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?

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.

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!

Happy Holidays! See you in 2024.

Posted on December 18, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Wishing You, and Yours, a Merry and Bright Holiday Season!

With all that’s going on in the world it is more important than ever to take time to laugh and share goodwill. The world is a beautiful magical place. We can all do our part to make it better, safer and more peaceful, and that starts with gratitude for the blessings we enjoy. So thank you!

I’m repurposing a card I made way back in 2012. It blows my mind that a) The two munchkins grew up so fast. b) Eleven years later I’m focused on making online shopping better and more fun. Was this where the seed was planted…? c) Tech is still pretty much that annoying. Can’t wait for AI to smooth the edges.

All the best

Sarah Fletcher – Stylaquin Founder

Here's a Shopify wishlist Santa would love!

Many things have changed in eleven years, but tragically online shopping isn’t one of them. Make 2024 the year that you push your Shopify site into the future with a Shopify wishlist that makes it more fun and engaging to shop!

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

AI isn’t quite there yet—Epic fail, LOL

Posted on December 11, 2023 by Stylaquin1

It seemed like a simple request—nope.

I wanted to create a graphic for 3 Easy Ways to Get More Sales This Season. Nothing fancy, just the title with some holiday whimsy. I though it would be fun to start with the words in the title, and then add a Santa hat to the number three. I headed over to Adobe Express to see if I could whip it up in a jiff with AI. I mean, how hard could it be right?

So here’s the instructions I gave the Adobe Express AI generator. It asked me what I would like to create and I typed “The words “3 Easy Ways to Get More Sales this Season” with a festive Christmas look and a red Santa hat on the 3.”

Here’s what I got back…

Does Your Site Do This?

When I got done laughing, I headed over to Canva to see if their AI generator could do any better. Canva first tried to steer me toward starting with a template, which I thought was smart, if they weren’t 100% confident in their AI generator’s capabilities. I decided to push the envelope and go straight to the AI generator.

Here’s what I got back…

Kudos to Canva for having real words, but points off for not being anything close to what I asked for. I mean, come on, no Santa hat anywhere. Not nearly as amusing, and also very odd. What is the shape with the glitter/snow supposed to represent? What is the odd broken heart shape with the Christmas tree lot in it? Were there no pics of Santa available? Hat or no hat, I never mentioned either tree or glitter.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

And so it seems that, much like self driving cars, there is a long way to go before we can just tell AI our dream featured post image and have it magically appear.

If you’ve got a great AI fail do share. It’s makes me feel like SkyNet is still a long way off.

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!

3 Easy Ways Get More Sales This Season

Posted on November 27, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Here are 3 easy ways to get more sales between now and December 24th

The holidays are here and if you’ve gotten all your promotions ready ahead of time—congratulations! If you didn’t quite have time, or just want to boost the end of the month sales report, here are three easy ways to get more sales.

Bundling

Take a look at the things that you are probably going to have left over inventory on, and think about ways to bundle them, before you have to put them on sale in January. Can you sweeten the deal with another complementary product by bundling them together? Buy 3 and save also works. Think about how the products will be gifted. Can you promote them as stocking stuffers? Would they make great Secret Santa gifts? Every kid has several teachers, so if you have a great teacher gift, try offering a set of three. Bundling lower priced items and telling shoppers how to use them is a tried and true tactic.

Does Your Site Do This?

Leverage your best sellers

Send an email to your customer list with your best sellers front and center. Use headlines like “Here are XX of our customers’ favorite things!”, “Looking for gifts everyone loves? Here are our customers’ favorites!”, “Last minute gifts that are sure to make them smile—our customers’ favorites.” You get the idea. Right now everyone is in a mad scramble to find the right gifts for all their loved ones. Bestsellers have already gotten the seal of approval, so shoppers who are worried about not choosing the right items will breath a sigh of relief.

Be sure to showcase some best sellers on your home page. Best sellers are proven winners and the items that are most likely to appeal to new visitors. In Shopify, you can set up a carousel of best selling items that will adjust as your inventory levels change. This means it will automatically update with new products if you run out. (You have to set your products to not show if inventory is zero.) There is awesome power in showcasing bestsellers on your home page.

Use collections to create price ranges

If you are on Shopify, one of the easiest things to do is to create collections based on price ranges. This time of year shoppers are very price conscious, but not because they don’t want to spend too much. They want to spend the right amount. If they are buying a small gift for a colleague or friend, they have a price in mind. If they are buying for a significant other, they have a very different price in mind. In both cases they have a price in mind and they are looking for a gift in a specific price range. Think about who your target customer is buying for and make create collections with the price points that will help them find the right gift quickly. If you are selling high end merchandise, don’t be afraid to use “over” as well as “under”. This strategy doesn’t work as well after the holidays, but while shoppers have a list that they are checking twice, it rocks!

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

This time of year it’s easy to get overwhelmed while trying to get everything done. If you have time to just do one thing on this list, I would recommend creating collections with price ranges. You can set it up in half an hour, and then add it to all your emails and social posts. It’s also something that can be set up and reused every year. Good luck!

Get more WOW from the products you have now

Posted on November 13, 2023 by Stylaquin1

How to Promote the right products on your Shopify store's home page

Imagine your home page as the digital red carpet to your store, where you have the power to make a dazzling impression on potential customers. When you strategically select and showcase your products here, you’re not just displaying beautiful items, you’re creating an experience that resonates with your audience. By understanding your customers’ tastes, staying on top of the latest trends, and curating a captivating home page, you can turn visitors into loyal shoppers. So, get ready to boost those conversion rates and sales like a boss! Your home page is your secret weapon in the competitive world of online retail, and it’s time to shine!

Understanding Your Target Audience

Understanding your target audience is the compass that guides your success in the world of online fashion retail. It’s not just about selling products; it’s about creating a shopping experience tailored to their desires and needs. Knowing your target audience intimately allows you to speak directly to their hearts and capture their attention on your home page. To achieve this, start by identifying who your target customer is. How old are they? What do they care about? What’s trending in their world? Put yourself in their shoes.

Does Your Site Do This?

Start with Bestsellers

The best place to go for inspiration on what to put on the home page is your best sellers. Bestsellers should have a prominent place on every home page. Why? Because they’re proven winners. Bestsellers are also a roadmap to seasonality. You probably won’t have the same bestsellers in August that you do in November.

Let Shopify do the heavy lifting

Go to your Shopify sales report, make sure it includes the date the product was sold, the number of products sold as units, the product name and SKU, the price and the profit. Download the report and open it in excel or whatever spreadsheet software you use. Open the file and subtotal the report by product. Some spreadsheets call this categories rather than subtitles. You are trying to find the products with the highest units of sales. If you have Stylaquin installed you can use the Insights Panel to see your best sellers. We have a video titled Bestsellers you can check out to learn more. Just change the date range to see a specific time.

Use color

This will make spotting the winners easier to see later. Color the cells with the top ten or so products with a bright green color. Then color the next ten or so products with bright blue, and color the following ten or so with bright gold. This will give you an easy way to spot where the best sellers are showing up in each season.

Sort your table by date

This way you can see where the best sellers are working their magic. Are they all Q4 gifts? Are they summer self purchase? What can you learn from them? Are there any the show up consistently throughout the year? We call those perennial best sellers and they typically are problem solvers.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

But wait! What about new products?

There has long been a debate about which is more powerful—new products or best sellers. If you want to dive in even deeper here’s a post on the subject. But the short answer is that most of the customers coming to your site will be new. That’s just how the online world works. So showcasing new products on your home page in place of bestsellers is risky. What if the new products are a bust? There are stores that can make showcasing only new products work, and clothing and accessories are frequently about tends. How do you pick? Not to worry, you can test it!

A/B testing is easy in Shopify

Head over to the App Store and you’ll find lots of apps that offer A/B testing. A/B testing lets you create two versions of a page which are randomly shown to visitors. It allows you to see which version gets you more clicks. You can A/B test headlines, product assortments, images and offers. Be sure to keep your A/B tests clean by not changing too many things at once. It’s also a good idea to keep a diary of what you’ve tested so you can keep track of learnings.

Keep learning, growing and being creative! ““

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.

8 Great Tips to Kickstart Your Holiday Marketing! + FREE gift

Posted on October 24, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Get Your Holiday Sales off to a Sane Start

Okay, so it’s October, and Halloween is almost upon us, which means Thanksgiving is right around the corner, and then OMG the holidays and the busiest time of the year are almost here. If you’re a Shopify store owner selling, well almost anything, getting ahead of the holiday tsunami will help your bottom line and your peace of mind. Here’s a quick list of things to get nailed down now and a free gift from me to make it easier.

Sales strategy

Unless you only sell Halloween costumes and Thanksgiving decorations, you don’t need to be having a sale. I know, I know, all the big stores are having sales and you will be killed if you don’t. Take a deep breath and consider if you can really compete on price, online, against the big box stores… If you can—then sale away! If you’re a niche boutique then think about the overall landscape before you offer up margin. Here are some things to try before resorting to sales. My general position on sales is they are the best way to get rid of unsold merchandise after the holiday, but should only be use sparingly, if at all, before the holiday.

Compete as a small business

Small Business Saturday is November 25th this year. Reach out to your customer base and remind them how great they will feel supporting a small or local business. Have a special event either in your store or online. It can be interviews with experts, meet the team, or help with the problem you solve for your customers. It can be as simple as how to find the prefect gift, or outfit, or how to spice up the holiday. Everyone is looking for tips and ways to make their loved ones feel appreciated. They want to connect, and engage, and feel the magic of the season.

Pricing

Shoppers are especially price conscious around the holidays, but not always on the low end. Everyone has a list of people they buy for and the gift they give needs to fit the level of appreciation/love they feel for the recipient. Let’s say you need to get a gift for your child’s teacher, it will probably fall in the under $20 range. Your spouse would probably feel unappreciated with a $20 gift. A big client might warrant a gift costing over $200, but a small one might only need a token. This is why making categories based on price works so well during the holidays. Gifts under $30 is a great price point, so is gifts under $50. Gifts over $100 can also work.

Does Your Site Do This?

Get attention without discounting

Hammacher Schlemmer always has one item that is insanely expensive. Think $250,000 for a personal submarine. They don’t expect to sell many (or any), but it gets attention. Think about how your store can get attention without discounting. Do you have a unique item with a story? Can you create an offer that’s unique? Can you start a challenge? Can you do something that makes your store stand out? (Hint: Stylaquin is absolutely bomb for that.)

Make a collection for sale items rather than the whole store

If you feel you simply MUST have a sale, rather than have a sale on everything, why not make a collection of sale items and call it Santa’s Bargain Bin. That way shoppers who are out looking for discounts get what they want without devaluing the rest of your merchandise.

Stocking stuffers and table gifts

If you have items that are under $20, or a high end customer base that lets you go higher, think about creating collections of stocking stuffers and table gifts. Teaching your audience how to make the holidays special is about surprising and delighting them with things they haven’t thought of. Tell stories about the most special gift you have received, or the most surprising gift you’ve received. How can the merchandise you sell surprise and delight your customers and new visitors? Selling bath products? How about a dirty Santa bath set. I have no idea what it would be, but I would look at it if you had one. Kids’ gift collections and pet gift collections are great for blog posts and social media.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Collections are an underused tool

Every Shopify store has collections, and there is a myth that the collections need to be in the top nav. You can make collections for anything and just use them for emails. Color collections, hidden collections, magic collections, surprise collections can all exist on your store and be part of an email campaign without being in your nav. You could make a Shopify collection of products that have the most meaning to you personally and share that with your customers. Johanna Gaines would totally do that, you can too.

Put a bow on it!

I’m including a download for my simple Holiday Bow image as my holiday gift to you.
bow_red.png
Add it to any product image and voila—It’s a gift! Slap in on your home page from November 1st to December 31st. The classic holiday bow hasn’t changed in a very, very long time. Sometimes the easiest things are the things that just work.

Use Brand Colors to Make Your Shopify Store POP!

Posted on October 19, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Brand colors can make your site more consistent and more recognizable.

Think of your company as a person. The core values are its soul, the name is the body, the logo is the little black dress, and the brand colors are the accessories that tie it all together.

Great brand colors are a foundational element of a great brand. Getting your brand colors can be tricky. There are some real challenges; like if you pick pink and teal, how do you make it work for Christmas? What about pastels? They look great at Easter, but not so much at Kwanzaa. Before you give up or throw a dart at the Itten color wheel, think about what colors mean to you, then be brave.

Does Your Site Do This?

There’s a festival in India called Holi – the festival of colours – Holi marks the last full-moon day of the lunar month and celebrates the beginning of spring and the victory of good over evil. People literally throw colors on each other. The colors mix, and swirl, and drip, and go everywhere. Holi made me see that there is nothing to fear when it comes to color combinations.

So what are the rules for brand colors?

Every year Pantone picks its “Color of the year”. This year was Viva Magenta. It’s a bold choice. The actual Pantone logo is often Black and grey which, it must be said, goes with every color. By picking very neutral main colors, Pantone assures that their logo can work with any color. But Pantone also makes their logo just about every color when it suits them. They are the svenglis of color. Target and Coke just stick with their very specific and copyrighted shades of red. So the rules for Pantone would seem to be different from the rules for Target and Coke. The truth is there aren’t any rules when it comes to color but, before you regret the time you’ve spent reading this post, I’ll share a some helpful guidelines.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Guidelines for using Brand Colors

Pick colors you like—you will be stuck with them for years and after that it will be harder to change. You can find inspiration for colors in a picture, landscape, flower, or piece of art.

Pick a bold color for your main color unless you are going for a minimalist tone-on-tone look. Again, you can make just about anything work, but you have to be consistent in order for it to be meaningful and recognizable.

Stick with it even when it’s hard. Any color combo can work. Look at Howard Johnson’s for an iconic but unusual pairing. Where things go off the rails brand wise is when folks get bored or scared. Target NEVER moves away from red, Home Depot NEVER moves away from orange. You have to commit.

Start with one color. It’s easier to have one main color than many colors. Lots of iconic brands have one main color, L.L. Bean is green, Target is red, Pacific Life is blue, Home Depot is orange, and so on. I bet you saw the color for each of those brands in your head as you read them.

If you’re brave or a pro add a second. If you want to dial up the color recognition further, go with two colors like McDonalds or Pepsi. At Stylaquin we have two main colors, Stylaquin green and Stylaquin magenta. We also have four additional colors that all work together. I chose the Stylaquin colors so that they’d stand out and get attention. Holi was my inspiration. I love bright colors. But bright colors don’t work for everyone, and we encourage customers to choose whatever color works for their brand when they add Stylaquin to their site. Working with multiple colors adds visual complexity.

Here are a few more tips on working with brand colors.

Create seasonal palettes that work with your main color(s). If you’re a Shopify clothing, fashion and/or accessories store, you will probably have seasonal items, and seasonal sales. Creating palettes ahead of time, and then reusing them, is just one more thing off of your always full plate.

Colors are like flowers, they usually work together, so don’t stress. Think of all the times you’ve seen a bouquet of wild flowers that surprised and delighted you. Colors usually magically go together. Some people have strong opinions about color and that’s okay, but I’ve never seen a garden that clashes. Once you have the basics chosen, you’ll develop go-to combos and things that just work. Forcing it just makes it harder.

You can go with the tide, or against the tide. If you sell things that fly, like kites, choosing sky blue as your main color can work. That’s going with the tide. You can also go against the tide and choose yellow, or orange, which will always pop on blue, Going with the tide typically produces a more calm color palette, Going against the tide usually gives designs more energy.

Play. Designers rarely finish where they start. They play and noodle, and make mood boards, and play some more. Then they let everything sit for a bit. Then they show it around, and then play more, and then finally make a decision. There’s an industry joke: How many Art Directors does it take to screw in a lightbulb? Eleven. One to do it and ten to say “I don’t know, what do you think?”

Consistency is the key to creating recognizable brand colors. Create a document that explains your brand colors and how to use them. Be sure to include the RGB web color codes and the matching CMYK print percentages. When you find an OMG amazing color combo that you love and goes perfectly with your brand color(s), write it down and add it to your palette. Be sure that everyone who contributes to your brand has a copy of the brand colors document, and an understanding of how to use your brand colors.