Today we’ll share 9 tips that any Shopify store selling smoke, vape, or CBD products and struggling with sales should know.
These tips will allow you quickly identify why your audience isn’t converting to customers.
We’ve used these tips to generate 7 figures in revenue for our own Shopify stores, so we know they work.
Researchers estimate that the global vape market is estimated to reach $104.51 billion by 2028, while the global CBD market is expected to reach $55 billion by the same year.
While competition in these markets increase every day, there’s still plenty of revenue available for everyone to generate sales.
For you, this means there’s never been a better time to enter the market and claim your share.
So whether you’re just starting your Shopify store or have been running it for months with little to no sales, we trust you’ll get value from these tips.
Here are the 9 tips to consider when you’re in the “traffic, but no sales” phase of your business:
Make your site easy to navigate
Most users will begin their journey on your site from the homepage and navigate to product pages, blog posts, or cart pages through your navigation menus.
The navigation menus are commonly located in the header and footer of your site.
For examples of what should be included in an effective navigation menu, look to large retailers in the industry like JustCBD, Storz and Bickel, and GRAV.
You’ll quickly notice what customers expect to find in a good navigation menu.
One element is a Shop button on the top menu.
This is typically a link to a collection page with your full catalog, or a drop-down menu with product categories for users to find specific collections they’re looking for, like gummies, topicals, and tinctures.
Ask a friend or family member who’s never visited your site before to browse through and take note of how easy it is for them to find different products and pages.
One of the quickest ways to lose a potential sale is making it difficult for users to find what they’re looking for.
Use your footer menu
A common mistake Shopify store owners make is focusing on their header menu and leaving their footer menu untouched.
While the header menu is a top priority, the footer menu is just as important.
Visitors expect to find several important links on this menu, such as your returns policy, reviews page, terms of service, and privacy policy.
It’s best practice to include a link to your Shopify blog and social media channels as well.
If a visitor is unable to find important policy information quickly, it can erode their trust in your Shopify store overall.
Develop a professional appearance for your brand
Starting on the homepage, your brand immediately makes an impression on new visitors.
The logo you choose all the way down to your fonts and colors will give shoppers insight into who your brand is and whether or not they should spend money with you.
This is especially true for the vape and CBD markets where trust is what makes or breaks your relationship with visitors.
Go through this short checklist to see if your branding is up to industry standards:
- Is your logo professional?
- Do you use consistent colors and fonts throughout your Shopify store?
- Are product and lifestyle images high quality?
- Is it easy to read and scan through your text?
Thankfully, you don’t need to be a design guru to create a professional brand.
Use services like Hatchful and Canva to design logos and color palettes for your brand.
When it comes to product photography, we always recommend purchasing samples to take your own photos for product pages and other spaces on your Shopify store.
This includes lifestyle and product photos.
Not only will this help you stand out from your competition, but it gives you the opportunity to keep branding consistent across the images shown on your Shopify store.
Place a clear call to action on your homepage
Don’t assume customers will know where to go or what to do when they’re on your site.
Much like the navigation menus, a good call to action will guide customers through your site from the homepage to checkout.
A call to action is a line of marketing copy followed by a linked button.
They work in unison to grab a reader’s attention and direct them on an action to take.
Many CBD and vape retailers place a strong call to action on their homepage banner.
This is where your visitors will most likely be looking first when they land on your site.
Use this space to promote your best product, collection, or value proposition.
Grenco Science offers a clear example of what a strong call to action on the homepage banner looks like:
Want to promote a secondary message?
Offers like free shipping, flash sales, and product releases are best placed on an announcement bar.
Announcement bars are usually located at the top of your Shopify store in smaller text so that it doesn’t take away from your homepage banner.
Write copy that speaks to your customers
Copy, text that informs and persuades visitors to purchase, is another important element of any good Shopify store.
The goal of your copy should be getting the point across in a persuasive, succinct way.
Avoid lengthy paragraphs that visitors will quickly lose interest in.
The best online retailers on Shopify and other platforms keep their copy light and powerful.
Even when V Syndicate is sharing its brand story, it keeps the copy short and to the point without sacrificing quality.
In about 30 seconds, a visitor can quickly understand what the brand is all about.
When you have identified your target audience, write your copy with them in mind.
When an ideal customer visits your site, they should read your copy and say, “This is for me.”
Optimize for mobile
Making your Shopify store look great on desktops should be a priority, but over 50% of online shopping is done on mobile phone.
This means the mobile version of your site needs to look just as good, if not better, than your desktop site.
Browse your Shopify store on your mobile device and any others you can access to make sure it functions correctly and looks good.
You can also use your browser’s Inspect tool to view how your Shopify store appears on different devices.
Load your homepage on your own mobile phone, as well as any other devices you have access to, in order to make sure it looks good and functions properly on each one.
If you don’t have access to popular devices like Androids or iPhones, you can use the Inspect tool on your browser to view your website as it would look on different devices:
Build trust on your Shopify store
When you have traffic but no sales, building trust with customers can seem impossible, but it’s a critical part of getting traffic and turning it into sales.
Visitors need to feel secure when browsing your site and without that feeling of security you can forget about turning traffic into sales.
Here are a few ways you can build trust right now:
Enable live chat
Just because visitors aren’t shopping at a physical location doesn’t mean you can’t communicate with them one-on-one.
Adding live chat support to your Shopify store is a great way to introduce yourself and connect with visitors.
As an added bonus, live chat allows you to answer questions for customers whether you have staff monitoring it or leverage automated messages.
Tell your story
Tell your brand’s story and make a point to share it with visitors.
When customers can get a sense of who is behind the brand or what it stands for, the shopping experience feels more personal.
This is one of your biggest advantages over retail giants like Amazon.
If you’re lacking a personal touch to your brand, that may be a leading cause of your low conversion rate and lack of sales.
Make your story a big part of your homepage or create a well-written About Us page to connect with visitors on a personal level.
Leverage social media
Your social media accounts play a big role in building trust with customers.
Visitors who don’t discover your brand on Instagram will usually check our your social profiles to see if you’re active, what type of comments your content gets, and what image your brand presents.
Don’t worry about growing every social media channel, but focus on ones that your audience spend the most time on.
Post regularly, engage with followers, and run promotions to give visitors a sense of who your brand is.
Analyze data: Add to cart rate
Take note of how many visitors add products to their cart to help identify where your site needs improvement.
Head over to your Shopify analytics dashboard to view your online store conversion rates and check how many visitors are adding products to their cart on your site.
If you find that products aren’t being added to carts, consider the following improvements:
- Adding more lifestyle and product photos to your product pages
- Change the color and size of your Add to Cart button
- Place your Add to Cart button above the fold on desktop and mobile
- Making your descriptions easier to read with bullet points and bold text
Capture abandoned carts
Every online retailer experiences abandoned carts, where a customers adds a product to their cart but doesn’t complete their purchase.
Shopify allows you to view all abandoned carts in the Abandoned Checkouts section of your Shopify admin.
There are a few effective strategies for recovering abandoned carts that you should consider if you’re struggling to get sales.
- Leverage abandoned cart emails through Shopify or another email marketing platform to to recapture customers who don’t complete the checkout process
- Offer a discount code with your abandoned cart email to get sales you would’ve lost otherwise while improving your conversion rate
- Send more than one abandoned cart email to increase your chances of converting customers. Common practice is to followup a few hours after the cart is abandoned and 24 hours after as well.
- Think about replacing your cart page with a slideout cart that keeps customers on the product page then takes them directly to checkout.
- Enable dynamic checkouts on your product pages so customers can go directly to the checkout page when they’re ready to buy.
Final thoughts
It’s not uncommon for Shopify retailers in the smoke, vape, & CBD industry to get traffic, but no sales on their store.
Getting traffic is a great start, but improving your site, brand, and checkout flow to get sales is a much harder task in most cases.
Use the tips outlined in this post to improve the overall shopping experience of your store and increase conversion rates.
Remember, this is an ongoing process that can’t be completed in one day or a weekend.
By regularly auditing your store and branding, you will see sales and traffic increase over time.
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