What is the value of a repeat customer?

Posted on April 22, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

How much more is a repeat customer worth?

There are a few things to consider when you look at the actual value of a repeat customer. Why they came back is important too. If you had a going out of business sale and you had repeat customers, maybe they’re not so valuable… just saying. From a more practical standpoint though, repeat customers are easier to keep, worth more to the bottom line, and will do wonders for your SEO and advertising costs. Let’s get into a bit more detail to understand why.

Lower acquisition costs

Acquisition costs are simply how much it costs to get a customer. When you look at the amount you spend on advertising, and then divide the number of new customers that advertising brought in, you get a simple acquisition cost. Repeat customers, even if they only come back once, are half the cost of new customers. If they come back multiple times, the acquisition cost drops with each visit. So the first value you get from repeat customers is lower acquisition costs.

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.

Improved site rank

While it’s easy to do the math on acquisition costs (not getting into attribution here), it’s harder to put a firm number on benefits like site rank because the search engines won’t tell you how their algorithm counts them. The best way to quantify this is to track it. Here is a list of sites that will rank your site.

Semrush for overall functionality
SEO Tester Online for an all-in-one SEO suite
Ahrefs for keyword analysis
Nozzle for data visualization
Advanced Web Ranking for reporting
Moz Pro for integrations
Rank Tracker for unlimited keyword tracking
Mangools for low-volume keyword tracking
Keyword.com for free keyword analysis

Why does having more repeat visitors improve your site rank?

Google’s customer is the person searching, not the ad revenue it earns from advertisers. In order for Google to keep its place as the top search engine it needs to make its searchers happy by sending them to sites that meet their query, and then sends them to a page they’ll like.

So how does Google decide which of the millions of sites are the best choice? It starts by finding sites that have what the searcher is looking for. Then it determines if geography is important to the search, like “best pizza near me”. Say the search is for “jeans with pockets”, well honey, there are a whole lot of sites that have jeans with pockets. Sites that have made a point to add “pockets” to their product copy will rank better than sites that just have Jeans listed. But that still leaves a lot of sites that Google needs to rank. They have a secret formula that looks at several factors. How much traffic does the site get? How fresh is the content they provide? How relevant is the content provided to the person searching? AKA is the site showing expertise in jeans? Google also looks at engagement. That is, how engaged are visitors to the site?

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.

Repeat visitors signal engagement

Repeat visitors tell Google that your site was so good that the searchers they sent there, came back. Google wants its customers to be happy and repeat visits are their most reliable signal that the searcher was happy with the result. It’s like getting a gold star on your book report. There are other factors that go into a site’s engagement score, like dwell time (time on site) and the number of events they trigger. Events are things like clicks and drags. Basically, the things you do while on a site.

How does more engagement translate into value?

In terms of money, the better your site’s rank, the less you pay for ads. Google discounts ads for stores with better site ranking. It’s a way to encourage sites to step up their game, and it also makes spammy ads more expensive. So, if you’re running ads on any of the major search platforms, getting more repeat visitors is also getting you a discount on your ad spend. Who doesn’t like free money?

Brand value is the big bonus

Money is always nice, but when you’re building a business, brand loyalty is priceless. There are millions of websites out there selling what you sell and getting customers to pick you first is a huge boost. That’s when customers sing your praises. That’s when the media starts to notice. That’s when the magic happens!

The easiest way to get repeat visitors is with Stylaquin

If you’re a Shopify site and have traffic that isn’t coming back, give Stylaquin a try. It is easy to add, inexpensive, takes no work to maintain, and increases repeat visits like no other app we’ve seen. Here’s a link to the app store where you’ll find a video and lots of helpful information.

How to boost your Shopify conversion rate

Posted on April 15, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

How do you increase your Shopify conversion rate?

Once an online store has gotten over the first hurdle, which is getting traffic, the second hurdle is conversions. Getting shoppers to visit your store is different from getting to buy things from your store. Crazy stunts and amazing sales can bring in traffic, but if what you’re selling doesn’t match up with the type of customer you’re attracting, your conversion rate is going to be crap city.

Start with your target customer

Are they cheap, or chic. All shoppers fall somewhere on the curve below.

Chic shoppers

Chic shoppers want beautiful images, plenty of white space, and no mention of savings or pricing. Prices don’t scare them because they expect to pay for the best. Chic shoppers may buy less, so the conversion rate may be lower, but they are willing to spend more when they find what they want. Chic shoppers are interested in trends, and name brands. They like to be a little ahead of the curve and see themselves as trend setters.

Cheap shoppers

Cheap shoppers don’t want to see you spending an extra dime, they want you to give them the best price possible. They will sort through a mountain of offers if it means winning the best price for an item. They live for sales and come armed with discount codes. They convert when they feel they’ve found the best available deal. Cheap shoppers are not necessarily short of cash, they just love to save money. It’s as much of a lifestyle choice as being a chic shoppers is. Cheap shoppers are just as happy telling you how they saved $10 on a small item as they are saving thousands on a new car.

The great middle

Shoppers in the middle are looking for a balance of chic and cheap. They’ll spend more for things they value, and you can still entice them with a sale or coupon. We all see ourselves as a little younger and a little chicer than we actually are so, unless you are going for rock bottom prices, try to make your site a little prettier and a little cooler than your basic target customer. Shoppers in the great middle convert when they see themselves in a brand, and feel confident in the value they’re getting.

Does Your Site Do This?

So how do you increase conversion rates?

You can increase your store’s conversion rate by making sure the customer you’re marketing to is the type of customer who will see themselves in your store’s brand and products. If you’re attracting chic traffic and offering lots of cheap or discounted products, they will not see themselves in your brand and they’ll leave. Same goes the other way. If you’re attracting cheap traffic and offering high-end products, they’ll bounce lickety-split.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

The magic of best sellers

If there is one secret weapon you can deploy that will help you win any type of customer it’s your best sellers. They are best sellers for a reason. If you have Stylaquin on your site, you can easily find your best sellers, most viewed products, and more in the insights panel. Make sure your best sellers are shown on your site’s home page and are featured in the site’s navigation. New shoppers are statistically more likely to buy best selling items than they are to buy anything else you offer.

Sale items

Unless you’re attracting the very chicest of chic shoppers, having a sale area is smart. If shoppers see that they are in over their heads price wise, they may still check out the sale pages. Unless you are specifically targeting a cheap customer, don’t put sale items on the home page. Promoting sale items tends to build a cheap customer base. That’s only a good thing if selling on price is a part of your strategy.

Try Stylaquin

An easy and inexpensive way to increase your conversion rates is to add Stylaquin to your site. Stylaquin engages and delights shoppers so they stay longer, view more products, come back more often, and buy more when they do. Stylaquin shoppers stay over 3 minutes longer and view more than 4 additional items when they shop. The conversion rate is over 1% higher. The real kicker is that Stylaquin shoppers are over three times more likely to become repeat visitors, and the conversion rate on repeat visits is up to 9% higher. Not bad for an app that starts at just $29/month.

How to have great online conversations with your customers

Posted on April 1, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

How do you create engaging conversations with customers?

You’re probably reading this because you have a brand and you want to engage your customers so that they feel connected to your brand. You look at big brands like Nike, L.L. Bean, Sephora, and Home Depot who have huge followings and real brand connection with their customers. How do you get there when you have no control over which post, reel, video, or website page your customer will see when they start the interaction? The first thing to do is decide what conversations you want to have.

When you talk about everything, you say almost nothing

There are big box stores, like Walmart, that sell a little bit of everything. You can buy tires if you have a common size. You can buy vegetables if you don’t want anything exotic. You can buy sheets if you don’t want a lot of colors or patterns. This is actually a really hard strategy to make work. How do you advertise everything? How do you compete with everyone? They can’t effectively position themselves as the expert because they don’t carry expert-level merchandise in any category. It’s a real challenge. Big box stores typically have conversations about price and convenience because they know that they can’t have in-depth conversations in any category they sell. But they are one-stop shopping and they have great prices.

What conversations should you be having?

The ones that matter to your customers and you can support with your brand authority and key competitive advantages. To do that, you need to figure out what your customers care about. Start with what you sell. If you sell clothing and accessories online you can look at who your customer is: Age, income, gender, hobbies, and education level is a good start. Then think about how what you sell can help them, delight them, or educate them. What makes your company special? Why should they buy from you and not another company? What expertise can you offer them? Go where they’re hanging out online. Visit your competitors’ sites. Stay curious!

Does the conversation need to have a start and an end?

Yes and no. Yes, each conversation has to have a start, but none of them have to have an end. That’s the beauty of online conversations. You can add links to continue the conversation, ask for feedback, and invite the customer to return. Because the order of any conversation is random and uncontrollable you have to assume that you are always starting fresh. If you’re dropping knowledge on folks, you need to make it easy for them to self-select their level of expertise so they don’t feel stupid. A store that sells fishing gear will want to keep the conversation at a pretty high level so they don’t lose the serious fisherfolk, but the newbies will need links that make it easy to keep up. The newbies who fall in love with fishing are likely to upgrade gear faster than the folks who already have great gear they only replace when it breaks.

Do you need words to have conversations?

No, you don’t. Think of all your customer interactions as conversations. If you create a coupon for 10% off, don’t stop at 10% off. Have a conversation about why they should buy from you and what getting extra can do for them. You can do this with words or images of best sellers and customers enjoying your products. Think about the fishing store example. Offering a 10% off coupon is great, but adding a picture of a grandparent teaching their grandchild how to fish is even better. It turns the coupon into a visual conversation.

If you are a Shopify store and want to look at other ways to engage your customers visually, take a look at Stylaquin. Stylaquin delights and engages shoppers, so that they stay longer, view more items, come back more often, and buy more when they do!

Does Your Site Do This?

How to create interactive content Google loves!

Posted on March 18, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

What does having "Interactive" content mean?

Google sees Interactive content is any type of content that requires active engagement from its users, more than just reading or watching. This can include quizzes, polls, calculators, interactive infographics, and other forms of content where the user’s input directly influences their experience or the outcome they see. From an SEO perspective, Google values interactive content because it can significantly enhance user engagement, dwell time (how long a user stays on a page), and user experience. Not surprisingly, all of these are factors in search rankings.

Google’s mission statement is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful.” Beyond that Google is a bunch of nerds who love the web and want to make it more fun. To that end, Google is rewarding sites with cool things that people enjoy interacting with. It makes them feel that they are helping to craft a better online life for all of us. Kind of like your mother helping you become a better person. (Sigh.)

Sites that are developing interactive content are ranking higher than sites who are just sticking to the same old things. So in order to rank better, you need to be more interactive and engaging. Google now requires this of you. If you are a site owner, I feel your pain. If you’ve been in business for more than a few years, you will remember when social media was the new must have thing and brands went from needing to post once in a while, to needing to post three times a day. (Stylaquin can actually help you make Instagram posts and reels in under one minute, read about it here.) Now Google is requiring you to add things that visitors can play with. We’ll look at some options for this, but first let’s dive into how Google measures interactive content.

Does Your Site Do This?

How does Google measure interactive content?

The truth is Google can’t really see what kind of interaction you have, it just counts events. Google defines events as user actions or browser actions that can be detected and responded to with JavaScript. These include actions like clicks, double-clicks, page refreshes, mouse movements, form submissions, key presses, and more. Google counts events to determine which sites and web pages are the most interactive. Here are some of the events Google looks for:

Click events: Detected when a user clicks on an element on the page.
DoubleClick events: Detected when a user double-clicks on an element.
Load events: Detected when a webpage or an element on the page, such as an image, has fully loaded.
Unload events: Detected when a webpage is being unloaded or refreshed.
Mouse events: Include mouse movements, mouse over (hovering over an element), mouse out (moving the mouse away from an element), and more. (Stylaquin drag events each count as an event.)
Keyboard events: Detected when a user presses a key on the keyboard.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

What is the best kind of interaction to have?

If you are looking from a purely SEO perspective, the answer is the interaction that creates the most events. More events means Google is happy, job done. From a brand perspective, the best interaction to have is the one that will actually engage your customers in a meaningful way. If you are selling services, then polls, quizzes and calculators are probably the best bets.

If you’re selling merchandise, the answer isn’t as simple. You can use the spin to win apps, It creates at least two additional events, but you have to give up margin to do that. You can add quizzes and polls, but they are interrupting customers while they are on the purchase path. Anything that distracts from the purchase path is not ideal. You can add AI recommendation apps, which can increase the number of items viewed, which often leads to more sales. Using AI for product recommendation shows real promise. Product recommendations can be annoying and clutter up the page, but they do create events, if customers see something they like, and that’s a good thing.

If you’re a Shopify store, you can add Stylaquin. Stylaquin makes the shopping experience more fun and engaging, so shoppers stay longer (increased dwell time), view more items (extra events), come back more often (the ultimate engagement metric), and buy more when they do (Bonus!). Stylaquin transforms any Shopify site in about fifteen minutes with no additional work for you and your team. Check it out in the Shopify App Store.

The future of online shopping is actually easy

Posted on March 12, 2024 by Stylaquin1

The future of online shopping is whatever is easy

A year or two after the iPhone came out on 2007 everything was abuzz with the sound of people predicting the demise of desktops. I was at a CEO roundtable when several really smart people postulated that we were going to have to immediately shift all of e-commerce to mobile, based on the adoption of Gen-X. The pivot was coming, but the timing and the demographic that triggered it was a ways off. Predicting the future of e-commerce based on usage by one demographic without sufficient context is like pointing to data on how many shoppers under sixteen rode bikes and predicting the demise of cars. The first demographic shift to iPhones was younger shoppers, but as mobile got easier, everyone started shopping on mobile. Seventeen years later, mobile has taken the lead. That isn’t bringing about the demise of desktops though. People shop on mobile, but they still buy more on desktop. Why? Desktop is a better buying experience, and grownups don’t have to pick one or the other. Shop on the commute, buy on a break. Waiting for a meeting to start, check out the sales and buy at lunch. Flash sales get more mobile adoption because they are time limited. You can’t force customers to shop a particular way, but you can get more sales by creating a better shopping experience.

In the future we will choose to do what’s easy. Period.

Younger shoppers embraced mobile before their elders for lots of reasons:

They couldn’t afford their own computers
They were concerned about parents snooping and they had more control over their mobile device
They developed the dexterity to master mobile at an age when learning new things is a snap.
iPhones were cool
Their friends were doing it
It was cheaper to buy kids a phone than a computer

Once Gen-X got jobs, they bought desktops and laptops. They still do everything on a phone, but it’s often easier to do things with a big screen, so they use both.

Does Your Site Do This?

Is AI going to make online shopping easier?

AI is great, and it’s going to revolutionize our lives in many ways. Not to be Debbie Downer but—AI is just a predictive algorithm. It looks at what most people will do/say/choose next, and meshes that with any known preferences, to come up with a really good guess. That’s an oversimplification, but it’s the gist of things.* Apple is betting on AI goggles. Asking shoppers to wear AI goggles to get a better shopping experience is a huge ask. What’s being offered by that experience that will be better than going to a store?

Is it faster? Do I need to go fast?
Is it more fun? What makes it more fun?
What problem is it solving? Do I have that problem?
Is it cool? Hard to look cool in goggles…

AI can help with predicting choices for making ensembles, and adding the mythical one more item to the cart. But does being shown lots of options make a better experience? Let’s outline the improved experience: “Hey shopper! We think you might like this, or this, or this, or this. Would you be interested in this, or this, or this?” It get’s old. Not quite as bad as getting spritzed with perfume at the entrance, but not awesome. Do you want to explore while you’re shopping, or do you want to hone in on the thing you’re looking for? These are two very different experiences. I’m going to predict that AI is going to influence the journey eventually, but I don’t see it as the holy grail of e-commerce anytime soon.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Faster and more fun

Here’s something to ponder—is it better to predict what online shoppers may like and try to serve it to them, or is it better to just make it more fun to explore on their own? Stylaquin is a faster and more fun way to shop online. It ticks two big boxes for a better online shopping experience. And it’s cool, don’t want to forget that one, so three big boxes. We’re seeing Stylaquin shoppers coming back three times more often and converting over 4% more when they do. If you are a Shopify site, you should give Stylaquin a look. I predict you will be intrigued.

*Reading x-rays is a great example of how AI will improve our lives. AI looks at a large data set of diagnosed x-rays and catalogs the known diagnosis (broken bones, fractures, arthritis, etc. and then, using that data, predicts what most radiologists will say an x-ray shows. It can’t replace a radiologist, but it can indicate where problems may be faster and with more accuracy. It never gets tired and it never has an off day. AI makes a great radiology assistant.

How to make a fabulous Instagram reel in under 1 minute

Posted on March 5, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

You can make a fabulous Instagram reel in less than one minute with Stylaquin

BIG shoutout to John Collins for coming up with this idea! In a recent demo for Stylaquin, John pointed out that Stylaquin would make it super easy to create beautiful instagram and Facebook reels and posts. I was gobsmacked. Of course it would! He said that in order to get any traction with social media these days he had to post at least three times a day and it was taking a LOT of his time. With Stylaquin he could just use the Idea Board pages, which are generated automatically and make screen grabs and recordings.

I wanted to see how long it took me to make an Instagram reel and, once I got the screen sized properly, it was less than a minute. I could have done a week’s worth of reels (21) in under half an hour. Talk about a time saver.

So here’s how to make your reel. (You do need a Stylaquin enabled Shopify website to do this.) Set your screen size to about 1708 x 1174 pixels. You want the recording area to be 1080 x 1080 pixels for Instagram, and you need a little extra room to crop out the browser top and edges. I added an image of the screen area being recorded and a recording of what I did to create the recording above.

Once you have the area you want to record selected, all you have to do is drag or flick the products you want to showcase onto the Stylaquin bar. Stylaquin’s algorithm automatically makes layouts using the images in the Shopify products carousel.

Practice dragging the products before you record, so that you’re sure you like the layouts. If the internet is slow, dragging each product will also cache the images in your computers memory so there’s no loading time. If you don’t like the layout in the Idea Board, you can easily change it by changing the order of the images in the Shopify image carousel. Because the layouts are fully responsive, they will also change when the size of the browser window changes. This means that the layout for your Instagram reels won’t look exactly like your Facebook shorts. How cool is that?

Making the reel was quick and easy. The hardest part was remembering not to let the mouse curser go into the area being recorded.

Pro tip: You can also adjust the Stylaquin bar position by sliding it side to side. This makes it easy to get the side to side size dialed in.

So to recap, Stylaquin makes it easy to create Instagram reels in under one minute. You can create layouts for all of your products as images even faster. If you’re on the Shopify basic plan this would only cost $29/month. But honestly, you should add Stylaquin to your Shopify site because it makes shopping more fun, so shoppers stay longer, often over three minutes longer. Stylaquin also delights and engages shoppers who use it so much that they come back to the site over three times as often, and they buy more when they do. Stylaquin is awesome on a lot of levels. Book a demo to learn more or head over to the Shopify Marketplace!

From Awareness to Retention: 4 phases of online shopping

Posted on February 27, 2024 by Stylaquin1

Four phases of the customer's online shopping journey

In the past decade, online shopping has transformed from a convenient alternative, to the primary method for many consumers worldwide. Particularly on platforms like Shopify, the rise of online clothing stores has redefined fashion retail, blending the convenience of e-commerce with the tactile allure of brick-and-mortar stores. As technology continues to advance, we’re witnessing a shift from a mere transactional approach to a more immersive, engaging online shopping experience.

Does Your Site Do This?

How Clothing Apps Enhance Each Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Awareness: The modern consumer often embarks on their shopping journey with a blend of curiosity and intent. Clothing apps present them with new styles, trends, and collections, bridging the gap between browsing and the discovery of must-have items.
Consideration: Once an item catches a shopper’s attention, the consideration phase commences. Here, features such as virtual try-ons, detailed product views, and customer reviews become essential, helping shoppers visualize how a particular item might fit into their existing wardrobe.
Purchase: This pivotal phase reaps the benefits of a seamless checkout process. Integrated payment gateways, secure transaction protocols, and an intuitive user interface can decisively influence a sale.
Retention: The post-purchase phase extends beyond mere delivery. Efficient return management, enticing loyalty programs, and personalized recommendations play a critical role in ensuring repeat business and fostering customer loyalty.

Spotlight on Top Shopify Clothing Apps and Their Unique Features

Stylaquin: Redefining the way online shopping is approached, Stylaquin delivers a captivating and delightful experience. Its distinctive Look Book feature lets shoppers swiftly browse through products, emulating the feel of flipping through a glossy magazine. The Idea Board, meanwhile, enables users to gather and curate items, presenting a unified view of all items that pique their interest. Importantly, Stylaquin offers store owners with crucial data on customer inclinations, empowering them to make informed product promotion decisions.
Virtual Try-On Apps: These apps empower users to virtually sample products, offering a near-authentic representation of how products might appear on them, bridging the online and offline shopping experience. Currently virtual try-on apps are limited to eyewear and makeup applications due to the complexity of creating full body virtual representations.
Review and Rating Platforms: In the digital age, customer reviews hold tremendous sway over purchasing decisions. Incorporating a robust review system into your Shopify store can substantially enhance its credibility and trustworthiness. Shopify has a wide variety of product review apps. Finding the right one requires determining the needs of your customer and the scope of your product selection.

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.

Conclusion: A Holistic Approach to Online Fashion Retail on Shopify

Online fashion retail is no longer solely about product transactions; it’s about delivering a memorable experience. From the instant a prospective customer accesses a Shopify store, each interaction, visual element, and feature plays a role in their overall journey. With trailblazing apps like Stylaquin at the forefront of enhancing user engagement and furnishing invaluable insights to store owners, the future of online fashion retail on Shopify shines brightly. As tech innovation continues, the boundaries between online and in-store shopping are becoming increasingly indistinct, promising shoppers an extraordinary online shopping experience.

How to get site visitors to stay a whopping 3:55 longer.

Posted on February 20, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

Adding almost 4 mins in time on site does magical things to SEO

I didn’t pick 3 mins and 55 seconds out of a hat. That’s how much additional time on site one of the larger newly Stylaquin enabled stores saw Stylaquin shoppers spend. This is something we see consistently with Stylaquin shoppers. Once we get some more data, I’ll ask the owner if I can share more info.

What does adding 3 minutes and 55 seconds do for SEO?

Does Your Site Do This?

I asked ChatGPT to act as an SEO expert and explain what adding 3 minutes and 55 seconds would do to a site’s SEO ranking. (Seemed only fair to ask an AI what another AI would think.)

Here’s what it said:

As an SEO expert, analyzing the impact of visitors staying longer on a site due to the use of an app like Stylaquin involves understanding several key factors related to user engagement, site performance metrics, and ultimately, search engine rankings. Here’s a breakdown of the potential impacts:

Increased Session Duration: When visitors stay on a site longer, the session duration increases. This is a positive signal to search engines, suggesting that the content is relevant and engaging to users. A longer session duration can contribute to better search engine rankings because it indicates that the website provides value, keeping users interested for more time.
Improved User Engagement: Stylaquin likely enhances the shopping experience, making it more interactive and personalized. This increased engagement can lead to higher user satisfaction, more pages visited per session, and potentially, a higher conversion rate. Engaged users are more likely to return, recommend the site to others, and convert into customers.
Positive Impact on Bounce Rate: If users find Stylaquin useful and it keeps them on the site longer, they’re less likely to leave the site quickly (bounce). A lower bounce rate is another positive signal to search engines, suggesting that the site meets users’ expectations and needs. This can positively affect the site’s search engine ranking.
Content Discovery and Indexing: The longer visitors stay on the site, the more likely they are to explore and interact with content. This increased interaction can lead to better content discovery by search engines, as it encourages the crawling of more pages. Moreover, engaging and interactive content, such as that provided by Stylaquin, can lead to more internal linking opportunities and improved site structure.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Social Signals and Backlinks: Highly engaged users are more likely to share content on social media or link back to it from their own websites or blogs. Although social signals are not a direct ranking factor for most search engines, they can lead to increased visibility and more organic traffic. Similarly, backlinks from reputable sites can significantly boost SEO efforts by increasing the site’s authority.
Enhanced Mobile Experience: Assuming Stylaquin is mobile-friendly, (Yup, it’s mobile awesome!) this increased time spent can also signify a positive mobile user experience. With mobile-first indexing, search engines prioritize the mobile version of the content for indexing and ranking. A seamless mobile shopping experience can thus further enhance SEO performance.

In summary, the use of Stylaquin and the resulting longer session durations can significantly impact a site’s SEO positively. By improving user engagement, decreasing bounce rates, and encouraging content discovery, it helps create a more favorable view of the site from the perspective of search engines. Consequently, this can lead to better rankings, more organic traffic, and increased conversions, which are critical objectives for any SEO strategy.

Thanks ChatGPT! I couldn’t have said it better myself. I wouldn’t have minded a touch more personality, but to be fair, I didn’t ask for sassy. Maybe next time.

9 Shopify Apps to Boost Your SEO Engagement Score

Posted on January 31, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

Wondering how to get visitors to stay longer, view more products and come back more often? Here are 9 Shopify apps that can help

If you have done the work to get more visitors to your site, well done! (Here’s a post about getting more traffic, if you haven’t.)The next step on the path to online success is getting visitors to stay longer and come back more often. Getting them to look at more products will increase sales, so yah, that’s good too. Engagement is one of the most important metrics in SEO. Increasing engagement will not only improve your site rank, and get you more organic traffic, it will also lower the cost of ads. Win, win, win!

Let’s look at nine of the best apps to jumpstart your engagement.

Stylaquin:

Stylaquin is the only app that increases engagement by transforming the online shopping experience. If you are looking for real, long term engagement, the best way to stand out and get visitors to stay longer, view more items and come back more often, is to make your store more fun to shop. Stylaquin is an excellent tool for Shopify store owners looking to enhance the user experience and increase engagement on their site, especially for stores where visual presentation and customer interaction play a crucial role in the shopping process.

Strengths: Stylaquin is designed to make online shopping more engaging and fun. It features a Look Book for easier browsing and an Idea Board where customers can collect and curate all the items they are interested in. They can also change options like colors and sizes right on the idea board. This can lead to shoppers viewing more items, staying longer on the site, and potentially increasing purchases. Its mobile-friendly design ensures a consistent user experience across devices.

Weaknesses: Stylaquin’s unique approach might be more suited for stores with visually appealing products or those that benefit from mix-and-match style presentations. It might not be as effective for stores with less visual or more standardized products.

Does Your Site Do This?

Omnisend Email and SMS Marketing:

This app is great for email and SMS marketing, offering features like automated campaigns, easy-to-use analytics, and SMS marketing tools. It’s known for its ability to recover abandoned carts and learn more about customers through analytics. While email doesn’t directly create engagement, it can remind customers of your brand and get them to return to the site which will improve your engagement score.

Strengths: Offers automated campaigns, easy-to-use analytics, and SMS marketing tools. Effective for recovering abandoned carts and learning more about customers through analytics.

Weaknesses: May require a learning curve to fully utilize all features. You must create emails to send regularly, so there is work for you or your team. The free plan is limited in terms of email contacts and monthly emails.

Loox Product Reviews & Photos:

Loox is great for showcasing customer reviews and building trust. It automatically gathers photo and video product reviews and displays them in customizable widgets, enhancing social proof and encouraging purchases Reviews don’t directly impact engagement, but increasing trust is a good way to get customers to browse and often return to the site.

Strengths: Automates the collection of photo and video product reviews, enhancing social proof and encouraging purchases. Customizable widgets are a plus.

Weaknesses: Some users may find the customization options limited, and it might not be as effective for stores with fewer products or lower traffic.

Boost Product Filter & Search:

This app enhances the shopping experience by providing advanced search and filtering capabilities. Features like spell-check, synonyms, auto-suggestions, and stop-words help refine search results. Making it easier for shoppers who know what they want to find what they are looking for improves the overall shopping experience. Avoiding spelling errors makes the brand look professional, which is important for building trust.

Strengths: Enhances the shopping experience with advanced search and filtering capabilities, including spell-check, synonyms, auto-suggestions, and stop-words.

Weaknesses: The advanced features might be more than what smaller stores need, potentially adding unnecessary complexity.

Justuno:

It leverages AI for conversion optimization, offering pop-ups, banners, and other tools to capture leads and increase conversions.

Strengths: Uses AI for conversion optimization with pop-ups, banners, and tools to capture leads and increase conversions. Versatile for various marketing strategies.

Weaknesses: The AI-driven approach might not be as customizable as some store owners would like, and there could be a learning curve to fully exploit its capabilities. Not all customers want popups and banners interrupting their shopping experience.

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Candy Rack | All-in-One Upsell:

This app integrates upsells at various points in the buying process, using AI-driven recommendations to optimize mobile shopping experiences.

Strengths: Integrates upsells at key points in the buying process using AI-driven recommendations. It has a mobile-first approach and quick loading times.

Weaknesses: Some store owners may find the AI recommendations don’t always align perfectly with their specific product mix or customer preferences.

Pinterest Integration:

The Pinterest app can turn your Shopify store into an inspiration hub, offering real-time catalog updates, organic discovery, and shoppable ads (source: Plerdy).

Strengths: Offers real-time catalog updates and organic discovery. The app includes shoppable ads and detailed tracking with the Pinterest Tag.

Weaknesses: Its effectiveness heavily relies on the visual appeal of products and may not be as beneficial for stores with less visually-oriented products.

ReConvert Upsell & Cross-sell:

This app optimizes the checkout and post-purchase experience, boosting average order value with one-click upsell offers and revitalizing the thank-you page.

Strengths: Optimizes checkout and post-purchase experience, boosting average order value. Includes a drag & drop editor for custom upsell strategy.

Weaknesses: Might be overwhelming for new users or smaller stores due to its extensive customization options and features.

Infinite Options:

This app is ideal for stores offering customized products, allowing endless product options and dynamic add-ons.

Strengths: Allows for unlimited customization of products, ideal for stores offering personalized items. Includes options for engraving, monogramming, or custom printing.

Weaknesses: For stores with a simpler product line, the app’s extensive customization options might be underutilized.

How to Bust Out Your Google Engagement Score!

Posted on January 22, 2024 by Stylaquin1

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

Using engagement to improve your Shopify site's Google rank

Last week’s post was about how to get more traffic to your Shopify site. Once you get some traffic coming in you need to engage it. Google’s key metric for Google is happy searchers. (If you want to understand how Google really works, download our free e-book “How to Outsmart Google”.) Google determines how happy searchers are by measuring engagement. In this post I’ll take you through how Google measures engagement and how to dial that in. Google fields 8.5 billion searches a day. They can’t send all their traffic on any one search to just one site. It would crash the site. So, moving up in the ranks is like starting a bike in tenth gear. It’s really hard and slow at first, but once you have momentum it gets easier and it goes faster.

Click-Through Rate (CTR)

CTR is a bit of the snake eating it’s own tail. Click-through rate is the percentage of people who click on your website’s link in search results after seeing it. Yup, you need to have created ads or high ranking content for this to come into play. It’s mostly for ads, and yes, Google rewards you when you buy ads. Adding CTR to the engagement score is Google putting a big fat finger on the scale for ads. Google believes that a high CTR suggests that your content is compelling and relevant to users. It can also mean that you have a knack for creating good ad copy. Read on, because there’s more to the story.

Bounce Rate

Bounce rate measures the percentage of users who leave your site shortly after visiting a single page. This is why having a compelling home page is so important. A lower bounce rate indicates that visitors are finding what they’re looking for and engaging with your content. Getting visitors to view a second page is the only way to reduce bounce rate. There are three questions you need to help visitors can answer quickly when they visit your home page.

What are you selling?
Why should your customer care? (What’s in it for them?)
What should they do next?

Go ahead and take a moment to visit your site’s home page and see if it answers those three questions. It’s harder than it looks, and crazy important. I’ll wait.

Dwell Time (Time on site)

Dwell time is the amount of time users spend on your site. Longer dwell times suggest that visitors are finding valuable content, which tells Google that your site provides a good user experience. This is a simple time measurement metric. You can’t fake it and even a few seconds longer will move you up in the ranking. Getting shoppers to stay longer is not easy. You are competing against life for their attention. Lots of moving, flashing, things probably won’t help. Who is your target customer? What matters to them? Putting together tight collections and having compelling photography really helps with this. If your customer is cheap, offer lots of discounts. If your customer is chic, offer a sophisticated design. Here’s a post on leveraging cheap and chic as a differentiator.

Pageviews and Events per Session

This metric measures how many pages a user views during a single visit to your site. The more pages visitors view, the more it shows Google that visitors are engaging with your content. Pageviews are part of what Google counts as events. Events are the sum of all the things visitors do when they engagement with your site. Clicking a link, visiting a page, adding to cart all count as events. Getting visitors to view more pages and do more things that cause events to be counted is a big deal. It’s hard to get visitors to view even one more page, so getting lots of page views is gold. Shopify sites can add recommendation apps to their site. But I think it’s easier to make shopping faster and more fun. (Biased toward Stylaquin for this one.) You can’t increase the amount of time visitors have to shop, but you can make it faster to shop, so they have time to see more items.

Does Your Site Do This?

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Comments and Engagement on Site

User-generated content, such as comments on blog posts or discussions in forums, count as engagement. Meaningful interactions on your site will signal to Google that your content is valuable and fosters a sense of community. Blogging about your products and linking to them is a good way to do that. Making it easy for customers to leave reviews is another way.

Instagram and Facebook are online fashion’s best friends when it comes to social engagement. Creating a real community of people you connect with, and offer valuable content to, takes time and focus. This is just another example of why having a very targeted audience is key to creating connection. Here’s a link to our free e-book on creating personas so you can focus your brand on your target customer. I don’t want to knock blogs and content. This is after all a blog post that you’re reading. But if you are a Shopify Store, you’re selling products. You don’t want them to go to your blog, you want them to go to your store. In the time it takes to create a blog post that will rank, you could created a boat load of instagram and Facebook posts that just show what you sell. Make them interesting, uplifting, pretty, funny and so on to get followers as well as click throughs.

Social media takes time to learn and master. Don’t try to get every channel going. You need a team for that. Pick the one that is most important to your customers and just do that one to start. If you already have a channel or two working, then branch out. Any channel can work, but it takes months to get it going and years to make it big. The TV show “Emily in Paris” is actually a good example of clever social marketing. It took our fictional hero a while to get the ball rolling even though she’s adorable, has a FABULOUS wardrobe, is a social media professional, and she lives in Paris. Work with what works best for your personal style and privacy needs.

Repeat Visitors

Returning visitors may be the ultimate signal to Google that users find your site valuable and are coming back for more. How do you get more repeat visitors? You have to create a compelling experience, and you have to have products that customers want. Wish lists can help. Setting up a good email program is another great way to get the same customers to come back. New items, sales, interesting info about the products all work. If you want to see a great example of how a family owned business can create quality email about their products, sign up for the emails at Cross Jewelers. Every email tells a story about a product, and they rarely are offer any sales, so they aren’t giving up any margin. It isn’t flashy, but it’s consistent and they’ve grown quite a bit over the years, so something is working.

Is there an easier way to improve your engagement score

Honestly, this is where Stylaquin is head and shoulders above anything else out there. It makes shopping fun AND it has an idea board that let’s shoppers save all the things they liked but didn’t buy. We’ve seen Dwell time go up 70%. We’ve seen product views go up over 180% when visitors shop with Stylaquin. We aren’t sure if visitors come back because it was just more fun, or if they wanted to see if what they left on their idea board was still there, but Stylaquin shoppers come back up to 28% more often, and they buy more when they do. Stylaquin is the total package for increasing engagement. Check it out.