How to Optimize Your Shopify Dropshipping Store? - The Most Detailed Checklist

Have you ever encountered such a situation: Your Shopify store has been open for more than a month but no sale, and it turns out that one of your store pages was set wrong and the customers cannot purchase successfully.

 

Does this situation make you panic?

 

Your Shopify store page settings should be standardized and detailed, which affects not only the customer experience but also your business performance.

 

You can either optimize your stores by yourself to save costs and gain a high degree of freedom. Or by hiring a freelance Shopify developer who can enhance your store's functionality, performance, and user experience, ultimately increasing sales and customer satisfaction. In this article, we have listed the key points for Shopify dropshipping store optimization. You can check your store according to this list.

 

1. Create Standard Pages

 

Your page must provide as much essential information about your store and product as possible to allow customers to find what they want quickly. So make sure your store has the following standard pages and info.

 

 • Home Page: The most important page of your store. It is used to showcase your business, products, services, and value. A well-designed homepage helps to retain new visitors. It should also contain all entrances to other pages of the store.

 

 • About Us: This is where your customers learn about your value, your brand, and your story. It is the page that helps you build customer trust and loyalty.

 

 • Contact Us: Make sure that your phone number, email, social media, and company address (if any) are displayed on the contact page. Make sure that your customers can easily get in touch with you to show as much authenticity as possible.

 

 • FAQs: Customers may have many questions when making purchasing decisions. An effective FAQ page will help customers get self-service solutions and prevent you from answering the same questions to customers repeatedly.

 

 • Return & Refund Policy: Nearly half of consumers check the return policy before buying, and this is why the shipping, return, exchange, and refund policies are essential on the website. It can also help you build more trust with potential customers.

 

 • Terms of Service: This page covers some legal basis, and what content is included or not included in your service.

 

 • Privacy Policy: As more and more people are concerned about data protection, you can try to work with lawyers to draft the content of the privacy policy if possible.

 

2. Product Listing Page

 

The listing page displays all your products to customers, and it is also the landing page for the majority of your marketing traffic. Therefore, make sure that your listing page is carefully designed to help customers find and purchase products more efficiently and increase customer engagement. Your listing page should contain the following contents.

 

 • A Brief Introduction of Listing Page

 

A brief introduction can be an eye-catching and unique headline to increase visibility. You should include the page keywords in the <h1> tag, which is helpful for SEO and will make your website rankings higher in the search result.

 

Remember that the introduction of your listing page should provide information and help to your customers first.

 

 • Category List and Sub-category List

 

If your store sells products of different categories, then please remember to classify your products. If the scope of the main category is too large, you can further classify it into sub-categories.

 

 • Filtering and Sorting Functions

 

The purpose of filtering and sorting is to allow customers to narrow the search scope and find the products they want faster. But before you set up these functions, you need to figure out what keywords your products can be filtered by (For example, your products can be filtered by color), and what sorting your customers may require. Then you can find the best way to filter and sort.

 

 • Best Sellers and Product Reviews

 

When your customers don’t know what to buy, they will usually refer to best-selling products and reviews to make choices. Because the best-selling products and highly rated products have been certified by consumers. It also reflects that your store and brand are trustworthy.

 

Therefore, you should display your best-selling products and ratings on your listing page and encourage your customers to comment after purchase.

 

 • Preview of Products and "Add to Cart" Button

 

More than one product image and a mini "Add to cart/ bag" button allows customers to preview products and add them to the shopping cart without leaving the current page.

 

3. Product Page

 

A good product page can increase people's desire to buy your products. But the product page is also the page that is most likely to go wrong. Such as lack of trust, unclear product information, etc. That's why your product pages need optimization as much as possible. We have listed the following essential contents and optimizable contents.

 

 • Essential:

 

Multi-angle Product Images

Make pictures of high-quality, professional products from different angles. If possible, using the product image zoom and 360-degree view function can help better display the product.

 

Product Description

Product description can better highlight the special features of your product. If you put the product description above the “Add To Cart” button and make it into a foldable style, the effect would be better.

 

Changeable Product Quantity, Model, Specification, Size, or Color

Allow customers to change the Product Quantity, model, specification, size, or color without leaving the product page, to increase the probability of customers adding products to their shopping cart.

 

“Add To Cart” Button

The “Add To Cart” button should use the most conspicuous color and style.

 

Discount Information

Discount information can play a role in attracting customers to stay when they are hesitant.

 

Shipping Information

Showing your shipping time and estimated delivery time can make customers feel at ease, to avoid customers from asking you shipping questions frequently.

 

 • Optimizable:

 

Stock Information

There are two purposes for showing the stock of each product. One is to remind customers of the maximum quantity that they can buy, to avoid customers from buying multiple products when the inventory is insufficient and you can’t ship them on time. The second is to remind customers that the stock is running out so that they have a sense of urgency that they want to buy immediately. 

 

Product or Store Reviews

You can build more trust from your customers by displaying reviews and recommendations, or other authoritative links.

 

Product Video

Video is usually better than pictures. You can add some product videos if possible.

 

Related Product Recommendation

If you are selling multiple products and they are related, please recommend these related products to your customers on the product page. Because they are likely to buy them together, such as mobile phone cases and wireless chargers.

 

After-sale Guarantees

Remind your customers that you provide after-sales guarantees for all the products, which is also a way to enhance customer trust.

 

Share Button

Let your customers take the initiative to promote your products to their friends through the share button.

 

4. Shopping Cart Page

 

This page is where your customers check the product they want to buy and make the final decision. You should create an effective shopping cart page to direct your customers to the checkout page.

 

 • Remind that there are discounts that have not been used, and also recommend related or similar products, to encourage customers to add more to the cart.

 

 • Display product details, including product name, image, size, color, and price. This helps customers remember which product they choose and why they want to buy it.

 

 • Use clear and eye-catching Call To Action buttons, such as "Go to Checkout".

 

 • Make the shopping cart easy to edit, such as deleting, changing size/color/quantity, etc.

 

5. Checkout Page

 

Consumers often abandon their shopping carts on the checkout page. So check this page of your store carefully. A perfect checkout page should contain the following.

 • Simple and Clear Process

 

A complicated checkout process will make customers get bored and abandon the shopping cart, so you should clearly show the checkout steps.

 

 • Multiple Popular Payment Methods

 

Using popular and guaranteed payment methods (such as PayPal, Google Pay) will make customers feel safe when paying money to you.

 

 

 • Detailed Address Field

 

Mark the required and optional parts of the address field to avoid making customers feel confused.

 

 • Clear Discount Price

 

Make your customers feel the value of discounts by clearly showing how much money customers have saved through discounts.

 

 • Obvious “Continue” Button and “Back” Button

 

Obvious buttons can guide your customers to complete the checkout more efficiently.

 

 • Order Confirmation and Coupons

 

Please invite your customers to confirm the order by pop-ups or emails when they complete the payment. And you can also encourage them to buy again by providing coupons.

 

6. Search Engine Optimization

 

Many online store owners rely on social media promotion or advertising to drive conversions. They may completely ignore or rarely consider search engine optimization (SEO).

 

Google accounted for over 70% of all global desktop search traffic in 2021, while the top five organic results generate more than 67% of all clicks. Therefore, a high ranking on Google is still one of the best ways to increase website traffic. And SEO is worth investing in.

 

 

You can start SEO by the following aspects.

 

 • On-page SEO

 

On-page optimization is still one of the easiest ways to improve your ranking on Google in 2022. It takes you less time but results soon. The first thing you need to do is keywords research, including your subject keywords and LSI keywords (refers to related phrases used to explain a page’s content better).

 

Then use your keywords for your title tags, meta description, images, and URLs. Also, insert the keywords into the product description and category description.

 

Starting blogs is also a good idea that helps on-page SEO. Because long-form content (at least 1,800 words) can easily include topic keywords (3-5 per page would be enough) and LSI keywords to improve topic depth and relevancy. But please make sure that you don’t have any plagiarized content or similar content on different pages of your own site.

 

 • Technical SEO

 

Technical SEO is to make sure that your website is able to be found, crawled, and indexed by search engines. That means you should optimize your website in terms of website security, loading speed, and performance on mobile devices. There are some simple things you could do for technical SEO.

 

Use HTTPS (HyperText Transfer Protocol) for your website, which can carry out encrypted transmission and identity authentication, so that customer information is protected safely.

 

Use Google Search Console to monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your site's presence in Google Search results. And confirm that Google can find and crawl your site. It also helps fix indexing problems and request re-indexing of new or updated content.

 

Compress your website images, reduce their file size, and speed up page loading. Also, uninstall the Shopify apps you don’t need. You can test the speed of the website through PageSpeed Insights or GTMETRICS.

 

 

Use Shopify themes that load smoothly and are highly adaptable to improve customer experience on mobile devices.

 

If you don’t know further about technology, you could consider hiring an expert to help you complete technical SEO.

 

 • Internal Links

 

Internal links make the content of different pages of your website chain together through links. It can help reduce the bounce rate of your website and help search engines find and index your website faster.

 

It’s even better if you are running blogs on your store website. You can use internal links in your blog content and allow readers to jump from the blog page to the product pages of your store.

 

 • External Links

 

External links mean backlinks that are posted on a third-party website but link to your website. These kinds of links are essential for SEO. Because a website with more high-quality external links has more credibility and sharing degree in the eyes of search engines. And at the same time, your domain authority score will also be improved because of this.

 

You can encourage your customers to share your high-quality content or posts on social media, but that’s too passive. So you can try to contact authoritative or high-quality website owners to publish your guest posts. This means you need to spend some effort to create content, but the effects will be long-lasting.

 

 • Authority

 

Google usually considers your website’s expertise, authority, and trust when determining the potential of the ranking of your website. If you are planning to run your own brand, then building authority can help your brand gain trust and popularity more quickly.

 

Most of the optimization ways mentioned in this article can help build your website’s authority. For example, secure websites with and complete information can increase trust. High-quality posts can help you showcase your expertise in your niches. You will also gain authority if your store website or blog are mentioned by some authoritative sites like press releases.

 

7. Necessary Shopify Apps

 

One of the biggest benefits of using Shopify is that you can easily expand your store by installing all kinds of apps and tools in the Shopify app store.

 

 

You can consider the following types of apps:

 

 • Store Design

 

A professional store design can enhance the customer experience. If you have enough budget, you can use store design tools to optimize your store.

 

 • Finding Products

 

Choosing the best product is the most important part of your Shopify business. Product finding tools can help you do product research and quickly discover hot-selling products and potential products, ahead of your competitors.

 

 • Sourcing and Order Fulfillment

 

This kind of app is for dropshipping businesses. Usually, dropshipping suppliers will help you handle product sourcing, order management, shipping, and even customization, and on-demand printing through their apps.

 

 • Marketing

 

There are massive marketing apps that cover SEO, content marketing, email marketing, social media marketing, advertising, direct marketing, marketing analysis, marketing automation, etc. Choosing the right marketing tools can make your marketing work more effective.

 

 • Conversion

 

Conversion apps are tools that help you set up store alerts, promotions, cross-selling, and customer feedback collecting, etc. These tools can often increase your sales conversion rate in unremarkable places.

 

 • Customer Service

 

Help center, live chat, SMS text messaging, customer management, etc. These are all included in customer service apps. And they can help you build a better customer experience.

 

8. Email Marketing

 

 

Email marketing can help establish and maintain good relationships with your customers. It is one of the most efficient marketing channels that can see effects in a few days.

 

The following are the eight most important emails in email marketing:

 

 • Welcome Email: It is used to thank your customer for joining your email list, and express your expectations to bring them more value.

 

 • Thank You Email: Thank your customers for purchasing the products and assure them that they will receive things on time.

 

 • Survey Email: This kind of email is to ask for your customer’s feedback on the shopping experience and product experience.

 

 • Abandoned Cart Email: If your customers leave products in their shopping cart and never buy, then you can alert them to complete the purchase by email.

 

 • Order Confirmation Email: After your customers have completed the payment, you can confirm with them the order they just placed in your store.

 

 • Up-sell and Cross-sell Email: Recommend and sell more products to your customers to increase average order value.

 

 • Promotional Email: Tell your customers about the promotion campaign, holiday discounts, free gifts, etc. are available on your website.

 

 • Customer loyalty and Re-engagement Emails: Send emails to your existing customers or customers who have not purchased from you within a certain time frame.

 

9. Social Media Marketing

 

Social media marketing means promoting your products, store, or brand on Social media, improving your brand awareness. There is a huge customer base on social media because 4.48 billion people are actively using social media in the world in 2021 and the number is growing rapidly year by year. Since your potential customers are probably active on social platforms, you should quickly interact with them on social media.

 

 

You can start social media marketing in many different forms.

 

 • Content Marketing

 

In addition to Google, major social media platforms also have powerful search engine systems. In order to better integrate SEO with social media marketing, keyword research is essential. You can start by building your brand homepages on social media platforms and posting content using keywords tags that are related to your brand or niche.

 

Of course, high-quality content does not only rely on keywords. You must ensure that you post content that is valuable to your customers to attract more followers, such as sharing featured links, sharing your blogs, promoting your products, introducing tutorials on how to buy products in your store, etc.

 

 

 • Advertising

 

Facebook, Instagram, Youtube, TikTok are platforms where you can build your homepage and run ads. But before your start advertising, you need to figure out which platforms your target customers are active on to ensure a high advertising conversion rate. TikTok is a potential marketing platform in 2022, and it is suitable for small businesses like dropshipping. It is worth trying with a small budget for advertising.

 

 • Influencer Marketing

 

If you don’t want to spend time running your own social media account but want to get the effect of social media marketing in a short time, then influencer marketing is a good idea. This means you can find a creater who already has a certain influence on social media and whose followers are also your potential customers. Then you can collaborate with the creator and promote your product or brand in his videos or posts. Instagram, Youtube, and TikTok are usually the most potential platforms for influencer marketing.

 

 • Community Operation

 

Facebook Group, Reddit, Youtube community, etc. When you have a large number of followers or customers, these are the places where you can bring your customers together and maintain relationships.

 

10. Data Analysis

 

Data analysis is essential for measuring business conditions and return on investment. A business that uses a combination of data, instinct, and experience to decide what to do is more profitable than a business that makes all the decisions on instinct by ‘going with their gut’. The following data analysis tools are the most commonly used by Shopify store owners.

 

 • Shopify Analytics and report is powerful enough to review your store's recent activity, get insight into your visitors, analyze your online store speed, and analyze your store's transactions. 

 

 

 • Google Analytics is a free and easy-to-use tool that provides you with more additional functions and reports. You can easily add google Google Analytics to your Shopify store. As your Shopify store grows, you may switch to using Google Tag Manager (GTM) to manage your Google Analytics, Facebook pixels, and marketing tags.

 

 • Google Search Console is also a free service offered by Google that helps you monitor, maintain, and troubleshoot your website's performance in Google Search results.

 

 

Final Words

 

In order to avoid mistakes and eliminate common troubles, please be sure to carefully test your website and all the call-to-action buttons before it goes published. In addition, continue to do A/B testing to determine what makes your customers more satisfied, and what factors bring about the conversion. 

 

Don’t neglect any detail, and don’t expect shortcuts. Only by optimizing your shop step by step, and accumulating less into more, is the real truth. List your plans and strategies and kick start now!