A few tips from Shopify about making the most of ecommerce platforms in the charity sector.

• Consider using a comparative shopping service
• Find the right one for you
• Link your CMS products to your Google ads
• Product reviews improve your SEO and increase revenue by 34%
• Make them easy to leave, e.g. emoji / star based
• Incentivise people to leave them
• Cross sell your products with plugins for Amazon / eBay
• Create a seamless ‘buy anywhere’ experience
• Promote your shop’s USPs
• Consider digital PR
• Complement seasonal products with other digital content
• Think outside the product, don’t consider your shop to be separate to other brand touch points
• Millennials are more interested in second hand items than new ones
• Use Instagram to style your products
• Cross and up-selling is possible with Shopify
• Use the launchpad feature to create a buzz around new product releases
• Use A/B testing to find the best configuration for conversion (e.g. Optimizely)
• Offer smart search to save your customers time and anticipate their needs
• Customise 404 pages with your best selling items
• 69% of carts are abandoned worldwide
• Utilise abandon cart emails to gain back 15% of lost customers
• Tell customers when stock is low to encourage faster purchasing
• Notify people when items they searched are back in stock
• Provide clear delivery and returns information up front so people don’t abandon in surprise when they get to the checkout
• Offer suggested donations – people give more because they don’t want to choose the lowest option
• Tell them exactly what their donation will mean (e.g. shopping list)
• Alleviating buyer’s remorse will encourage them to return for another great experience
• Large companies perform worse on customer satisfaction – they ignore the basics and go for quantity over quality