If you're just starting to build out
your business on Shopify
or you're thinking about it,
watch this video first
where I'll cover the five most common
and expensive Shopify mistakes people make.
So you don't make the same mistakes.
Hi, my name is Mei
and I help makers, artists and designers
make a living from selling
their handmade products online.
Now, I've been selling on Shopify
for many years now
and there are no affiliate links in this video
but I just love them so much and I wish
everyone would use them
because they really do amazing for sales.
Shopify is the pioneer
for selling products online.
No one can compete with them.
So if you don't need any more convincing
then let's jump into the five mistakes,
and I'm saving the biggest mistake
for the end of the video,
so make sure you stay to the end.
The first mistake
I see a lot of people make
is having inconsistent photo sizes in their shop.
The sizes themselves
aren't the most important thing,
but you definitely want to make sure
your main image ratios are consistent
from product to product.
This makes your home page
and your collection pages
more organized and cohesive
and it just looks way more
professional and trustworthy.
Which means,
strangers visiting your shop
are more likely to buy
because people buy from shops
they know, like and trust.
If they don't feel they trust you,
they probably won't buy,
so don't give people any reason
to distrust you.
So I like using a square ratio photo size,
but you can use whatever works
for your type of product.
A Marketplace site like
Etsy or Amazon forces all of their first
or main images for every product listing
to be the same image ratio
regardless of the shop.
This makes everything line up
and it's just a better look.
If your other images
besides the main image
is a different ratio,
that's fine, but I still prefer
to keep them all the same
to streamline the photo editing process.
Mistake number two.
Please don't spend any money
on a paid theme if you're
just getting started.
You don't need it.
I almost tripped up over this too
with my new print-on-demand shop
that my husband now runs.
When we were just building out that Shopify site,
I was so tempted to buy
a fancy, highly rated theme
that would‘ve cost me
hundreds of dollars,
and I hadn't even made a
single sale back then yet!
Save that money
to put towards marketing instead
because no one's going to see
your fancy paid theme on your site
if you don't have a plan
for getting traffic, right?
Shopify has a number of amazing
free themes that can perform just as well.
For that new business I started,
we used the Minimal theme,
which was totally free and get this,
we've made millions of dollars with it.
With a free theme.
Once you've made some sales
and you feel you're ready to level up
then by all means,
upgrade your site with a paid theme.
You just don't have to start with one.
Mistake number three.
So many people have this block.
I know Shopify isn't the cheapest solution
out there at $29 a month, right?
But I also don't want you to compare
Shopify with any of its alternatives
based on just pricing alone,
because Shopify wins at every other area.
Shopify is faster, more secure,
provides better service,
is more intuitive to use,
has more features
and it is ultimately more powerful
at making sales for you
than any of its competitors.
For just a few dollars more
than other options out there,
I think that's a really fair trade.
However, I also want you
to think of it in this way.
How many products
do you have to sell every month
to pay off the $29 Shopify fee?
For me, I just need to sell one necklace.
Use that as motivation
to start treating your business
like a real business
and focus on marketing
and getting traffic.
Unlike a Marketplace site like Etsy,
Shopify doesn't come
with a pre built-in audience.
You have to be solely responsible for getting people to come to your site.
As long as you expect that,
and have a plan
for generating traffic, you'll be fine,
But the mistake I see
is people expecting to just set up shop,
not lift a finger at getting traffic
and somehow expecting sales to follow.
It doesn't work like that.
And if you're wondering then,
why not just sell on Etsy?
Well, I have a whole video
comparing Etsy and Shopify
and why I believe Shopify
to still be the superior option here
that you can watch later.
Next, mistake number four.
I see this
with virtually every new Shopify store
because I review a lot of them
from all the emails we get
and some of them are for our
A Sale A Day students’ websites too.
Many newer Shopify themes
make it a default setting
to use Dynamic Checkout Buttons.
In theory, it sounds really cool.
Shopify checks every visitor to see
if they've got Amazon, Apple Pay,
Google Pay and so on.
And depending on what that visitor has,
Shopify will dynamically show
an additional payment method
as a button on your product listing pages.
Unfortunately, this button
is super attention-grabbing,
very distracting,
which is normally a good thing,
but this is bad for several reasons.
One, you actually want people to buy
more than just one thing from your shop.
So adding to cart is actually the action
you want visitors to take,
not to checkout right away
with just one item.
Two, this bypasses Shopify's
built-in checkout pages which means
you cannot do any remarketing
on abandoned carts.
This is when someone enters
their email address on the checkout page,
but for whatever reason,
didn't follow through
on placing their order.
The majority of people
shopping on your site will do this.
So you need a way
to reach back out to those folks
to remind them
to complete their purchase.
And you can't do this
if people are clicking
on the alternate payment options.
Keeping these dynamic check out buttons on
in your product listings is proven
to lower conversion rates
and sales overall,
so make sure you turn those off!
And the biggest mistake of them all,
which can cost you a lot of money,
is mistake number five.
I made this mistake myself
when I first moved over to Shopify
from a self-hosted,
e-commerce platform called Prestashop,
and I lost $2,000, probably more.
And frankly, no one
at that time was talking about this
and I wish they were
because it could have saved me
a lot of money.
But basically,
certain platforms like Shopify
have a feature called Payment Capture Method.
When a customer enters
their credit card information on your site
when they're checking out,
two things have to happen.
First, the payment method is authorized
and then second, the charge happens
which is where the payment
is actually processed.
With this feature,
there is actually an option
to do only one step automatically,
and that second step is manual.
This is the mistake I made,
by selecting Manual.
If you've got this selected,
you basically have to manually process
the customer’s payment within
a certain timeframe or you don't get paid.
I recommend just selecting
automatic capture for both steps
so the customer is charged immediately
when they check out
so it's one less thing
for you to worry about.
If you have any Shopify tips of your own
you'd like to share, let me know
in the comments and also,
was this helpful for you?
I hope it was, and if so,
please give this video a thumbs up.
It will really help.