Shopify Business Development: How to Avoid Total Shopify Store Failure

Doing research about Shopify, you found out that almost 90% of the businesses that chose to use it as their e-commerce business platform actually failed. And that statistics quickly made you feel discouraged and disappointed. How can a top performing e-commerce platform fail so many businesses? A failure percentage of 90% is something that’s too serious to ignore. It means that only 10% actually made it to success and even so, a smaller part of those successful businesses still exist to this day.

Shopify must be a flawed platform. There must be something wrong with it! These are normal preconceptions that a business-minded person would have and without careful examination and study about Shopify, one will surely go for the other e-commerce platforms out there that seem to work better (at least according to the ads being spread around in different online channels). But what really are the reasons why there are so many businesses that failed with Shopify? Is it Shopify’s fault why they fell into the abyss of oblivion and failure?

These are questions that we’re going to answer in this article so just read on to find out what really are the things that can cause total failure and as well as learn some simple things that you can do to avoid such pitfalls.

Painting a Positive Meaning to the Word FAIL

Failing doesn’t feel good at all! The disappointment and stress it can result to is something that is not easy to deal with. But for an optimistic and business-minded person, failure can actually turn into a blessing. It can be a good lesson that one can learn from and after each failed attempt, the lessons gleaned from it could make one wiser. That is why failure can actually be an acronym and turn into a meaningful message that says “First Attempt In Learning”.

Failing opens a new level that you can take and this time, you’re wiser and more knowledgeable which means that your chance at achieving success is greater than the first attempt you did. So as you start building your online business with Shopify, it is important that you know the pitfalls and dangers that you need to avoid so the chances of your venture would fail will be minimized. Here are the dangers and pitfalls that you need to avoid and how you can solve them.

1. Choose a Marketable and Sellable Product

The most common mistake that these failed shops did probably due to excitement or simply out of poor judgment is choosing the wrong product. We have stressed several times in many of our articles and guides that choosing a product is important. You will need to consider several factors when picking one. First, you need to ask if the product is sellable and you’ll need to research whether there’s a good market out there that will have interest in purchasing it.

Next, you need to find a product that solves certain problems or one that makes life easier to the people that you are planning to target. A product that solves particular needs or assists in making regular tasks a lot easier and faster to accomplish will always be a sellable one. So take time to do market research and choose a product that will pass those qualifications. It will be a bonus if the product itself matches your passion or hobby. After all, there’s really nothing that feels more fulfilling than doing a business or selling a product that matches your passion, interests, and hobbies. When you find one, working on it won’t feel work at all but more of an extension of your passion, one that you will be happy sharing with your customers and feel so accomplished seeing them happy like you do.

2. Excessive Expense on Customer Acquisition Strategies

Funneling more and more people to keep flowing towards your site will entail a significant amount of money. Running ad campaigns on social media and many other channels isn’t cheap at all and the sad thing is not all of these people who will be directed to your site via those ads you placed in different online channels will not actually make a purchase. That is why you need to focus on other marketing methods that are available, those that are free or the ones that are cheaper but works more effectively than social media and Google ads.

Most of the businesses that failed spent so much in FB ads that they ended up having no money to pay for operational expenses and even for refunds. This is highly possible especially when you consider how much does a single ad campaign costs in every online channel that exists. It really isn’t cheap so it’s better to focus on content marketing, SEO, and other alternative marketing strategies. They work as effective as ads but don’t cost as much so moving that direction is going to be a wise move.

3. Put Focus on Customer Support

No business is perfect. Whether it is you who keep the stocks and do the shipping of the products or it is a supplier that is based overseas that handle everything in a dropshipping business arrangement, something will really go wrong anywhere within the process. That is why setting up a customer support department is crucial. It is this team that will serve as the front liners in calming customers and preventing them from filing any legal suit against your business.

But it should not just be a customer support team to the letter but one that is really supportive to every customer in the fullest sense. It is easy to feel comfortable after hiring some agents but without proper training, that team you created is still bound to fail. So take time and exert some effort in training the agents you hired and provide them with every tool that’s needed so they can offer efficient resolution to any problem or issue that customers might have.

Cutting down the all-important customer support budget is actually a recipe to a bigger disaster so find other aspects to cut down expenses from and leave the customer support budget as is. It simply is a crucial aspect of your business so spend on it generously and ensure that it performs at its best every single time.

4. Smoothen the Checkout Process

Abandoned carts and postponed checkouts account to about 60% of the total number of orders that Shopify stores get each month. Now that’s a significant part and a big chunk that could amount to hundreds if not thousands of dollars if only those purchases were pushed through and placed by those customers. One of the reasons why people don’t pursue with their purchase is a lengthy checkout process. That is why it is important that you streamline your shop’s checkout process and take down any unnecessary page that makes the overall process lengthy.

5. Start a Customer Retention Program

As more and more people visit your online shop and make a purchase, there will be those who will eventually come back and make another purchase. That process can turn into a routine for them until they turn into your loyal customers. And once they turn into one, you will need to be ready to turn them into your business partners using an efficient customer retention program like an Affiliate Ambassador Program.

There are plenty of apps that can assist you in implementing one for your shop but if you have so many things to do aside from monitoring every single one of your ambassadors and affiliate partners then definitely choose an app that can put your customer retention program into autopilot. Most Shopify businesses that failed didn’t care to implement any program that would turn loyal customers into promotion and advertising partners thus failing in the aspect of customer retention and further marketing efforts.

To avoid falling to the same fate that the 90% of shops fell into, you’ll need to start your very own Affiliate Ambassador Program today!

Failure Isn’t the End, It’s a New Beginning

Once again, FAIL shouldn’t mean an end for your goals and dreams, it should serve as a new beginning, a reset button that has been pressed so you can start anew and this time, you are better equipped with the lessons you learned and the wisdom you gleaned from the previous experience. Most of the top Shopify businesses out there didn’t make it the first time they tried building a shop.

They too experienced failures and were ridiculed for failing. Others even failed multiple times but refused to give up. You are never defeated until such time you decide to finally quit. When the going gets tough, it’s the tough ones that keep going. Study, research, and test products; learn from the top competitors in the market and adopt some of their best practices making a unique version for yourself of course.

Innovation is key and persistence is the driving force. Let the  success of others serve as your inspiration and in time, you’ll get your share of it as well. It will take time but nothing good really comes easy so give it your all and soon, success will smile back at you and reward you accordingly. Just don’t give up and you’ll be on the winning side all the time!

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