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7 min read
The client needed a specialist to implement email and SMS marketing for their newly established online store. The client's main goal at the beginning of the collaboration was to acquire potential customers before the store's opening.
Monika Nastalska
Email Marketing Freelancer at SoftwareSupport
4 min read
CRM is a game changer for most companies. By automating workflow, lead generation & other operations, sales can be closed faster and more efficiently.
It's not a surprise that CRM is a game changer for most companies. Our client, an influencer marketing agency, needed to organize and speed up daily tasks, projects, and other operations. By automating workflow and lead generation, sales could be closed faster and more efficiently.
Automating workflow is all about business performance. You have a sequence of activities required to complete the process. Usually, it's used for repetitive tasks that don't need approval. With automation, they are accomplished by dedicated software. You no longer have to spend additional time doing things manually. If it's designed and implemented by a professional, you might be sure it will significantly improve your business efficiency.
Automation is something that every entrepreneur should consider investing in. Even with the best idea for the business, you won't succeed if you waste time and energy on tasks that can be fully computerized.
By automating workflow, lead generation, and other operations you get:
1. More control over data: It's easier to gather, organize and analyze all the details. This way, you know what to improve, what to focus on, or how much revenue you can expect.
2. Improved efficiency: All repetitive tasks are automated, allowing team members to focus on other areas of improvement, communication, and development.
3. Reduced human errors: It's easy to make a mistake if there's a lot of data. Every automation minimizes errors that could cost you a lead, client, or image.
4. Smooth communication: Tasks are assigned, and all employees are kept up to date. As a result, it's easier to prioritize assignments and focus on goals.
5. All tasks organized and easier to manage: Instead of manual organization, you immediately gather information in relevant locations.
Goals:
Company: Good Egg – an influencer marketing agency
As a marketing agency, we need our projects organized into workload trackers where the team can see and update everything. We have so many ideas of how Monday can help us reduce our workforce efforts, but we're not very gifted on the tech side, such as optimizations, integrations, etc. – Sharmayne Anandarajah, Project Manager at Good Egg, the Client
Project’s scope:
Project’s time: 3 weeks
Used skills: monday.com automation, sales funnel setup, business analysis & reporting, Integromat integration
Good Egg needed to improve the reporting dashboards and lead workflow for multiple sales channels across different regions. During the project, we consolidated multiple pipelines into a single pipeline for ease of use and visibility.
We set up two dashboards, one for each region and source of leads. This empowers the business to see where resources should be focused based on quarterly and monthly numbers of sales in each region.
We also used Integromat for advanced email routing from the lead generation email provider into the sales pipeline in monday.com. This saved the sales team time. It also provided a holistic context of conversations and information from lead emails into the monday.com lead pipeline. As a result, we were able to reduce the time to close sales and improve customer relationships.
CRM can be extremely helpful with automating workflow and lead generation. The thing is, first it has to be properly implemented and integrated with other tools. If your business wants to benefit from CRM, hiring a professional is better than trying to solve technical issues on your own. It will simply save you time, and time is money.
An organized and simplified workflow made the software easier to use in this case. Automated e-mail generation organized and simplified workflow made the software easier to use. Automated e-mail generation saved time, and reduced errors through auto-syncing information into monday.com columns on CRM. It also decreased the time to connect with customers.
Sales dashboards created enable data-driven decisions specific to each region. The sales cycle was shortened by a quicker turnaround for proposal creation and delivery.
6 min read
Hiring a freelancer has one serious flaw. You get lots of external data. SoftwareSupp integration gives a spotless data flow between tools & helps manage work.
Hiring a freelancer online has one serious flaw. You get a lot of external data and notifications that are hard to organize in one place without losing time. SoftwareSupp integration allows you to connect your favorite business tools with the project board to communicate with the expert. You can get automated updates on every new task, change, answer or estimated time on the project and significantly improve the workflow.
We know how valuable is our customer’s time. Integration with SoftwareSupp gives a chance to connect your project board with apps you use every day. It empowers your business with a spotless data flow between tools that help manage the work. It doesn’t matter if you’re running the company independently or have a large team and various departments. Automatization saves your time on unnecessary actions, so you can focus on growth.
It’s not only about getting notifications on every project’s update. Yes, it keeps you informed, but also offers a lot more. You’re able to customize the flow of information between apps. This way you can store all important data in one place or make it a part of project management in your company. By automation, you not only save time but also avoid human mistakes. Having a lot of information makes it easy to cause errors. Integration with SoftwareSupp improves internal communication and keeps everyone in the team updated.
The project board, which is a co-working space with your freelancer, stores all the information about the work that is planned, ongoing, or done. Naturally, it changes as the project develops. To stay updated, you can choose what you want to be notified about. It includes a new task, task update, new answer (comment), project description, and time reports.
First, you need to be registered on SoftwareSupp and have an active project. Once you have the access to your dedicated project board, there are two methods you can integrate SoftwareSupp with your apps.
We highly recommend the first solution – an API-based native integration. If you are a web developer (or have one on your team), it seems like the best choice. Why? This way, you are able to fully customize the process, based on your specific needs. You can control and manage the entire integration lifecycle, without relying on third-party software and its technical issues.
The second option is to integrate the project board with your tools through Zapier. It's software that allows you to build customized workflows (so-called Zaps). This option is recommended if you have a very limited budget. You can integrate projects on SoftwareSupp with your apps, but it comes with a few drawbacks, such as only five integrations in a free plan. Plus, you need to get familiar with the platform, which takes time. It's worth considering whether to invest in native integration development, rather than paying subscriptions for third-party software.
To use the second solution, you need to wait a little longer. SoftwareSupp is currently awaiting approval as a public app on Zapier. Follow us on social media to stay updated.
SoftwareSupp integration is possible to implement in your company by a developer right away. If you don't have a dedicated team, you can always hire a certified freelancer with us and be sure that integration works perfectly. Below, you will learn what steps to take and where to find the necessary information.
Go to your account settings and follow the next steps.
You will find here the unique API key and endpoints list that will allow you to integrate your business tools with SoftwareSupp.
Once you have the API key and endpoints, you can finally create the integration of your favorite tools with SoftwareSupp. Below are example requests to implement.
Follow this link to see the full documentation.
Whenever our app goes public in Zapier, you will find here an instruction. We will guide you on how to create a Zap (workflow) that allows integrating the SoftwareSupp project board with any app you want. To stay updated, follow us.
You already might have your favorite business tools. If not, below you will find 4 integrations that can make working with freelancers easier. Remember that every app gives different opportunities. It’s good to consult with an expert which of them are going to be useful for your purposes. This way, you can save time and money on testing irrelevant tools.
You might be asking yourself: is it possible to manage a business without a CRM? Clearly, it gives a lot of benefits and makes companies’ processes faster. If you are already using a CRM platform, we have good news! You can now integrate it with SoftwareSupp. You don’t have to spend time updating your CRM system with external information about freelance projects anymore. They will flow over there, while you focus on different things.
CRM you can integrate with SoftwareSupp: monday.com, Salesforce, Zoho, Pipedrive, HubSpot
Project management tools provide an overall view of all processes taking place in the company. The problem is, that without automation, it can give a headache. Updating data manually is not only slower, but there is always room for human error. When managing a lot of information, it’s easy to lose track of changing the project status or notifying the right team. Using SoftwareSupp integration, you can easily combine a freelance project with internal work easily.
Project management tools you can integrate with SoftwareSupp: Jira Software, ClickUp, Asana, Trello
Do you run a business on your own without using any additional software, such as CRM platforms or other project management tools? Or maybe not, but you still use e-mail as the primary tool for communication? In either case, you can swiftly integrate SoftwareSupp and receive notifications about every change or progress in the project.
E-mail tools you can integrate with SoftwareSupp: Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, MailChimp, Zoho Mail
Internal communication is key to getting work done faster, more efficiently, and seamlessly. Automated and customized notifications about your project with a freelancer will allow you to be always up-to-date. With SoftwareSupp integration, messages can be sent in a direct message or to a specific channel, such as your development team.
Workflow management tools you can integrate with SoftwareSupp: Slack, Microsoft Teams, Discord, Google Chat
Do you have an ongoing project on SoftwareSupp? Great! You can start using the integration immediately. Connect your favorite tools with the freelance project board and start saving time now. If you don’t have any projects, you can always try the service.
5 min read
Dedicated platforms make it easier to organize, manage and analyze data. HubSpot CRM implementation helps with automating work and growing sales.
When the company grows, it will ultimately need to structure its data. Dedicated software makes it easier to organize, manage and analyze contacts. One of the most popular, all-in-one choices is HubSpot. CRM implementation and functionalities of these platforms allow businesses to focus on automating work and growing sales.
I’m not only using HubSpot CRM but integrating, implementing and optimizing it. I prepare an entire strategy behind and do trainings for team members. – Roman Yakovchuk, SoftwareSupp Freelancer
Goals:
Company: GGK Grundbesitz
Project’s scope:
Project’s time: 9h
Unlike other CRM platforms, HubSpot offers a 100% free basic plan. It might be a perfect option for small or medium-sized businesses that have a limited budget or want to try the CRM in the company. It has some limitations, such as only five e-mail templates, HubSpot branding included or a limited segmentation list.
However, HubSpot offers different products. Depending on needs, companies can choose between so-called "Hubs": Marketing, Sales, Service, CMS and Operations. Each expands functionalities based on the selected plan (Starter, Professional, or Enterprise).
HubSpot CRM implementation gives a business a centralized database with contact segmentation. It helps to manage relationships, follow-ups with clients, download reports, forecast performance and simply grow sales.
If you're looking to start with a CRM in your company, the best you can do is consult with a CRM Expert. They will advise you on what platform to use based on your specific needs and budget.
The CEO of GGK Grundbesitz, a real estate company based in Germany, was looking for someone to guide them through the process of implementing a new CRM. Contactually, the platform they had been using previously, officially shut down in March 2022. They had over 10k+ contacts in the database that needed to be filtered and migrated. The main goal was to identify those relevant to their company.
Before the project started, the client was unsure what CRM to choose. He was thinking of HubSpot, but didn't know how it works or which plan to select. The budget for this project was limited, and the company needed someone to advise them and teach them how to use the platform.
After a short scoping session, the client decided to use the HubSpot CRM and their "Marketing Starter Hub" plan. The main reason for such a choice is the size of the campaigns. It would be impossible to handle so many emails through the "HubSpot Sales Sequences" in a short time.
Before the expert started HubSpot CRM implementation, he worked a little with the Excel database. It contained all the contacts that had to be imported. First, he filtered the list by selecting the most valuable contacts by postcode and location. It might sound easy, but there was a lot of manual work. In the end, out of 10,000 contacts, only 1,400 were imported. That means the company saved a lot of time by avoiding sending at least 8,600 emails to irrelevant people. Additionally, the more leads are imported to HubSpot, the more price grows. By filtering data manually in the first place, the freelancer could save some of the client's money.
The HubSpot expert set up the trial version, established deal stages and configured the pipeline automation. After that, he analyzed all valuable approaches to filter the database. The best option was automatically updated lists with predefined filters. Also, some filters were created and saved, so the customer can use them later.
At some point, as a result of the discussions with the customer, a new idea appeared. Why spend €360 per month for the HubSpot Marketing Starter plan if they could use a Mailshake. It's a cold mailing tool that gives them the functionalities they need for €41 a month. There was no reason to pay more, especially with the limited budget.
The company ultimately continued with a free version of the HubSpot CRM. The freelancer integrated the Mailshake, saving the client €319 per month.
After the HubSpot CRM implementation, the whole system and functionalities were tested. Once everything worked properly, the expert had a training session with the company's team members. He guided them on using the HubSpot, filtering the data, and setting up cold email campaigns.
The client received support after the first email campaign. An expert identified the challenge with a high bouncing rate. Mainly it was caused by a weak email addresses research and bounce testing. To reduce it, the freelancer suggested using sales tools like: Apollo.io, Snov.io, Hunter.io, Neverbounce.com, Zoominfo.com, and Zerobounce.net.
The basic HubSpot CRM implementation and integration of sales tools were completed in 9 hours. The customer got a ready-to-use system for managing client relationships and sending massive cold email campaigns. The expert could not only spend less budget than expected, but he also saved some client’s money for future operations.
5 min read
The average conversion rate that leads to purchases is 2.86%. Make sure your Shopify product variants are displayed correctly and avoid losing clients.
A customer contacted SoftwareSupp regarding the problem on the product page on Shopify. Product variants of out-of-stock items were still displayed as available. It led to confusion and unsatisfied customers, who were unable to get purchased goods. A Shopify expert was hired to fix the issue and prevent losing more clients.
Goal: Blocking a non-existing product variant to avoid customers choosing an unavailable combination of size and color.
Client: RoyalPets
Project's scope:
Technology stack: Shopify, JavaScript
Project's time: 12h
Products often come in different sizes, shapes, colors, etc. Moreover, assume a brown dog bedding in size “L” is sold out, but the same color is still available in other sizes. These are product variants. It’s different options for one item that customers might choose between. Store owners can easily add or edit them when using Shopify. Product variants are an essential option for giving clients a varied offer and customizing their shopping experience.
There are over 25 million e-commerce stores around the world. According to BuiltWith Web Technology Usage Report, almost 4 million are using Shopify. Customers have a lot to choose from. They have different preferences, so diversifying products is a minimum that sellers should do. If you want to stay in the game, give clients several choice options.
E-satisfaction is one of the most important factors determining business success. Without face-to-face contact with the seller, customers rely on them for other reasons. For example, trust. In e-commerce, it really takes a little time to lose client’s confidence. It might be a lack of secure payments, “About us” page, contact information or no reviews of the store. The User Experience design, in general, significantly impacts customer loyalty.
In this case, what caused the dissatisfaction, were issues with showing unavailable product variants. Consider the following scenario: you have finally purchased the product you have been haunting for a long time. Instead of the e-mail confirming the package was sent, you receive the information that the shipping time will extend because it’s out of stock. How would you react? Most likely, request a refund and look for a different store. This is exactly what most of the customers would do.
Unfortunately, purchasing unavailable products is still very common. Due to the lack of an automated ordering system or website issues, online retailers suffer from lost clients in this process. In this case, the Shopify expert found a simple solution to improve displaying product variants. It allowed the development of options in a way that complies with the Shopify specification without generating additional costs.
The latest research from 2020 shows that the average conversion rate on e-commerce stores that leads to purchases is 2.86%. It’s extremely difficult to convince customers to buy products online. This is why Shopify business owners must ensure that the shopping process goes smoothly. Otherwise, it might cost them the shutdown.
After checking how the Shopify product variants were configured, it turned out that they were created incorrectly. It was the main reason why unavailable options were displayed. As an experiment, changes were made to one product page with the original “Debut” theme. The expert followed steps from the documentation available on Shopify. Product variants were properly added to the product page, and the next step was to see how they could be easily applied to the rest.
In this case, the original Shopify template – Debut – was modified by a client. Because of that, adjustments to displaying non-existing product variants were impossible. As it turned out, the whole product page template, with 800 lines of code, was changed. It included the logic of displaying “Color” and “Size” variants that needed to be modified. Only that would block showing unavailable options to customers.
After checking other product pages, the perfect solution was to adjust the template, so the store logic itself excluded the unavailable variants. With the existing theme, using the same script logic for other products, was impossible.
However, changing the template was not an option in this case. After evaluating the Shopify theme the customer used, the expert proposed an easy way to improve displaying product variants. He decided that the best option was to customize the modified theme – Debut – and activate the script that displays the variant. In the end, there was no need to make changes to the website's code. Instead of this, the script logic was changed. Variants “Color” and “Size” were replaced by “Available options”, where color and size were related according to available options. It helped to avoid generating unnecessary costs and reworking the product page.
Because of the modified template, the project was extended. There were many items and no possibility to integrate the created script. As a result, the expert had to improve all products in the store manually.
The project was completed, and the "Available options" logic with the number of available products was implemented on all product pages. Depending on the selected option, the product variant will be added or removed on the product page automatically. Additionally, when the stock of a certain variant is 0, it will be displayed next to it.
After analyzing the website, the expert recommended changing the Shopify theme. In this scenario, the best and simplest option would be to restore to the original "Debut" template. The logic to block unavailable variants is ready; thus, restoring would take less time.
Of course, the template must be adjusted and filled with content. It'd take additional work, but implemented functionality would be beneficial.
While working on fixing product variants, the expert noticed that the page speed was very slow. A terrible code optimization resulted in the poor performance of the website. Restoring the original "Debut" template would significantly increase page load speed.
Shopify product variants are one thing, but there’s a lot more that can go wrong. To maintain a high conversion rate, you must systematically revise your store. If you’re not a specialist, it’s recommended to take the UX audit of the website if you have never done it before. Even if you did, you should still optimize the store. Especially in terms of the final step of purchase, which is a payment. Adding Google Tag Manager to the Shopify checkout page might help avoid issues and improve customers' journey to maintain high sales.
9 min read
Are you about to launch Shopify store? Follow this Shopify Launch Checklist to make sure your website is customized, user-friendly and optimized.
Every concept of a successful online store starts with a vision, dream or aspiration. But, in order to make it work, you need to do a few things before starting the business. In this guide, we will walk you through 5 key steps to take before launching your Shopify store. Follow this Shopify Launch Checklist to stay one step ahead of the competitors who have no idea what they’re doing.
At the end of this post, you will be ready to make your store user-friendly, properly market it and overcome common problems Shopify store owners usually face. What’s next? Becoming one of them.
If you want to start your eCommerce business on Shopify, it provides you with the ability to easily log in or customize your store, integrate it with payment methods and social media. – Muhammad Asad Ullah Baig, Shopify Developer
It allows you to step-by-step get your Shopify store ready to launch. Not just from the technical point of view, but also from the marketing perspective, which is crucial in running a business. Remember, even the top brands understand that customers' decisions are rarely rational. That's why they invest so much in exceptional design and communication. However, even the finest product will not be purchased if users are unable to browse or filter items as they do in other stores such as Zalando or Amazon.
Going live with the eCommerce takes a lot of work and things to remember. With this Shopify Launch Checklist, you can be sure that you did everything to set up a customized, user-friendly and optimized online store.
After launching your Shopify store, you will be busy answering customers, communicating with business partners, advertising your brand and distributing products. Or perhaps you won’t, because the store isn't getting any conversions. Traffic but no sales is a common issue that new stores experience. That is why, rather than solving problems, it's essential to avoid them in the first place. Knowing these most common 6 problems that Shopify store owners face will allow you to focus on growing and scaling your business rather than resolving basic issues. It simply saves time, reputation and money.
Branding is a key to marketing activities, but it's also necessary for the store to perform. After doing market research and defining your niche and audience, you need to design the relevant brand identity. The only way to attract targeted customers is to clearly communicate your business goals, mission, and vision. The value proposition you provide by purchasing your products or services need to be visible in every aspect of the Shopify store. Starting with the content, moving on to the website design and how they explore it, concluding with the package they receive purchased product in.
There are plenty of Shopify stores that are not user-friendly. Don’t be one of them. It’s clear the business you run is your source of income. But consider customers that want to purchase your products. They have their own needs and habits, and if they are dissatisfied with your shop, they might leave and never return. As the saying goes – you never get a second chance to make a first impression, so make sure that users have a positive experience on your website.
Remember that customers’ behaviors change over time, so there will always be a need to optimize it. Still, there are a few rules to uplift your store’s customer experience that stay timeless.
Shopify is a platform that gives you a wide range of opportunities to customize your store. Make sure the design represents your brand well and that users understand your product and its benefits completely. The homepage is usually the first page customers arrive at. Allow customers to go swiftly from the homepage to specific products, such as “bestsellers” or “new collection”, where they may begin to explore the store.
Sometimes users want to find specific information quickly. Live chat software for e-commerce might help not only meet their expectations and develop trust, but it can also provide you with valuable data to help with store optimization.
Consider how time-consuming it would be for you to search through Amazon's 12 million goods to find one specific product. That would be crazy, right? Even if you have 50 items in your Shopify store, customers will likely leave if they can't locate what they're looking for fast. Collections and filtering are not so challenging to implement, but you can save your customer's time and patience by doing so.
Poor website speed can damage the customer’s experience, lower conversions and affect search engine ranking. In a perfect scenario, 1 second response time is a maximum that customers probably won’t notice. With every extra second, mobile user bouncing increases. There are several factors for a bad website loading speed. It might be a slow e-commerce platform or hosting, large graphic and file sizes, broken links, slideshows, pop-up windows, etc.
This Shopify official guide will help you establish what elements on the website might need improvement to speed it up.
In 2020, according to e-commerce statistics, 60.1% of all customers used their smartphones to shop online. This number is still growing, so don’t consider mobile optimization an extra benefit for your clients. If they’re not satisfied with your website, 9 out of 10 will go to another store that offers a better user experience. Make sure all critical buttons are visible, fast loading speed, buyers can easily choose different collections and filters, and the purchase process is quick.
First, decide what you want to sell online and conduct research on your competition. It’s critical to identify the market niche in which you will place your store. Consider it in terms of restaurants. Where do people go more often, and what is more popular – a certain cuisine, such as a classy Italian restaurant serving seafood, or a no-name short-order bar? The answer is rather simple. After you've determined your niche, target your audience and design all processes to reach them as effectively as possible.
It’s a good practice to create a list of dos and don’ts, where your “dos’ are benchmarks (online stores you aspire to) and don’ts – websites you don’t want to take an example from. Sometimes you don’t really need to differ the product a lot, but make sure to find a unique value proposition that will help you to stand out.
Treat your Shopify store as if you only have one chance to attract customers; therefore, make sure everything is correct before launching it. It’s not only a beautiful layout you use on the website. Of course, web design is essential for making an excellent first impression, but it also includes UX design, integrations, theme development, SEO optimization, etc. Hiring an expert and getting access to their knowledge in areas you are unsure about is incredibly helpful. They deal with it every day and can offer not only professional development of your Shopify store, but also first-hand, useful tips.
Most of the conversions and customers are coming from mobile devices, so it’s very important to make your store responsive to all of them. This is why most of the merchants fail in making any conversions – they don’t have a proper website design for different types of devices. – Muhammad Asad Ullah Baig, Shopify Developer
You can also learn more about the UX best practices for mobile devices to implement on the store and boost conversion rate. You will find here specific recommendations to apply to your Shopify store before launching it.
Searching should be flawless. Otherwise, users might get frustrated after a few attempts and exit the website. It’s not only the response time or how you design the customer’s path. Every link must lead to the right page, and every button must allow the user to take the proper action. A non-responsive store might be the reason for you struggling in the future with abandoned carts or no clients registered.
Before going live, browse through your website and take every possible action to find errors. If you’re the curious type of store owner, you can learn more about how to reduce shopping cart abandonment.
Your first thought might be Facebook or Instagram, and that’s true. Nowadays, social media is a must. Consider where your customers spend time between work breaks or where they go to interact with friends online. Introducing your brand to the place they naturally use might be a smart idea to promote it.
But that’s not all. You can install different free and premium apps on your Shopify store to extend the functionality and improve the customer experience. On Shopify App Store, you can get plugins that will help you implement the web design, add payment methods, connect with social media, create a mobile app, support upselling, and many others.
If you want to empower your brand, rank higher on search engines and improve the conversion rate, think of custom app development. In that case, you will need help of a Shopify expert who’s going to develop a customized app tailored to your business needs.
Speaking of integrations – CRM (Customer Relationship Management) is the integral aspect of e-commerce. It helps to automate procedures, manage relationships, and determine possible sales opportunities. Are you interested in speeding up procedures in your Shopify store and saving finances as a result?
There are many ways you can market your store for free. Start on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter or TikTok, depending on where you can meet your target audience. Shopify also has its own community. There are groups where merchants often share links to their stores and ask Shopify experts questions. That is the point at which you may increase the traffic in your shop. Also, don’t underestimate your network. Share your store on social media. The world of mouth is the best kind of marketing you can get.
To effectively market your Shopify store, create some eye-catching visuals, such as graphics, product pictures, etc. Videos are a great idea, but keep them short. Around 10-30 seconds will be enough. Show how and in what situations your product can be used and how it can help customers resolve their problems.
Let’s say you set up a launch date. Before it happens, test your Shopify store: go over it one more time or ask someone else to do that and try it on different sorts of devices. It’s better if you identify any bugs or errors rather than the potential customer.
Extra tip: Don't stop tracking traffic and conversions once you've launched your Shopify store. The data you collect will be beneficial for learning about users' behaviors and optimizing the website.
You can have your own idea or design in mind. But when you hire a Shopify developer, you get an expert that:
Shopify's experts will explain to you everything about launching the Shopify store. It’s good to take advice from a professional rather than customizing sections, adding content and applying products on your own.
What now? After completing this Shopify Launch Checklist, you are ready to start an online store using Shopify.
9 min read
Shopify website often suffers from poor design and user experience. UX audit discovers usability issues that need to be improved. Find recommendations here.
User Experience audit aims to discover usability issues and areas that need to be improved in order to increase user satisfaction. Think of UX on your Shopify website as of the customers when they enter a regular store. Would they rather go to the one that is neat, has intuitive structure and signposts that make it easier to move around and purchase needed products? Or would they choose the store that is a complete opposite?
The answer is pretty clear, so below we share UX recommendations delivered by the SoftwareSupp expert for Pitbullstore, one of the most popular eCommerce in Poland based on the Shopify platform.
The goal of the project: To improve UX design and optimize the Shopify-powered website for mobiles in several areas, especially the product and category page. The objective is to increase the store’s conversion rates and raise overall sales.
Project time: 33 hours
Content of the UX audit:
I am a UX Designer with over 12 years of experience. I specialize in designing customer experiences based on quantitative and qualitative data. My great achievement was to increase mobile applications’ conversion of one of the largest tour operator by more than 10%. – Katarzyna Gajewska
The audit is a complete evaluation of the Pitbullstore website in terms of compliance with the habits and expectations of users. It allows checking whether the product meets users' needs and find out what should be improved in order to increase their satisfaction.
The UX audit was conducted on the basis of heuristic evaluation – a method of analyzing a website in terms of heuristics, i.e. general usability principles.
The analysis is based on Nielsen's 10 heuristics:
1. Visibility of system status: Keep users informed on what's going on the website. To browse the store and make a purchase, it must be intuitive and somewhat predictable. Customers have their habits that are difficult to change.
2. Match between the system and the real world: Make the system more humane. Use simple, non-technical language and informative icons that users are familiar with.
3. User control and freedom: It happens that customers might click on the wrong button after filling a long form, especially while using a mobile. Let them go back to the last step easy without being forced to start all over again, because in most cases – they won’t.
4. Consistency and standards: There are patterns that website users are used to, and to avoid confusion, it’s better to not change it. The same with buttons – if they lead to the same place on the website, always use the same titles for them.
5. Prevention of errors: It’s better to prevent the problem than fix it. Make sure every information is clear and features are working how they suppose to. You will save the time and avoid customers being upset because of the message they didn’t understand.
6. Recognition instead of recall: Once again, make your website intuitive and design the customer’s path in a way that seems natural to them. Don’t make them remember what to do next or where to go for information they need. Let them recognize elements that lead to the right place.
7. Flexibility and efficiency of use: Remember that the website should be easy to navigate for both, inexperienced and experienced users.
8. Aesthetic and minimalistic design: Include only necessary information and elements that don’t distract the user from the most important actions, such like: sign up, add to the cart or order now. Also, make sure that the titles are readable and there is enough space between buttons.
9. Help users to identify, diagnose and remove errors: To not leave users frustrated or prevent them from leaving the website, design their error experience. Make sure they are aware of it, explain where and why it happened, as well as how they can solve it.
10. Support and documentation: In a perfect world, a well-designed website wouldn’t need any additional explanations. However, don’t forget to give users a space with documentation, tutorials or Q&A that are easy to find, simple and comprehensive.
Each section on the website has a purpose and needs to be evaluated from a user and a business perspective. UX design helps to fix problems that customers meet and make their path to purchase easier.
Using heuristic evaluation, the following areas of the Pitbullstore.pl were thoroughly reviewed:
The result is a report of client’s Shopify website, including identified problems. Each problem consists of a brief description of the bug, its assessment, and detailed recommendations for fixing the issue. Each bug was assessed on 3 levels. It determines how much the problem may disturb the users.
Identified problems:
The client wanted to create a new mobile-oriented design for the eCommerce store based on the Shopify Plus platform. Below are some problems appearing on the website that SoftwareSupp expert identified and gave recommendations to.
The first place on your Shopify website clients usually visit is the home page. Make sure their positive experience with the store starts here. Otherwise, they may abandon the shop and never return.
Critical error: When an incorrect email address, such as "kg@gmail" is entered, you don't receive an error message, and it's processed without the corresponding information. As a result, the users don't know whether they successfully subscribed to the Newsletter or not.
Recommendation: Introduce error validation into forms, so users are aware they entered incorrect data.
Serious error: The site's banners fill up the whole screen, discouraging the viewer from scrolling down. The user may have the impression that the page ends with a banner.
Recommendation: Shorten banners so that the screen may show a fragment of the next module, encouraging the user to scroll further.
Minor error: Product names, headings and other content are much more difficult to scan when they are written with majuscules (capital letters). It is a bad practice to use too many of them.
Recommendation: To make it easier for users to scan the content on the website, avoid using capital letters in headers, categories, and product names.
Critical error: The most important feature – login – is missing on the navigation bar. Login/My Account should be easily accessible so that registered users may quickly enter their accounts and have easy access to historical data, e.g. the last order. Also, it is a good practice that the customer logs in right away after entering the website, to go through the purchase process easier.
Recommendation: Add in the Menu bar the Login/My Account function.
Serious error: The module "Subscribe to our VIP list" sounds quite mysterious – users don't know what is the VIP list, what are benefits by subscribing to it and is it different from "Join the PITBULLTEAM".
Recommendation: Change the “VIP list” headline to something more clear, explaining what it is and what benefits the user get. Additionally, the two leads, "Join PITBULLTEAM" and "Subscribe to our VIP list", should be separated.
Critical error: After entering the list of results from a search bar, the user lands on a page with navigation items that take up half of the screen.
Recommendation: Navigation elements in the results list should be structured in a way that takes up as little space on the screen as possible. After entering the list, the user should first view the products.
Serious error: Use a discount percentage next to the product. If this information is missing, it reduces the power of the sale.
Recommendation: If the product is discounted, it's a good idea to display the discount value as a percentage in a visible place. Instead of writing SALE, it’s better to put the sale value in a red block, e.g. "-23%".
Minor error: When the user clicks on the stars, a blue box that appears, seems like an error.
Recommendation: Remove the blue frame.
Critical error: In clothing eCommerce, there is a huge focus put on cross-selling and upselling. Also, from a user perspective, purchasing two or more items is often more beneficial due to shipping costs, as well as practical - shopping for clothes at one store is just easier. As a result, the "Buy Now" banner may be disadvantageous for both sides.
Recommendation: Put more visual emphasis on the "Add to Cart" button to increase the shopping cart value and user satisfaction.
Serious error: The pattern of "Add to wishlist" function with a filled heart suggests that the product has already been added to the wishlist. However, in this case it's not, which may confuse the user.
Recommendation: Change the design of the add to wishlist function according to good UX/UI design practices.
Minor error: On the product page, the entire screen is taken up by a gallery of pictures with thumbnails. On the mobile version of the website, it's unnecessary, because users browse the gallery by swiping photos to the right.
Recommendation: Remove thumbnails and instead add the product name with number of ratings or/and the price.
Critical error: When there are more products (more than 3), users don't see the summary, which is the most important information for them in the shopping cart.
Recommendation: Add a summary of the cart value in a visible place.
Critical error: Including additional tools like chatbots in the booking process is an unnecessary distractor and bad practice. The order process should be intuitive and simple enough to avoid contacting the customer service.
Recommendation: Remove the chat widget from the shopping cart.
Critical error: Informational messages should not be highlighted in red. This color in the order process is normally used for error notifications, thus it may confuse the user.
Recommendation: Change the color of the VAT invoice information to neutral.
Based on the UX audit and the data contained in the analytics tools, the SoftwareSupp expert recommended explicit steps to follow. By using these best UX practices on the Shopify website, the client can provide a great user experience and boost store's overall sales.
It includes three major guidelines:
Does your Shopify website struggle with abandoned carts, unfinished payments, or no actions performed by users? The first step to take is a professional UX audit provided by a qualified expert. SoftwareSupp allows you to hire a certified freelancer on-demand.
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