One of the biggest mistakes new store owners make involves over-optimizing the wrong things while forgetting a few of the essentials. In this article, we’ll break down some tips that’ll help you master the basics while making sure you’re focusing on the right stuff. 

Update your product inventory monthly

People often get a bit eager and add hundreds of products in one go after launching their new website only to be overwhelmed by the process.

So, let’s slow down a bit.

Focus on adding less than 25 products to your online store on your first day. I know how tempting it is to add them all but you’ll be more likely to succeed if you focus on a smaller batch first.

Then, everyday, every week or every month, depending on how much time you have to work on your store, add a bunch of new products.

What you want to signal to Google (powerhouse of organic traffic) is that you update your website regularly. If you post all your products on day one and never post another product again, Google sees that you get traffic but they don’t see the need to crawl your website. When you add new products, blog posts, or pages regularly, Google’s crawlers are aware of it. 

The more you update your website, the more active your website appears and so the more organic traffic you’ll get back to your website.

So as an online retailer, create a schedule for how often you can manage adding new products. If you can do one new product a day – great. If you can only do 25 products a month – also great. But try to maintain a schedule that you can keep over the long-term to benefit from organic search traffic. 

Promote on free channels if you don’t have the budget

Most people who run an online store for the first time want to make money as fast as possible. And so they turn to Facebook Ads so they can hear their first cha-ching. I love that ambition you have. But if you’ve never created a Facebook Ad in your life, your first ad is more likely to result in an oh no!

To make your bank account grow, you need to be careful with how you spend your money. 

First, add your Facebook Pixel to your website. Then, create a re-targeting ad on your website. This could be an add to cart re-targeting ad which tends to convert the best. 

Now, to avoid spending too much money, focus all your efforts on driving free traffic to your website. Go on Pinterest and post a ton of products on your account. Be sure to pin other images as well so you don’t trigger your account as spam. You want to promote hard but still follow the terms of service. 

Then, go on Instagram and post your products on there as well. If you’ve already built a following on Instagram, share links to your products in Instagram Stories. If you don’t have an audience, reach out to niche fan pages like “fashion lovers” and ask them if they can share a sponsored story on their account. In my experience, fan pages have lower ad rates than models.

If you’ve created blog content for your website, you can share those on Twitter. I like to run re-targeting ads targeting blog content exclusively in case people didn’t realize I also had a store attached to my website. This is my second best re-targeting ad.

By doing retargeting ads and focusing on driving free traffic, you keep your ad costs low in those early months as you learn how to promote your online store. It’ll prevent you from overspending money you don’t have. It’s about making sure you develop the foundational marketing skills you’ll need to succeed long-term but without going into debt.

This can be a bit of a long-term slow play. However, by doing this, you’ll be less likely to break-even on your acquisition costs and you could actually build a profitable online store. 

Always test your store’s mobile settings

You need to double check to see what your website looks like on mobile. For example, when you create an ad, not everyone will view the website on their laptop. Some might see the ad on their phone or tablet.

Sometimes, when looking over your website on a different device you might notice that images aren’t resized properly. By knowing that the model’s face in the picture is cut off, you might choose to crop the picture differently so that it appears in the same format as the desktop version.

Mobile testing is especially important if your main sources of traffic are from ads, influencer marketing or if traffic comes from an app like Instagram or Pinterest.

To test on mobile, all you need to do is visit your website on your phone or tablet. Browse every page of your website and look for cut-off pictures, hidden calls to action, and monitor how much scrolling you need to do on each page. 

Create a text logo

one of the biggest mistakes is when people have a colored store background and they’ve downloaded their logo as a .jpg instead of .png you end up with this awkward white box around your logo. And this makes you a dead giveaway for being a total newb.

I know you’ve put a lot of work into choosing your name and designing a logo that looks great. However, the one thing I want to stress more than anything is that it’s okay to have a text-based logo. Your logo doesn’t need an image on it at all.

As a store owner, you’ll be wearing a lot of hats. And if you’re building a print on demand store, design skills are one of those hats. However, if you’re dropshipping, you don’t necessarily need to be a great graphic designer. Keep it simple.

Add all your policies to the footer

One of the biggest things new store owners forget to do is add policies to their website. Often, when customers browse websites, they want to look at the return policies to ensure that they can get a refund in case products are defective. Policies also add an element of legitimacy to your website. It helps build trust. 

Change pricing from 999 to solid 1000

Most online retailers who are looking to seem affordable add cents to all their prices. The average online retailer prices their products with .99 at the end. If you’re trying to position your brand as a bargain, adding cents might help make your brand seem more affordable.

However, not all drop shipping brands need to play the budget game. You can position your brand to appear more reputable by adding solid prices.