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How to Make Your First Sale
Making your first sale is a major milestone for any business. But before you start selling, it's important to set up your online store for success.
With Spiffy Stores, you can create an online store that is optimised for selling online, but that's just the beginning
This step-by-step guide will help you reach that milestone so you can continue to effectively build your brand and grow your business.
01. Set up your online store
We have a special Getting Started Guide that walks you through the process of getting set up.
You can start by working on your design, but it's best to add some content first, so you can actually see how your store will look when it has stuff in it! It's difficult to get an idea of how a store will look if it's empty!
Start by creating some collections. A collection is just a group of products, and a product can belong to multiple collections.
Once you have created your collections, you can then add them to your store's menus. Most of our themes support drop-down menus.
Now it's time to start adding your products. As you do this, you can see that you can add them to your collections as you go. Make sure you upload high-resolution images, as the software will resize your images automatically so they are the right size wherever they are displayed.
As you go, you'll find you can add different sizes and colours of your products if you need to. Every Spiffy Stores online store also has a built-in inventory management system to help you keep track of what's in stock.
Once you've added a few products, it's probably a good idea to have a look at your theme and work on customising it in your Theme Editor.
Remember that if you get stuck, we're here to help, so give us a call, email us, or contact us on chat. We also have a huge amount of info in our knowledge base.
02. Connect a payment processor
Next, you'll need to connect a payment processor to your online store in order to be able to enable transactions.
You can connect Pin Payments, Stripe, Square, PayPal, Afterpay, Zip, or more than 80 other payment providers.
Choosing which processor to use for your online store depends on a few factors, like where you‘re located and which payment methods you want to offer.
Connecting Stripe or Pin Payments lets customers pay with their debit and credit card. Both accept payments from Visa, MasterCard, and American Express.
Afterpay and Zip provide layby-type payments that are proven to increase customer spend per order.
If you're selling a physical product, you should also set up your shipping rates. Learn more about our shipping options to find the one that works best for your business.
03. Add a Discount
You may want to try offering a discount to new customers visiting your website.
You can do this by creating a coupon code in the Marketing section of your store's admin. We've found a free shipping discount can work well, but often a deal like 20% off can get amazing results. Just remember to ensure that your markup on your product prices is sufficient to be able to do this.
Create a Pop-Up that welcomes new visitors to your store and offers them a discount to encourage them to sign up for your mailing list.
04. Go live
Once you have your online store designed and your payment processor and shipping prices in place, your online store is officially open for business.
Make sure you've added a custom domain to your store.
Custom domains give your site a professional look, strengthen your brand, and make it easier for visitors to find you on the web.
And remember, you can always continue editing and improving your online store later. Don't let your pursuit of perfection stand in the way of your business' big debut.
05. Boost your store's SEO
Now that your online store is open and ready for business, it's time to find some customers.
If you're an established brand, you can announce your new store to your existing fan base. However, if you're a newer business, you should continue adding content to your online store to help boost your Search Engine Optimization, or SEO.
Utilising the built-in blog, and writing stories about your products helps you to rank in search results. You could write about how a product is sourced or made, how it is used, and add lots of photos of your products to the stories as well.
SEO is the process of improving your site‘s ability to rank in search results. While the factors search engines like Google, Bing and Yahoo use to rank sites are kept secret and change frequently, we build the known SEO best practices into every online store.
When you have some meaningful content for the search engines to pick up, it's time to submit your domain to them.
06. Get the word out
Make sure you integrate your business's social accounts with your online store so you can post about new products, sales, and special announcements.
If you're selling physical products on your website, you should connect your store to Facebook to show all of your products in a Facebook Shop.
Once you've done that, you should also connect your Facebook Catalogue to Instagram to allow your followers to shop directly from your social posts.
Depending on what you're selling, Pinterest is another great way to get the word out.
TikTok is another option that many don't consider. Fun and relevant videos can be a sure-fire way to get the word out about your products.
07. Start building an email list
Connect the built-in form in your store to MailChimp to collect visitor emails so you can start — or continue — to build your audience.
You can also create email signup forms for your Facebook page.
Create a Pop-Up that welcomes new visitors to your store and offers them a discount to encourage them to sign up for your mailing list.
Create an introductory email in MailChimp to welcome new customers to your brand. You can build powerful email marketing content with your existing products, blog posts, and logo so your messaging is consistent and effective.
Once people sign up for your emails, you'll be able to communicate with them about sales, discounts, special offers and updated products, just be sure to check out these mailing list best practices first.
08. Drive traffic to your website
One way to increase the number of visitors to your online store is by running advertisements.
Google Ads, Bing, Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest are usually the most effective. This can depend on what types of products you're selling, but for many advertising is the best way to get the word out.
You can also use Facebook Dynamic Ads to help you target new customers by promoting products in your inventory relevant to their interests.
Facebook Dynamic Ads uses the Facebook Pixel to track visitors' activity, and based on its insights, automatically shows them personalized ads for your products they‘re more likely to purchase.
09. Use analytics to gain insights
In order to continue to grow your audience, it's important to understand where your current traffic is coming from. Spiffy Stores makes it easy to connect your store to Google Analytics to gather data about your visitors.
With Google Analytics, you can get a clear picture of your visitors and their behavior through visual reports on statistics like page views, conversion, sales, referrers, and popular content.
With analytics data, you can see where your orders are coming from and fine tune your social media and marketing efforts.
10. Review and revise
After a few months, your store should be selling, and you should be getting a reasonable amount of traction on social media. You should be aiming for a conversion rate above 2%, which you'll find in your store's Anaytics Dashboard.
If you're not, it might be time to get us to have a look at your site and marketing efforts, and suggest any improvements.
Our design studio is here to assist you to get your site looking its best and can help you to tailor the look for your target market.
Our marketing experts can assist you with optimising your advertising and social media efforts, and our technical team can assist with making sure your online store is running as well as possible.
All you need to do is contact us for assistance, so give us a call, email us, or contact us on chat.