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?

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.

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!

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.

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! ““

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.

Rock your Shopify Store with Killer Apps

Posted on October 10, 2023 by Stylaquin1

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

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

The Challenge: Filtering the Essential from the Extravagant

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

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Adopting a Customer-Centric Approach

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

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

The Easy Way to Get Everything You Need in One App

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

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

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Why Stylaquin Resonates with Female Shoppers

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

Reimagining Your Shopify Clothing Store with Stylaquin

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

Crazy Better than a Shopify Wishlist!

Posted on October 4, 2023 by Stylaquin1

Crazy Better Than a Shopify Wishlist!

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

The Silent Workings of a Traditional Wishlist

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Unlocking the E-Commerce Potential with Stylaquin

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

A Fun and Engaging Visual Journey

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

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

Beyond the Wishlist

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

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

Data Analytics: Actionable insights

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

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Traditional Wishlist vs. Stylaquin

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

Driving Profits Through Enriched Customer Engagement

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

The Easy to add Shopify Wishlist that sets you apart!

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

Tailoring the Best Clothing App Experience on Shopify

Posted on October 2, 2023 by Stylaquin1

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

The Intersection of Fashion, Tech, and E-commerce

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

Criteria to Evaluate Shopify Clothing Apps

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

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Top-Rated Clothing Apps on Shopify

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

Features That Make These Apps Indispensable for Fashion Entrepreneurs

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

Remember to make it fun!

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

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 Time on Site impacts SEO

Posted on September 14, 2023 by Stylaquin1

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

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

Let’s break that down into 4 components.

Increased engagement: The longer a visitor spends on a website, the more engaged they’re likely to be with your content. We spend time with stores we like, so increasing time on site also leads to increased brand awareness, product interest, and ultimately, sales.
Improved user experience: If visitors are spending a lot of time on a website, it’s a good indication that they’re finding the site easy to navigate and the content valuable. This kind of positive user experience increases customer loyalty.
Better search engine rankings: Time on site is one of the metrics that search engines use to determine the quality and relevance of a website. If visitors are spending a lot of time on a site, search engines see this as a sign that the site is providing high-quality content and improve its ranking accordingly.
Higher conversion rates: When visitors spend more time on a website, they learn more about the brand and products, which leads to trust, which, as I mentioned in the Post on SEO Metrics, leads to higher conversion rates. In addition, longer time on site is often an indicator that a customer is closer to making a purchase.

Does Your Site Do This?

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

Here are some thing to consider:

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

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

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

AI is going to destroy keyword SEO

Posted on August 3, 2023 by Stylaquin1

AI built websites are going to destroy keyword SEO

Here’s a bold prediction about how AI will change SEO: engagement is going to become the single most important metric in determining your website’s Google rank, and it’s going to happen a lot sooner than you think. I read an article by tech thought leader, Om Malik, titled AI & Internet’s existential crisis. The threat he pointed out is that AI can create almost infinite websites with SEO designed to rank well with Google and other search engines in less time than it takes a person to come up with a good keyword strategy. Remember content farms that were only limited by the number of humans they could find to create cheap content? Now there’s no longer a limiting human factor. The sites that use AI to manage SEO will outperform the sites that are created by humans. The proliferation of machine-made sites, linking and amplifying each other in an ever-expanding web of SEO keyword goop will inevitably muddy the waters of the internet to the point that keywords, and even content itself, can no longer be trusted as the best way to direct searchers. Wow. That’s going to make online marketing even harder. It will look like what happened to email marketing—only it will happen in months, not years.

So what’s the pushback?

What will the search engines do when faced with a tsunami of content? Well, Google recently limited the content crawled on websites and started favoring new content. That means the AI content bots will adjust and start refreshing content more often. AI can iterate on one top-ranking piece of content infinitely. Every time search engines defend against an AI strategy to beat the algorithm, AI sites are going to come up with new strategies. It’s going to be a never-ending whack-a-mole game at mind-boggling speeds. The Google and Bing bots are going to be using AI to detect AI content. AI-generated sites are going to be constantly adjusting to stay ahead of the algorithm. But, wait. STOP! If all the legitimate sites are using AI too, how will the search engines sift through all the churn and clutter to determine where to send searchers?

Does Your Site Do This?

Searchers not bots

Remember, Google’s #1 success metric is how happy searchers are with the results provided. Google’s job is to make people happy by finding the best website, or information, to answer the searcher’s query. Without reliable keywords and unique content, how will the search engines determine which sites to send searchers to if there are umpteen million of them all looking remarkably the same? More importantly to you—how will you get the search engines to send searchers to your website?

What about ads?

You can, and probably will, spend a ton more money on advertising. But even ad spend is directly linked to your site’s SEO rank. So how do you outsmart AI and also make nice with the search engines?

Change is coming!

That’s where my bold prediction comes in. I think the most likely answer is going to be a huge shift in the importance of customer engagement as a key SEO metric. Customer engagement may well become the most important metric used by search engines to rank websites. Think about it for a minute. Customer engagement is the hardest metric to fake. Engagement tracks events, the things shoppers do on your site. Getting shoppers to engage with your website, look at more products, click on more things, play with more things, and return to your site more often is the only way to improve your engagement score. AI can’t help with that. You can’t fake real people having fun and participating in an experience of discovery. But you can make a website more fun to shop, more interesting, more memorable, and more likely to get return visitors. The easiest way to increase engagement is simply by adding Stylaquin to your website. If you’re a Shopify store and haven’t taken a few minutes to check out how Stylaquin get’s shoppers to view 180% more products, stay 70% longer, and come back 25% more often, now might be a good time watch the video below and visit the Shopify App Store. If you’re not on Shopify, give us a call, or join our waiting list.

Whatever strategy you use to create more customer engagement on your site, be creative, have fun, and don’t lose sight of the simple truth that you can’t out-iterate AI, but you can be way more fun to spend time with. As humans, we all seek out fun things, and happily go back to the things we enjoyed doing. The best engagement strategy is to be the website that’s the most fun to shop!

P.S. If you’d like to learn more about increasing engagement here’s a blog post on How to Increase Engagement Without Spending a Fortune.

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?

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.

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.

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6 ways to improve your Shopify site’s speed

Posted on June 16, 2023 by Stylaquin1

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

Why is site speed important?

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

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

How to check your site’s speed

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

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Optimize your images

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

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

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

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

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

Delay popups

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

Lazy load your images

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

Remove unused apps

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

Update your theme

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

Make sure your theme uses a CDN

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

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

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

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

Understanding Your Target Audience

Does Your Site Do This?

Start with Bestsellers

Let Shopify do the heavy lifting

Use color

Sort your table by date

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

But wait! What about new products?

A/B testing is easy in Shopify

Get Your Holiday Sales off to a Sane Start

Sales strategy

Compete as a small business

Pricing

Does Your Site Do This?

Get attention without discounting

Make a collection for sale items rather than the whole store

Stocking stuffers and table gifts

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Collections are an underused tool

Put a bow on it!

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

Crazy Better Than a Shopify Wishlist!

Does Your Site Do This?

Add a Styling Board and a Wishlist!

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

Does Your Site Do This?

Remember to make it fun!

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

Let’s break that down into 4 components.

Does Your Site Do This?

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

AI built websites are going to destroy keyword SEO

So what’s the pushback?

Does Your Site Do This?

Searchers not bots

What about ads?

Change is coming!

New versus Best Sellers and how best to leverage them both

Best Sellers

Does Your Site Do This?

New

Is that all there is?

Want to increase sales? Try using these magic words!

New

Does Your Site Do This?

Free

Save

Sale

Sex

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

Why is site speed important?

How to check your site’s speed

Does Your Site Do This?

Optimize your images

Delay popups

Lazy load your images

Remove unused apps

Update your theme

Make sure your theme uses a CDN

Book a Quick Demo!