest that. If you have new products each week. So there arelike 20 products, and you don't have a team. Probably not feasible, but if youhave like 10 products and you just, you know, new variations of them and you doit every couple of weeks, I would highly suggest that. That's actually a reallygood idea. All right. So let's recap here. We have one, to make sure that youfamiliarize yourself with the plug-ins. Those are huge. It's going to be a gamechanger in doubling or tripling the amount of sales that you have. Two, testeverything and also get some friends and family and other business partners'feedback about the pages and layouts and how they navigate through the site.And then lastly, do not hold bar on any type of photography, and make sure itis high quality photography.

Christian: [00:10:20] Yeah,that's very true. All right. This is the end of our episode, and if you'velisten all the way through, make sure that you give us a shout out. Go onTwitter @BitBranding, and let us know how we're doing. Also, if you wouldplease share this episode with someone who might be starting a boutique oralready has a boutique business and is trying to get online. Definitelyrecommend the Shopify, and then send them to this podcast so we can teach themsomething too. Right?

Aaron: [00:10:51] Allright. See you guys- Well, talk to you. I do that every time.

Christian: [00:10:54] Yeah,talk to you.

Aaron: [00:10:54] Talkto you guys next week.