Succeeding With Shopify : How To Build A Shopify Content Marketing Strategy That Convert (PART I)

 Succeeding With Shopify 

How to Build a Shopify Content Marketing Strategy That Converts (PART I).

Welcome to "Succeeding With Shopify"! Owning your own e-commerce site is one of the most rewarding and fulfilling things you can do in your life.

Knowing that you have unlimited income potential and that everything depends on the rigor of your work is very liberating and motivating. While having an online store is a dream for many, few actually take the step and create one. You are therefore part of a unique class of individuals.

Of course, creating a store has never been easier, thanks to Shopify. In fact, setting up and launching an e-commerce site is now as simple and painless as creating a WordPress or Blogger blog, and this is thanks to e-commerce platforms like Shopify.

What do you need to start your e-commerce site?

There are a few initial things you should have or accept if you plan to create your own e-commerce site, even before you start setting up your store or decide what type of products you are going to sell.

You should ask yourself if you have, or are willing to cultivate, the qualities on the list below to give yourself the best chance of succeeding in online sales. Here are some points to consider if you are thinking of embarking on this adventure.

• Are you able to devote the necessary time to make your store a success? This could include several hours a week setting up your site while holding down a full-time job or managing your usual responsibilities. Even if you are successful and work on your store full-time, you will need to spend time each week preparing orders, shipping, updating your store, communicating with customers, and keeping up with the news in the industry of the products you sell.

• Do you have the ability to invest in your store while meeting your financial obligations and possibly compromising the lifestyle you are accustomed to, in order to free up funds to set up your store? Even if you take out a loan to start, you are taking a financial risk and must ensure you are prepared for it.

• Can you work on your store for a year or more without seeing any profit? The Small Business Administration estimates that the average small business does not make a profit until its second or third year of operation.

• Will you be able to stay motivated even if you feel you are not meeting any success with your store? You might have to work for a long time before seeing the slightest success, and most people give up before reaching that tipping point. Will you be able to force yourself to do the necessary daily work while living your normal life, including working another job, all without any visible reward in the near future?

• Are you prepared to accept potential failure? You could provide the work, live frugally, or take out a loan to invest in your business, buy a lot of stock, and do countless other things to succeed, only to finally realize that it will never work as you currently have it set up. The competition is fierce, and it takes not only skill and perseverance to run an online store but also luck. It is possible that you may never take off, and you must be prepared to take that risk.

Why you should create an e-commerce site

Even if it may seem like a venture reserved for people with a lot of free time and money to invest, there are great reasons to take on the challenge. Yes, it's hard work, but it also has advantages that make up for the difficulty of the process. Here are some of the positive aspects and outcomes of launching your own online store.

• You are your own boss. This means that no one tells you what to do, and your successes (or failures) are entirely your own. Many dream of being their own boss and dislike their current job or supervisor, but few actually have the opportunity. You will undoubtedly accomplish something that many people dream of.

• You can work from home. That's right; you don't have to go to the office. You don't even have to leave your house. You can skip the shower if you want. You can work barefoot, in your underwear, or however you like (blinds down, of course). Besides the comfort factor, you also have the option to work the hours you choose and take time off whenever you want. If you decide to work ten days and then take five off, no one will stop you. Of course, if you ship the goods yourself, you may be limited by your customers' needs, but you will still have great freedom.

• You have the potential to earn an unlimited amount of money. You know that in your regular job, no matter how hard you work, the most you can hope for is a series of raises. Even with the best luck in the world and working harder than anyone, you won't get rich on your salary. But with an online store, the harder you work and the luckier you are, the more money you make. Becoming a millionaire is (within the realm of possibility) when you are self-employed.

• You are preparing for the future. The fact is, physical stores are on their way out. If a technology is created to ship an item and have it arrive at the customer's home or business in a few hours (like Amazon's drone delivery program or the use of 3D printers), physical stores will have no more advantages and many disadvantages. Currently, their only advantage is that you get the item immediately. In the future, the benefits of in-person shopping are likely to be surpassed by those of online shopping, and you will already be there, ready to meet the demand in your niche.

• You benefit from many advantages compared to opening a retail store. E-commerce offers many advantages to business owners compared to physical stores, perhaps even more than for customers. For example, you stay open 24/7, 365 days a year. Can you imagine the cost of operating a physical store 24/7? Furthermore, you don't have to pay rent, and utilities and startup costs are significantly reduced.

Why you should create a Shopify store

While there are huge advantages to creating an e-commerce site, there may be even more to doing it with the Shopify platform. In fact, many of the risks and potential problems mentioned in this introduction are minimized or eliminated thanks to Shopify. Whether or not you create an e-commerce business is up to you, but if you decide to do it, you absolutely must use the Shopify platform. Here are a few reasons:

• Save on design. Normally, the design costs for your store would amount to thousands of dollars for a designer capable of creating a professional-looking site and programming all the necessary e-commerce functions, including security. With Shopify, there's no need to invest thousands of dollars. You simply pay for one of the four available plans, and you get the perfect e-commerce site.

• Benefit from the entire Shopify team. You don't just get a site template with Shopify, but a turnkey store where all the bugs have been fixed, which has been rethought and reworked to work perfectly and include virtually every feature imaginable.

• An intuitive platform. The platform is so intuitive that you can start building your store right after logging in. You may need to consult the help pages for some advanced features, but to add products, customize the design, and do other basics, you can start right away, with almost no learning curve.

• Unmatched security. The law requires an e-commerce site to take certain measures to protect customers' financial information, but with Shopify, you don't just get sufficient security, but one of the highest-rated security systems on the market. You don't have to worry about programming security protocols or protecting your site from all sides against thieves. Shopify does all the work for you.

• Optimized for SEO (Search Engine Optimization). If you paid a designer for a custom e-commerce site, you would spend thousands, even tens of thousands of dollars, without getting Shopify's features. One of them is its optimization for search engines. With Shopify, your store has the best chance of ranking high in results and bringing you organic traffic.

• Detailed analytics. With Shopify, you see exactly where your customers are coming from, what keywords they are using, where they are going on your site, and how long they are staying. All this information has one main goal: to allow you to adjust your Shopify site and your marketing efforts to attract as many people as possible and make them stay. You still have to offer a good products, but Shopify helps you market your site much more effectively.

• Mobile optimized. Your site is already optimized for mobile and will remain so in the future. With Shopify, you get a responsive site that works on any mobile device. As this quickly becomes the primary mode of shopping, your site will only get better, with the platform's engineers ensuring you always keep up with technology.

• Hosting is included. Shopify has an advantage that many platforms don't have: your site is hosted by them, and your payment gateway and other shopping cart features are already managed. Not only does this save you money (no separate hosting fees), but you will always have enough bandwidth and unmatched hosting security.

• Extreme reliability. Shopify didn't become the number one e-commerce platform by accident. Its popularity comes from its great reliability. When your store starts to get more traffic, you lose money for every second of downtime. Shopify minimizes this risk as much as possible.

• A rich app store. The Shopify App Store is full of programs created by talented designers to further enhance your store. You can already customize a huge amount with Shopify, but with the app store, you can create an irresistible force in the world of e-commerce.

• In the next part, we will get a general overview of e-commerce. Don't miss this opportunity to follow along in this guide, where I will explain everything you need to know about the Shopify platform: why to use it, how to use it, and what types of products and services it is suited for.

Leave a comment, or you can ask questions and offer suggestions. Happy reading!