11 ways to get more free organic traffic

Posted on January 17, 2024 by Stylaquin1

Shoppers stay longer, view more, come back more, and buy more!

How to get free organic traffic to your Shopify store

One of the questions I get asked most at Stylaquin demos is “Does Stylaquin bring traffic to a website?” The answer to that is yes and no. Stylaquin engages and delights the traffic you have, so new visitors are more likely to become repeat traffic, it also brings in referral traffic from shoppers who enjoy shopping with Stylaquin, but it isn’t a good source of traffic for brand new stores. If you are a new store, just starting out, with little or no traffic, I want to help you get past 500 visitors a month so that Stylaquin will be able to help you grow. Here are 11 ways you can get free organic traffic to your website.

Just for kicks I asked ChatGPT how to get more traffic, and it spit out a decent framework, which didn’t include enough specifics to be useful. Then I asked Google Bard to see if there was anything that Google, lord of internet search, could add. Not really. Which made me realize that the question new and struggling business owners should be asking isn’t, “How do I get more free organic traffic?” The question should be “How do I get more free organic traffic in a way I can fit into my incredibly busy life, so that I can comfortably grow my business without losing my sanity.” There’s a time, and results interconnection that needs to be addressed, and you need to factor in what skills you have, and what skills you may need to develop or buy.

Where should you start?

I’m giving you a list of 11 really good options for getting more traffic. You’re probably getting excited, and then the spin starts. Which should I do first? How do I know which is the best for my website? Which will get the best results? Which will get the fastest results. Okay, hit pause, stop and breath. The worst thing you can do is bounce around from one to the other looking for a magic fix that will give you the power of a Kardashian. There is no magic fix. But the path to building your business can be fun and rewarding. You can also do it at a pace that won’t make you crazy and won’t keep you from doing the things that matter. I’m going to break down the list in the order you should work through. Some things are just basic marketing and some are more nuanced.

This easy to understand seven page guide will teach you how to create useful personas so that you can market more effectively and truly engage your customers.

Download your copy today!

1) Find the right customer for what you sell

The pros call this Market Research. Every successful business has a target customer who will be excited about what the company sells. It’s much easier to target a specific segment of customers than it is to do what we call “Spray and pray”, that is throwing everything you can think of, at as many people as possible, and hoping something catches on. If you want to get free organic traffic, it’s easier and more effective to define a narrow niche audience, say people who love lighthouses, people who wear bow ties, people who collect baseball cards or people who own scooters. The narrower your audience is, the easier it is to target them with content, keywords and ads. Here’s a link to the Smart Shopify Persona Builder which will get your started.

2) Create a product selection that appeals to your target customer

Once you know who you’re targeting, and you have a persona or personas, you’re ready to collect the products that will interest your target customers. The advent of drop shipping has made putting together a good product assortment easier. You don’t have to go to shows, visit vendors, an spend a lot of money on stock merchandise. You just have to pick out products from an online catalog, or add your designs to existing products. There are a ton of youtube videos where folks tell you how they made $25K per month selling teeshirts or gadgets. The one thing they all have in common is they started with a narrowly focused target audience and designed products for that audience.

3) Create a professional online presence and website

In order to sell your products to your target audience you’ll need to create a professional website that is visually appealing, easy to navigate, and optimized for search engines (SEO). Shopify makes this easy and comes with 12 free themes. Any of them will probably work for what you’re selling. All Shopify themes are based on the free Dawn theme with some alterations. If you’re on a tight budget, consider starting with a free theme, and once you have money coming in, switch to a paid theme. You can use the money you save for advertising when you get to that phase. To start, your site needs to look professional and be easy to shop. You need to have high quality photographs of your products and they must be a high enough resolution that they don’t look blurry.

If you’re not a professional artist, or a gifted amateur, don’t try to reinvent your theme’s design. I’m saying this as an art director with over 30 years experience, who has worked for billion dollar companies. The design is the least important part of your website. WHAT?!?! Yup, unless you have the skills to create a memorable brand at the start, just build your site with the design elements provided by the theme and be consistent. Don’t spend a lot of time trying to redesign something that a highly trained professional has already created and Shopify probably spent real money developing. Here’s a tip from art school: Art is theft. Every great artist stands on the work of the artist that came before. Look for inspiration in other stores that you admire and copy what they’re doing. You don’t need to start new trends, just keep things clean and tidy. When in doubt ask yourself “What would appeal to my target audience?” It’s always about your target audience, it’s never about you. Write that one down and tape it to your computer.

Don’t get mad at Google, outsmart it! Having trouble getting your site to rank well? Wondering how to get to the top positions without paying for placement? Google is just an algorithm, once you understand how it works, you can learn how to outsmart it. Download your copy today!

P.S. It’s free and we will never share your name. You can unsubscribe at any time.

4) Build free organic traffic with good SEO

If you’ve already gotten your Shopify website built, and chosen products, you may have to back track a bit. SEO, like everything else, starts with the target audience. I’ve added a link to our free e-book How to Outsmart Google that will go into more detail on how Google sees your site and how to use that to your advantage. In order to be successful, you’ll need to start with a narrow target audience, and choose products that customers in that niche are interested in. At the start, because you don’t have a list yet, you’ll be out in the web in a crowd with millions of others. That’s the equivalent of starting a store in Wyoming, on a dirt road, far from town and hoping that putting a sign on the building will bring in traffic. Your friends are gonna show up, but that’s about it.

The purpose of SEO is to make it easy for your target audience to find you. You do this by determining why each product will appeal to your target audience, and then writing copy that will include the words they will type into Google or Bing when they’re looking for that product. I’m going to say that again again, it’s crazy important. Determine why each product you sell will appeal to your target audience, then write copy that will include the words your customer will type into Google or Bing when they’re looking for that product in the copy. You can download our free e-book titled Smart Shopify Copy Builder to get detailed help on how to write good product copy that will work for search engines. If you don’t get the words your customers will type into Google in your product copy, Google will not send searchers to your product. It’s that simple.

5) Get free ad placement

In the Shopify App Store there’s a Google app. The app makes it easy to create a Google ads account and get the proper tracking set up on your site. You should do this even if you never run a Google ad.

Setting up a Google Ads account manually is not all that easy. The interface was designed by people who understand how tracking and analytics work and there is a huge amount of assumed knowledge that mere mortals may not possess. Installing the app makes the setup less painful.

The big win is you can be certain that your site is properly tagged for Google AND, once you get your products added, they will appear in the band of images at the top of the Google Search screen for free as long as Google deems them relevant to the search query. You don’t have to pay for placement, but you do need to make sure Google knows what the products are, and why someone would be interested in them. Google does what’s easy for them and not what works best for you. There are lots of Youtube videos that will walk you through how to set up the Google app. It will take longer than you think, so wear comfy clothes and bring a tasty beverage.

6) Keywords are the key

Sorry, I know that’s obvious, but if you want free organic traffic for your Shopify site, keywords are how you get it. They aren’t sexy, they aren’t always obvious, but they aren’t rocket science either. Hopefully you’ve downloaded and read How to Outsmart Google and now you understand how keywords work and how Google “thinks” about them.

There has been a lot of talk about AI and how that will improve search. The truth is Google has been using AI for years. Without going down the AI rabbit hole, just know that keywords, relevant copy and content are the pillars of your SEO strategy and they will be for a long, long, time.

Here’s another important reason to put real time and energy into Keywords, content and copy—It will save you money when you do start placing ads. Paid ads that don’t lead to a site with good SEO actually cost more than ads that go to a store with good SEO. Yah, Google does that. Because Google’s customer is the searcher (read How to Outsmart Google, it will change how you see the web.) Google promotes sites that have a targeted audience and keywords that will appeal to that audience. You don’t just get a good discount, it also improves your ad placement. Seriously, good SEO will save you real money once you get to placing ads. Don’t even think about starting ads till you get the SEO basics nailed down.

7) Use AI to help with keywords and content

It is a battle of the bots. Google’s AI reading copy written by Bard and ChatGPT, how very sci-fi! For many bits of online copy it’s faster, and with some practice it works quite well. You have to build a base of content in order to rank with Google and get free traffic. That’s a good bit of content. As of this post you can still get free versions of ChatGPT and Bard. If you decide to pay you’ll get more options and more detailed output for about $20/month. You can pay for companies who have developed scripts for ChatGPT that dial in the copy, but you can do that yourself. Here’s how.

Tell ChatGPT to act as the head of marketing and copywriter for [your site].
Tell ChatGPT who your target customer is.
Give it information on the product you want to get copy for. [product name, what it does, why that matters to your target customer, as well as any relevant specifications]
Ask it what the best keywords for that product would be to rank well with Google.
Ask it to write a copy block that will appeal to your target audience using the keywords provided.
Be sure to tell it not to make up anything.

Important Safety Tip: Be sure to pay attention to the output. AI hallucinates, AKA makes stuff up. It can make up quotes and cite references that don’t exist. Telling it not to make things up usually works, but check anyway. It’s a machine designed to tell you what you want to hear.

You can ask AI to use the same style as copy you have already written and like. You can ask it to write copy that’s sassy, or calm, or funny. Try different prompts till you find ones that get you copy that fits your brand and appeals to your target audience. Write down the prompts you used so you can continue to use them later. This will help create a consistent voice for your brand.

8) Create Content that resonates with Google

One of the time honored ways to get free organic traffic is to set up a blog and create relevant, engaging content that showcases your expertise and provides value to your target audience. But really, who has time? You can outsource blog posts and social media, or take it on yourself. If you decide to outsource, there are folks on Fiver and Upwork as well as online services that can get the job done for $50-$100/post.

If you decide to take it on yourself, you must be consistent. It’s better to write one good post a week and share it on social media than to write a whole bunch and have gaps of weeks in between. Why? Because Google crawls websites at a rate that is dependent on how often it finds new content. Big sites write three posts a week. But since posts take (me at least) a couple of hours to write without AI and slightly less with AI, (I only use it for outlines and research) then I have to come up with images and get them posted; that would be a full day of my time just to write three blog posts. I don’t have that kind of time, so I post once a week.

I’ve trained Google that their bots need to crawl my site every week in order to keep their search results accurate. In order to be the most successful search engine, Google needs to be accurate. Google is also tasked with crawling the web, which is massive, so they have to be strategic. Google only crawls the things that change often. If I post three times a week and then skip a couple of weeks Google may not even notice until it crawls my site and, seeing changes, it may crawl the next week, but once I stop posting, Google stops crawling. Consistency is the secret to success and, even posting twice a month will work better than posting in fits and starts.

To change the frequency that Google crawls your site, you need to add new relevant content every week. Why does that matter? Because Google considers “freshness” very important and gives precedence to sites that have fresh content. Here’s a link to a video about the importance of keeping your copy fresh.

9) Make sure that your Shopify site is mobile friendly.

In order for Google to send you free organic traffic, it requires, yes requires, that your site is mobile friendly. All of the Shopify themes start out mobile friendly. Since the paid themes are all built on Dawn, they are also probably mobile friendly. So if you’re on Shopify, you’ll start out mobile friendly, but you can still mess it up. Your mobile score will be impacted by five main things.

Slow, or out of date theme.
Photos that are too large to download quickly.
Photos that don’t have alt text.
Too many photos on a page, which makes the pages take a long time to load.
Poor contrast between type and background.

You can check your site’s Lighthouse score (Google controls Lighthouse) to see if there is anything you need to fix. It will give you a score for mobile and desktop and tell you what needs to be fixed. Here’s the link to a free Lighthouse test from PageSpeed Insights.

Why does having a good mobile score matter? Well Google has prioritized mobile and, if your site isn’t mobile optimized, it won’t serve your site up in the organic search as high as similar sites with better mobile scores. Since over 50% of all online traffic is now mobile—it matters.

10) Social Media

Social media can get you free traffic, and it has been very successful for oodles of new stores. Social media is a bit like waving your arms in the air and shouting “Hey look at me!” online. The idea is to get attention and be interesting enough that people want to spend time with you. There are plenty of social media experts online who can guide you through the best practices, take a few minutes to google who the top players are for your niche and follow them for inspiration. You don’t need to reinvent the wheel to get traction. As with content creation, you do need to be consistent. Social media is a lot of work, especially if you don’t enjoy being on social media. Do a little every day and don’t let it pull you away from all the other things that matter.

11) Do more of what works and less of what doesn’t

Make a point to check your site’s analytics weekly so that you know what’s working and what isn’t. Google provides detailed information about where traffic is coming from. Once you added the Google App to your Shopify site you started the data flowing. You can get most of the info you need in the app, or you can deep dive by going to your Google Analytics page. Nothing happens overnight, it will take a few months to see progress. Once you have been consistent for a couple of months you should start to see movement. If you don’t see improvements from week to week and month to month, it’s a good bet that what you’re doing isn’t resonating with your audience, or isn’t being understood by Google.

Checking your stats weekly lets you see where to focus your time and effort. You only need to find one good channel to get the ball rolling.

Then what?

Once you’ve created a steady stream of traffic to your site, then it’s time to delight and engage them with Stylaquin! Shoppers who use Stylaquin will stay longer, view more items, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Stylaquin is the easy and inexpensive way to add an engaging online shopping experience that makes your store stand out in the crowded world of e-commerce.

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.

Shopping fast and slow

Posted on January 8, 2024 by Stylaquin1

Shoppers stay longer, view more, come back more, and buy more!

Shopping is incredibly complicated and how we shop determines how we buy

Imagine you’re shopping for a birthday gift. Are you going to shop fast or slow? Who is it for? What do they like? How much do you want to spend? How much time do you have to choose? All of these questions factor into what you buy. Now imagine you are buying an outfit for date night. Who is it with? What mood do you want to set? Does it have to double as a work outfit? Now imagine you’re shopping for new bathroom tile, fabric for a hobby, a new game, lipstick, or hosiery. Your thought process shifted with each shopping scenario. It takes a lot of brain power to shop well.

Online shopping is designed for people who already know what they want.

There’s a world of difference between buying something you use often and have run out of, and buying something that you aspire to own. There’s a big difference between buying something that will last 10 minutes (dog toy) and something that will last years and also needs to coordinate with other things you own (fine jewelry).

Does Your Site Do This?

When displaying products in a brick and mortar store, merchants spend a ton of time thinking about where and how the product will be displayed. In catalogs there are hot spots both across the catalog and on individual pages. A great deal of thought is put into how much space each product gets and where it goes. But online—you get what you get. You can add collections and filters, but not much else that makes the actual shopping experience better. Today’s websites are set up to shop fast. It’s like the folks who designed shopping online weren’t really shoppers at heart. They were computer programers looking for efficiency and speed. I remember sitting through so many presentations about reducing the number of clicks it takes to buy a product and how important that was to developing a clean purchase path. I haven’t been to one about how to actually make online shopping more fun. (Fun fact: the architecture used by today’s websites was invented in 1957.)

Stylaquin transforms online shopping by adding a series of virtual spaces to a website. The bar acts as a portal to the spaces. One space let’s shoppers flip through Look Book pages so there’s more visual excitement without all that clicking. There’s also the Idea Board space that acts as an interactive styling board, so shoppers can collect and curate all the things that interest them without committing to the cart.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

The Stylaquin Idea Board keeps customers engaged in two ways: it’s an interactive styling board where shoppers can collect and curate all the things that interest them; and it also acts as a wishlist that shoppers can return to. Find us in the Shopify App Store.

What space would you add to your website if you could?

Let’s get back to shopping fast and shopping slow. The truth is sometimes you want to shop fast. Life comes with time constraints, and we don’t always care about getting a bargain or finding the perfect [insert noun here]. Sometimes we just need to get it done. But other times you want to shop slow. Look at all the options, imagine yourself wearing it, eating it, giving it, or just reveling in it. So in order to have the perfect shopping experience online, you need to be able to shop both fast and slow depending on your mood, time constraints and what you’re shopping for. The Stylaquin bar is the portal to the place where shopping slow makes sense. It’s there if you want it, and out of the way if you don’t.

Can AI solve the problem?

Ai can provide better guesses as to what we will like based on our purchase history. I think there’s a big opening for AI to be an online stylist. I asked Chat GPT what would make a better online shopping experience for someone who loved to shop. Not surprisingly, it provided a list of all the best SEO practices. But it didn’t come up with anything to make online shopping more fun.

What else makes a great online shopping experience? Is it finding new things? Having a large selection, getting a killer deal? If you’ve had a great online shopping experience recently, let me know in the comments!

Do women shop differently than men? Yikes—Is that sexist?

Posted on January 1, 2024 by Stylaquin1

Shoppers stay longer, view more, come back more, and buy more!

Or is that missing the point entirely?

History is so littered with the bones of misogynist “truths” that typically we either take them as gospel, or take them for granted. But sometimes there’s a hidden nugget of truth that is genuinely helpful. You can see it in “Women shop differently than men”, but only if you don’t fall into old tropes that no longer fit.

Change the phrasing and uncover it’s true power

Every woman doesn’t shop differently than every man, but power shoppers do shop very differently than item shoppers. Power shoppers love to shop, shop often, and typically buy more when they do. Item shoppers can’t be bothered looking around at things they don’t need yet, they get what they came for, and they get out. Item shoppers look at shopping as a chore that needs to be done efficiently and infrequently.

Does Your Site Do This?

Online shopping is still designed for item shoppers

The online experience was originally designed to replace call centers for catalogers. Anyone remember “Open 24/7”? Primordial e-commerce used quick-shop codes so you could buy things by number. The web was too slow for many images back in the 90’s, but over time it got faster. And then nothing really changed. Nothing. Which is surprising since the pandemic changed where we shop and online is now a much bigger channel than it was in 2019. Think about how odd it is that after 40 years the online shopping experience is still designed for item shoppers.

But what about the power shoppers?

Yes, why aren’t power shoppers getting their needs met? They love shopping, they spend more time shopping, and they buy more than item shoppers. Well, until Stylaquin arrived, there was no way to have both experiences, the one that works for item shoppers, and the one that works for power shoppers, on the same website. (Actually there has never really been anything designed for power shoppers, but letting that go for now.) With Stylaquin, both kinds of shoppers can have their ideal shopping experience on the same website, without re-engineering.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

What do power shoppers want?

Have you ever watched people shop? Really spent some time watching and thinking about the actual process of searching, sorting, trying/imagining, curating, selecting and buying? There’s a lot of brain engagement that goes into making a purchase for those who care about how things will look, fit, coordinate, delight, and fit into a budget. (Power shoppers!)

Browsing

Power shoppers like browsing and they want to have fun doing it. It’s that simple—power shoppers like looking at things they could buy. You’ve heard the phrase “Retail therapy”, it’s just a human thing to enjoy looking at things you can buy. Some clearly find it more therapeutic than others. Power shoppers LOVE browsing. Stylaquin’s Look Book feature lets them flip through a site like they flip through a magazine. It’s faster and more fun. It’s also intuitive and makes the experience more engaging. We are all slaves to the pleasure centers in our brains. We do more of the things we enjoy. Make the shopping experience more fun and engaging, and shoppers will come back for more.

Collecting and curating

One of the biggest problems power shoppers have is that it’s hard to collect and curate all their options before committing to the cart. Power shoppers will create lots of open tabs, one with each item they’re interested in. This isn’t an ideal shopping experience, but it gets the job done. Stylaquin solves that problem with the Idea Board. It’s both an interactive styling board and a wish list. Power shoppers can add all the things that interest them, move them around to see them together, change colors and sizes, and if they make the cut, add them to the cart right from the Idea Board. The items on the Idea Board remain there as long as the cookie is active so when shoppers revisit the site, they can pick up right where they left off. That’s why Stylaquin shoppers come back more often and buy more when they do.

Make your store power shopper friendly

If you’re on Shopify, it takes less than 15 minutes to add the Stylaquin app. The Look Book pages are created automatically, and the biggest decision you’ll have to make is what color you want to make the Stylaquin bar so it matches your website. (Of course you can change it whenever you want to.)

Power shoppers are the backbone of the e-commerce world, it’s time they got the love and shopping experience they deserve!

The 5 Things Apparel Shoppers Want

Posted on December 4, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Knowing what your customers want makes marketing easy (er)

I ran into an interesting study by Bain & Company that focuses on what customers perceive as the elements of value. The group identified 30 separate elements and grouped them in a pyramid based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of needs. From the bottom up the groups are:

Functional:

Saves Time
Simplifies
Makes Money
Reduces Risk
Organizes
Integrates
Connects
Reduces Effort
Avoids Hassles
Reduces Cost
Quality
Variety
Sensory Appeal
Informs

Emotional

Reduces Anxiety
Rewards Me
Nostalgia
Design/Aesthetics
Badge Value
Wellness
Therapeutic Value
Fun/Entertainment
Attractiveness
Provides Access

Life Changing

Provides hope
Self-actualization
Motivation
Heirloom
Affiliation and Belonging

Social Impact

Self-transcendence

Does Your Site Do This?

Bain’s chart says that the five most important elements in the apparel industry are:

Quality
Variety
Avoids Hassles
Design/Aesthetics
Saves Time

When you read the list, you can see how important it is to really understand your target customer. Quality may not be as valued with younger shoppers looking for fast fashion. Variety may not be important to someone who likes wearing a personal uniform (Think Steve Jobs). Avoids Hassles is less true for real bargain hunters. Though site issues are universally despised. Design/Aesthetics won’t appeal to those who hate shopping and only buy clothes so they aren’t naked and cold. You see where I’m going here.

Understanding what motivates your customers is a cornerstone of marketing. Relying on big data for most customers will actually send you down a path that has broad appeal, but no specific appeal. In other words, it will work well for Walmart, but not for a boutique.

I think some of the most important elements for smaller businesses are in the Emotional and Life Changing groups. We don’t think about clothing as being heirloom but buying a jean jacket your daughter will want to wear in 20 years is an interesting angle.

Nostalgia has appeal to everyone, and if you are selling to a niche that has a time period, you can always hit that note and it will resonate. Steam Punk, Cottage Core, 50’s – 90’s and so on all have a nostalgia element to them.

Fun and entertaining is another element that will resonate with power shoppers. Make shopping more fun and engaging and shoppers will come back. (That’s what Stylaquin does!)

Women often joke about needing some retail therapy, but it’s real, and having a great shopping experience is something those who like to shop genuinely value. When the mood strikes, there is something oddly relaxing about looking at lots of beautiful things, even if you don’t buy them. There’s also a rush when you find items that spark joy, whether it’s the prefect gift, or the perfect pair of shoes.

Social impact is another area that has trementous power. Tom’s shoes, Ivory Ella, Bert’s Bees and many more have social impact at the core of their business model. Younger customers have shown tremendous brand loyalty to companies that give back to causes they care about.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Creating connection with your customers takes time. Use the elements as a guide to spark ideas for everything from sales to social media posts. Think about the ones you can align with easily and focus on them. Good luck!

Nail the Sale Before the Cart – Browse Baby!

Posted on November 6, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Before the Cart: Using Stylaquin's Idea Board to Curate Your Customer's Journey

We all know where a purchase begins, or do we? The cart is actually the midway point, not the beginning and not the end of a customer’s purchase journey. The decision to buy comes before the cart, not after. So we need to think about how we can help shoppers have a better purchase journey from start to finish.

Mapping the journey

Shoppers come to your store because they are looking for something. It may be a specific thing, so they use the search bar, the nav bar, or the filters to find it. But if they’re just browsing, they may not know what they want, but they’re interested enough to poke around. Most sites aren’t offering the shoppers who are just browsing a great experience. Browsing shoppers want to consider their options. Most women fall into the browsing category. Women will often open a different tab for every item they’re considering. They don’t want to lose track of things they like, but they aren’t ready to put them in the cart. That’s where Stylaquin is a game changer.

The Idea Board Revolution: A New Way to Shop

This browsing behavior, which we can easily do in any brick and mortar store, gave birth to the Stylaquin Idea Board, it allows shoppers to collect all the things that interest them, rearrange them, change colors and sizes and visualize them in different combinations, all before committing anything to the cart. Shoppers who use the Idea Board when they shop will view more items and come back more often than those who don’t. When they come back, they’ll see all the things that interested them the first time, so they can start shopping right where they left off. When you think about why Stylaquin shoppers buy more on return visits, it just makes sense, they had an engaging experience that they enjoyed, and when they returned, they didn’t have to remember, and then search for, all the things they liked on their previous visit.

Does Your Site Do This?

An Interactive Styling Board or a Wishlist?

There’s nothing like Stylaquin. In fact it’s so unique it’s patented. Stylaquin totally transforms the current shopping experience into something fun and engaging. Stylaquin shoppers stay longer, view more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do.

Think about how different the two shopping experiences are. In the experience we have now, shoppers have to click on each product and the click through each product picture. If they like something, but aren’t ready to add it to the cart they have to save what interests them in tabs, and then toggle through different tabs trying to figure out which is the best choice. If they have to leave and close the browser window they will have to start from scratch when they return. Maybe they’ll find what they liked, or maybe they won’t. Now let’s compare that with Stylaquin. Stylaquin shoppers can flip through a site like a magazine, collect all the things they like in one place, and then edit them till they have exactly what they want. When they come back to the site, all the things they were interested in are right there, so they can pick up where they left off. It’s a better journey, a more engaging experience, and a whole lot easier.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Once you look at the shopping experience as a whole, from the moment of need or curiosity, through the consideration phase, the purchase decision, the actual product experience, and finally to embracing the brand, it’s clear that the cart isn’t last step in a journey of discovery and consideration. Meeting your customer at each phase of their journey and finding ways to delight and engage them throughout is what creates a passion for your brand.

Rock your Shopify Store with Killer Apps

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Navigating the World of Shopify Apps for Stores that Sell Clothing and Accessories

Venturing into the Shopify App Store can feel akin to a child stepping into a candy store – so many options, yet so little time. And just like that child, it’s easy to get overwhelmed. With an array of apps labeled ‘essential’ for your Shopify clothing store, how do you determine which ones will genuinely elevate your customers’ experience? The solution lies in understanding the heart and soul of your store – your customers.

The Challenge: Filtering the Essential from the Extravagant

Every entrepreneur’s journey in the Shopify realm invariably includes a pitstop at the app store. The goal is simple: enhancing functionality, aesthetics, and user experience. However, the process? Not so much. Here are the challenges many face:

Overchoice: With thousands of apps vying for attention, how do you select the right one?
Compatibility: Will the app seamlessly integrate with your store’s theme and ethos?
Value Addition: Does the app offer genuine value, or is it just another shiny tool?

Does Your Site Do This?

Adopting a Customer-Centric Approach

The best way to address the app-selection dilemma? Flip the script. Instead of thinking about what you want for your store, consider what your customers desire. Here’s a guideline:

Simplify the Browsing Experience: Your customers should find joy in the journey, not just the destination (or purchase, in this case). Consider apps that simplify and enhance the browsing process.
Personalize Their Journey: Apps that allow customization and personal curation can turn a passive browser into an engaged buyer.
Retain and Re-engage: Think about apps that can draw your customers back, turning them into repeat visitors.

The Easy Way to Get Everything You Need in One App

Among the myriad of apps available, Stylaquin stands out, particularly for Shopify clothing stores. Here’s why:

Look Book Experience: Shopping becomes a delightful journey with Stylaquin’s Look Book, allowing users to flip through products much like they would in a magazine. Not only is this faster, but it’s about as close as you can get to the joy of flipping pages, and finding new things that delight and engage you.
Idea Board: The Idea Board is a revolution in the digital shopping realm, especially for female shoppers. It allows them to curate, change, and visualize their selections, an online experience that traditional wishlists simply cannot match. It’s not just about adding items to a cart; it’s about creating a personalized narrative of one’s style journey. Best of all, the idea board remains active as long as the Stylaquin cookie exists, so when shoppers return, all the things they liked are right there waiting for them.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Why Stylaquin Resonates with Female Shoppers

Women shop differently than men, but the online shopping experience was designed for the way men shop. Now both experiences can exist on the same site at the same time. Women, more than just buying a product, are investing in an experience, a story. Stylaquin’s Idea Board offers just that – a space where they can weave their own story, visualize combinations, switch things around, and truly engage with the products. While the digital experience isn’t the same as in person shopping, Stylaquin’s offerings mirror the fun, and engagement of an in-person shopping spree.

Reimagining Your Shopify Clothing Store with Stylaquin

The road to selecting the perfect apps for your Shopify store is paved with challenges. However, by putting yourself in your customer’s place and choosing tools like Stylaquin that genuinely understand and enhance the shopping experience, you can turn these challenges into opportunities. Remember, in the vast digital ocean of e-commerce, it’s the quality of engagement, the depth of connection, and the joy of the journey that sets your store apart. Choose wisely, and let Stylaquin guide your customers on a shopping adventure like no other.

Hey Marketers—Permission Slip will make you sad

Posted on October 5, 2023 by Stylaquin1

There's a Privacy App called Permission Slip that's Coming for Your Customers

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, bad marketers are like fire ants, they find any little crack in wall and they swarm in to get at the goodies. Privacy apps are proof that customers are fed up and saying “STOP!” As this gets worse, and it will, there will be apps and hoops and bots, and, and, and… Bad marketers are making it hard for the rest of us. Bad Marketers—stop it!

What is Permission Slip?

Permission Slip is an app for Apple and Android phones that’s free from Consumer Reports that promises to banish ads and make the internet safe for browsing. The gadget guys were breathless about how great it was in the article I read. I haven’t added it to my phone yet because I like being marketed to. Permission Slip’s fate will be determined by customers who may discover that no ads isn’t ideal either. Good marketing actually make their lives better by sharing solutions to their problems, showcasing new things of interest, and highlighting great pricing on things they buy. Great marketing makes shopping fun, creates community and inspires devotion.

So why are customers resorting to apps?

Does Your Site Do This?

The problem is that we need to get real about what it takes to get customers and keep them. It isn’t bombarding them with sales and ads, and it isn’t stalking them. (Though the stalking thing does seem to work better than I thought it would. Yah, my hands are not clean on this.) Regardless of what black arts we dabble in, the truth is that our relationship with our customers is largely transactional. Online stores without a brick and mortar location are especially vulnerable to losing the fun factor of shopping.

Shopping is either a chore or entertainment

There are folks who hate to shop and only do it to eat, and not be naked. There are folks who love going shopping and can’t wait to see what’s new or on sale. Cyber Monday sends chills up their spine. Online shopping is currently designed for the folks who want to get in, find what they need, and get out fast. We should maybe give a little more love to the ones who actually love it, since they spend more. Just saying.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

And then there’s the confusion factor

Have you ever watched someone who loves to shop actually shop? They open a different tab for each product they like because they want to consider it, but don’t want to add it to the cart. This is a great truth. All the folks reading this, who love to shop, are smiling and nodding, while the non-shoppers are having an Ah Ha! moment about all the times they borrowed a computer and thought “Good grief, why would anyone have so many open tabs?”

Who are these strange people?

For the sake of gender equality we’ll just call them power-shoppers. (Women! They’re mostly women!) Power-shoppers like choice. Power-shoppers don’t want just a blue shirt, they want the perfect blue shirt that goes with the pants they love, and the jacket, and the shoes. Power-shoppers deserve an elevated shopping experience that works for the way they shop. If you want to see what that looks like, (and you managed to ignore all the cool blinking images in this post), check out Stylaquin! Stylaquin is a Shopify app that transforms the online shopping experience for power-shoppers. Shoppers stay longer, view more items, come back more often, and buy more when they do! Go ahead and check it out!

Crazy Better than a Shopify Wishlist!

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Crazy Better Than a Shopify Wishlist!

Wishlists are so old fashioned, and yet they work. Before you sigh and think “Well it’s just something we need to add…” Take a moment to consider something infinitely better. The traditional Shopify wishlist has been transformed into a dynamic, engaging, and revenue-multiplying adventure by Stylaquin.

The Silent Workings of a Traditional Wishlist

The conventional wishlist just sits there. At best it acts as a subtle reminder of coveted items, a silent nudge towards conversion that lingers in the corner of a shopper’s digital experience. For the store owner, it silently accumulates data, reflecting potential future sales that live somewhere between desire and action. While beneficial, driving both engagement and potential revenue, it prompts the question: Is there something better?

Does Your Site Do This?

Unlocking the E-Commerce Potential with Stylaquin

The better answer is Stylaquin, an innovative and patented tool that doesn’t merely catalogue desires like the traditional wishlist but elevates them, turning passive interest into an active, engaging, and conversion-driving experience.

A Fun and Engaging Visual Journey

For your shoppers it’s a page-flipping experience that turns browsing into an adventure, inviting exploration, and prolonged interaction with your products.

For you, the retailer Stylaquin creates a mesmerizing first impression that lingers, driving engagement, which not only boosts SEO, but also promotes deeper exploration into your product catalog, increasing the likelihood of added cart items.

Beyond the Wishlist

Shoppers, especially women shoppers, want a digital playground where they can not only save but play with all the things that caught their eye. Power-shoppers often open separate windows for each product they like and then click through the tabs to see them. With Stylaquin, they don’t have to because everything is in one place.

Stylaquin creates a treasure trove of data revealing not just what your customers want, but a deeper insight into their preferences and shopping behaviors, enabling more targeted marketing and better stock decision-making.

Data Analytics: Actionable insights

Stylaquin gives you an in-depth view into your customer’s journey. The Insights Panel shares insights that go beyond just what customers bought or left in their cart, but also shares what they liked and almost bought. enabling you to harness product marketing strategies that can elevate engagement, retention, and ultimately, revenue.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Traditional Wishlist vs. Stylaquin

While a traditional wishlist captures desires, Stylaquin’s Look Book and Idea Board weave them into a narrative, actively engaging customers, prolonging their journey on your site, and incrementally increasing the chance of conversion and average cart value. The traditional wishlist silently holds potential purchases; Stylaquin dynamically showcases them, transforming save it for later desire into active engagement, creating a shopping environment that doesn’t just encourage browsing but invites customers to revel in it.

Driving Profits Through Enriched Customer Engagement

With Stylaquin, you’re not just implementing a tool; you’re embedding a truly unique experience into your Shopify store, one that seductively whispers to your customers to stay, explore, play, and yes, purchase.

The Easy to add Shopify Wishlist that sets you apart!

It’s easy to add Stylaquin to your Shopify site. Just look for us in the Shopify App Store. You can set up Stylaquin in less than 15 minutes and then just sit back and watch your customers play, driving not just sales, but developing a relationship that ensures they return, time and time again, to continue their journey.

Tailoring the Best Clothing App Experience on Shopify

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Stylaquin1

The Perfect Fit: Tailoring the Best Clothing App Experience on Shopify

The Intersection of Fashion, Tech, and E-commerce

Fashion, with its ever-evolving trends and distinctive personal expressions, has always been an art form that captures both the culture today and how far we have come. Fast forward to the digital age, and we’re at the unique intersection where fashion meets technology, resulting in an exhilarating fusion that’s reshaping the very way we shop. This fusion is most evident in platforms like Shopify, where e-commerce makes it easy for fashion retailers at all levels to sell to a vast audience. But are they connecting with their audience on a deeper, more interactive level? Because to get ahead of the pack, It’s not just about selling clothes anymore; it’s about offering an immersive experience.

Criteria to Evaluate Shopify Clothing Apps

Before diving into the best clothing apps available on Shopify, it’s crucial to understand the parameters that set these apps apart:

User Experience (UX): A simple, intuitive interface is key. The user should not only find the app easy to navigate but also enjoyable.
Integration: How seamlessly does the app integrate with Shopify and other essential tools?
Features: Does the app offer unique features that can significantly elevate the online shopping experience?
Scalability: Can the app support a growing business, adapting to increased traffic and product inventory?
Support and Updates: Regular updates and prompt customer support can make a world of difference.

Does Your Site Do This?

Top-Rated Clothing Apps on Shopify

Stylaquin: At the nexus of intuitive design and technological innovation, Stylaquin stands out as a premier choice for fashion entrepreneurs on Shopify. Two of its standout features include the Look Book, offering shoppers a magazine-esque browsing experience, and the Idea Board, allowing users to curate and visualize their fashion choices in a unified space. For store owners, the insights generated by Stylaquin, concerning customer preferences, can be revolutionary in driving marketing strategies and product placements.
Size Recommendation Apps: One major hurdle online fashion retailers face is ensuring customers choose the right size. Apps like Kiwi Size, Fit Quiz, and Robosize These apps use customer data, like height, weight, and fit preferences, to recommend the most suitable size, reducing return rates.
Virtual Dressing Rooms: Giving shoppers the ability to virtually try on clothing items using augmented reality could be a game-changer. For now just being able to collect and curate the things that shoppers find interesting will improve the online shopping experience. Stylaquin has a feature called the Idea Board that does just that. Power-shoppers find this particularly helpful.
Inventory Management Tools: For the business side of things, keeping track of inventory is crucial. These apps help store owners manage stock levels, track bestsellers, and identify items that may need promotional boosts. Shopify has a full range of inventory management tools built into the platform, but stores who have special events, pop-up stores, and affiliate sales may need advanced tools that can only be found in an app.

Features That Make These Apps Indispensable for Fashion Entrepreneurs

Personalization: Modern shoppers crave personalized experiences. Tools that utilize AI to offer tailored product recommendations based on browsing and purchase history are constantly improving. Apps like Wiser, Drift AI, and Frankie AI are are showing improved sales and conversions, by helping shoppers see items they may have missed.
Interactive Browsing: Stylaquin’s Look Book is a prime example of how browsing can be transformed into an interactive experience, making shopping more engaging and enjoyable.
Insights and Analytics: Beyond the front-end customer experience, apps that provide valuable data can transform a store’s strategy. Knowing what products resonate with shoppers, and which don’t, can guide inventory decisions and marketing campaigns. Shopify makes it easy to connect Google analytics which goes into great deal, perhaps overwhelming detail for some. Stylaquin is the only app that can provide analytics on the entire shopping experience for Stylaquin shoppers. It also has an insights panel that shares the most actionable insights and explains how to use them.
Loyalty Programs and Incentives: Apps that enable stores to offer rewards, points, or discounts for repeat customers can foster brand loyalty and encourage repeat business. Shopify has too many Apps to list, all with slightly different features and benefits. Be sure you know what your customer is looking for before adding a loyalty app. Just increasing customer engagement and making your store stand out in the crowd, like Stylaquin does can deliver significantly more repeat visits and create loyalty without giving up margin or adding complexity.

Remember to make it fun!

The big truth about shopping is that there are three kinds of shoppers, Those who love to shop are the ones you should focus on first. Stylaquin was invented because women deserve a better online shopping experience. One that’s faster, more beautiful, more intuitive and one that makes it easy to explore and engage with all the fabulous products they find. That’s what makes a shopping experience memorable and worth coming back for!

P.S. It’s free and we will never share your name. You can unsubscribe at any time.

How Time on Site impacts SEO

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Enticing customers to stay longer can have a big impact on your SEO rank

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.

Let’s break that down into 4 components.

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.
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.
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.
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 Post 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.

Does Your Site Do This?

Okay, you’re sold, but how do you get customers to stay longer?

Here are some thing to consider:

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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 a short video that explains how Stylaquin works.

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.

P.S. It’s free and we will never share your name. You can unsubscribe at any time.