How to Design Your Shopify Store to Make It High-Converting

In this episode of The Ecom Show hosted by our own Daniel Budai, we get a chance to learn from another master of retention marketing in the ecommerce world!

Blended Commerce co-founder and CEO Adam Pearce tells us of his journey, bouncing around between management, consultant, and even teaching jobs before realizing he was interested in ecommerce (and pretty great at figuring it out too!).

Both ecommerce shop owners and marketers can learn a whole lot from Daniel and Adam this episode, with great topics like:

✔️ The best Shopify apps

✔️ Expert design tips for ecommerce stores

✔️ Beautiful aesthetics vs. conversion rates

✔️ Latest Shopify design trends

✔️ When you should consult a design expert

The Tools Experts Trust

Every great marketer has their trusted apps, and Adam is no exception. He mentions Klaviyo taking the crown from Mailchimp a few years back to become one of the very best apps you can use. It does much more than set up email campaigns, essentially giving business owners complete control over their valuable data!

Recharge is another prominent app, great for recurring purchases and subscriptions. Octane AI is an exciting quiz app for ecommerce shops to personalize the experience and pitch specific products to shoppers. At the same time, Reviews.io is the perfect way to get user-generated video reviews, which can boost your sales!

Three Crucial Design Tips

What Adam and Blend Commerce can be pretty complicated at times, but he gave us a few simple tips for all businesses to utilize. While getting started, he recommends having a large budget for product photos and videos, as quality videos and 360-degree photos can up your conversion rate by 70%!

Being consistent with color, shapes, fonts, and photos goes a long way to build trust with prospective customers. Having your “Call to Action” prominently displayed at the top of the landing page is more effective than a large, flashy hero image or text. Be sure to put social proof, mentions of free shipping, and other vital information close to the CTA to make a choice even easier.

Beauty Does Not Equal Sales

If it were just about making beautiful ecommerce landing pages, it would be a piece of cake for Adam and his agency. But he says knowing your audience is the most critical part of owning an ecommerce brand.

Some of the top-performing pages are quite ugly, while some of the sleekest, futuristic designs yield hardly any sales! Both Daniel and Adam mention websites catered towards older crowds needing to be less flashy, more informational, and less distracting. In contrast, sites catered towards younger demographics can go with more aesthetic designs. “Make it beautiful for the type of people you want to attract!”

Ecommerce Trends of 2020

Ecommerce is exploding right now, with 54% of traffic attributed to new shoppers since COVID-19 started. Although the traffic was once evenly distributed between desktop and mobile users, Adam says that around 80% of traffic comes from mobile these days.

People are also prioritizing web speed more lately, with studies showing that improving your loading speed by just 1 second can net you 7% higher conversion rates! There has even been an increase in Shopify stores with digital products as well.

Do it Yourself or Ask an Expert?

Lots of the stuff Blended Commerce does for their clients, you can also do for yourself. Adam says, don’t worry about hiring someone when you have less than 1000 visitors per month because there simply isn’t enough data to sift through and come to a conclusion.

You can use design templates, Google Analytics, Hotjar (a helpful heatmap to analyze your site), and more before consulting an expert. It is a lot more useful to tell them precisely what you want rather than saying, “make my shop beautiful, please.”

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