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How to Get Your First Sale on Shopify in Under 30 days? A complete guide for beginners!
Last updated on
April 24, 2024
After pouring everything into your start-up to make it successful, your excitement and happiness reach new heights when you finally achieve your first customer as an entrepreneur. It's a result of pure hard work and sheer dedication that helped you to achieve this milestone.
But not everyone is going to get there the same way. It's easy to get lost in the trap of perfecting every minute detail and not focusing on how to drive people to your store. If you're an entrepreneur who is just getting started on Shopify, there is a high possibility that you might don't know where to start from. What mediums you could use to drive traffic to your store?
There is nothing wrong with not knowing everything, but what's important is to get started. That's why we created this comprehensive guide to help you get your first sale on Shopify in under 30 days.
We have broken down the guide into 4 steps to make it easy to understand. This guide will help you drive more traffic to your store, increase conversion rates, and bring you a good ROI.
In the meantime, let's start with the most searched question.
How long does it take to get first sale Shopify?
The duration of time it will take to get your first sale on Shopify depends on a variety of factors.
1. Domain Name
The age and domain authority plays a crucial role. The older your domain name is, the more chance you have to get a higher ranking on Google. This is because search engines like Google take brand stability (i.e., how long this domain name was held by you) into account.
2. Product Pricing
If your products are not priced competitively, or if you don't offer any incentives like bundle discounts, free shipping, gift cards, etc. it will be difficult for you to attract customers. This becomes even more important when your business niche is highly competitive.
3. Marketing
Whether you're a big established business or a new E-commerce store, a good marketing strategy is an essential part to pierce through the market and gain a competitive edge over your competitors. There are several unique ways to promote your business though social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, are important to build brand image. You can start promoting and building your audience even before you launch your Shopify store.
4. Shipping
One of the primary reasons customers don't complete a transaction is because they don't like the shipping costs. Either the shipping costs are too high or not transparent. You can use our Shopify shipping rates app to get complete flexibility to display accurate rates based on 20+ parameters.
You can't expect to get sales in within an hour of starting your Shopify store without putting in an effort. However, you can still expect to make your first Shopify sale in a few days or weeks with a respectable amount of network. The main thing here is to leverage what you have and optimize your store.
The first Shopify sale is only your first step, you need to focus on consistently growing sales every day to make your business successful. Read this guide to get an idea of what you can do to generate your first sale and to grow it.
How to Get Your First Sale on Shopify?
Here are some steps you require to follow to generate more leads.
Step 1: Focus on targeted traffic
Newbie Shopify store owners try to drive random traffic to their store in order to increase sales quickly. Getting customers to your store should be your first objective to get your sales ramped up. Without it, you won't know whether your products are priced right, if there’s anyone interested in your product or if your brand resonates with the audience you're targeting.
However, targeting a random audience to your store can significantly waste your time & resources. The wrong audience will not buy anything simply because they aren't interested in your product.
You need to target the audience which is interested and looking to buy your product. This is why you require to leverage free sources to grab the eyeballs of these people.
Reach out to your personal network to get your first few sales
Several entrepreneurs generate their first few sales from their personal connections, there is nothing wrong in asking your friends, colleagues, relatives for support. Even the tech giant Amazon generated its first few sales from friends, families of the founding team members. So, share the URL of your Shopify store on your personal social media accounts to easily spread the word.
You can email your connections as well and ask them to share your store on their personal social media accounts. Also, ask them to purchase any product from your store and leave a review. You can even share a copy of the review with them, which will be great to build credibility and drive more sales.
Make use of free sources
Make use of free sources to target your audience/potential customers. Join online Facebook groups and actively look out for forums that may be interested in your product or store. Build your reputation and network with other people to promote your product as well. After you've built up a strong profile, start promoting your products but in an organic manner, perhaps with a discount code.
You can also contact other experienced entrepreneurs or do your research to get to know some tactics to grow your online presence. Here are a few free platforms where you can build your audience and start getting sales.
Facebook: Facebook is one of the biggest platforms where people of diverse interests and geographic locations gather on a daily basis. You can join Facebook groups that are targeting the same audience as you are and start promoting your products.
The best way to build your audience will be to create your own Facebook page and start promoting it. Create a good post and leave a link to your Facebook page in the description and share in the targeted groups. Promote your page on a daily basis through pictures, posts, or videos specifically to quickly build your audience.
Instagram: Instagram is a powerful tool to get early sales on your Shopify store, especially because of its visual nature. Create a clean and attractive profile that clearly showcases what your store offers. You can integrate your store link in your bio and in your posts to get organic traffic.
Focus on videos also as they have a higher engagement rate as compared to pictures only. Try different strategies to increase your reach and sales.
Similarly, start leveraging other social media platforms and boost your sales.
Create Blogs
Creating blogs with targeted keywords is a great way to get organic traffic. You can create blogs about your products and leave a buy link in them. A good blog will help you target your specific audience and promote your products for free. You can publish these blogs on your website or do guest posting to gain even more exposure.
Find a top website in your niche that has a good amount of traffic, DA, and pitch them about your guest post idea. Decide which keywords and data you're going to use in your guest post and leave a buy or website link but in an organic way.
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Step 2: Paid Advertisement
If you want to get targeted traffic quickly, then paid advertising is the best shot for you. Paid advertisement allows you to target your potential customers by displaying ads. The best part is all platforms follow a cost-per-click model, that significantly reduces your bills and allows you to reach quality customers in the shortest time.
Every platform works differently, so it is best to choose the platform which offers you more reach in a cost-effective manner. If you're targeting a specific geographic location or demographic, you would like to do research beforehand to find the most popular/used platforms.
Instagram Advertising
Instagram is becoming more popular among the younger and millennial audience because of its visual format. It is one of the most engaged social media platforms and offers a large customer reach if you use the right tactics.
You can drive more traffic towards your store and increase your brand awareness with this.
Facebook Advertising
With 2.5 billion active users, Facebook is no doubt the most popular social network across the globe. Facebook offers a wide reach to vast demography, geographic location for you as an advertiser. You get to choose your target gender, age, interests, income, job titles, and location to reach your potential buyers.
Pinterest Marketing
Pinterest is often ignored or under-appreciated when it comes to marketing. But it is one of the most engaged social platforms with a majority user base of female audience with disposable income. Pinterest currently has 500 million monthly active users, and 25–34-year-old women make up almost 29% of Pinterest's user base.
47% of Millennials on Pinterest purchased something they had pinned. Several stated that Pinterest inspired them to shop even when they were not looking for anything!
Google Ads
If someone is confused or wants to buy something, the possibility is they will Google it. It is hard for a new website to get ranked high in its early days. Google Ads helps you to display your website at the top of search results for relevant search terms.
You can select text ads that show in the search results. Google Shopping Ads lets you display product images and their prices as well.
Google Ads depend on the keywords you pick, so it is important to do thorough keyword research to find the best keywords and search volumes.
YouTube Ads
YouTube is one of the most consumed and engaging platforms. Billions of videos get posted every day and billions of users watch them. This is a great opportunity for you to let your targeted audience know about your products and your store. According to a survey done by biteable on 694 participants, YouTube has the best Return on Investment (ROI) for videos, followed by Instagram and Facebook.
Also read: 9 Best Retargeting Apps For Shopify To Boost Sales [2022]
Step 3: Outreach Tactics
In this competitive environment, using only conventional promotion methods won`t be enough to reach more eyeballs. You need to imply some unorthodox methods to outrank your competitors and maintain your competence, fortunately, the internet has made it possible.
In this digital era, anyone can build a platform and, as a result, you can form connections with the right platforms through partnerships. This can help you to build your brand credibility.
Partner with influencers for paid shoutouts
Ads are no more the only way to reach your target audience and drive more sales. With the rise of social media, brands started endorsing celebrities to promote their products. Influencers offer you easy and direct access to your target customer base thus allowing you to drive more sales.
Influencers exist on every platform, be it YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, or Twitter. But it is really important to pick the right influencer with a sizeable (greater than 10,000) follower base.
The bigger the follower base, the more expensive charges of the influencer will be. You can always start with small to test the waters first to analyze how the audience is responding.
Strategic partnerships
Partnering with relevant businesses that don`t directly compete with your products is a great way to reach more customers.
The aim is to collaborate with organizations and offer your product/services as complementary for an exclusive discount.
Guerilla marketing
Guerilla marketing is a very unconventional marketing strategy to increase brand awareness among the audiences without even bothering them. All you need to do is to go outside and spread the word yourself.
Use the help of your friends or some creative ways to communicate your message with the target audience. The best part is it won`t cost you a single penny, sorry you might consider giving a treat to your friends.
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Step 4: Optimize your store
After successfully driving traffic to your site and turning them into your buyers, it is important to make sure your site offers a good user experience. You should also try Shopify analytics apps which can help you optimize your store by doing deep customer analysis. You can monitor performance of your marketing strategies, get actionable insights that will increase your conversion rates and drive profits.
Add a live chat feature
As a fresh brand with little to no reviews and brand trust, customers may have questions about your products or services. They might also show reluctance in buying your products at first, so it is important to add a live chat feature so they communicate directly with you to resolve all their doubts.
You don`t need to be online 24/7, you can set up to stop showing the chat button during non-working hours or holidays. Going this extra mile is worth it to get your first Shopify sale.
Optimize your Shopify website for mobile
A big portion of the e-commerce sales happen through mobile devices and if your store is not properly optimized for mobile devices, you`re losing a big chunk of your sales.
According to oberlo, mobile sales have grown multi-fold from $0.97 trillion in 2016 to $3.56 trillion in 2021.
Focus on optimizing your website for mobile devices to offer a good user experience and generate more sales.
Create upsells for your products
Upselling is a marketing practice that involves encouraging customers to buy an upgrade or more expensive version of the selected product. You get the opportunity to make more profits without doing an extra effort.
You can display upsell and cross-sells via a popup when the customers add an item to the cart. If you want you can also offer discounts, frequently bought together items or automatic recommendations. Don`t worry about the price, the app is totally Free.
Also read:
Everything you needed to make your first sale on Shopify in 2022
Starting your first Shopify Startup can seem a bit unnerving at first but after you get a hang of it, it will become a piece of cake for you. There`s nothing like a one-size-fits-all approach, you need to explore, try, and implement what you learn.
Everything eventually boils down to how you carve your strategy and implement it. If you do it right you will be able to start seeing great results.
I hope this guide helped you to get an idea of how to get your first sale on Shopify in under 30 days. Share it with your friends whom you think might help.
Keep growing and happy selling!
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