Do you want to make more money?
Hah! That's a silly question. Of course, you do…
Now I want you to think about the answer to that question and consider how you'd respond if there was a bit of a lull in your business. The truth is, sometimes there are just slow months.
So what do you do? Throw in the towel? Just wait it out?
It can be easy to get complacent around the “slower” months and just accept that you won't make as many sales, but if there's anything I've learned throughout the years, this is the exact time to push against that mentality.
YOU get to decide how successful you are!
To help push past the slow season's sluggishness, I brought on Bryan Bowman to re-energize our resolve and make more money this month. He shares the top 11 apps you must have on your Shopify store to grow your numbers and convert all of those leads into actual buyers!
Grab your pen and paper because you are gonna want to jot some notes down for this one!
The Four Ways To Grow Your Business
Before we jump into the four ways to grow your business, I wanted to touch on something SO IMPORTANT that Bryan mentioned during our interview. Psychographic.
You've heard of demographics when it comes to marketing. When you think of your ideal client, you probably have an idea of how old they are, where they might live, their gender, etc. But to really push those sales numbers, you've got to get even deeper than that.
That's where psychographics comes in. This is when you get in their head. What do they value? How are they feeling? What kinds of things are they interested in and what makes them happy/sad/frustrated?
When you're in the e-commerce game, the competition is kind of limitless. Until you make sure that it isn't. Bryan shares a beautiful example of how he managed to increase his sales numbers using psychographics. He bought a bunch of textbooks from eBay and sold them at a higher price point through Amazon.
And he was able to do this because he recognized a need in his customers. Frustrated students didn't want to deal with the unfriendly user interface of eBay. They didn't trust it as much as Amazon and were willing to spend extra for the convenience of a positive buying experience.
Now it's your turn to get in the mind of your customers. Remember to report back on your findings! I'm curious! With that settled, let's get into the four ways to grow:
#1 Leads
Step one is getting new leads into your business and nurturing those leads.
#2 Conversion Rates
Next is figuring out how many of those leads are buying.
#3 Upsells
After that, it's important to focus on the customers you do have and beef up their order by upselling other products you offer.
#4 Return Customers
And finally, you want to make sure they come back and do that process again.
The Shopify Apps You Need to Facilitate the Sales Process
- First, to capture and nurture your leads, you'll need an email service that works. We swear by Klaviyo. It's specifically designed for e-commerce stores and can plug into the backend of Shopify.
- Next up for rounding out the shopper experience is Optimonk. It helps generate and capture leads for your online store.
- Now that we've captured some leads, the next thing to do is to convert them into buyers. What do you do before you buy anything? You read reviews. We like Loox for this!
- Judge.me is another resource for reviews!
- Converting buyers also means helping them out a little. Maybe they really want to purchase a cart full of items, but it isn't in the budget at the moment. Apps like Afterpay
- and Klarna divide those payments up so they can shop to their heart's desire!
- No one likes an overflowing email inbox. Reach them through SMS instead with apps like Postscript. It's also an amazing tool to combat all of those abandoned carts. Yep, remind your potential customers of all the goodies they could be missing out on if they don't head back over to your storefront.
- Guess what! Load times matter. People will abandon ship if it takes too long to load your site. Usually, it's because of the size of the images you use, so compress them using an app like Crush.pics. It's the easiest way to speed up your site!
- The way your page looks matters. Make your brand stand out from the pack by offering a unique visual display. There are plenty of apps out there for that, but we like to use Shogun.
- We've converted a bunch of leads…yay! Now let's get them to SPEND MORE. Apps like Honeycomb allow you to upsell from the cart or even after the sale.
- Your best prospect is your EXISTING customer! Maybe you're worried that you don't have anything else for your customers to buy. This is when something like Print on Demand can come in and save the day by adding some versatility to your storefront. We use apps like Printfull.
Top Takeaways
There you have it. The eleven Shopify apps we shared will help navigate you through the entire sales pipeline. Again, there are so many more Shopify apps out there, and some that you might even like more than the ones we've listed. I encourage you to do your research and play around with the ones that seem to fit the best!
I've got one more list for you, and it's the top takeaways from this episode.
1. Psychographics. Make that word your new best friend.
2. What can you do to make your product more convenient to your customers?
3. Use Klaviyo to gather leads or anything to get their emails!
4. The apps to convert leads into buyers
5. Help them out with apps that spread out payments
6. Upsell to your customers
7. Get them to buy EVEN more!
8. Don't be afraid to add subscriptions
9. Make sure the plugins that you use are expert in their field.
10. No customer list = No business.
