9 Reasons Your Shopify Store Isn't Making Any Sales

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Starting an Ecommerce business is no small feat. It is complicated, cumbersome, and most importantly, requires a ton of patience and hard work.
Unfortunately, a majority of entrepreneurs lack such qualities. They seek shortcuts and ultimately end up making huge losses. And Shopify, the famous online store builder, is one such shortcut that amateurs often fall prey to.
Though it was an easy-to-use and inexpensive option when started in 2006, its model has miserably failed to churn results in today's times. Online stores' overt dependence on Shopify is one of the biggest reasons why they fail to succeed. Studies show that 95% of new businesses that are created in Shopify shut shop.
With only a five percent success rate, Shopify is no longer people's choice for creating an online store. They instead build each part from scratch. Scroll down to discover the top nine reasons why Shopify stores end up as non-starters.

1. Inability to Appear Unique to Customers

Vendors do not pay sufficient attention while designing their store on Shopify. A user-friendly, clear-cut web design is one of the critical aspects of boosting your ratings. A non-intuitive and sloppy theme will make sure customers never revisit your store.
Also, there are only 71 themes available on Shopify's theme store. This results in many sites looking the same. What's even worse? You might have the same theme as your competitor.
And your uniqueness should apply to the products you sell too. It would be best to give your future clients a reason for choosing your services over eBay, Amazon, or a local store. Right from domain name to product description, your store must stand out.

2. Failing to Focus on Customer Service

This is arguably one of the most common reasons for the failure of most Shopify stores. You are probably not listening to your customers! Breaking this golden rule is bound to have severe repercussions like a high bounce rate, low customer retention, and a steep drop in revenue.
Though a tedious process, there are simple steps to overcome this. Firstly, be on alert 24/7 to respond to customer comments and reviews. Reply to them and fix the issue as quickly as possible. Display your contact number and email idea prominently on your store.
Make it easy for them to get in touch with you. Incentivize loyal customers with cashback and gift coupons. Diligently follow up on queries, sort out shipping problems with suppliers, and most importantly, be reachable to your customers.

3. Your Creation Is Not Entirely Your Own

Shopify offers you many attractive all-in-one packages to build a website. But this is where the main problem lies too. Shopify uses a hosted platform, and this locks the vendor in. They cannot do much if Shopify decides to close down. All information about your customers, products policies, store design, will go along with it.
Another problem is that there will be technical difficulties in migrating your website to another platform. The lack of a backup option puts your store in jeopardy. This kind of uncertainty dampens your efforts to optimize your website. This directly affects your visibility and brings down sales.

4. Get Rich Quick Attitude

Many compare creating a Shopify store to building a house. The responsibility to carefully cement each brick and tile remains with you. And this requires a ton of patience and persistence. Unfortunately, most vendors expect to reap benefits overnight.
Firstly, people must not blindly believe the various narratives that they found online. These are misleading and harmful to your online store. Most look at Shopify as a platform to get rich with little investment and even lesser efforts.
As an online store is handed to them ready-made, most take the business's day-to-day functioning for granted. Also, people must not lose confidence when they come across a loss or a problem for the very first time. Perseverance is a much-needed factor to sustain business here.

5. Lack of Prior Market and Product Research

Jumping into the Ecommerce industry without the support of thorough market and product research is a self-destructive move many marketers make. As there are hundreds of products sold by even more vendors, one must decide what and where to sell.
It is pertinent for future store owners to have prior information about their target audience, location choice, products, market niche, and competitors.
Many fail to explore and understand the trends in their market niche. Hence, they remain unaware of the challenges that will soon crop up.
Next, one must have proper knowledge about their competitors, their products, the prices, customer demographics, and more. This way, you can discover the gaps in the market which your company can fill.

6. Choosing Low Quality, Bad Products

This is one of the most challenging tasks that get the better of most new businesses on Shopify. To find good quality products that are also unique and in your market niche is a difficult task indeed. But it is an important one to fulfill to prevent your shop from shutting down.
One way to overcome this is through product sourcing. You either go down the path of creating your products or work along with a manufacturer or a wholesaler. Before picking one, check their references, do your research to check their legitimacy, and discuss all costs upfront.
To choose the right product, one must get to know their customer niche very well. This way, you will select only those products that they need. Later, by running several email campaigns and online surveys, you can keep upgrading your inventory in the long run.

7. Poor Shipping Service

As Shopify works primarily on the dropshipping model, online store owners automatically become the middlemen. With the loss of control over how and when products are shipped, the store starts slowly losing customers.

Related : Tips to Do SEO for a Dropshipping Store

As you start working with multiple suppliers, the number of problems you will face also increases steadily. And you are not the only client of your supplier. Hence in the melee of a busy day, your customers' products may not be shipped on time or to the correct address.
Also, it is advised for marketers to work with local suppliers. It will be easier to coordinate, a chance to solve problems by being present physically, and lesser delivery time. This way, you will avoid earning a bad reputation and negative reviews from customers and preventing revenue loss.
Here is how you can avoid the backlashes of a flawed delivery management system.

8. Not Doing Sufficient Marketing for Your Store

Most entrepreneurs on Shopify incorrectly think that the main task is over after creating a store. And this is one of the main reasons behind their downfall. Businesses must market their products via every avenue possible.
One has to notify all customers, part of his target audience, about his/her store's existence. One can do this by putting out relevant content, running email campaigns, promoting products on social media platforms, and more. Investing in SEO strategies and campaigns is another helpful method that companies must never abstain from. Another option is to connect with famous persons in your customer niche like influencers.
Through word of mouth is a powerful tool; it is not advised to rely only on it. Explore more options like launching a sale, distributing pamphlets, brochures in public spaces, and more.

9. Substandard Platform

Lastly, your business might not be performing as you expected on Shopify, and it's also partly the platform's fault. When it was launched, Shopify was undoubtedly one of the best options for small-time investors. But sadly, that's not the scenario any longer.
Along with its 800,000 stores, Shopify too is on a downward spiral. There are many reasons behind this. It soon becomes apparent that it’s way more expensive than expected to sustain a store here. Upgradation comes with a hefty price including themes, applications, plugins, added features, etc.
And as this is on a hosted platform, you have little control over your website, primarily on the SEO front. Moreover, due to its limited customization options, your website doesn’t have many options to be unique. This is why people are considering other better platforms.

Shopify SEO FAQs

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1. Will Shopify Take Care of SEO for My Online Store?

No, it doesn't. One of the significant drawbacks of Shopify is that there are no in-built SEO provisions. This tampers with your store's visibility ultimately.
Your ranking on Google and other search engines will be affected. The name of the product and its description aren't SE-optimized. There is no provision for including product video as well.
From a technical standpoint, robots.txt and canonical URLs can't be edited, and no option to create an HTML sitemap, and trust icons aren't supported.

2. How to Improve SEO for My Shopify Store?

As Shopify lacks in this category, a business must take up alternate methods to increase its ratings and rankings.
Firstly, one can add a Secure Socket Layer or SSL to your domain name. Instead of HTTP, go for HTTPS. Search engines rank websites with an SSL higher than others.
Next, add your site to Google Search Console and Bing Webmaster Tools to notify them of your existence.
Improve your page loading speed using compression tools and safe web fonts. And SE-optimize all written content on your website, including titles, descriptions, headings, etc.

3. Which App Do I Invest into Boost SEO for My Shopify Store?

The most popular choice is to go for SEO plugins. Thankfully, a variety of options are provided by Shopify on its app store.
This takes care of most troubleshooting errors like slow speed, broken links, unoptimized keyword display, and more. But most of the efficient ones are paid applications. The ones available for free fulfill essential functions like inserting keywords, optimizing tags, and your written content.

4. Why Is My Shopify Store Not Making Sales?

The main reason behind this is the lack of sufficient online traffic to your site. And this is usually because many won’t be aware of its existence. SE-optimizing your website is a practical and effective approach to rectify this.
Next assess the user-friendliness of your website which will improve the dwell time. Another way to boost sales is to strengthen your marketing game. Think of ways to woo and convince customers like hosting sales, giving out gift coupons etc.
Are you looking to boost your sales on your shopify platform? Drop your details here.