Last updated on 5 January 2023
Shopify is now the leading eCommerce platform. They have created a platform to allow anyone who can use a computer, the ability to build a multi-million dollar eCommerce brand. I have compiled my favourite Shopify tips & tricks that I believe will help you progress in building your brand.
One thing we will talk about is Shopify apps. Shopify apps are the building blocks of the Shopify ecosystem and they play a crucial role in building a store.
#1 International pricing
It’s possible to set different pricing amounts for each country. For example, if you sell a product for $10, but you want to charge more in a specific country due to taxes or other reasons, then you can now set your price higher using a percentage. You can say 20% higher in Germany, to help cover the costs of German sales.
It sets the international pricing by increasing or decreasing your chosen percentage from what the price was. 20% on $10 will calculate to $12.
There are 2 methods for editing this (you need Shopify Payments as a payment gateway for this):
- Go to Settings > Payments > Once Shopify Payments is set up, click ‘Manage’ > Scroll down to ‘Countries/regions’
- Go to a product in Shopify, scroll down to the pricing and click the ‘International pricing’ link. This will open up the international pricing section.
Availability only on $79 Shopify plan
International pricing is only available from the Shopify $79/month plan, but it’s a brilliant feature useful for stores selling worldwide.
#2 Bulk product editor
It’s possible to bulk edit your products in many ways. You can add attributes to basically design your table to make customisations to all of your products quickly and efficiently.
Go to Products > Select all products you want to customise (example below shows selecting all products on your store) > Click ‘Edit products’
#3 Checkout using email or phone number
Customers now get the choice to checkout using email or phone number as default. Depending on what the store owner would like to capture from their customers, it’s best to review this setting in case you want to capture emails from everyone for further email marketing.
Go to Settings > Checkout > Scroll down to ‘Customer contact’
#4 Shopify multi-currency
One of my favourite Shopify tips is Shopify Multi-currency. This is a feature that solves many issues about selling worldwide. Everyone wants to go to a store and see the currency in their home currency right? The store doesn’t feel quite “at home” when you’re unfamiliar with the currency. Well, this solves it.
You will need to use Shopify Payments as a gateway for this, Paypal Express also works with multi-currency now too.
How to use Shopify Multi-Currency
Go to Settings > Payments > Once Shopify Payments is set up, click ‘Manage’ > Scroll down to ‘Countries/regions’ and click ‘Add country/region’.
You can find more information about setting up multi-currency here.
Two methods for currency conversion on live store
There are two methods to showing the correct currency in your customers country:
- Using a Shopify app to change the currency automatically based on the viewer’s IP address
- Using a Shopify app to inform customers to change their currency if they are in a different country to the default
Method 1 – Coin app – Charges a monthly fee
Coin Currency Converter is a perfect app for changing the currency automatically for your viewers. It’s compatible with Shopify Multi-currency and was one of the first apps to do this.
Method 2 – Geolocation – Free
Shopify has built a free app called Geolocation to inform your customers to change currency
#5 Price rounding
Price rounding is a brilliant feature, especially if you’re using Shopify multi-currency. Any prices that automatically show up in a different currency will be rounded to the nearest .99 or .00. This makes your store look better and more optimised for your customers’ native currency.
Let’s admit, we’ve been to stores before and saw a price of something like $23.76. It looks very unpleasant and sometimes untrustworthy.
This feature is available only while using Shopify Payments as a payment gateway.
How to do Price Rounding on Shopify
Go to Settings > Payments > Click ‘Manage’ on the Shopify Payments gateway > Scroll down to ‘Countries/regions’ and click ‘Enable’.
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#6 Digital Goods VAT Tax automatically calculated
A huge feature for digital stores is the automatic tracking of digital goods VAT. By law, it’s compulsory to pay VAT tax in the country that your customer is in if you are selling digital products, no matter what country your company is based in. This is only relevant in the EU.
This has been done to stop companies like Amazon from selling digital products to the EU while basing themselves in a VAT-free country and avoiding paying VAT. Thanks, Amazon!
Therefore this feature in Shopify should be turned on if you are selling digital goods so that your accountant doesn’t have to do it manually at the end of the year. Imagine them having to find out the VAT rate for each European country, then calculate it up!
How to calculate VAT on Shopify
Please view our extensive VAT tax for Shopify guide on how to do this properly. Shopify has changed it since.
Go to Settings > Taxes > Tick the checkbox ‘Charge VAT on digital goods’.
It’s up to you if you want the VAT inclusive of your product price, or to be added on top by ticking the checkbox ‘All prices include tax’ if you want it inclusive.
Recommendation for digital stores
If you run a digital product store, we have a recommendation that we as developers have found to be super useful, and we want to share it. Use the app Downloadable Digital Assets to deliver your digital products, it’s by far the best digital downloads app for Shopify that we have used.
As a Shopify expert, I happen to know the developers and they will do anything to help you out, they’re a great team behind it. The team were also staff-picked by Shopify’s app store staff.
#7 Add languages
Languages are such a big connection for the world, so why don’t we take it more seriously? If you sell products to multiple countries, then it’s probably best to add languages helping your customers feel comfortable and connected to your store.
How to do it
Go to Settings > Languages
#8 Add your site to Google Search Console
Another Shopify tip I can’t stress enough – if you want to rank on Google, you need to set up Google Search Console and learn how your site is ranking.
GSC is Google’s way of showing you what pages are ranking best, what keywords your store is ranking for and a bunch of other useful things. It also tells you what issues your site has and where you can improve with site speed, mobile usability and a lot more.
Useful tips for SEO:
- DO NOT ever change your URLs, this will damage your rankings. You can only change them if they have been live for a short time like one day or so because they are not ranked properly yet. If they have had time to rank and you want to change the URL for a good reason, then set a 301 redirect from the old URL to the new URL.
- Do not have duplicate content to fill up pages
- Always do internal & external linking, Google loves it and so do your customers
- Learn how to optimise your pages with keywords, meta, tags & more
- To get new pages ranked faster, drop the URL of the page into GSC and request an index
#9 Shopify Analytics
Analytics are some of the most used metrics in eCommerce. It’s important to know where and what your customers are doing. Shopify has its own analytics built-in, which are very useful.
Of course, depending on the Shopify plan you are on, you may get more options. Shopify basic is quite limited, but the next plans up are much more advanced. You can see metrics such as which products have sold the most, product conversion rates, average order value and much more.
I would highly suggest you install both Google Analytics Universal (old version) & the new Google Analytics 4. I have written an extensive guide on how to install GA into Shopify here.
#10 Use collection pages for SEO
Collection pages play an important role in SEO. Sometimes it’s difficult to rank a specific product page for a keyword, so you can use collection pages to rank for that keyword instead, as long as it’s relevant.
Collection pages rank really easily on Google as they aren’t product pages with pricing etc. they are simply a page showing off a set of your products.
You will need to add content to the collection page for Google to rank it. I’m talking about adding a lot of words and information that talks about the keyword/products that you are describing. I would suggest adding the content below the products, so people can see the products instantly, as that’s what collection pages are for. The content is simply to get on Googles Search radar.
Summary
There you have it, a list of some Shopify tips & tricks I would highly recommend considering for your store if they work for you. I’ve been building Shopify stores for many years now and I want to teach people the best methods to grow fast.
If there are any tips & tricks you would like to mention, please comment below and I would love to add them.
