Hey guys my name is Nora. My name isMarianna and we are with Printful'smarketing team so we've been withPrintful for a few years now and overthe course of this time we have had thepleasure to work with a lot of reallyinspiring and fascinating store ownersand over this time we've noticed that alot of people are doing really greatthings for their stores, but we've alsoregularly noticed a lot ofdon'ts or mistakes that we see peopledoing as well that come up prettyfrequently. So in this video we want totalk about some of these 10 mistakesthat you're doing in your online storeand how you can fix them, so you can yousell more and grow your store evenmore. Let's get started! Mistake numberone – store isn't optimized for mobile.Whatever it is that we're looking on theinternet we're used to looking at on abig screen on our laptops or whatever,but as soon as you put it on a smallerscreen – whole another story. Make surethat it's optimized for mobile. It'simportant because people are becomingmore and more used to shopping on theirmobile phones. Almost 40% of allecommerce purchases during the 2018holiday season happened on asmartphone. So this isn't a trend that'sgoing away. It's just gonna get more andmore popular and more and more peopleare gonna shop on mobile. One good wayhow to test if your site ismobile-friendly is to check… What'sit called again?”Google mobile-friendly test”. You plugin your URL and then Google will tellyou right away whether or not it ismobile-friendly and if it's notmobile-friendly, what are the things youshould work on. You can also justtest it yourself by opening your storeon different devices like a smartphone,different size smartphones, tablets. Youget the picture. Exactly, and if youyou're a bit too close for comfortor getting too accustomed to your siteyou can also give your store or yourdevice to a friend and see how theyinteract with your site. Because that's avery good way to figure out what worksand what doesn't. You can alsohave your friends test and actually makea purchase on mobile. Because it's onething whether or not it looks good onmobile, it's a whole other ballgamewhether or not you can actually checkout and follow through with a purchase.That's also an important thing totest out. Few other things you can doto make sure your store ismobile-friendly is making sure all theicons are fitted to the screen,thesize isn't too small. Make sure yourimage sizes are high quality, but alsonot super huge, so they load quicklyenough and generally you want to makesure that you also have responsivedesign. What that means is that thedesign of your store expands andretracts depending on the size of thescreen you're looking at. Any developercould help you do this, but you can alsotake a look at the themes that yourecommerce platform offers and make sureyou go with a theme that is alsoresponsive and looks good on mobile.Mistake number two – No “About us” page. Inthis day and age, you may have heard, thatstorytelling is a big deal. You have totell your story to be heard, becauseyou've got a lot of competition outthere, a lot of e-commerce stores goingafter your click, so you have to tellyour story. One great way how to doit is through “About us” page.That's a way to build credibility, tobuild this connection with your audienceand just tell your story. A lot ofpeople might think it's just anoverlooked page, people don't actuallyread it. but that's wrong. People do readthe “About us” page and it does helpbuild credibility, because if your brandisn't well known then peopledon't know is the store legit, who am Ibuying from, what is the idea behind thestore? And it also gives you an advantageover the big-box retailers. Theymaybe don't have a unique story thatyou do and it's like a David and Goliaththing, where you can stand out becauseyou're a small business and you canshare your story and who you are.Some of the things you can talk about inyour “About us” page – who you are, aboutyour brand, about your brand values, maybesome brand history. Is it familyowned? Are you building yourbusiness with a friend or is it maybe forcharity? What's the reason for youcreating this business? It also helpsto add a few pictures just so people seethat there's a real human being behindthat store. Mistake number three – poorquality product photos. In the digitalage media is primarily visual. Peopleare still attracted to pretty photos andthe eye is immediately drawn tocolorful visuals or just aestheticallypleasing visuals. It's very importantto integrate things like that on yoursite as well. It also helps to sellyour products, because you're selling thevision of your brand, you're selling animage of your endcustomers wearing your products. Whenyou're shopping online you can'tactually try on a product or touchit, feel it, see what it's like, so ithelps your customers get an idea of whatthey're buying and what they're shoppingfor exactly. It's also useful to adddetails like the size of the model andcomments on the fit. Maybe it's abit tighter, maybe loose fitting?Remember, your customers can't touch ortry on the product so it's very usefulto provide as much as these details aspossible.You can try lifestyle photos for the fit,for the overall look of the garment orwhatever product that you're selling andalso flat lays are cool, they justlook nice and they build thisenvironment, this vibe.Make sure your photos are alsogenerally zoomable so people can zoomin on the details that they'reinterested in. Mistake number four – boringproduct descriptions. What we'retrying to say is product descriptionsthat don't really stand out and don'treally inform the customer aboutanything, that's what qualifies asboring. As we mentioned earlierstorytelling is still very big, peoplewant to know you, they're interested andinvested in telling and learning stories.So that also applies to your productdescriptions. You want to sellyour story and really sell your productsto the customer using language andimagery to help visualize themselves inyour product. Make sure to addinformation which is relevant to thecustomer, remember, there's nothing wrongwith adding that technical information.Do mention the fabric for at-shirt, wash instructions,wash and care instructions. On someof the well-known ecommerce sites outthere you'll notice that the productdescriptions have this balance ofthe creative side and the technical side.Sometimes they're split up in these twolittle tabs with shipping or careinstructions and then they have thebrand language description. Then,going along with your productdescriptions, you also want to include asize guide as well. Then payattention also to grammaror spelling mistakes. You need to usethis opportunity to show off your brandand show how legitimate your store is.When you're writing productdescriptions make sure to include thosekey keywordsabout your product. If it's a t-shirt,make sure to add the actual word “t-shirt”,if you're selling, I don't know, a mug, acoffee mug, do mention the words “coffeemug” in the description, because thatmakes your description and your productthat more searchable. Next step, mistakenumber five and that is confusing a productcatalog. Basically, when a customer landson your site, they should know justintuitively where they want to go orwhere they have to go to find the productsthat they want. That means laying themout andn all of your products out inunderstandable categories or creating anunderstandable collections, just socustomers can easily see “Okay, I want amen's t-shirt – where do I go to find thatexactly?” You don't have to get tooelaborate, if you're running an apparelbusiness, I think, for starters you canjust go with “men's”, “women's” or maybe”t-shirts”, “bottoms”, “accessories” justsomething super simple so there isn'ttoo much overlap between categories.That's something we see oftenwhere people want to simplify theprocess by making severalcategories thinking that you'll justclick just the one you need, but if theproduct appears in several categories itgets a bit confusing. That'sanother thing we also notice – a lot ofcategories, but also too few categories.When you land on a page and it'sjust like a huge list of products andthen it's a little bit overwhelming,because there's so many productshere, I don't know what I actually amlooking for, I don't know what I want, howdo I get through all of this? So it'sfinding that balance of okay whatproducts do I have and how do I showthem and organize them in a way that mycustomers will be able to find what theywant? It actually goes hand in hand withproduct photos, so make sure they'reall similar, that they're of the samestyle so when the person gets to seeyour product grid, when they've opened acategory, it's not too chaotic, so therearen't photos with white backgroundsand suddenly there are lifestyle photos.So it's just more easy on the eye.Mistake number six – no social proof. Justto get started a quick reminder on whatsocial proof means. It's some kind of evidenceof people enjoying your product. Thesedays it takes shape of social mediaposts that are incorporated in the site.Those could be testimonials,user-generated photo.For example, reviews things likethat, just evidence of people using yourproduct and it's important because andthis kind of ties back to your “About us”page, where if you're an unknown brandpeople don't know who you are, they mightnot want to buy from you if they justdon't know if your products are actuallygonna be legit and quality. It justhelps lend your store credibility if newcustomers can see “Oh! This otherperson brought this product and loved itso I must be on the right pageand I could buy from the store as well.”Customers are generally gonna trustreal people over a brand telling themthat this product is quality. Becauseof course we're gonna be tellingeverybody that you're great, but that'sfor people to decide. The easiest way toget more customer reviews and socialproof is just to ask for it. People, ifthey are fans of your product and theywant to help your brand succeed, they'reprobably gonna be more than willing tohelp you out, especially if you'rea little brand just getting started.You can send out an email.In Printful we have ourpacking slips, we can add custom messagesso even there you can say “Hey, leavea review, I would love it!”You can even offer aspecial incentive to everyone who leavesa review by giving them Xpercent off for example. Another coolthing you can do is just make yoursocial proof a bit more personal.Try to connect your story with yourcustomers story. If you see somebodywho's particularly interested in yourbrand or maybe sharing a lot of yourproducts on social media, sharethose photos again, give them a shout-out.Maybe send them thank-you note orsomething, just built that bridge,make it more solid. It'salso always a good idea to reach out tomaybe an influencer orcelebrity becausethey also have a lot of clouts. Iftheir fans see that they are wearing oneof your products, that's also gonnareally help spread the word. Mistakenumber seven – no incentives to buy. Peoplearen't going to want to necessarilyspend their money, especially if it'stheir first time on your store. It'sreally a good idea for you to help nudgethem in the direction that you want togo in. There's a lot of subtle ways,or not so some ways, of doing this so youcan also, for example, in your productdescriptions make the product sound alittle bit more exclusive. “It'sunique product”, “handcrafted” or if you dohand design for example. You can alsodrive the sense of urgency by sayingthat it's a limited time collection.Offer free shipping, this is huge, wealways recommend offering free shipping.We've seen it ourselves in our ownEB tests for our “StartupVitamins” store – people are going tobe more likely to buy even if youincrease the price to take into accountthe shipping. People are more likely tobuy a product with free shipping. Make sure that people know about yourfree shipping offer as soon as they geton that page. You see this all thetime with the little free shippingbanners on the top of the page. I'm sureyou've seen those,it's super effective. Holdingsome kind of a sale or promotiondiscounted prices that's also been howto motivate them to buy more.Those are all good ways to boostsales, but make sure not to be a bit tooeager. Especially for things likepop-ups and and emails. Don'tget too excited, don't jump all over yourcustomer as soon as they land on yourstore just give them a few minutes totake it all in and then go “20% discount”For pop-ups especially werecommend doing like a scroll kind ofpop-up or a time to pop-up so it's notlike your customer lands on your pageimmediately and “Uh 20% off? ButI don't even know why do I wantthis!” Let them browse a littlebit, let them get to know your store orsee your products, peaktheir interest a little bit first.Another good idea in terms of pop-ups isan exit intent to pop-up. That iswhen pop-up software can tell based onwhere the cursor of the mouse is goingif they're about to leave a page, then apop-up will appear “Hey, areyou sure? You know you can stay put onthis page buy something, get a discount.”It's kind of a last-ditch effort tomake them stay. Mistake number eight – too much stuffgoing on. This ties in a little bit withwhat we just talked about in terms ofcreating incentives for people to buythings. Like we just said, youhave to incentivize a little bit, but youhave to be careful with that balance andmake sure that you're not overdoing it.It's a good idea to keep yourstore kind of clean andminimal. You don't want a lot ofdifferent gifs, orlittle illustration pop-upshappening. Keep your store veryneat, clean and easy to navigate. Anotherthing that sometimes is a bit annoyingis that people want to get you tosubscribe or log in too eagerly, create anaccount to check out. People arereally, really sensitive about what dataor what information they share aboutthemselves and surprisingly enough theymay not be willing to share their emailaddress with you. If you do, andagain this also ties in with the last point alittle bit, if you do ask for an emailaddress at the check out, then make sure youalso understand what value they get outof it as well. Thinkof it as currency. You're not justgonna give your email away for no reasonat all, you have to offer somethingthat's gonna be of value. Whether thatis a discount like we mentioned in thelast point or like a free ebook,if you're selling phonecases like a free home screen.Something like that, just something thatmakes them kind of want to actuallyoffer their emails. Mistake number 9 -broken links and broken things. Why is it important? Because it justbums you out to go on a site andsee a broken link. You want to buysomething and you can't, so you just leave.It also kind of damages yourreputation and your credibility if afirst time customers on your pageclick a button and it doesn't work,it's not a good look. They mightnot think that you're credible, yourbusiness is legit and they're probablynot gonna want to leave their creditcard information with you. That's justa very basic bottom line thing thatyou should do – make sure everythingworks. You should testyour store on your desktop, on yourmobile device, make sure there's no bugs, allyour links work and they're all clickablewhen they should be. You can also testyour checkout process to make sure thatyou can go through it that it's smooth,that it's quick and you know it actuallyworks. Make sure that people can submit their paymentsand get their orders. One little thing we've alsonoticed are these little social mediaicons that tend to appear at the bottomof the page. Make sure that they gosomewhere. If you don't have an Instagramor a Facebook account or Twitter, thenjust don't use them.If you do have one make sure thatyou actually have some content on therebecause that's another level of sort ofsketchiness.That's an example of social proof,somebody scrolls down to the bottom ofthe page see your Instagram accountclick and there's no posts, no nothing. “Oh,do I want to buy from this store? I don't think so.”We've arrived at mistake number 10 whichis difficult checkout flow. Which isarguably the most important one.In this case let's imagine a customerhas landed on your store, they're reallyinto it, they love your products, theyactually click on one, add it to theirbasket and they're on their way tocheckout and they expect that “okay,couple clicks and this product is gonna bemine.” But then they're asked tocreate an account, they're asked todo something else. Check this box andtype this information. “I don'twant to, nevermind this is too mucheffort I'm putting this product back andleaving.” You're so close to the finish line,with the checkout you almost have thatsale. You just really want to makesure that the process is super smooth.You want to ask for the least amount ofinformation as possible to get that.If they have to type a milliondifferent things, they're just gonnaget annoyed, they're gonna get lazy andthey're not gonna do it. So make surethat it's as few steps as possible, aseasy as possible. Make sure thatyou have the payment methods thatthey're used to paying,accepting credit cards, PayPal thatkind of thing. Exactly and another veryimportant thing is that the checkout flow islike the Holy Grail.It's just super focused, no distractions,no sales, no promos. Your customerhas already placed a few items in theirbasket and now you got to getthem to the finish line, no distractions.That's the one CTA – purchase.And that's all you should be focusing onat this point. A thing you can doto make sure your checkout is easyand seamless and we've already touchedon this before throughout this talk,is to test it out yourselfMake sure that you can buy aproduct you know give it to a friend,make sure they can buy a product.Go through theprocess yourself and then make sure thatthe product also works in thebackend as well, that it actually syncs withyour e-commerce platform withPrintful and that it actually goesthrough. Remember to check if it'seasy to buy in Mobile. Alright andthat's it from us guys! We hope you foundthis very helpful and we'd love to hearfrom you as well. If you have anyquestions about what you might be doingwrong, what you might be doing right. Ifyou have noticed what others are doing wrongwe'd love to hear it, so post it in thecomment. As always keep hustling,keep doing your best and keep workinghard and good luck! Good luck! Hey, there!It's a Wes from Printful! I hope you likedthat video. Leave us a comment below onwhat video you'd like for us to make next.Subscribe to our YouTube channel andclick on that Bell icon, so that way youalways get a notification when we have anew video.
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