New versus Best Sellers

Posted on July 6, 2023 by Stylaquin1

New versus Best Sellers and how best to leverage them both

Highlighting new items and best-selling items is just good marketing. They are both great way’s to get customer’s attention, but they function differently in marketing, though there is overlap in the type of customer they will appeal to. Let’s start with best sellers.

Best Sellers

These are the most popular products and the backbone of your store’s sales. Never underestimate the awesome power of best sellers. Merchants have something called the 80/20 rule where 80% of sales come from 20% of products. Where stores get into trouble is that they get bored. I remember when I was an Art Director at L.L. Bean everyone was sick to death of telling the bean boot story. That’s the story about how L.L. sold his first batch of bean boots but most of them fell apart. He took back every broken pair and replaced them with the now famous bean boot and the rest is history. It’s a great story. Every time we ran it, sales went up. Especially with new customers. But everyone in the company had heard it a thousand times so they rolled their eyes when it came up. Best sellers are like that. They are often the tried and true, boring products, that just keep selling. Not the shiny new products that everyone is excited about. Do you have a best seller collection? You should, it’s easy and it works. Customers who are new to your brand will be looking to see if you have anything that interests them. Best sellers are best sellers for a reason, make sure they’re featured on your home page. Use them on landing pages for ads and promotions. Think of them as both a gateway drug to your brand and a favorite bedtime story you can tell often.

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.

New

New is also powerful, but serves a different purpose and a different customer. New is a magic word, customers never get tired of it. (There’s a Bar Hop on magic words that may be of interest.) Your existing customers will already be familiar with your best sellers so new items are the best way to get their attention. On a Shopify website it’s easy to create a collection of new items that keeps itself automatically updated. Having an automated NEW collection is an easy set it, and forget it strategy. You can also make sure your home page shows some new items, so that returning customers have a reason to stop by. There’s an important truth in marketing that it’s easier to get more customers to buy, than it is to get customers to buy more. Best sellers are more likely to get customers to buy than new items. It goes back to the 80/20 rule. If you don’t know if you should feature a best seller or a new item, go with the best seller. Most of you traffic will be new visitors and best sellers are your best bet.

Is that all there is?

So is that all there is to NEW and Best sellers? Nope. You can use this strategy in your ads and customer emails. In ads, focus on best sellers. They are already proven winners. In existing customer emails, focus on New with a dash of best seller. Think of it as you get new customers in the door with best sellers and then keep them interested with new items. Best sellers are also a treasure trove of goodness for emails that don’t offer discounts. Your customers love these items so talk about where they came from, what makes them amazing, all their benefits, and finish with other items that are similar, complimentary, or also best sellers. If you only send out discount emails you are going away free money and training your customers that they shouldn’t pay full price.

If you enjoyed this video, and got some good info, please join our mailing list. If you’d like to see a Shopify app that increases the number of items viewed by 180%, increases time on site by 70% and just makes online shopping more fun and engaging, here’s a link to the Stylaquin Video in the Shopify App Store.

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.

How to Increase Sales with Magic Words

Posted on June 23, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Want to increase sales? Try using these magic words!

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

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

New

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Free

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

Save

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

Sale

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

Sex

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

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

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

How to get customers to come back

Posted on February 17, 2022 by Stylaquin1

5 simple truths about getting more customers back to your Shopify website

Marketers often talk about the Sales Funnel. New customers go in the top and lost customers come out the bottom. The more customers who stay in the funnel, the better your overall sales will be since return customers typically buy more and more often. Many marketers focus on getting more customers into the funnel by buying ads and offering discounts. But if they are pouring out the bottom it can get very expensive. If you can reduce the number of customers that leave and never return, you will see big changes over time.

What is a good attrition rate?

Attrition is the number of customers that leave in a given period of time and don’t return. Every industry has a different benchmark, clothing has a higher attrition rate than grocery. Time between orders is another factor, if you just bought a refrigerator, you probably won’t be in the market for another one for years. No matter what you are selling, here are 5 truths about why customers leave and what you can to to fix them.

1) Boring sites don’t inspire return visits.

Put yourself in your customer’s shoes—there are infinite sites to choose from, do you go back to the boring one you’ve already visited, or just pick a different site? There are plenty of ways to make your site stand out. Great photography and design are key to having a site that stands out. Be sure to keep your target customer in mind when you design your site. What is inspirational to a 45 year old accountant, probably won’t do much for a 15 year old skateboarder. It seems obvious, but if your designer isn’t focused on the right customer for your products they won’t be showcased in ways that appeal to that customer. Here’s a tool that can help get everyone headed in the right direction the
Smart Shopify Persona Builder

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!

2) We would rather do fun things.

Let’s say you have a Shopify store selling women’s clothing. You can and must make it visually compelling for your target customer, but the basic shopping experience isn’t going to stand out since they are all the same. You can add a discount wheel, but discounts hurt your bottom line. You can change your theme, add loyalty programs or widgets but if you really want to improve the shopping experience you should look at what Stylaquin can do for a website. Stylaquin is coming to the Shopify App Marketplace in Spring of 2022. Here’s a link to a 2 minute video that explains what Stylaquin is and why it works so darn well. If you’d like to get in on Stylaquin before your competition, consider joining the Shopify Beta Group.

3. Life is your biggest online competitor.

Sometimes customers leave because life gets in the way—the doorbell rings, their boss calls or the commute ends. Giving them a nudge can get them back on board. Shopify has several plugins in their marketplace that will help you get started. Stylaquin also helps with abandoned carts because the items on the Idea Board are saved till the cookie expires, usually 7 days on an Apple device, longer on PCs. Being able to go back and see what they liked, but didn’t buy, gets customers back to where they were before they were interrupted fast.

4. Best sellers beat new items.

Merchants fall in love with their new items. Customers may or may not. Focusing on new items keeps a site fresh but best sellers are where the money is. When you showcase products on the home page, make sure to showcase best sellers rather than just new items. By their very nature bestsellers are the products most customers bought and so they are the most likely to attract new customers. If your bestsellers are not all that sexy, spend some time and energy on making them look great. It will really pay off. Increasing sales of best sellers by 5% will probably do more than increasing stale or underperforming products by 50%.

5. They just forgot about you.

Once a customer leaves your website they’ll probably forget about you. Adding a new experience like Stylaquin will help you stand out, but getting an email and marketing to them regularly is even better. There are several Opt-in forms available on the Shopify Marketplace. Choose the one that integrates with your marketing strategy, your CRM, and email providers.

Stylaquin

Shoppers stay longer and buy more!

Tag Archives: #marketing

New versus Best Sellers