Experts on Covid-19’s effect on Shopify | Takeaways for sellers

Covid-19’s effect on Shopify is evident in multiple aspects. Apart from some major concerns like public health and economic downfall, one thing prominently in the spotlight is the pandemic’s effect on eCommerce. Narrowing it for you, in this article, we will talk about how it is impacting Shopify stores and what’s the best a seller can do.

In the recent sources and webinar, Shopify has revealed the Covid-19 impact on their ecosystem, which is defying the odds and going positive. One of the major reasons is the change in customers’ behavior. Adhering to the steps taken to flatten the curve, people are rarely stepping out from their homes. Moreover, they are also stocking essentials and non-essential items widely and here eCommerce comes into play. A number of online stores and marketplaces are bridging the gap between people and the products they want. Therefore, eCommerce sales are going up massively.

Shopify unveiled that their traffic amid pandemic and lockdown is nearly equal to that of BFCM.

What’s covered?

• Pandemic and Shopify’s ecosystem: Truth unzipped
• Essentials v/s Non-essentials: Who’s winning?
• Next move for Shopify sellers
• Help by Shopify
• How new sellers can go with the flow?
• How to research winning products to sell?
• Our little contribution
• Conclusion

Pandemic and Shopify’s ecosystem: Truth unzipped

As the lockdown is spreading globally, retail markets have slowed down. Therefore, eCommerce is potentially increasing as it enables customers to buy products from their comfort and safe zones.

Retailers are now realizing the need for an online store for their business. Therefore, a lot of new businesses are onboarding on Shopify dealing in all the essentials and non-essential categories.

Shopify has experienced one of the highest revenue last month.

Moreover, the businesses that mostly deal in brick-and-mortar stores like coffee shops are also opening online stores on Shopify.

The boost in app downloads for Shopify stores has also occurred. Experts reported that the total downloads which take place in 1 quarter are now equal to downloads in a month.

Essentials v/s Non-essentials: Who’s winning?

With people rushing for essentials like food, grocery items, health products, etc. it may seem obvious that essentials are leading the charts. However, that was the scenario at the starting of the lockdown, where traffic on online grocery sites increased by 116%.

The other essentials, protective gears, and health products have experienced a hike in mountainous percentages (source)-

1. Masks sales increased 590% from the week prior.
2. Hand sanitizer sales increased 420% from the week prior
3. Vitamins sales increased 78% from the week prior
4. Tissues sales increased 43% from the week prior
5. Hand soap sales increased 33% from the week prior
6. Toilet paper and paper towels sales increased 26% from the week prior

The increase in traffic of furniture and home decor stores was:

However, Shopify experts unveiled that as soon as a few weeks passed by, the categories dealing in non-essentials like fashion, jewelry, etc. along with all other categories dealing in essentials experienced huge in-store traffic and sales.

Next move for Shopify sellers

The unappreciated effects of Covid-19 have shaken the day-to-day lifestyle, economy, public health, etc. Being an online seller, you can be the torchbearer for millions of people looking for products they want without any health risk.

But for the better outcome of your efforts, you should go with a proper plan followed by efficient expert tips. This will also help you to grow your business:

1- Sell globally:

The best way to demolish the Covid-19’s effect on Shopify is to expand globally. Selling cross-border will enable you to envelop a wider audience. Thus, fulfilling more needs. More shoppers will discover and purchase your products.

Also, not all countries are affected by novel-Coronavirus equally. Therefore, you can sell as per different requirements by shoppers from different countries.

2- Experiment a lot:

Just experiment out all the strategies you’ve ever thought of doing with your business. It will either bring result or teach important lesson ad both will be helpful in recovering from Covid-19’s effect on Shopify.  Do experiments regarding all the verticals like shipping or the buyer’s journey of your store.

Moreover, you can also experiment with your social media handles or email. You can start out creating a different type of post focusing on the entertainment of your customers rather than talking about business. Or you can go live on your handles for keeping customers warm.

With email, you can try out A/B testing or sharing your brand story, your help amid Covid-19 pandemic, your new products, or post-covid plans (if any).

3- Offer gift cards:

Providing relief from Covid-19’s effect on Shopify. The popular platform has enabled gift card feature on all the plans to support small businesses. Offering gift cards gives your customers a way to support you today. Gift cards are sold like any other product and its value can be used as payment toward future orders from your online store.

Therefore, this provides customers with a safe option to make a purchase they can redeem at a later date.

4- Consider the post-covid scenario:

The Covid-19’s effect on Shopify will not exist forever. eCommerce boom is expected to remain after the end of the pandemic or it can hit more charts. Therefore, it would be difficult for sellers to manage all the orders and inventory manually.

Shopify app store is full of apps that can help sellers to easily manage orders and inventory and can also help in selling on sales channels like eBay, Etsy, Walmart, etc. automatically.

Learn more about selling on sales channels from Shopify

5- Focus more on creating content:

Money spending should be reduced in marketing and advertising. Instead, sellers should focus more on content creation for educating their audiences.

There are so many different ways you can deliver your content and recover from Covid-19’s effect on Shopify. You can do it via blog posts, videos, ppt, whitepapers, or informative guides, etc. You can also create content for fun like bingo challenge which has spread over social media a few days back.

6- Sell protective gears or other essentials:

As we have seen the record-breaking stats on the rise of sales essentials products, it is good to add a category for these products as well. No matter in which category you’re selling, you can add these ones as they are now hitting the charts and are among the top-selling products in 2020.

Also, it is suggested by health officials for the normal public not to buy N-95 masks to prevent shortage for patients, sellers can sell DIY masks which can be created by using simple techniques.

Help by Shopify to Minimize Covid-19’s effect on Shopify Mechants

To help sellers in this tough time, Shopify has put up a long list of things to offer. From providing few features for free to providing 360-degree virtual assistance, it has come forward many steps to give the best aid possible. Let’s have a look-

Shopify will be introducing a free Grocery theme

1) Extended 90-day free trial:

Shopify has extended his 14 days’ free trial to 90 days.

2) Free Gift cards:

Sellers can create and send gift cards to free up the cash flow.

3) Local pickup and delivery:

Shopify provides an option to create a local delivery option, visible to the customers for a particular area.

4) Free email marketing for all plans:

Shopify email is available to all new and existing Shopify stores for free until October 1.

5) $200 million in small business funding:

Currently available in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom, Shopify is helping businesses with funding through Shopify capital.

6) Sellers can pause their store for free:

Existing sellers can pause their online store if they want, for free. They don’t have to pay for the number of days the store is paused.

7) Shopify compass:

It is step-by-step guidance for anyone starting out or want to grow business on Shopify. It contains the latest online courses and tutorials, upcoming webinars, live streams, and online events specially designed for Shopify sellers.

“We’re launching Compass early and making everything inside available for free, so that small business owners like you can navigate these challenging times.” – Shopify

With Shopify compass, you can-

1. Learn from a number of free online courses
2. Track progress of your store
3. Connect with the community of entrepreneurs
4. Attend live workshops
5. Watch previously held workshops

Signup on Shopify compass

How new sellers can go with the flow?

As per the statistics mentioned above, it is clearly a good idea for new sellers to hit eCommerce. People around the world are mostly dependent on eCommerce to get essential or even non-essential products.

Moreover, free services by Shopify partners and Shopify itself like an extended free trial, gift cards, etc. make it more valuable for sellers to get started with online selling.

Looking forward to a thriving store within the minimum time possible? Experts can help you out.
Schedule a meeting | Create a job

How to research winning products to sell?

If you want to take your brick-and-mortar business online, then you may want to deal for the products you already sell, which is completely fine. Or you may have researched for the products in which you want to deal with.

But if you are not clear with which product to sell, then no worries, you can use the following tool by google to search winning products or niche.

1- Google trends:

With the help of Google Trends, one can easily review and compare which products are currently rising in demand based on Google search data. Therefore, finding one niche or products with good sales potential doesn’t have to be difficult.

Here’s a trend of the “Men’s fashion” in google trends

You can also compare the trend for different keywords related to the same product. For example, comparing men’s fashion with women’s fashion.

In the same way, you can compare two niches and find which is more trending overtime.

You can also analyze the trend of a particular keyword on the basis of region and subregion. It also contains a section of “related queries”, you can use these queries as keywords and use them into product titles or descriptions.

Follow the guide to start selling on Shopify
How to sell on Shopify? A detailed guide on the Shopify store set up

2- Ecomhunt:

Ecomhunt is a popular website for finding the hottest and most popular products. It enables sellers to have access to trending products with minimum efforts.

One should consider this website if looking for trending or best-selling products to add in the store.

3- Product evaluator tool:

It instantly evaluates your product to check whether your product is worth selling or not. Your product will go for a series of questions which at the end gives you a score and help you decide the right product to sell.

After answering the questions, you’ll receive an answer via mail.

Our little contribution

“We are in this together, and together we will overcome”

Being the Shopify experts with a seller-centric core, we have always tried helping sellers with our solutions and services. And in times like this, when the people and businesses need the guidance and services the most, we have decided to avail them with free services. Broadly, we are offering the following services for free-

1) Store audit:

Our experts having years of experience will analyze your store on all the grounds. After that, they will let you know all the loopholes on which you can work to get more traffic and conversions.

2) Domain mapping:

Get your third-party domain mapped with the domain of your Shopify store. This will help you in branding your store and give it a professional look.

3) Payment settings:

They will set up the payment gateways and all the related settings according to your requests.

Reach us now to get our free services
Contact Shopify Experts 

Conclusion – Covid-19’s effect on Shopify is Temporary Hurdle

The insights, statistics, and tips shared by experts shared in the blog above is powerful enough to let us know the potential of eCommerce for a business. Having an online presence can help your business thrive even in situations like this.

Last but not least: Always consider taking care of your health and people around you. Because a healthy body and mind matters the most.

Having doubts regarding anything related to Shopify? Just drop a comment. We will reach you as soon as possible.