When setting up the store or promoting products, Shopify beginners will make many mistakes. They will search for an actionable answer on Google, Quora, Shopify FAQ, or other eCommerce communities. However, there will be various answers for the same problem. That confuses many people because they don't know which solution is correct.
In this post, let's find out the beginner's mistakes to avoid on Shopify store set-up and product promotion process.
6 Common Mistakes Made on Shopify
1. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Store Details
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Store Name. If the logo is uploaded, the logo will display in the store and overwrite the store name. If the store doesn't have a logo, the store name appears.
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Account Email. Shopify will send store information such as subscription fees, orders, and product listing, via this account email. Shopify beginners should be cautious about this account email because Shopify will send all the vital information to this email. You don't want this information to get lost or leaked.
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Customer Email. Your customers will see this address if you email them. When sending emails to customers, the default sender address is this email address for notification. On the Contact us page, the email also needs to be placed.
Here is the important difference between the account email and customer email.
Account email and customer email are separated to prevent email confusion. You can use Gmail as your account email, but your customer email should be a business email. You can change your account email and customer email at any time.
2. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Store Address
Store Address. It is the address when registering a Shopify account. Fill in the address of the company's business license truthfully. For the "Country/Region" option, you need to ensure that you fill in your company location correctly. You can change other information at any time.
Notes: It is recommended not to frequently change your "Country/Region" information once you set up the account. The Shopify payment feature is unavailable if your location is set to China. In the United States or other countries, in that case, there will be a Shopify payment option in the payment provider.
Suppose you have a company in US or HK. In that case, you need to contact Shopify's customer support team to ask whether you can access the Shopify Payment feature.
After the customer service confirms that you are eligible to use Shopify Payment, you can change the default address to the US and then activate the Shopify Payment feature. Otherwise, there is a high probability that the shop will be suspended due to suspected fraud.
3. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Standards and Format
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Time Zone. You can change it based on your serving time and ad campaigns. Suppose you run ad campaigns in Europe and the US. In that case, the store time zone setting should be consistent with the Facebook or Google ad campaign.
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Product Unit. Shopify has two measurement units, kilograms/grams, and pounds/ounces. You can set it based on your needs because the measurement unit will not automatically be displayed in the store.
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Order ID Format. The format is for modifying the order number to better manage the order with ERP/WMS/SCM system. The default order numbers provided by Shopify are #1001, #1002, #1003, etc. You can add pre and suffixes before and after the order number. If you modify the order number prefix, add the domain name abbreviation BG as the prefix and * as the suffix, the order number will become BG1001*, BG1002*, etc.
4. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Store Currency
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Usually, the default currency unit is USD, but you should set it based on the target audience's preference. When there is no order, you can change the currency unit freely. After one order is generated, you can't change the currency unit yourself anymore. You need to contact the customer support team to explain why you want to alter it. The customer service will help you change the currency unit in most cases.
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Best Currency Converter-related Settings. Shopify's most popular currency conversion App supports displaying product prices in the customer's local currency. This App also needs to be set here to be effective (omitted).
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Payment methods. Suppose you can support as many payment methods as possible. In that case, your online shop conversion rate will increase due to a comprehensive checkout process.
5. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Order Fulfillment
Order fulfillment is important to the store. Many Shopify shipping apps and order fulfillment apps can help you gain shipping rate discounts and send shipment tracking status to your customers.
10 Best Third-Party Shopify Order API & APP
Ecommerce Shipping Guide 2022: Get More Sales With Less Cost
6. Avoid Mistakes on Shopify Management
The time spent on running a Shopify store is allocated into three parts.
20% of your time should be spent building and optimizing the store. For example, you can attract customers to subscribe to your store or blog to exchange coupons, small gifts, etc. Or write a very tempting email that customers and subscribers can't help but click on it.
In contrast, if you spend most of your time entangled in building a perfect store, you won't have time to attract people to visit your store and read your product pages. Let alone find your ideal customers. So don't spend a few weeks and months in the process of building a store.
Product development is crucial to all online businesses. 30% of your time should be spent developing products. The product you choose should have good search volume in Google, and it should be a niche. For example, don't sell dog collars, but sell LED dog collars for Christmas or Corgi pink dog collars for women, and so on.
You should spend 51% of your time on marketing. Marketing is difficult to learn and practice. You will need to have a deep understanding of the existing marketing knowledge and strong execution.
Suppose you want to promote your products via online ads. In that case, you need to have the knowledge to run successful Facebook and Google ads campaigns. Tool integration should be on your must-learn list because one software can't meet all your needs. You will need to put several tools together to achieve the best results.
Conclusion for All Shopify Store Owners
Running a Shopify store is like running an online store on other eCommerce platforms. We need to spend time and energy researching, testing, and iterating. It is inevitable to learn many new things, such as email marketing and integrating data analysis software with your eCommerce stores.
That is not all. Learning how to calculate margins and create effective Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or Snapchat ads are also part of your learning list.
The focus is on product development and testing. After getting the result you want, you can optimize the store design and product descriptions to improve the conversion rate of potential customers. Therefore, time allocation is crucial.
