Sick of making resolutions for New Years? Why not make a checklist to upgrade your Shopify store instead! After all, the best way to kick-off the New Year is to make plans to grow and succeed in your business goals!
- Primp and polish your policies (i.e., privacy, TOS, returns, shipping, etc.)
Are your privacy policies and shipping explanations looking a little stale? Today is the day to give them new life and check to ensure that nothing seems out-of-date. We encourage you to comb through all of your policies and see if they are a) informative, b) accurate, c) current to today’s societal and business climate. Once that’s all done, continue on with the rest of the steps!
- Spruce up your about page and make it extra-welcoming
The most trustworthy businesses have engaging about-pages that establish trust and intimate connection with your customers. About-pages are the best way to tell your personal story, your company philosophy, and all the things that will make you relatable to your ideal client. So take advantage of that online real-estate and sell yourself!
- Update to a mobile-friendly layout
Do you hate those pop-ups on your smartphone that take up the whole screen with no close button to find in-sight? Us too. Hence, 2021 might be the year you finally test your mobile site as if you were an actual customer and not just the shop owner. Use that insight to purge the details from your shop that do not add value to the shopping experience when using your mobile device. Plus – the more mobile-friendly, the higher your Google rating too!
- Give your brand a refresh
Let’s go from deck-the-halls to deck-the-digital-assets! Because the New Year is the perfect time to update your colors, fonts, and language you use with your customers. Browse 2021 trends, analyze the visuals that worked for you in 2020, continue them into this year, and enlist your audience to give feedback on what they will find engaging!
- Organize, organize, organize
Now’s the time to check if your shop’s collections are up-to-date and categorized correctly. Maybe your dishes ended up in the pots department, or perhaps your shirts and socks are improperly labeled in the back end. Clean it all up, and then when you’re done that – reorganize your site’s menu to accommodate for the best user-interactive experience!
- Clean up your SEO and make it keyword compatible
Are your meta-descriptions and web-titles looking like a hot mess? Yeah. We get it. But the good news is those can always be changed, upgraded, and updated! Do some additional research using Google’s keyword finder and assess your keywords against your competitors. There are websites like BuzzSumo and SpyFu that can help you figure out what your competition uses. And once you know, you can use that data to update your current SEO practices to even better ones.
- Shape-up your shipping and business settings
Sometimes amid all the hustle, we can forget to adjust and take care of the little details – like shipping and business settings. Whether that’s changing your shop from CAD to USD pricing or adding in a new shipping provider and the estimated rates… there are probably lots of little details you either missed or told yourself you’d “set up later” on your Shopify site that you could update. And chances are these updates will help your website for the best!
- Out with the old, in with the new
Have you checked to ensure all your orders from 2020 have shipped and been fulfilled? If you haven’t, now is an excellent time to make sure all loose ends have been taken care of. After you’re confident that you’re all good to go, clear off your notification board and set-up for all the new orders that will be rolling in!
- Ramp up your blog posts
Now more than ever – blog posts are so important to bring awareness to your business and brand. Everyone is on their computers and browsing the web. Therefore there are almost triple the chances of being discovered online. Start thinking about the most relevant topics that can help educate new customers about your brand and ensure your ideas are searchable and common questions that people are currently searching for. If you want a great way to spark some new posts? Check out Google Trends to get up-to-date ideas!
- Review your website speed
Nothing is going to slow you down this year, not even your web speed! The first step is to test out the speed using a website like Pingdom. Not only will Pingdom tell you your current speed grading, but it will also tell you the best ways to increase how fast your website runs. For example – maybe your redirects on your websites are scoring a letter D on their site? Well, why not reduce the amount of link redirects your pages and products face to help up your letter grade to an A! There are lots of tools like this online, so find one that works best for you.
Do you feel like a Shopify guru now? Ready to rock 2021 with all the best settings on your online shop? If you said yes – that is precisely what we want to hear! However, if you need a little assistance… Kait Studio is always here to help, and we would love to hear from you!
Just to let you know the date here is 2021 rather than 2024!!! 🙂
Thanks! 🙂 This was created in 2021! x