Monthly Archives: June 2023

How to Increase Sales with Magic Words

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Want to increase sales? Try using these magic words!

Hi, Sarah Fletcher, Stylaquin founder here. For those of you who don’t know me, I’ve been a catalog design expert for the last umpteen years. I’ve worked with a lot of catalogs you know and love like Harrington’s of Vermont, Mrs. Beasley’s, The Vermont Country Store, L.L. Bean, Jamestown Distributors, and Glendale to name a few.

One of the most interesting things I learned from catalogs is that there are magic words. They always work, they never don’t work, and you can’t overuse them. They are: New, Free, Save, Sale and Sex. So how do you use magic words? First, Don’t over think it, they’re magic, not tricky.

New

New has big magic. Call out new items with a bold red NEW. You can do this in the product body copy. You can add NEW at the end of the Product name, though Shopify and some platforms don’t allow formatting for headlines. An easy win is to create a NEW collection and set it to show new items automatically. If you don’t have many new items, go with what you have and keep the five or ten most recent in the new collection manually. Some stores have a high turnover of new products, so new may mean they are new within the last month. There aren’t any official rules about what constitutes new, though calling items new for more than a year could make it look like the site is never updated.

Animated gif showing a laptop that displays Stylaquin's Look Book Feature

Does Your Site Do This?

It can with Stylaquin! Stylaquin is the easy to add Shopify app that transforms your website. Stylaquin makes shopping faster, more engaging, and more fun. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view over 85% more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Find us in the Shopify App Store.

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Free

Free is another magic word. It is why free shipping works so very well. Free gift with purchase, and buy one get one free, are other great uses of free. Anything you can give away free is going to resonate with customers. Free upgrade, free class, free case or accessory, free extended warranty, free refill, anytime you can give the customer something free they will love it.

Save

Everyone loves a bargain. Very high end customers won’t respond if save is plastered all over everything, but they love to save as much as the next person. You can tell customers they will save on lots of things that aren’t money, like time, or effort. Save yourself headaches, save more when you buy more, and so on. Saving a dollar amount is usually better than saving a percentage. Customers don’t like to do math. So save $20 will usually do better than save 20% even if the actual dollars saved are a little more with 20%.

Sale

This one’s a classic and most companies use it pretty well. Seasonal sales are a tried and true way to reduce old inventory. Regular sales can move customers off the fence for a small discount. Shoppers who love your brand, but not your prices, may be enticed to buy. You can do the occasional store-wide sale and also have a sale category. Adding a popup to the sale category that specifically targets bargain shoppers can be effective. There is a subset of shoppers that simply won’t pay full price, it’s a badge of honor and a lifestyle choice. Don’t try to change them, meet them on their own terms and they can become loyal, though frugal, customers.

Sex

You’re on your own with this last one. Though I will mention that when I worked with International Justice Mission on their catalog, “Save children from being victims of sex traffickers” was their most effective headline. Though typically you only need to use one magic word at a time. All kidding aside, if you’re looking for a good charity to donate to, International Justice Mission is doing amazing work in dangerous places.

That’s it for magic words, If you enjoyed this blog and got some good info please join our email list. If you’d like to see a Shopify app that increases the number of items viewed by 180%, increases time on site by 70% and just makes online shopping more fun and engaging, here’s a quick demo of Stylaquin. If you’d like to see the Magic Words video or get more marketing, copy, and design tips check out Hump Day Bar Hopping with Stylaquin. 

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6 ways to improve your Shopify site’s speed

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Is your Shopify site slower than you'd like? Here are 6 ways to speed it up!

Why is site speed important?

Site speed is important on two fronts. First, it affects the user experience. A slow-loading website will frustrate users and make them more likely to leave. We’ve all been there, the spinning wheel is a super buzzkill and it sends the wrong message about your brand. Second, site speed can impact your search engine ranking. Google and other search engines take site speed into account when ranking websites, so faster sites rank higher in search results. Remember the higher your site’s rank, the less you pay for ads, that’s a nice benefit all by itself.

Before you add any app to your site you should check your site speed. If it’s slow, fix that first. Many of the top websites around the world have surprisingly bad site speed scores, but if you’re a big fish you can get away more than if you’re a little fish. Regardless of what size fish you are there are compelling reasons to make site speed a priority.

How to check your site’s speed

So first things first, here’s how you check your site speed. Open a web browser and go to https://pagespeed.web.dev/. Type in your site’s URL and hit the Analyze button. Go ahead and do that right now, I’ll wait.

So now you know your site’s speed and if you are over 80, well done! If you are between 50 and 80, you can improve it with these tips, but it doesn’t have to be the first thing you do right now. If you are between 25 and 50, make it a top priority. If you are under 25—stop, drop, and roll!

Animated gif showing a laptop that displays Stylaquin's Look Book Feature

Does Your Site Do This?

It can with Stylaquin! Stylaquin is the easy to add Shopify app that transforms your website. Stylaquin makes shopping faster, more engaging, and more fun. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view over 85% more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Find us in the Shopify App Store.

Learn More

Optimize your images 

Images are one of the biggest contributors to slow loading times. The goal is to optimize your images by reducing their file size without sacrificing quality. The biggest gains are made by choosing the right image format. Jpeg files are significantly smaller than png files. I asked my adorable dog Pudge to give me a hand with this. The jpg of this handsome fellow at 1200×1600 with high quality output is a mere 748 KB. The same size png is a brutal is 4 MB. 

Two images of a dog, side by side showing that the jpeg is 748 KB and the png of the same image is 4 megs.

If we dumb them down to low quality, the jpg is only 260 KB while the png is still a whopping 1.2 MB. 

Two images of a dog, side by side showing that the jpeg is 748 KB and the png of the same image is 4 megs.

But before you start hating on jpgs we need to look at the difference between a photo and an illustration. When it comes to illustrations and type, the png has a slight edge coming in a 2KB rather than the 9 KB of the jpg.

Comparison of jpeg and Png file size for line illustrations. Jpg file is 9 KB and the Png is 2 KB.

So how do you choose? The first thing to ask is do you need a transparent background? If the answer is yes, you can only use a png. Jpegs do not support transparency. If you don’t need transparency, go with a jpg for photos. When it comes to Illustrations pngs are a better choice, not just because they are a tiny bit smaller, but they’ll have sharper, crisper edges. So image files for typography, symbols, or illustrations are better as pngs.

You can use tools like Adobe Photoshop, TinyPNG.com or Kraken.io to compress your images. If you are working in Canva the default is Png so be sure to change the output settings before you download.

Delay popups

Popups are a great way to collect visitor emails and promote products with special savings and offers, they can also be a significant drag on your load time. When search engines measure your site speed, there is something called time to first paint, which is just a fancy way of saying how long it takes before a visitor can see the site. Some things are super quick to load, like Stylaquin, but apps that have to call and display large amounts of data, can take seconds, which is way too long in online time. The easy way around this is just to have the popup load after the site speed has been measured. A short delay of 15 seconds should do it.    

Lazy load your images

Lazy load tells browsers not to load images that are not going to be visible until they’re needed. Remember how I said that search engines are measuring time to first paint? If you have lots of images below the fold the browser is going to load all of them before it tells the search engine that it’s done. Lazy load tells the browser to stop loading the images that aren’t being shown, so the time to first paint is much faster. There is a bit of a delay when visitors scroll down but it’s usually imperceptible. Lazy load is a feature of most Shopify themes so check with your theme provider about where that setting is.

Remove unused apps 

Apps can slow down your store, so remove any apps that you’re not using. Apps like Stylaquin are super lightweight. Some apps are not so well behaved. If you’re concerned that an app is slowing down your site, the first thing to do is measure your site speed with the app on, and then again with the app off. Be sure to measure 4 to 6 times with the app on and the same number of times with it off. Site speed tests are affected by internet traffic, server speed and the vagaries of the web. It’s likely that you will get a range of results and testing multiple times keeps you from jumping to conclusions. I’ve seen results that make it look like an app is speeding up a site, but the next test showed it slowing down the site. To be confident you need to run the same test multiple times and preferably at different times. You can check your admin panel to see which apps are installed on your store.

Update your theme

This one is something that often gets filed under “Things to do when I have time”. Because of all the good things that come from having a fast site, you may want to move it up in the to-do list. Older themes may not be as optimized for speed as newer themes. It’s always a good idea to keep your theme up to date for security reasons as well.

Make sure your theme uses a CDN

This one is for nerds and developers. A CDN (content delivery network) can help to improve the speed of your store by caching your website’s content on servers that are closer to your customers. That way a customer from France gets the same load time as one from the US. All the free Shopify themes use the Shopify CDN by default, so you’re all set if you are using a free Shopify theme. If you paid for your theme, and you have done all the easy things we already covered, it’s worth checking. Using a CDN is especially important for stores that sell worldwide or across a wide geographic area.

The easiest way to determine if your non-Shopify theme is using a CDN is to email your theme developer and ask.

If you’d like to see this content as a video  Click here. If you’d like to see a lightning fast Shopify app that increases the number of items viewed by 180%, increases time on site by 70% and just makes online shopping more fun and engaging, click here for quick demo of Stylaquin. 

How to get customers to stay on your site longer

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How to get customers to stay on your site longer

Time on site is the term used to measure how long a visitor stays on a website. Why is time on site important? It’s the often overlooked metric that measures how engaged and interested visitors are with your website. The longer a visitor spends on a website, the more likely they are to interact with the content, explore different products, and ultimately make a purchase.

Time on site does a lot of good things for your site. Let’s break that down into 4 components.

  1. Increased engagement: The longer a visitor spends on a website, the more engaged they’re likely to be with your content. We spend time with stores we like, so increasing time on site also leads to increased brand awareness, product interest, and ultimately, sales.
  2. Improved user experience: If visitors are spending a lot of time on a website, it’s a good indication that they’re finding the site easy to navigate and the content valuable. This kind of positive user experience increases customer loyalty.
  3. Better search engine rankings: Time on site is one of the metrics that search engines use to determine the quality and relevance of a website. If visitors are spending a lot of time on a site, search engines see this as a sign that the site is providing high-quality content and improve its ranking accordingly.
  4. Higher conversion rates: When visitors spend more time on a website, they learn more about the brand and products, which leads to trust, which, as I mentioned in the Hump Day Bar Hop on SEO Metrics, leads to higher conversion rates. In addition, longer time on site is often an indicator that a customer is closer to making a purchase.
  5. Okay, you’re sold, but how do you get customers to stay longer? Here are some thing to consider:
Animated gif showing a laptop that displays Stylaquin's Look Book Feature

Does Your Site Do This?

It can with Stylaquin! Stylaquin is the easy to add Shopify app that transforms your website. Stylaquin makes shopping faster, more engaging, and more fun. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view over 85% more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Find us in the Shopify App Store.

Learn More
  1. Improve the user experience: A good user experience is crucial for keeping visitors on a site for longer periods of time. This includes factors such as site speed, easy navigation, and clear product descriptions.
  2. Offer engaging content: Providing high-quality, relevant content can help to keep visitors engaged and interested. This can include product videos, blog posts, customer reviews.
  3. Eye Candy: Making sure your site visually appeals to your target customer is crucial for extending time on site. High-end customers want to see beautiful photography and lifestyle images. Everyone wants to see photography that clearly shows the products. Clear photos that show features also reduces returns.
  4. Personalization: Personalizing the user experience based on a visitor’s behavior and preferences can help to increase engagement and time on site. This can include personalized product recommendations, and customized landing pages for customers who are coming from an ad, blog, or other trigger.
  5. Incentives and rewards: Offering incentives such as free shipping, discounts, and loyalty programs can help to keep visitors on a site for longer periods of time and increase the likelihood of making a purchase.
  6. Optimize for mobile: As more and more consumers shop on their mobile devices, optimizing for mobile is crucial for increasing time on site. This includes using a mobile-responsive design and optimizing for mobile search. This is especially important if you have a younger customer, but granny is on her phone now and girl likes to shop.
  7. Utilize social media: Social media can be a powerful tool for driving traffic to an online store and increasing time on site. Make sure your social media content links back to your website and also encourage social sharing.
  8. Making it fun to shop: This is my favorite. We all do more of the things we enjoy and shopping is more fun with Stylaquin. How much fun? Data shows that Stylaquin shoppers stay on site a whopping 70% longer and view 185% more items. Here’s a link to the Stylaquin video.

So to wrap all this up, time on site is an often overlooked metric that absolutely impacts your site rank with search engines. Making your site more attractive, more personal, more interesting and more fun to shop will entice your customers to stay longer, buy more and come back more often.

If you’d like to watch this as a video here’s the link.

Visit our Demo Site
Find it on the Shopify App Store
Contact Stylaquin