This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/books-for-entrepreneurs

Are you looking for advice on boosting your small business and improving your life?

We’ve compiled a list of the best books by renowned business leaders, novelists, and successful entrepreneurs, packed with practical advice on becoming an industry innovator and finding your passion through meaningful work. With these books, you too can build your own business and thrive.

We encourage you to find a local bookstore that offers delivery or curbside pickup. Check IndieBound if you truly don’t have local options, or consider purchasing from Bookshop, an online bookstore with a mission to financially support local, independent bookstores.

32 must-read entrepreneur books for 2020

1. The Power of Broke

Author: Daymond John

Daymond John is an influential voice for founders who don’t have a ton of money to get their small business started. In his bestselling The Power of Broke, he discusses how being broke and on a tight budget can motivate you to achieve great things—as long as you’re hungry for success.

2. Behold the Dreamers

Author: Imbolo Mbue

Behold the Dreamers inspires with its timeless plea for courage. Set during the 2008 financial crisis, this New York Times bestselling novel is told through the eyes of a young Cameroonian woman and shines a light on the immigrant experience with a wit and compassion that’s lacking in today’s political conversation. The story feels more relevant than ever as equality movements redefine what it means to be an immigrant living in the United States.

3. The Virgin Way

Author: Richard Branson

Richard Branson was just 16 years old when he dropped out of school and started working for himself. Some 40 years later, his Virgin Group is an international brand. This is the playbook for leadership, showing how family, fun, passion, and listening are key to creating a successful, worldwide team of employees.

4. Steve Jobs

Author: Walter Isaacson

Anyone involved in business has heard at least a few stories about Apple founder Steve Jobs. Walter Isaacson’s riveting biography of the Silicon Valley icon will inspire you to build and create products that people want, to test the boundaries of innovation, and to become an entrepreneurial success with a business plan to change the world.

5. Year of Yes

Author: Shonda Rhimes

Leading Hollywood producer Shonda Rhimes, best known for her hit series Grey’s Anatomy and Scandal, lets readers in on her personal industry experiences in Year of Yes. Rhimes shares her journey from being a shy and nervous introvert who turned down endless opportunities to becoming a confident speaker and authoritative figure who said yes to everything that came her way. This book is for anyone who wants to bust out of their shell and bring their voice into the world.

6. Beating the Odds

Author: Eddie Brown

Philanthropist and business magnate Eddie Brown walks you through how he built and maintained Brown Capital Management through hard times, like 9/11 and the 2008 recession. In his autobiography, Beating the Odds, Brown offers a fascinating look at being born in the rural South to a 13-year-old mother who died shortly after his birth. Brown tells how, despite endless hardships, he created his own life path—graduating college, joining the Army, and becoming an engineer at IBM—and eventually built his billion-dollar company.

7. Female Innovators at Work

Author: Danielle Newnham

Female Innovators At Work is a must-read for all current and aspiring leaders of women-owned businesses. Danielle Newnham’s book is full of inspiring interviews and case studies from female CEOs, founders, and inventors from various different areas of tech, as they share their experiences, challenges, and lessons learned on their journeys through entrepreneurship.

8. In the Company of Women

Author: Grace Bonney

In the Company of Women shares and highlights inspiring advice and life stories from women entrepreneurs across various industries, careers, backgrounds, races, and places, showing how visibility is the key to success for women leaders today. If you want to gain new perspectives and soak up some inspiration, this is one of the best entrepreneur books to check out.

9. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

Author: Angela Duckworth

Many of us know persistence and effort are key to success. Those who “make it” aren’t always the ones with the best ideas or resources. They’re the ones who work and improve every day—no matter what. This is what Grit is about. In this New York Times bestseller, Angela Duckworth teaches business owners how to cultivate more grit in themselves and the people around them.

10. The Last Black Unicorn

Author: Tiffany Haddish

In this autobiography, actress and comedian Tiffany Haddish shares her rags-to-riches story. The Last Black Unicorn is a powerful and personal tale of how you can come from nothing and make it to the top by following your dreams and being true to who you are. If you want to have a good laugh and a dose of inspiration, this is your must-read book of the year.

11. Girl Code

Author: Cara Alwill Leyba

One of the many tough parts of being a female entrepreneur can be dealing with other women. But when women show up for and support each other, amazing things happen. In this powerful book for female entrepreneurs, Cara Alwill Leyba shares the secrets to building confidence and empowering other women. Girl Code helps you connect with why you do what you do in your life and business, handle jealousy, burn out, and self care, and find out what success means to you.

12. David and Goliath

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

Each of Malcolm Gladwell’s books are riveting. In David and Goliath, heexamines how we think about challenges and disadvantages while offering a new look at what it means to be discriminated against, lose a parent, attend a mediocre school, or suffer from any number of life setbacks. Learn about the success of the Impressionists, the history of the full-court press, and why you should avoid elite colleges like Harvard and Brown.

13. The 4-Hour Workweek

Author: Timothy Ferriss

If you follow the Shopify blog, you’re aware of Timothy Ferriss. In this book, you’ll learn how he went from working 80 hours a week and earning $40,000 a year to earning $40,000 a month working only four hours a week.

14. All Marketers Are Liars

Author: Seth Godin

Great marketers don’t talk about features or benefits. They tell stories. In All Marketers Are Liars, Seth Godin shines some new light on this industry, discussing how marketers think and create stores—as well as lies and frauds— that have an impact on the lives of many, for better or for worse. His book will also teach you how to build a brand and craft your story.

15. Purple Cow

Author: Seth Godin

Purple Cow, another book by Seth Godin, showcases one core principle of marketing: be remarkable. Godin discusses how the old way of building a business—making safe, average products then advertising them on TV—is long gone. Instead, he argues here, you need to stop advertising, start innovating, and build remarkable products.

16. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

Author: Ben Horowitz

Does the name Horowitz seem familiar? Ben Horowitz is one half of Andreessen Horowitz, one of the most respected VCs in Silicon Valley. Here, Horowitz offers essential advice on founding and running a startup, as well as practical wisdom for navigating the biggest challenges business schools don’t cover.

17. Rework

Authors: Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson

In Rework, Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson convincingly show that most of what we regard as obstacles—hiring staff, dealing with paperwork, decision making, time management, renting an office—are simply excuses not to get started. With its direct language and simple-is-better technique, Rework is the best playbook for anyone who’s dreamed of running a successful business of their own.

18. Trust Me, I’m Lying

Author: Ryan Holiday

Do you want to know how the media really works? Ryan Holiday claims to know. As a media manipulator, he uses blogging to control and distort the news, as much as any one person can. Trust Me, I’m Lying shows you how he does it. But be careful—the information provided here is dangerous.

19. The Lean Startup

Author: Eric Ries

Rather than waste your time creating a big business plan, The Lean Startup offers companies of all sizes a new way to test their vision, adjust, and adapt—fast. Eric Ries provides a scientific approach to creating a successful startup—whether founded in a Fortune 100 boardroom or a garage, like Amazon—in a time when companies need to innovate to thrive.

20. The Startup Owner’s Manual

Authors: Steve Blank and Bob Dorf

The Startup Owner’s Manual is a 608-page how-to guide on how to run a startup. If you like charts, graphs, diagrams, and unlocking the secrets to building a successful, scalable company, this is the business book for you.

21. Crush It!

Author: Gary Vaynerchuk

Gary Vaynerchuk discovered the possibilities of sales through the internet earlier than many. In Crush It!, you’ll learn his advice for turning your web presence into a personal brand—just like Vaynerchuk did when he grew his family’s wine business from a $4-million venture to a $60-million one.

22. The Tipping Point

Author: Malcolm Gladwell

The Tipping Point is Malcolm Gladwell’s seminal book about how small changes can prompt big ones. In this bestseller, Gladwell explores and explains the “tipping point phenomenon,” which changed how people throughout the world think about selling products and sharing ideas. You’ve heard about it. Now it’s time to read it.

23. Good to Great

Author: Jim Collins

In Good to Great, Jim Collins profiles major companies such as Intel, Coca-Cola, and Merck to discover how they took quantum leaps ahead of their competitors. To find out what makes a company great, Collins and his 21-person research team read and coded 6,000 articles, produced more than 2,000 pages of interview transcripts, and created 384 megabytes of computer data over the course of five years. Their findings are presented in this intriguing business book.

24. Getting to Yes

Author: Roger Fisher and William Ury

Getting to Yes is based on the work of the Harvard Negotiation project, a group that deals with all levels of negotiation and conflict resolution. This book has been published continuously for 30 years, teaching business owners a step-by-step strategy for coming to mutual agreements in every sort of conflict. Not many business books can claim the same.

25. The Power of Visual Storytelling

Author: Ekaterina Walter and Jessica Gioglio

The Power of Visual Storytelling is one-of-a-kind guide to developing powerful marketing programs using visual storytelling. In this book, you’ll learn how to grow your business and strengthen your brand by leveraging photos, videos, infographics, presentations, and other rich media.

26. Hooked

Author: Nir Eyal

Looking for a product to sell and open to trying anything? Consult Nir Eyal’s Hook Model, a four-step process to build customer habits and learn how to build products that people can’t put down.

27. Ogilvy on Advertising

Author: David Ogilvy

Ogilvy on Advertising is a classic book for entrepreneurs, written by David Ogilvy, one of the co-founders of Ogilvy & Mather who’s also been called the original Mad Man.

28. How to Win Friends and Influence People

Author: Dale Carnegie

Since 1936, How to Win Friends and Influence People has sold more than 15 million copies. This timeless bestseller is packed with actionable advice that has carried hundreds of thousands of successful people through their business and personal lives. It can teach you some new people skills and how to achieve maximum potential in a noisy and competitive age.

29. The Art of the Start

Author: Guy Kawasaki

Guy Kawasaki was one of the first marketers for Apple, where he cultivated the ability to put ideas into action. From raising money to hiring the right people, defining your position and building a brand, creating hype and fostering a community, this business book will guide you through the journey of starting a business.

30. Start With Why

Author: Simon Sinek

Start With Why takes you inside the minds of business leaders who’ve had the greatest influence on the world. Simon Sinek explores how they think, act, and communicate. Pulling from real-life experiences, he brings together a clear playbook for what it takes to lead and inspire. If you want to inspire others, or learn how to find a mentor who inspires you, this book will show you how.

31. Rich Dad Poor Dad

Author: Robert T. Kiyosaki

Rich Dad Poor Dad tells Robert Kiyosaki’s story of growing up with two dads: his biological father and his fathers’ best friend—his “rich dad.” Kiyosaki shares how both men shaped his thoughts about money and investing. He also explores the myth of earning a high income to become rich and shows how you can use money to work for you, rather than constantly working for money.

32. Zero to One

Author: Peter Thiel

Peter Thiel, co-founder of PayPal, explores how to build a better future in his bestselling book, Zero to One. Thiel presents a positive look into the future of America’s tech world and offers a new way of thinking about innovation—learning how to ask the right questions that lead you to discover value in the most unexpected places.

What are the best entrepreneur books you’re reading?

When it comes to entrepreneur books, you may find some topics more interesting or practical than others. Regardless, reading these types of books helps you learn from other successful entrepreneurs’ mistakes and take advantage of their lessons, so you too can build a profitable business of your own.

If you want to learn more about entrepreneurship, check out these top business podcasts to explore more tips, tricks, challenges, and lessons.

Shopify Tutorial

How to Support Small Businesses—with 100+ Gift Ideas to Get You Started

May 6, 2021 Elksourcing, Small Businesses by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/why-support-small-businesses

The busiest shopping season of the year is upon us. Our inboxes are brimming with deals from businesses vying for our dollars. While there’s no indication that the pandemic will stop the Black Friday Cyber Monday surge, the way we shop has changed forever.

An increase in online shopping and adoption of alternative delivery methods are the most obvious trends. But what the pandemic has also uncovered—call it a silver lining—is an increased sense of community. We are all in this together. And our communities rely on the small businesses at the heart of them.

Go Forth Goods

Small business owners have been hit especially hard by the measures and government mandates set to keep people safe. Many have been forced to close their doors. According to one report, during the first three months of the pandemic’s surge in the US, small business revenues were down 40% overall, and 40% of small businesses closed. Some may not reopen. Others have made clever pivots to service their customers without human contact.

We have choices right now.

We, as a global community, can secure the futures of those resilient small businesses and help them shine. This BFCM, consider diverting your dollars from big-box stores to local businesses—you may even discover a new favorite destination for buying gifts.

While the need to help the independent business community is most immediately obvious, the benefits of shopping small extend beyond times of crisis.

While the need to support small businesses is most immediately obvious, the benefits of shopping small extend beyond times of crisis. We’ll illustrate why shopping at small businesses is good for everyone at all times and give you plenty of tips on how to do it—even at a distance.

Why support small businesses
5 ways to support small businesses while social distancing
The ultimate independent gift guide—100+ ideas
Staff picks: even more gift ideas

Why support small businesses

Burst

Beyond their size, small businesses are defined by their spirit. And at the helm are their intrepid founders—scrappy, ambitious, and resilient. They invent and build things despite uncertainty, because it’s what drives them. Their risks lead to innovation that moves the world forward. And we need them.

Small businesses are important to the economic and social fabric of our society, and we all play a part in their survival.

Competition from chain stores, skyrocketing retail leases, and struggles to secure funding or manage cash flow all contribute to well-known small-business failure rates. But small businesses are important to the economic and social fabric of our society. Here’s why it’s important to support them.

1. They make a positive impact to the local economy

The spread of the global pandemic has undoubtedly affected the economy. We cannot stop this, but we can make a choice with our dollars to help local economies stay afloat and give small businesses a fighting chance to rebound when we emerge from our homes.

Growing companies, some that started in garages or coffee shops, foster eco-systems that enable other small businesses to thrive in their wake. Entrepreneurship inspires and facilitates more entrepreneurship—think online curators, who amplify even more small brands, bringing their products to new audiences.

When you shop local, your dollars stay in the community and help local development.

In terms of local businesses, the impact is even more obvious. When you shop local, your dollars stay in the community and help local development. This is called the multiplier effect. For example, a restaurant buying ingredients from local producers uses a local insurance broker and hires a local design firm, building symbiotic relationships that help the whole business community prosper.

2. They support communities and job creation

Small businesses, especially in the case of retail stores, are often major contributors to the heart of a community. “Main Street” becomes a hub of activity, where stores, business associations, and local government work collectively to create and preserve the character of their town or neighbourhood. A deliberate focus on supporting local business helps drive up the appeal of the shopping area and attracts tourism dollars into the community. The effect has a positive impact on adjacent hotels, attractions, and tours.

A healthy presence of small businesses in communities also helps people learn on-the-job business skills, empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs.

Small businesses also create local jobs. As of 2015, US small businesses employed 58 million people, or 48% of the private workforce. A healthy presence of small businesses in communities also helps people learn on-the-job business skills, empowering the next generation of entrepreneurs.

3. They are often sustainable shopping alternatives

Handmade sustainable chair. Masaya & Co.

While not true in every case, smaller businesses may have a shorter manufacturer-to-consumer journey, meaning there is more transparency in ingredients, materials, and the source of the products you buy. Small businesses are often makers, producing goods locally. Or they are resellers of products made by small-batch brands.

Smaller businesses often have the means to manufacture and source locally and ethically because of smaller quantities. You may pay more for these goods versus similar items at chain retailers, but you’re paying for the peace of mind that comes with ethical production.

4. They put customer experience first

Large brands have recognized that immersive experiences win in retail, but the intimacy and personalized care of small businesses is hard to scale. Many new business owners launch alone and fill every role in the business, including customer service. Without the layers of management and corporate policy, small business owners can make their own rules. The good ones will bend over backward for each shopper—because every customer matters when you’re small.

Every customer matters when you’re small.

Shopping with small businesses is often a point of discovery. Smaller, local, and handmade goods brands often can’t fulfill wholesale orders for larger chains, and their goods generally can only be bought direct from the business’s own website or sales channels, or in independent retailers. Where department stores win on volume, small businesses shine in diversity and uniqueness.

5 ways to support small businesses while social distancing

Moorea Seal

There are many ways your dollars—not being spent on bars or movies—can be diverted to small businesses. From pandemic survival basics to unique gifts, independent shops have you covered. Now that you know why it’s important to support small businesses, here’s how to do it.

1. Discover new brands

Take a look around while you’re out walking in your neighborhood. Is there a small grocer you haven’t noticed before? An independent bookstore you haven’t visited? Check with neighbors and review sites to discover local businesses that may become your new favorites.

You can also download the Shop app. It not only tracks all your orders from all online sources in one place, it’s also a great way to discover local and curated businesses and get notified when your favorite brands have new products in stock.

2. Buy gift cards

Good Neighbour

We’ll get through this. And once the lockdowns have been lifted, you’ll be back to your usual routine, visiting your favorite sandwich shop, taking a hot yoga class, or buying candles at the maker space. Help your usual haunts make it through the lockdown by paying for products and services in advance. Check their websites to see if they offer gift cards or class packs.

On Instagram, Good Neighbour founder Aziz Alam says, “We will dearly miss seeing our wonderful neighbours during this challenging time. As a small, family owned business that relies on foot traffic to keep things running smoothly we greatly appreciate your support [online]. Gift cards can also go a long way.”

3. Share your favorite stores in your social networks

Did your favorite small business close? Is it paying its employees anyway? Help it stay afloat by paying forward its goodwill. Tell your followers about ways they can support it, like buying gift cards for future purchases.

While others in your circles may be looking for gift ideas of their own, share your unboxing experiences or short reviews of products you’ve purchased from small businesses.

4. Reach out

Burst

You may have built relationships with some of the small business owners where you usually shop. Reach out and ask what they need right now. If you’re a business owner too, stick together and support your fellow founders—like Pause Beauty, which has committed to giving free pedicures to frontline workers when the risk is over. Think of the online business community as one big self-sustaining Main Street.

In a recent Instagram post, Noah Clothing founder Brendon Babenzien urged his followers to “buy something. Not necessarily from us, but from any independent businesses or creative enterprises you believe in, and preferably those that’ve made positive, ethical choices in the ways they create and operate.”

5. Buy holiday gifts from small businesses

Larger retailers have made it easy to shop, with incentives like free next-day shipping. But if you have a little more time to wait, you can find unique, handmade, or sustainable alternatives at small businesses. Give twice with every gift—your business means a lot to independent brands, especially now. Read on to discover dozens of ideas for feel-good gift giving.

The ultimate independent gift guide—100+ ideas for every occasion, everyone on your list

Gift ideas from (left to right) Clean Beauty Box, Harry Barker, Octave Jewelry, Brooklyn Bicycle Co., and ART ARK

Gifts for your bestie, gifts for your stepmom, gifts for yourself. Whomever you’re buying for and whatever the occasion, there’s an independent business with the perfect gift. To get you started, we’ve picked 100+ ideas to kick off your BFCM and holiday shopping adventure.

Gifts for foodies
Gifts for makers
Gifts for fitness buffs
Good gifts that give back
Gifts for entrepreneurs
Tech gifts
Kid gifts
Gifts for coffee and tea lovers
Gifts for self care
Fashion gifts
Gifts for rainy Sundays
Gifts for pets and their people
Custom gifts
Beauty gifts
Gifts for grounded travellers
Gifts for outdoorsy types
Gifts for hunkering down for a long winter

Gifts for foodies

Old World Kitchen

Many restaurants are closed for dine-in, but check in to see if any are offering delivery as an alternative. Gift cards to your favorite eateries make great gifts. Otherwise, get inspired by those hours of Top Chef you’ve been binging in isolation.

Handcrafted wooden cooking tools from the family behind Old World Kitchen ( Read their story)
Professional-grade pots and pans by Saflon
Zesters, pinch bowls, and other baking tools from Pot & Pantry
Global inspiration (even if you can’t travel right now) inside a Mediterranean cookbook from Goods
A trip to Italy in your own kitchen with virtual cooking classes by Nonna Live ( Read Nonna’s story)

Gifts for makers

Friday Pattern Company

Nine months into this thing, I think we’re all makers now. Give gifts for idle hands with easy-to-follow kits and supplies for more advanced DIY.

Sew-your-own clothing patterns by Friday Pattern Company
Simple wooden cross-stitch kits for tiny hands from Stitched Modern
Artist-quality tools and brushes from Martha Mae
Yarn and knitting supplies by The Knitting Tree, LA
Architectural scale-model building kits for kids and adults alike by Arckit
Indoor gardening tech by SmallGarden

Gifts for fitness buffs

York Athletics Mfg.

Replicating the gym or yoga studio experience at home requires gear. Stock up on gifts for fitness lovers from these independent businesses.

Cork yoga mats by Mukta Being
Kettlebells and weight-lifting equipment from Fringe Sport
Exercise bikes and home gyms from G&G Fitness
Footwear by YORK Athletics Mfg. ( Read their story)
Fitness wear by Superfit Hero and Manduka
Anywhere, anytime fitness with virtual classes by BodyLove Pilates, P.volve, and Hyl Fitness

Good gifts that give back

Nisolo

Supporting small businesses is already an act of kindness, but you can go a step further by shopping from sustainable and ethical independent brands. Here are a few that offer great gift ideas, too.

Vegan, paleo, and delicious chocolate bars by Rescue Chocolate that support animal rescue organizations
Ethically sourced Australian Aboriginal art from ART ARK
Luxurious organic cotton sheet sets by Alterra Pure
Organic MoonWomb nursing pillows by The Sustainable Baby Co.
Grow Anthology long boards made in the US from Richlite recycled paper (a tree is planted for every deck sold!)
Ethically produced footwear, socks, and accessories by Nisolo

Gifts for entrepreneurs (and remote working life)

George & Willy

Working from home? Same. Now we’ve all joined the reality of the many entrepreneurs who start businesses from their kitchen tables. Give meaningful gifts that make the work-from-home experience more ergonomic and professional.

Unique laptop stands by MOFT and Masaya
Sustainable wood desks by From the Source
Heated coffee mug by Ember
Wall-mounted paper rollers by George & Willy
Window-mounted standing desk by DeskView
A gift for the aspiring entrepreneur: their very own business from Shopify’s Exchange marketplace

Tech gifts

Momentum Home Automation

Shop gear and gadgets that automate tasks, keep your loved ones safe, and teach kids the basics of tech, all from independent brands.

GPS tracking watches for kids by Lil Tracker
Noise-cancelling earbuds by PaMu
STEM kits for young people by Makey Makey
Smart home security cameras by Momentum
Retro flip clock by Schoolhouse

Kid gifts

The Bee & the Fox

Swimming in plastic junk and stumped for gift ideas for kids who have everything? Get creative with ideas from small businesses that aim to spark creativity, encourage movement, and expand growing minds.

Inclusive jigsaw puzzles featuring diverse characters from Puzzle Huddle
Statement tees for future activists by The Bee & the Fox ( Read their story)
Jewellery designed for kids by kids from Gunner & Lux ( Read their story)
Cozy bamboo and cotton basics for active play by Little & Lively
Fort building and construction kits by Fort Magic
Kids’ music player by Jooki

Gifts for coffee and tea lovers

Detour Coffee Roasters

Local cafes may be closed, and free-flowing office coffee sources have gone dry, but you don’t need to resort to instant coffee. Please, I beg you. Shop these online retailers to send some caffeinated SOS to those you love:

Pour-over coffee maker and accessories from Melodrip (or try the single-serve portable version by One Fresh Cup)
Tea by BLK & BOLD ( Listen to their story)
Beans by Detour Coffee Roasters and Rwanda Bean
Grinders and espresso machines from Clive Coffee
Handmade pottery coffee mugs by Red Bison Studio

Gifts for self care

Walls of Benin

We’re nine months into pandemic isolation—that’s still very challenging for some. Stay in tune with your mental health and access resources available to you. It’s also a good time to treat yourself.

Luxe loungewear by Walls of Benin
Cozy and cute slippers from BureBure and Patricia Green
Self-care subscriptions by Lunarly
52 Lists books by Moorea Seal ( Read her story)
Home mists and essential oil diffusers by Vitruvi
Sleep machines and accessories by Yogasleep

Fashion gifts

OKAY OK

We’re all spending a little more time in loungewear these days, but for those who haven’t given up on “hard clothes” altogether, there are plenty of independent fashion brands selling apparel that’s cool and comfy, too.

Non-frumpy sweats by Ijji and OKAYOK
Loafers by Blackstock & Weber
Clothing for transgender girls by RUBIES ( Read their story)
Drop earrings by Octave Jewelry
Cozy statement sweaters by SheNative Goods ( Read their story)
Apparel printed with designs by those with developmental disabilities by Alivia

Gifts for rainy Sundays

Four Point Puzzles

It might be a while before we can all escape the isolation and return to our book clubs or coding classes. In the meantime, give the gift of a new hobby or pastime with these picks from small businesses.

Outdoor space explorer coloring book by Ooly
Designer puzzles for the whole family by Four Point Puzzles
Beer-making kits—chocolate maple porter and jalapeno saison, to name a few—by Brooklyn Brew Shop
Custom board game shelves by BoxThrone ( Listen to their story)
A subscription to Mouse Book Club—get portable versions of book classics and new favorites four times a year

Gifts for pets and their people

Wild One

Pets are the real winners this year, basking in the love of their humans who have no choice but to be home bestowing pets all day. That doesn’t mean they don’t deserve a treat, too. These independent businesses sell everything from cookies to toys to custom pet-themed art.

Ropes, balls, and stuffies for dogs by Harry Barker
Healthy pet food and treats by Farm to Paw
Custom pet portraits by Royal Pet Pawtrait or My Pooch Face
Orthopedic dogs beds by Big Barker
Colorful matching leads and harnesses by Wild One

Custom gifts

Happy Box Store

Nothing says “I’m thinking about you” more than a truly personal gift. These independent businesses help you create one-of-a-kind gifts with your loved one in mind.

Custom neon signs by Neon Mfg or MK Neon
Build-your-own gift boxes by Happy Box
Mystery book bags, based on your preferences, by Type Books

Beauty gifts

Then I Met You

How else would we survive a year like 2020 without a little self care? For some, that means indulging in at-home spa rituals or even something as simple as wearing lipstick in a work Zoom meeting. For gift ideas for the beauty worshippers on your list, consult the experts: these independent skincare and cosmetics brands.

Skincare by Then I Met You ( Read their story)
Lipsticks curated for darker skin tones by MFMG (Makeup for Melanin Girls) Cosmetics ( Listen to their story)
Monthly subscription box filled with good-for-you and good-for-the-earth beauty products by The Clean Beauty Box
Skincare for men of color by Ceylon ( Listen to their story)
Pillowcases that combat dry skin and tangled hair by Madison & White

Gifts for grounded travellers

Grand Trunk

I’m as gutted as you are that I haven’t explored outside my own city’s limits for the better part of the year. For others with an unsatisfied hunger for travel, give a gift that reminds them of faraway places or helps them explore safely.

Backyard hammocks (in lieu of that resort vacation they’d planned) by Grand Trunk
Hand-drawn maps to plan the next adventure by Xplorer Maps
Custom-city-map etched glassware by Well Told
National Parks notebooks from City Bird
Backpacks for local hikes and urban exploration—neutral packs by Go Forth Goods or colorful packs by Cotopaxi
Bikes for shorter trips around the neighbourhood by Brooklyn Bicycle Co. ( Listen to their story)

Gifts for outdoorsy types

Brant & Cochran

We’re not saying you should panic, but preparedness never hurt anyone. These shops have everything you need to go on an extended off-grid stay in the woods—social distancing at its finest.

Survival kits and gear from My Patriot Supply and Uncharted Supply Co.
Axes for camping and chopping wood for the stove by Brant & Cochran ( Read their story)
Portable campfires for anywhere, anytime camping by Radiate Portable Campfire
Fishing and hunting apparel by Habit Outdoors
Garden kits and accessories by Coco and Seed

Gifts for hunkering down for a long (and socially distanced) winter

Mi Cocina

Soon we’ll say goodbye to socially distanced driveway hangs and hunker into full isolation for the winter. Give gifts that bring comfort to lonely souls and cold feet.

Cozi Throw by Johanna Howard Home
Denim and leather log-carrying bag for indoor fires by Mi Cocina
Light therapy lamps by Verilux
Luxuriously soft robes from All You Are
Elf-Care Kit by Pinch Provisions

BONUS: Staff picks for independent gifting

My favorite little independent video rental spot closed last year (yes, it was so magical, it lasted until 2019). What was so special about it, like many other independent businesses, was the personal touch that Blockbuster could never replicate to scale—handwritten signs, weathered wood shelves, and best of all, the staff picks. The store was staffed by true film lovers, and I relied on the staff pick shelf to discover hidden gems.

In that spirit, I asked some of my colleagues to share their own gift ideas from independent businesses. Here are our personal picks from some of our favorite Shopify stores.

Braveen’s pick

Wooden desk accessories by Grovemade

Grove Made

“I spend a lot of time in my home office (like a lot of people these days). So I decided to invest a bit into my workspace to make it more comfortable and more organized with Grovemade’s products.” —Braveen Kumar

Desirae’s pick

Cocktail kits by Bar from Afar

Bar from Afar

“Bar from Afar delivers high quality cocktail kits so you can recreate the fancy drink experience at home with no equipment or experience!” —Desirae Odjick

Shuang’s pick

Bath and body products by Alaffia

Alaffia

“Alaffia is one of my favourite gift shops. They sell bath and body products infused with Indigenous West African ingredients made by women in Togo through a cooperative that empowers women and kids.” —Shuang Esther Shan

Dayna’s pick

Vibrant cotton and linen bedding by Maison Tess

Maison Tess

“I bought the cotton amber bedspread from Maison Tess and the richness of the color was even better in person.” —Dayna Winter

Adam’s pick

Handcrafted home decor by Timber Made Design Co.

Timber Made Design Co.

“As I moved recently, I discovered Timber Made Design Co., a small wood workshop that makes beautiful home decor.” —Adam Rogers

Feature illustration by Isabella Fassler

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Get Inspired: 200+ Motivational Quotes To Encourage Your Success

May 6, 2021 Elksourcing, Motivational Quotes by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/motivational-quotesWhat is it about motivational quotes that make them so endearing? Every driven person eventually figures out that there’s a whole lot of feel-good time wasters out there that suck us because they feel like work, and browsing endless lists of motivational phrases are no exception. And yet, there’s hidden value in finding a concise expression that perfectly distills our own beliefs.

Quotes often feel like our own opinions making a return visit, just augmented by someone with writing talent. And the right quote at the right time can change things—words matter, and motivating phrases can encourage us to get up, overcome tough times, take action, stop procrastinating, escape our comfort zone, invest in personal growth, and do the hard work that needs doing.

Even genuinely successful people show some reverence to a favorite inspirational quote or two—to get through hard times, remember an important personal principle, or even get some inspiration to be more productive while working from home. In business and life, quotes are short bits of wit and wisdom that are easy to revisit when we need them.

That said, here are a few of our favorite motivational and inspiring quotes from a wide variety of sources. We hope you find a few you like and can revisit often to stay motivated.

200+ Motivational quotes to inspire your life in 2021

Deep motivational quotes
Motivational quotes for success
Motivational quotes for life
Motivational quotes for work
Motivational quotes for women
Motivational quotes for men
Motivational quotes for students
Funny motivational quotes
Team motivational quotes
Short motivational quotes
Motivational Monday quotes
Friday motivational quotes
Best motivational quotes to start your day
Positive quotes for motivation
Daily motivational quotes
Inspirational quotes
Positive quotes
Encouraging quotes
Motivation quotes
Quote about life
Best motivational quotes
Inspirational new year quotes
Quotes about success

Deep motivational quotes

“We cannot solve problems with the kind of thinking we employed when we came up with them.” — Albert Einstein
“Learn as if you will live forever, live like you will die tomorrow.” — Mahatma Gandhi
“Stay away from those people who try to disparage your ambitions. Small minds will always do that, but great minds will give you a feeling that you can become great too.” — Mark Twain
“When you give joy to other people, you get more joy in return. You should give a good thought to happiness that you can give out.”— Eleanor Roosevelt
“When you change your thoughts, remember to also change your world.”—Norman Vincent Peale
“It is only when we take chances, when our lives improve. The initial and the most difficult risk that we need to take is to become honest. —Walter Anderson
“Nature has given us all the pieces required to achieve exceptional wellness and health, but has left it to us to put these pieces together.”—Diane McLaren

Motivational quotes for success

“Success is not final; failure is not fatal: It is the courage to continue that counts.” — Winston S. Churchill
“It is better to fail in originality than to succeed in imitation.” — Herman Melville
“The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same.” — Colin R. Davis
“Success usually comes to those who are too busy looking for it.” — Henry David Thoreau
“Develop success from failures. Discouragement and failure are two of the surest stepping stones to success.” —Dale Carnegie
“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not; nothing is more common than unsuccessful men with talent. Genius will not; unrewarded genius is almost a proverb. Education will not; the world is full of educated derelicts. The slogan ‘Press On’ has solved and always will solve the problems of the human race.” —Calvin Coolidge
“There are three ways to ultimate success: The first way is to be kind. The second way is to be kind. The third way is to be kind.” —Mister Rogers
“Success is peace of mind, which is a direct result of self-satisfaction in knowing you made the effort to become the best of which you are capable.” —John Wooden
“I never dreamed about success. I worked for it.” —Estée Lauder
“Success is getting what you want, happiness is wanting what you get.” ―W. P. Kinsella

Motivational quotes for life

“The pessimist sees difficulty in every opportunity. The optimist sees opportunity in every difficulty.” — Winston Churchill
“Don’t let yesterday take up too much of today.” — Will Rogers
“You learn more from failure than from success. Don’t let it stop you. Failure builds character.” — Unknown
“If you are working on something that you really care about, you don’t have to be pushed. The vision pulls you.” — Steve Jobs
“Experience is a hard teacher because she gives the test first, the lesson afterwards.” ―Vernon Sanders Law
“To know how much there is to know is the beginning of learning to live.” —Dorothy West
“Goal setting is the secret to a compelling future.” — Tony Robbins

Motivational quotes for work

“Concentrate all your thoughts upon the work in hand. The sun’s rays do not burn until brought to a focus. “ — Alexander Graham Bell
“Either you run the day or the day runs you.” — Jim Rohn
“I’m a greater believer in luck, and I find the harder I work the more I have of it.” — Thomas Jefferson
“When we strive to become better than we are, everything around us becomes better too.” — Paulo Coelho
“Opportunity is missed by most people because it is dressed in overalls and looks like work.” — Thomas Edison
“Setting goals is the first step in turning the invisible into the visible.” — Tony Robbins
“Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” — Steve Jobs
“It’s not about better time management. It’s about better life management” — Alexandra of The Productivity Zone

Motivational quotes for women

Women challenge the status quo because we are never it.” — Cindy Gallop
We don’t just sit around and wait for other people. We just make, and we do.” — Arlan Hamilton
“Think like a queen. A queen is not afraid to fail. Failure is another stepping stone to greatness.” — Oprah Winfrey
“The strongest actions for a woman is to love herself, be herself and shine amongst those who never believed she could.” — Unknown
“Whenever you see a successful woman, look out for three men who are going out of their way to try to block her.” – Yulia Tymoshenko
“Some women choose to follow men, and some choose to follow their dreams. If you’re wondering which way to go, remember that your career will never wake up and tell you that it doesn’t love you anymore.” — Lady Gaga
“The thing women have yet to learn is nobody gives you power. You just take it. ” ― Roseanne Barr
“No woman wants to be in submission to a man who isn’t in submission to God!” ― T D Jakes
“A witty woman is a treasure; a witty beauty is a power.” ― George Meredith
“When a woman becomes her own best friend life is easier.” – Diane Von Furstenberg
“If you want something said, ask a man; if you want something done, ask a woman.” – Margaret Thatcher
“We need women at all levels, including the top, to change the dynamic, reshape the conversation, to make sure women’s voices are heard and heeded, not overlooked and ignored.” – Sheryl Sandberg
“It took me quite a long time to develop a voice, and now that I have it, I am not going to be silent.” – Madeleine Albright
“Women must learn to play the game as men do.” – Eleanor Roosevelt
“I swear, by my life and my love of it, that I will never live for the sake of another man, nor ask another man to live for mine.” — Ayn Rand

Motivational quotes for men

“He who conquers himself is the mightiest warrior.” — Confucius
“Try not to become a man of success, but rather become a man of value.” – Albert Einstein
“One man with courage makes a majority.” – Andrew Jackson
“One secret of success in life is for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it comes.” – Benjamin Disraeli
“A man who has committed a mistake and doesn’t correct it is committing another mistake.” – Confucius Kongzi
“The successful man will profit from his mistakes and try again in a different way.” – Dale Carnegie
“A successful man is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks others have thrown at him.” – David Brinkley
“He is a wise man who does not grieve for the things which he has not, but rejoices for those which he has.” – Epictetus

Motivational quotes for students

“You’ve got to get up every morning with determination if you’re going to go to bed with satisfaction.” — George Lorimer
“Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.” — Nelson Mandela
“The most difficult thing is the decision to act, the rest is merely tenacity.” —Amelia Earhart
“You’ll find that education is just about the only thing lying around loose in this world, and it’s about the only thing a fellow can have as much of as he’s willing to haul away.” —John Graham
“Take the attitude of a student, never be too big to ask questions, never know too much to learn something new.” —Augustine Og Mandino

Funny motivational quotes

“The elevator to success is out of order. You’ll have to use the stairs, one step at a time.” — Joe Girard
“Be a positive energy trampoline – absorb what you need and rebound more back.” — Dave Carolan
“People often say that motivation doesn’t last. Well, neither does bathing – that’s why we recommend it daily.” — Zig Ziglar
“Work until your bank account looks like a phone number.” — Unknown
“I am so clever that sometimes I don’t understand a single word of what I am saying.” — Oscar Wilde
“People say nothing is impossible, but I do nothing every day.” — Winnie the Pooh
“Life is like a sewer… what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.” — Tom Lehrer
“I always wanted to be somebody, but now I realise I should have been more specific.” — Lily Tomlin

Team motivational quotes

“Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence win championships.” — Michael Jordan
“Individual commitment to a group effort—that is what makes a team work, a company work, a society work, a civilisation work.” — Vince Lombardi
“Teamwork is the ability to work together toward a common vision. The ability to direct individual accomplishments toward organizational objectives. It is the fuel that allows common people to attain uncommon results.” — Andrew Carnegie
“Coming together is a beginning. Keeping together is progress. Working together is success.” — Henry Ford
“Alone we can do so little, together we can do so much.” — Helen Keller
“Remember, teamwork begins by building trust. And the only way to do that is to overcome our need for invulnerability.” — Patrick Lencioni
“I invite everyone to choose forgiveness rather than division, teamwork over personal ambition.” — Jean-Francois Cope

Short motivational quotes

“Just one small positive thought in the morning can change your whole day.” — Dalai Lama
“Opportunities don’t happen, you create them.” — Chris Grosser
“Love your family, work super hard, live your passion.” — Gary Vaynerchuk
“It is never too late to be what you might have been.” — George Eliot
“Don’t let someone else’s opinion of you become your reality” — Les Brown
“If you’re not positive energy, you’re negative energy.” Mark Cuban
“I am not a product of my circumstances. I am a product of my decisions.” — Stephen R. Covey

Motivational Monday quotes

“The greatest discovery of my generation is that a human being can alter his life by altering his attitudes.” — William James
“One of the differences between some successful and unsuccessful people is that one group is full of doers, while the other is full of wishers.” — Edmond Mbiaka
“I’d rather regret the things I’ve done than regret the things I haven’t done.” —Lucille Ball
“You cannot plow a field by turning it over in your mind. To begin, begin.” ―Gordon B. Hinckley
“When you arise in the morning think of what a privilege it is to be alive, to think, to enjoy, to love…” – Marcus Aurelius
“Mondays are the start of the work week which offer new beginnings 52 times a year!“ – David Dweck
“Be miserable. Or motivate yourself. Whatever has to be done, it’s always your choice.” – Wayne Dyer
“Your Monday morning thoughts set the tone for your whole week. See yourself getting stronger, and living a fulfilling, happier & healthier life.” – Germany Kent

Friday motivational quotes

“Friday sees more smiles than any other day of the workweek!”—Kate Summers
“Oh! It’s Friday again. Share the love that was missing during the week. In a worthy moment of peace and bliss.” —S. O’Sade
“Every Friday, I like to high five myself for getting through another week on little more than caffeine, willpower, and inappropriate humor.” —Nanea Hoffman
“Make a Friday a day to celebrate work well done that you can be proud of knowing that you just didn’t put in time to the next paycheck.” —Byron Pulsifer
“When you leave work on Friday, leave work. Don’t let technology follow you throughout your weekend (answering text messages and emails) take a break you will be more refreshed to begin the workweek if you have had a break.” —Catherine Pulsifer

Best motivational quotes to start your day

“You can get everything in life you want if you will just help enough other people get what they want.” —Zig Ziglar
“Inspiration does exist, but it must find you working.” —Pablo Picasso
“Don’t settle for average. Bring your best to the moment. Then, whether it fails or succeeds, at least you know you gave all you had.” —Angela Bassett
“Show up, show up, show up, and after a while the muse shows up, too.” —Isabel Allende
“Don’t bunt. Aim out of the ballpark. Aim for the company of immortals.” ―David Ogilvy
“I have stood on a mountain of no’s for one yes.” —Barbara Elaine Smith
“If you believe something needs to exist, if it’s something you want to use yourself, don’t let anyone ever stop you from doing it.” —Tobias Lütke

Positive quotes for motivation

“Don’t look at your feet to see if you are doing it right. Just dance.” ―Anne Lamott
“Someone’s sitting in the shade today because someone planted a tree a long time ago.” —Warren Buffet
“True freedom is impossible without a mind made free by discipline.” ―Mortimer J. Adler
“Rivers know this: there is no hurry. We shall get there some day.” ―A.A. Milne
“There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique. And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.” ―Martha Graham
“Small is not just a stepping-stone. Small is a great destination itself.” ―Jason Fried
“He that can have patience can have what he will.” ―Benjamin Franklin
“The only one who can tell you “you can’t win” is you and you don’t have to listen.” —Jessica Ennis
“Set your goals high, and don’t stop till you get there.” —Bo Jackson
“Take your victories, whatever they may be, cherish them, use them, but don’t settle for them.” —Mia Hamm

Daily motivational quotes

“Life can be much broader once you discover one simple fact: Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… Once you learn that, you’ll never be the same again.” —Steve Jobs
“Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep your balance you must keep moving.” —Albert Einstein
“What you do speaks so loudly that I cannot hear what you say.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson
“I have never let my schooling interfere with my education.” —Mark Twain
“If you can’t yet do great things, do small things in a great way.” ―Napoleon Hill
“If you really want to do something, you’ll find a way. If you don’t, you’ll find an excuse.” ―Jim Rohn
“Be sure you put your feet in the right place, then stand firm.” ―Abraham Lincoln
“Live out of your imagination, not your history.” —Stephen Covey
“Do not wait for the perfect time and place to enter, for you are already onstage.” —Unknown
“The greater the difficulty, the more the glory in surmounting it.” ―Epicurus
Courage doesn’t always roar. Sometimes courage is a quiet voice at the end of the day saying, “I will try again tomorrow.” —Mary Anne Radmacher
“If the decisions you make about where you invest your blood, sweat, and tears are not consistent with the person you aspire to be, you’ll never become that person.” ―Clayton M. Christensen

Inspirational quotes

“Fear of what other people will think is the single most paralyzing dynamic in business and in life. The best moment of my life was the day I realized that I no longer give a damn what anybody thinks. That’s enormously liberating and freeing, and it’s the only way to live your life and do your business” — Cindy Gallop
“The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.” ―Arthur C. Clarke
“Worry is a misuse of imagination.” —Unknown
“Courage is the most important of all the virtues because without courage, you can’t practice any other virtue consistently.” ―Maya Angelou
“I never look back, darling. It distracts from the now.” —Edna Mode
“A year from now you will wish you had started today.” —Unknown
“The reason we struggle with insecurity is because we compare our behind-the-scenes with everyone else’s highlight reel.” —Steve Furtick
“Somewhere, something incredible is waiting to be known.” —Carl Sagan
“I will not lose, for even in defeat, there’s a valuable lesson learned, so it evens up for me.” —Jay-Z
“I do not try to dance better than anyone else. I only try to dance better than myself.” —Arianna Huffington
“If you don’t risk anything, you risk even more.” —Erica Jong

Positive quotes

“Failure is simply the opportunity to begin again, this time more intelligently.” — Henry Ford
“Our greatest glory is not in never falling, but in rising every time we fall.” — Confucius
“If you change the way you look at things, the things you look at change.” — Wayne Dyer
“We must reach out our hand in friendship and dignity both to those who would befriend us and those who would be our enemy.” — Arthur Ashe
“It’s fine to celebrate success but it is more important to heed the lessons of failure.” — Bill Gates

Encouraging quotes

I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been given a no. Only to find that a better, brighter, bigger yes was right around the corner.” — Arlan Hamilton
“We need to accept that we won’t always make the right decisions, that we’ll screw up royally sometimes – understanding that failure is not the opposite of success, it’s part of success.” — Ariana Huffington
“When everything seems to be going against you, remember that the airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.” — Henry Ford
“You cannot always control what goes on outside. But you can always control what goes on inside.” — Wayne Dyer
“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.” — Aristotle
“Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.” — Arthur Ashe
“Hustle beats talent when talent doesn’t hustle” – Ross Simmonds

Motivation quotes

“Everything you’ve ever wanted is sitting on the other side of fear.” — George Addair
“The question isn’t who is going to let me; it’s who is going to stop me.” — Ayn Rand
“Every strike brings me closer to the next home run.” — Babe Ruth
“I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work.” — Thomas A. Edison
“Don’t worry about failure; you only have to be right once.” —Drew Houston
“You carry the passport to your own happiness.” —Diane von Furstenberg
“Never let success get to your head and never let failure get to your heart.” —Drake
“Ideation without execution is delusion.” — Robin Sharma

Quotes about life

“Make sure your worst enemy doesn’t live between your own two ears.” —Laird Hamilton
“It is a rough road that leads to the heights of greatness.” —Lucius Annaeus Seneca
“For the great doesn’t happen through impulse alone, and is a succession of little things that are brought together.” —Vincent van Gogh
“If we take care of the moments, the years will take care of themselves.” —Maria Edgeworth
“Resilience is when you address uncertainty with flexibility.” —Unknown
“Sometimes magic is just someone spending more time on something than anyone else might reasonably expect.” —Raymond Joseph Teller
“It’s not the will to win that matters—everyone has that. It’s the will to prepare to win that matters.” —Paul Bryant
“As a single footstep will not make a path on the earth, so a single thought will not make a pathway in the mind. To make a deep physical path, we walk again and again. To make a deep mental path, we must think over and over the kind of thoughts we wish to dominate our lives.” —Henry David Thoreau
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” —Earl Nightingale
“True humility is not thinking less of yourself; it is thinking of yourself less.” — C.S. Lewis

Best motivational quotes

“The two most important days in your life are the day you’re born and the day you find out why.” – Mark Twain
“Nothing ever goes away until it teaches us what we need to know.” – Pema Chodron
‘We can see through others only when we can see through ourselves.” – Bruce Lee
“First forget inspiration. Habit is more dependable. Habit will sustain you whether you’re inspired or not. Habit will help you finish and polish your stories. Inspiration won’t. Habit is persistence in practice.” ―Octavia Butler
“The best way out is always through.” ―Robert Frost
“The battles that count aren’t the ones for gold medals. The struggles within yourself—the invisible, inevitable battles inside all of us—that’s where it’s at.” —Jesse Owens
“If there is no struggle, there is no progress.” —Frederick Douglass
“Someone will declare, “I am the leader!” and expect everyone to get in line and follow him or her to the gates of heaven or hell. My experience is that it doesn’t happen that way. Others follow you based on the quality of your actions rather than the magnitude of your declarations.” ―Bill Walsh
“Courage is like a muscle. We strengthen it by use.” —Ruth Gordo
“Relentlessly prune bullshit, don’t wait to do things that matter, and savor the time you have. That’s what you do when life is short.” —Paul Graham
“More is lost by indecision than wrong decision.” —Marcus Tullius Cicero
“If the highest aim of a captain were to preserve his ship, he would keep it in port forever.” —Thomas Aquinas
“You can be the ripest, juiciest peach in the world, and there’s still going to be somebody who hates peaches.” —Dita Von Teese
“Keep a little fire burning; however small, however hidden.” ―Cormac McCarthy

Inspirational new year quotes

You’ll never get bored when you try something new. There’s really no limit to what you can do.” — Dr. Seuss
“I think it’s intoxicating when somebody is so unapologetically who they are.” —Don Cheadle
“You can never leave footprints that last if you are always walking on tiptoe.” —Leymah Gbowee
“If you don’t like the road you’re walking, start paving another one.” —Dolly Parton
“If it makes you nervous, you’re doing it right.” —Childish Gambino
“What you do makes a difference, and you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.” —Jane Goodall
“I choose to make the rest of my life the best of my life.” —Louise Hay
“In order to be irreplaceable one must always be different.” —Coco Chanel
“Anything can make me stop and look and wonder, and sometimes learn.” —Kurt Vonnegut
“People’s passion and desire for authenticity is strong.” —Constance Wu
“A surplus of effort could overcome a deficit of confidence.” —Sonia Sotomayor
“Doubt is a killer. You just have to know who you are and what you stand for.” —Jennifer Lopez
“No one changes the world who isn’t obsessed.” —Billie Jean King
“I learned a long time ago that there is something worse than missing the goal, and that’s not pulling the trigger.” —Mia Hamm
“Some people want it to happen, some wish it would happen, others make it happen.” —Michael Jordan

Quotes about success

“It is remarkable how much long-term advantage people like us have gotten by trying to be consistently not stupid, instead of trying to be very intelligent.” —Charlie Munger
“You can’t be that kid standing at the top of the waterslide, overthinking it. You have to go down the chute.” —Tina Fey
“When I believe in something, I’m like a dog with a bone.” —Melissa McCarthy
“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” —Anaïs Nin
“The standard you walk past, is the standard you accept.” —David Hurley
“I’ve searched all the parks in all the cities and found no statues of committees.” —Gilbert K. Chesterton
“Success is stumbling from failure to failure with no loss of enthusiasm.” ―Winston Churchill
“Keep your eyes on the stars, and your feet on the ground.” ―Theodore Roosevelt
“Do not stop thinking of life as an adventure. You have no security unless you can live bravely, excitingly, imaginatively; unless you can choose a challenge instead of competence.” ―Eleanor Roosevelt
“Perfection is not attainable. But if we chase perfection we can catch excellence.” —Vince Lombardi
“Get a good idea and stay with it. Dog it, and work at it until it’s done right.” —Walt Disney
“Optimism is the faith that leads to achievement. Nothing can be done without hope and confidence.” —Helen Keller

Using inspirational quotes in your day to day life

Whether you’re a budding entrepreneur or eCommerce veteran, learning how to deal with stress while running a business will always be challenging.

Inspirational quotes are one way to help stay positive, productive, and happy as you move along your journey. Even saying one daily motivational quote in the mirror each more can make a huge impact on your day-to-day life.

As you move through the day and in your business, my hope for you is that you feel powerful. That you use these quotes to connect with yourself, clear your mind, and move into the world with self-confidence and appreciation for yourself and the world around you.

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The Beginner’s Guide to Analyzing Shopify Reports and Analytics

May 6, 2021 Elksourcing, Shopify Reports and Analytics by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/analyzing-shopify-reportsWhat sites are referring traffic to your store? Where in the world are your visitors? How did your Black Friday Cyber Monday marketing campaign perform last year? What products are people searching for most?

You have a lot of questions about your business, your customers and your marketing efforts.

Fortunately, answers to many of those questions are in your Shopify reports and analytics.

Reporting vs. analysis

It’s the end of the day (or week, or month) so you open up your analytics tool and jot down some key metrics. “Traffic is up 2% week over week. Nice!” You pat yourself on the back, maybe do a little dance in your chair.

That’s data reporting. Up is good, down is bad.

You have to think of data and analytics the way you think of an iceberg. Sure, you can see a few shiny metrics above the water, but there’s so much hiding just below the surface.

Analysis is the process of diving below the surface and uncovering meaningful insights about your business. So instead of just getting the “what” from basic ecommerce metrics, you start exploring the “why” and “so what”.

Analytics are a lot more complex than “up is good, down is bad”. But that added complexity of looking below the surface can be overwhelming, whether you’re using Google Analytics or Shopify analytics.

Still, we must persist because below the surface, you’ll find:

The answers to meaningful business questions (and new questions to ask, too).
Problem areas you aren’t aware of that are costing you money.
Quick wins and fixes to improve your user experience (UX) and conversion rate.

Asking the right questions of your data

So, we all want those insights hidden below the surface. The question becomes: how do you get below the surface? By asking meaningful questions about your store.

If you open up your analytics, you’re going to be staring down a lot of data. That kind of volume gets overwhelming quickly. To focus your efforts, it helps to have a list of questions that you want answered.

That way, you’re not clicking around waiting for insights to pop out at you. (This doesn’t happen, though it would be nice.) You need a purpose.

So, what’s a good question, then? Good question.

When you think you’ve got a good question, ask yourself: “What am I going to change based on the answer to this question?” If the answer is nothing, it’s not a good question.

Try to come up with an “if this, then that” scenario for each question. If the answer is yes, then this. If the answer is no, then this.

Here’s a simple process for coming up with meaningful questions to ask of your data:

Walk through your site looking for problem areas. Basically, you’re trying to break your store, to find something that’s not working as expected.
Write down the problem areas, concerns, questions, etc. that you identify during the walkthrough.
Turn to your analytics to confirm the problem areas and concerns, and answer the questions.

For step one, it helps to have a structured walkthrough process. For example, set a few important factors ahead of time to eliminate your subjective opinion and biases:

Friction: is anything difficult? How can you make it easier? Is anything preventing your visitors from buying?
Distraction: is anything distracting your visitors from taking your most wanted action, whatever that might be? For example, adding a product to cart or checking out.
Motivation: what’s adding to or subtracting from the motivation of the visitor? Are they motivated enough to complete your most wanted action?
Relevancy: is everything on the page relevant? Is there anything that’s irrelevant or unimportant? Is everything on the page working in favor of the most wanted action?
Clarity: is the value of the product or service clear? Is the next step clear? Is the most wanted action clear? Is anything confusing?

After the walkthrough, you’ll undoubtedly have a big list of meaningful questions to ask of your data.

One thing to note, though. There’s this old saying in statistics, inspired by Ronald H. Coase, “Torture data long enough and it’ll confess to anything.”

If you go looking for a specific answer, you’ll find it. Eliminating cognitive biases during analytics analysis is actually quite difficult, but try to put emphasis on your questions, not your presumed answers.

What’s a good X?

What’s a good amount of monthly traffic? What’s a good conversion rate? What’s a good average order value? What’s a good…?

There’s no real answer to these questions. There are, of course, industry benchmarks and averages that you can turn to, but they are often more interesting than actionable.

For example, what will you change about your business knowing that the average store in your industry gets 100,000 visitors per month?

If you have fewer than 100,000 visitors per month, maybe you’ll vow to increase your monthly traffic. But aren’t we always trying to increase traffic? If you have more than 100,000 visitors per month, will you forget all about increasing traffic?

A good amount of monthly traffic is more traffic than you had last month. The same is true of every other metric you’re tracking.

It’s all about what’s good for you and your store.

Start where the value is

If you’re wondering where to start your walkthrough because you don’t have time to run through the entire store right now, start where the biggest opportunities are. That boils down to three categories:

High volume, low value pages. These are pages that get a lot of traffic, but aren’t bringing in much revenue. So, for example, this might be an old blog post.
Low volume, high value pages. These are pages that get a smaller amount of traffic, but that traffic is higher quality and more likely to convert. For example, your checkout page.
Your funnel. Break your purchase funnel down into definitive steps. For example: the homepage is step one, the collection page is step two, the product page is step three, the cart is step four, and the checkout is step five. Linear funnels are on their way out, so you can likely think of multiple routes your visitors will take to purchase.

Funnels are particularly interesting. If you gather data for each step of the funnel, you can pinpoint exactly where your funnel is “leaking”. That is, where people are falling off most frequently. For example:

100 people make it to a collection page.
50 people make it to a product page.
40 people add a product to their cart.

You can see from this (super basic) funnel example that the biggest leak is on your collection page because you lose 50% of visitors there. So, that’s a good place to start digging around for questions, which you will use to analyze your data later.

Note that the further down the funnel you go, the smaller the necessary impact. For example:

100 people make it to a collection page.
50 people make it to a product page.
40 people add a product to their cart.
20 people click checkout.
4 people complete the checkout.

In this example, imagine increasing four completed checkouts to six. That’s a 50% increase very close to your bottom line. Now imagine increasing 50 people making it to a product page to 52. Much smaller impact because it’s higher up the funnel.

That’s why perfecting the bottom of your funnel can be so valuable.

Analyzing 3 core Shopify report categories

You’ll find both analytics dashboards and full analytics reports in Shopify:

Different reports are available to you depending on your Shopify plan. Everyone has access to the Overview dashboard and the Finances reports. If you’re on the Shopify plan or above, you also have access to three other report categories: acquisition, behavior, and marketing.

1. Acquisition reports

Acquisition reports focus on visitors to your website. A couple important things to note:

The number of visits and visitors are based on cookies, one that identifies the device (visitor) and one that identifies the length of the visit. So, to be clear, one visitor can generate multiple visits.
A visit automatically ends after 30 minutes of no activity or at midnight UTC.

Visits over time

You’ll find this report under “Acquisition” in the “Reports” overview:

Visits over time shows you the number of visitors and sessions during the specified time period:

You’ll notice the bar graph visualization above the data table for easier interpretation.

You can click the data table’s column headers to sort ascending or descending. So, for example, you could bring the days with the most visitors to the top of the data table or simply order the days in chronological order.

Note that you can dig deeper beyond the default time period:

Compare the last 30 days to the 30 days prior. Compare Q3 this year with Q3 last year. The more you slice and dice your data, the more you dig, the more you will undercover.

It’s also important to prioritize trends. Data will fluctuate. The last week often matters much less than the how that week compares to the eight previous weeks. Don’t look for minor fluctuations, look for trends that are developing.

Visitors by referrer

You’ll find this report under “Acquisition” in the “Reports” overview as well.

Visitors by referrer shows you the number of visitors and sessions referred by source:

In this case, Google search is the most popular referral source. Google has referred 574 visitors to this store, who have generated 604 sessions.

Note that referral source is broken out by referral name. You can use the column header sorting to end up with something like this:

Now it’s easier to see that Facebook is the top social referral source, for example.

This report adds another layer to the simple visits over time report. Not only do you know who is visiting your site and how often, but you know where they’re coming from as well.

This is important for deciding where to invest your marketing time and money. You’re a busy entrepreneur who can’t be everywhere at once. Pay attention to what’s paying off and double down. Or, better yet, experiment with a new referral source and track how effectively it referred traffic to your site during the experiment period.

Be sure to note the difference between visitors and sessions. If the number of visitors from a referral source is high and the number of sessions from the same referral source is on par, it’s not inherently bad, but it may indicate lower traffic quality or engagement.

Visitors by location

You’ll find this report under “Acquisition” in the “Reports” overview as well.

Visitors by location shows you the number of visitors and sessions from various countries:

Not only is it interesting to know which countries people are accessing your store from, but geographic information can be quite insightful, too.

For example, let’s say you’re running Facebook ads to your most popular product’s page. Now you know exactly where to target your ads:

Or perhaps you’ll break up the ad campaigns by country to see which refers the most traffic to your store. You might even put some ad spend on a country that looks promising, like the Philippines, which generated only 5 visitors, but 11 sessions.

You can also use geographic information to inform things like spelling and grammar, cultural references, and imagery (skin tones, faces, etc.) Go a step further and let it inform your shipping and pricing.

2. Behavior reports

Behavior reports focus on the actions your visitors take. A couple important things to note:

The website cart analysis report also falls under this category, but is only available to those on the Shopify plan or higher.
Half of these reports require that you use a theme with a search bar. If you don’t, two of the following four reports will not have any data to display.

Visitors by landing page

You’ll find this report under “Behavior” in the “Reports” overview as well.

Visitors by landing page shows you the pages visitors first arrive to your store on:

In the example above, the blog is bringing in the most traffic followed by product pages and the homepage. You might decide, based on this data, that you should double down on blogging efforts because it’s working to bring visitors to your site. Or you might note that your Pinterest ads to your product pages are working well.

Of course, you’ll also uncover what’s not working well.

Be sure to compare current performance (the last seven to 30 days) with long-term performance. Is a new landing page up and coming? Has a previously successful landing page fallen off your radar?

This can help you decide where to spend your landing page optimization time and effort. If a landing page performed well in the past, but doesn’t anymore, there’s likely friction on the page. If a landing page performed ok in the past, but is booming now, prioritize it during your walkthrough.

This is especially useful if you’re running dedicated landing page tests, like for Black Friday Cyber Monday, for example. You can sort by the “Landing page type” column header and see which BFCM landing page performs the best (e.g. variation A vs. variation B or men’s clothing vs. women’s clothing).

Visitors by device

You’ll find this report under “Behavior” in the “Reports” overview as well.

Visitors by device shows you the device types being used to access your store:

Why does this matter? It might seem, at first glance, that this report is filled with “nice to know” data, but it’s actually quite an actionable report. Here’s how:

Ad targeting. Most major ad platforms will ask whether you’d like to create desktop ads, mobile ads or both. This report will help inform that decision. Using the data above, mobile ads and desktop ads seem fairly even, both appearing to be a solid choice.
UX differs. A good mobile UX looks and feels very different than a good desktop UX. That’s something a lot of people neglect. Responsive design is a step in the right direction, but you need to go a step further. With mobile, you need to think about things like button size, keyboard style, swiping, tapping, etc. A navigation that’s intuitive on desktop might be infuriating on mobile. This report will help you flag potential UX issues on desktop and mobile.
Separate testing. Because desktop and mobile are so different, it’s important to test and experiment with them separately. Having a report broken out by device type will make that much easier.

3. Marketing reports

Marketing reports focus on the effectiveness of your marketing campaigns. A couple important things to note:

Four other reports also fall under this category, but they’re only available to those on the Shopify plan or higher.
Marketing reports summarize data from all Online Store channel orders.

Visitors by marketing campaign

You’ll find this report under “Marketing” in the “Reports” overview:

Visitors by marketing campaign shows you the number of visitors generated by a UTM marketing campaign:

If you’re unfamiliar with UTM campaigns, this is a great guide to get you started. Here are the basics:

UTM parameters are small pieces of information that can be added to links so that you have a more holistic view of your marketing efforts.
You’ll see three parameters most often:
- Source (utm_source): This is generally used to define the site the link is placed on. For example, utm_source=shopify or utm_source=newsletter.
- Medium (utm_medium): This is generally used to define the marketing effort. For example, utm_medium=paid.
- Campaign (utm_campaign): This is generally used to define the specific campaign you’re running. For example, utm_campaign=bfcm or utm_campaign=summer17.

In the end, your UTM campaign link might look something like this:

www.yoursite.com?utm_source=shopify&utm_medium=paid&utm_campaign=bfcm

Now, when you open up the visitors by marketing campaign report, you can pull that UTM parameter information. You now have a comprehensive understanding of how your marketing efforts, from your newsletter to your paid campaigns, are performing.

Note that UTM parameters are automatically applied by Integrated Marketing Apps.

Understanding columns and filters

As you can see, there’s a lot of useful data within Shopify analytics. Your list of problem areas or areas to explore during your site walkthrough is probably pretty long already.

But we still haven’t even scratched the surface. There’s still a ton of insight hiding below the proverbial water.

How do you dive into that data? Through segmentation.

Segmentation is a scary word, but it’s really quite straightforward. Let’s say you have a pack of Smarties. Do you ever separate the Smarties out by color? That’s segmentation.

With Shopify analytics, you have two options: filters and columns.

Filters allow you to isolate a specific portion of the report’s data (e.g. only the red Smarties). There are three key components of filters:

Name: identifies the filter and corresponds with a column. For example, “Device type” or “City”.
Operator: this is where you’ll select “is” (meaning “equal to”) or “is not”.
Values: identifies the specific words or numbers you want to filter based on. For example, “Mobile” or “Toronto”.

To the top left of your data tables, you’ll find a “Manage filters” button, which will open a popup:

You can add and remove a variety of filters from categories like device, landing page, location, marketing campaign, referrer, returned results, etc.

Note that some reports will offer you unique filtering options, like the search bar reports:

You can add multiple filters as well. The more you slice and dice your data using filters, the more likely it is that you’ll find those below the surface insights.

Columns allow you to show more data than is displayed by default. You’re essentially adding and removing the column headers we’ve been using to sort the data tables.

Simply click the “Edit columns” button to trigger a dropdown, where you’ll see all of the available columns:

You can add and remove a variety of columns from categories like device, landing page, location, marketing campaign, referrer, time, visits, etc.

Note that some reports will offer you unique column options as well, like the search bar reports:

So, let’s see this stuff in action, shall we?

Remember the visitors by location report? We can use filters and columns to segment the data and dive deeper into the insights:

Now you’re looking at cities in the United States (filter) that have generated visitors, cart additions (column) and checkouts (column).

Note that it’s always a good idea to measure close to the money. So, for example, checkouts is a stronger indicator of success than visitors.

Remember the visitors by landing page report? It’s the perfect report to show you why bottom of the funnel metrics like checkouts are more insightful than top of the funnel metrics like visitors:

All I’ve done here is add a “Checkouts” column and the insights have changed drastically. When we were only looking at sessions, we figured we should focus on writing more blogs since it generated the most visitors.

Now we know that blog articles generate visitors, but not a lot of sales. How can we improve the conversion rate from the blog, then? Let’s add that to our walkthrough list.

More visitors are nice, but more money is the goal. Low quality traffic that won’t convert is a waste of marketing time and money.

Ok, one more. Remember the visitors by device report? Here it is now with some new filters and columns:

I’ve added two filters, one to isolate mobile and one to isolate visitors using iOS. So the data table is showing me information exclusively about mobile iOS users.

I’ve also added three new columns, one to tell us the version of iOS, one to tell us how long the average session duration is and one to tell us the number of checkouts.

This report is useful for a couple reasons:

It will surprise you how many people are using old operating system versions and browser versions (you can recreate this report for browsers as well) you consider irrelevant. Do you know that your custom theme looks good and works well on a mobile operating system from 2013? Because 143 visitors arrived via iOS 7.1.
If a device operating system version has a much lower average session time or checkout count, it could be an indication that UX issues exist on that version. Make sure you’re always comparing within the same family though. For example, I’ve purposefully isolated only iOS. I would never compare iOS to Android, only iOS to iOS and Android to Android.
It’s very time-consuming to check how well your store works in dozens of device versions and browser versions. This report can help you find the most popular (and most concerning) versions for your store, so you know exactly where to start.

You can also export reports to CSV:

This can be helpful to those who prefer to analyze their data in Excel, an incredible tool for more advanced data analysts.

As you continue experimenting with filters and columns, segmentation ideas will just start popping to mind. I’m not exaggerating when I say the options are endless. Practice makes perfect!

Analyzing and optimizing your business is an ongoing process

Inevitably, the answers to your burning questions will lead to even more questions.

Analyzing reports is a continuous process of asking questions, digging for answers (both in reports and on your site) and asking more informed questions next time.

Keep slicing and dicing, experimenting with filters and columns. Resist the urge to simply report on what’s above the surface.

Shopify Tutorial

67 Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) for Ecommerce

May 6, 2021 Ecommerce, Elksourcing, KPI by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/7365564-32-key-performance-indicators-kpis-for-ecommerce

Performance should inform business decisions, and KPIs should drive actions.

Key performance indicators (KPIs) are like milestones on the road to online retail success. Monitoring them will help ecommerce entrepreneurs identify progress toward sales, marketing, and customer service goals.

KPIs should be chosen and monitored depending on your unique business goals. Certain KPIs support some goals while they’re irrelevant for others. With the idea that KPIs should differ based on the goal being measured, it’s possible to consider a set of common performance indicators for ecommerce.

Table of Contents

What is a performance indicator?
What is a key performance indicator?
Why are key performance indicators important?
What is the difference between a SLA and a KPI?
Types of key performance indicators
67 key performance indicator examples for ecommerce
How do I create a KPI?

Here is the definition of key performance indicators, types of key performance indicators, and 67 examples of ecommerce key performance indicators.

What is a performance indicator?

A performance indicator is a quantifiable measurement or data point used to gauge performance relative to some goal. As an example, some online retailers may have a goal to increase site traffic 50% in the next year.

Relative to this goal, a performance indicator might be the number of unique visitors the site receives daily or which traffic sources send visitors (paid advertising, search engine optimization, brand or display advertising, a YouTube video, etc.)

What is a key performance indicator?

For most goals there could be many performance indicators — often too many — so often people narrow it down to just two or three impactful data points known as key performance indicators. KPIs are those measurements that most accurately and succinctly show whether or not a business in progressing toward its goal.

Why are key performance indicators important?

KPIs are important just like strategy and goal setting are important. Without KPIs, it’s difficult to gauge progress over time. You’d be making decisions based on gut instinct, personal preference or belief, or other unfounded hypotheses. KPIs tell you more information about your business and your customers, so you can make informed and strategic decisions.

But KPIs aren’t important on their own. The real value lies in the actionable insights you take away from analyzing the data. You’ll be able to more accurately devise strategies to drive more online sales, as well as understand where there may problems in your business.

Plus, the data related to KPIs can be distributed to the larger team. This can be used to educate your employees and come together for critical problem-solving.

What is the difference between a SLA and a KPI?

SLA stands for service level agreement, while a KPI is a key performance indicator. A service level agreement in ecommerce establishes the scope for the working relationship between an online retailer and a vendor. For example, you might have a SLA with your manufacturer or digital marketing agency. A KPI, as we know, is a metric or data point related to some business operation. These are often quantifiable, but KPIs may also be qualitative.

Types of key performance indicators

There are many types of key performance indicators. They may be qualitative, quantitative, predictive of the future, or revealing of the past. KPIs also touch on various business operations. When it comes to ecommerce, KPIs generally fall into one of the following five categories:

Sales
Marketing
Customer service
Manufacturing
Project management

67 key performance indicator examples for ecommerce

Note: The performance indicators listed below are in no way an exhaustive list. There are an almost infinite number of KPIs to consider for your ecommerce business.

What are key performance indicators for sales?
What are key performance indicators for marketing?
What are key performance indicators for customer service?
What are key performance indicators for manufacturing?
What are key performance indicators for project management?

What are key performance indicators for sales?

Sales key performance indicators are measures that tell you how your business is doing in terms of conversions and revenue. You can look at sales KPIs related to a specific channel, time period, team, employee, etc. to inform business decisions.

Examples of key performance indicators for sales include:

Sales: Ecommerce retailers can monitor total sales by the hour, day, week, month, quarter, or year.
Average order size: Sometimes called average market basket, the average order size tells you how much a customer typically spends on a single order.
Gross profit: Calculate this KPI by subtracting the total cost of goods sold from total sales.
Average margin: Average margin, or average profit margin, is a percentage that represents your profit margin over a period of time.
Number of transactions: This is the total number of transactions. Use this KPI in conjunction with average order size or total number of site visitors for deeper insights.
Conversion rate: The conversion rate, also a percentage, is the rate at which users on your ecommerce site are converting (or buying). This is calculated by dividing the total number of visitors (to a site, page, category, or selection of pages) by the total number of conversions.
Shopping cart abandonment rate: The shopping cart abandonment rate tells you how many users are adding products to their shopping cart but not checking out. The lower this number, the better. If your cart abandonment rate is high, there may be too much friction in the checkout process.
New customer orders vs. returning customer orders: This metric shows a comparison between new and repeat customers. Many business owners focus only on customer acquisition, but customer retention can also drive loyalty, word of mouth marketing, and higher order values.
Cost of goods sold (COGS): COGS tells you how much you’re spending to sell a product. This includes manufacturing, employee wages, and overhead costs.
Total available market relative to a retailer’s share of market: Tracking this KPI will tell you how much your business is growing compared to others within your industry.
Product affinity: This KPI tells you which products are purchased together. This can and should inform cross-promotion strategies.
Product relationship: This is which products are viewed consecutively. Again, use this KPI to formulate effective cross-selling tactics.
Inventory levels: This KPI could tell you how much stock is on hand, how long product is sitting, how quickly product is selling, etc.
Competitive pricing: It’s important to gauge your success and growth against yourself and against your competitors. Monitor your competitors’ pricing strategies and compare them to your own.
Customer lifetime value (CLV): The CLV tells you how much a customer is worth to your business over the course of their relationship with your brand. You want to increase this number over time through strengthening relationships and focusing on customer loyalty.
Revenue per visitor (RPV): RPV gives you an average of how much a person spends during a single visit to your site. If this KPI is low, you can view website analytics to see how you can drive more online sales.
Churn rate: For an online retailer, the churn rate tells you how quickly customers are leaving your brand or canceling/failing to renew a subscription with your brand.
Customer acquisition cost (CAC): CAC tells you how much your company spends on acquiring a new customer. This is measured by looking at your marketing spend and how it breaks down per individual customer.

What are key performance indicators for marketing?

Key performance indicators for marketing tell you how well you’re doing in relation to your marketing and advertising goals. These also impact your sales KPIs. Marketers use KPIs to understand which products are selling, who’s buying them, how they’re buying them, and why they’re buying them. This can help you market more strategically in the future and inform product development.

Examples of key performance indicators for marketing include:

Site traffic: Site traffic refers to the total number of visits to your ecommerce site. More site traffic means more users are hitting your store.
New visitors vs. returning visitors: New site visitors are first-time visitors to your site. Returning visitors, on the other hand, have been to your site before. While looking at this metric alone won’t reveal much, it can help ecommerce retailers gauge success of digital marketing campaigns. If you’re running a retargeted ad, for example, returning visitors should be higher.
Time on site: This KPI tells you how much time visitors are spending on your website. Generally, more time spent means they’ve had deeper engagements with your brand. Usually, you’ll want to see more time spent on blog content and landing pages and less time spent through the checkout process.
Bounce rate: The bounce rate tells you how many users exit your site after viewing only one page. If this number is high, you’ll want to investigate why visitors are leaving your site instead of exploring.
Pageviews per visit: Pageviews per visit refers to the average number of pages a user will view on your site during each visit. Again, more pages usually means more engagement. However, if it’s taking users too many clicks to find the products they’re looking for, you want to revisit your site design.
Average session duration: The average amount of time a person spends on your site during a single visit is called the average session duration.
Traffic source: The traffic source KPI tells you where visitors are coming from or how they found your site. This will provide information about which channels are driving the most traffic, such as: organic search, paid ads, or social media.
Mobile site traffic: Monitor the total number of users who use mobile devices to access your store and make sure your site is optimized for mobile.
Day part monitoring: Looking at when site visitors come can tell you which are peak traffic times.
Newsletter subscribers: The number of newsletter subscribers refers to how many users have opted into your email marketing list. If you have more subscribers, you can reach more consumers. However, you’ll also want to look at related data, such as the demographics of your newsletter subscribers, to make sure you’re reaching your target audience.
Texting subscribers: Newer to digital marketing than email, ecommerce brands can reach consumers through SMS-based marketing. Texting subscribers refers to the number of customers on your text message contact list.
Subscriber growth rate: This tells you how quickly your subscriber list is growing. Pairing this KPI with the total number of subscribers will give you good insight into this channel.
Email open rate: This KPI tells you the percentage of subscribers that open your email. If you have a low email open rate, you could test new subject lines, or try cleaning your list for inactive or irrelevant subscribers.
Email click-through rate (CTR): While the open rate tells you the percentage of subscribers who open the email, the click-through rate tells you the percentage of those who actually clicked on a link after opening. This is arguably more important than the open rate because without clicks, you won’t drive any traffic to your site.
Unsubscribes: You can look at both the total number and the rate of unsubscriptions for your email list.
Chat sessions initiated: If you have live chat functionality on your ecommerce store, the number of chat sessions initiated tells you how many users engaged with the tool to speak to a virtual aide.
Social followers and fans: Whether you’re on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, or Snapchat (or a combination of a few), the number of followers or fans you have is a useful KPI to gauge customer loyalty and brand awareness. Many of those social media networks also have tools that ecommerce businesses can use to learn more about their social followers.
Social media engagement: Social media engagement tells you how actively your followers and fans are interacting with your brand on social media.
Clicks: The total number of clicks a link gets. You could measure this KPI almost anywhere: on your website, social media, email, display ads, PPC, etc.
Average CTR: The average click-through rate tells you the percentage of users on a page (or asset) who click on a link.
Average position: The average position KPI tells you about your site’s search engine optimization (SEO) and paid search performance. This demonstrates where you are on search engine results pages. Most online retailers have the goal of being number one for their targeted keywords.
Pay-per-click (PPC) traffic volume: If you’re running PPC campaigns, this tells you how much traffic you’re successfully driving to your site.
Blog traffic: You can find this KPI by simply creating a filtered view in your analytics tool. It’s also helpful to compare blog traffic to overall site traffic.
Number and quality of product reviews: Product reviews are great for a number of reasons: They provide social proof, they can help with SEO, and they give you valuable feedback for your business. The quantity and content of product reviews are important KPIs to track for your ecommerce business.
Banner or display advertising CTRs: The CTRs for your banner and display ads will tell you the percentage of viewers who have clicked on the ad. This KPI will give you insight into your copy, imagery, and offer performance.
Affiliate performance rates: If you engage in affiliate marketing, this KPI will help you understand which channels are most successful.

You can track your ecommerce marketing analytics in Google Analytics or using Shopify’s built-in analytics tools.

What are key performance indicators for customer service?

Customer service KPIs tell you how effective your customer service is and if you’re meeting expectations.You might be wondering: what should the KPIs be in our call center, for our email support team, for our social media support team, etc. Measuring and tracking these KPIs will help you ensure you’re providing a positive customer experience.

Key performance indicators for customer service include:

Customer satisfaction (CSAT) score: The CSAT KPI is typically measured by customer responses to a very common survey question: “How satisfied were you with your experience?” This is usually answered with a numbered scale.
Net promoter score (NPS): Your NPS KPI provides insight into your customer relationships and loyalty by telling you how likely customers are to recommend your brand to someone in their network.
Hit rate: Calculate your hit rate by taking the total number of sales of a single product and dividing it by the number of customers who have contacted your customer service team about said product.
Customer service email count: This is the number of emails your customer support team receives.
Customer service phone call count: Rather than email, this is how frequently your customer support team is reached via phone.
Customer service chat count: If you have live chat on your ecommerce site, you may have a customer service chat count.
First response time: First response time is the average amount of time it takes a customer to receive the first response to their query. Aim low!
Average resolution time: This is the amount of time it takes for a customer support issue to be resolved, starting from the point at which the customer reached out about the problem.
Active issues: The total number of active issues tells you how many queries are currently in progress.
Backlogs: Backlogs are when issues are getting backed up in your system. This could be caused by a number of factors.
Concern classification: Beyond the total number of customer support interactions, look at quantitative data around trends to see if you can be proactive and reduce customer support queries. You’ll classify the customer concerns which will help identify trends and your progress in solving issues.
Service escalation rate: The service escalation rate KPI tells you how many times a customer has asked a customer service representative to redirect them to a supervisor or other senior employee. You want to keep this number low.

What are key performance indicators for manufacturing?

Key performance indicators for manufacturing are, predictably, related to your supply chain and production processes. These may tell you where efficiencies and inefficiencies are, as well as help you understand productivity and expenses.

Key performance indicators for manufacturing in ecommerce include:

Cycle time: The cycle time manufacturing KPI tells you how long it takes to manufacture a single product from start to finish. Monitoring this KPI will give you insight into production efficiency.
Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE): The OEE KPI provides ecommerce businesses with insight into how well manufacturing equipment is performing.
Overall labor effectiveness (OLE): Just as you’ll want insight into your equipment, the OLE KPI will tell you how productive the staff operating the machines are.
Yield: Yield is a straightforward manufacturing KPI. It is the number of products you have manufactured. Consider analyzing the yield variance KPI in manufacturing, too, as that will tell you how much you deviate from your average.
First time yield (FTY) and first time through (FTT): FTY, also referred to as first pass yield, is a quality-based KPI. It tells you how wasteful your production processes are. To calculate FTY, divide the number of successfully manufactured units by the total number of units that started the process.
Number of non-compliance events or incidents: In manufacturing, there are several sets of regulations, licenses, and policies businesses must comply with. These are typically related to safety, working conditions, and quality. You’ll want to reduce this number to ensure you’re operating within the mandated guidelines.

What are key performance indicators for project management?

Key performance indicators for project management give you insight into how well your teams are performing and completing specific tasks. Each project or initiative within your ecommerce business has different goals, and must be managed with different processes and workflows. Project management KPIs tell you how well each team is working to achieve their respective goals and how well their processes are working to help them achieve those goals.

Key performance indicators for project management include:

Hours worked: The total hours worked tells you how much time a team put into a project. Project managers should also assess the variance in estimated vs. actual hours worked to better predict and resource future projects.
Budget: The budget indicates how much money you have allocated for the specific project. Project managers and ecommerce business owners will want to make sure that the budget is realistic; if you’re repeatedly over budget, some adjustments to your project planning need to be made.
Return on investment (ROI): The ROI KPI for project management tells you how much your efforts earned your business. The higher this number, the better. The ROI accounts for all of your expenses and earnings related to a project.
Cost variance: Just as it’s helpful to compare real vs. predicted timing and hours, you should examine the total cost against the predicted cost. This will help you understand where you need to reel it in and where you may want to invest more.
Cost performance index (CPI): The CPI for project management, like ROI, tells you how much your resource investment is worth. The CPI is calculated by dividing the earned value by the actual costs. If you come in under one, there’s room for improvement.

How do I create a KPI?

Selecting your KPIs begins with clearly stating your goals and understanding which areas of business impact those goals. Of course, KPIs for ecommerce can and should differ for each of your goals, whether they’re related to boosting sales, streamlining marketing, or improving customer service.

Key performance indicator templates

Here are a few key performance indicator templates, with examples of goals and the associated KPIs.

GOAL 1: Boost sales 10% in the next quarter.

KPI examples:

Daily sales.
Conversion rate.
Site traffic.

GOAL 2: Increase conversion rate 2% in the next year.

KPI examples:

Conversion rate.
Shopping cart abandonment rate.
Competitive pricing.

GOAL 3: Grow site traffic 20% in the next year.

KPI examples:

Site traffic.
Traffic sources.
Promotional click-through rates.
Social shares.
Bounce rates.

GOAL 4: Reduce customer service calls by half in the next 6 months.

KPI examples:

Service call classification.
Pages visited immediately before call.

There are many performance indicators and the value of those indicators is directly tied to the goal measured. Monitoring which page someone visited before initiating a customer service call makes sense as a KPI for GOAL 4 since it could help identify areas of confusion that, when corrected, would reduce customer service calls. But that same performance indicator would be useless for GOAL 3.

Once you have set goals and selected KPIs, monitoring those indicators should become an everyday exercise. Most importantly: Performance should inform business decisions and you should use KPIs to drive actions.

Illustration by Till Lauer

Shopify Tutorial

The Beginner’s Guide to Conversion Rate Optimization

May 6, 2021 Conversion Rate Optimization, Elksourcing by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/120261189-conversion-rate-optimization

Your store needs to be designed with your customers in mind.

While boosting your traffic can generate more sales, it’s just as important to focus on turning your current traffic into paying customers.

At every step of your customers’ purchasing journeys, there are new opportunities for you to make their paths shorter, easier, and more enjoyable. Through rigorous experimentation and analysis, you can fine-tune your website to push people closer to making a purchase. This process is called Conversion Rate Optimization or CRO.

Conversion Rate Optimization is a technique for increasing the percentage of your website traffic that makes a purchase, also known as a conversion.

Conversions are a big deal. They’re that great moment when a casual visitor to your store finally buys one of your products.

And, on a much smaller scale, conversions are happening all the time leading up to that moment, too.

For instance, a conversion on your homepage might mean having a visitor click through to a product. A conversion on a product page might mean a customer clicking ‘Add to Cart’. Conversions can be entirely dependent on the purpose that a specific part of your website serves.

To optimize your online store for conversions, both big and small, you need to be constantly testing each and every aspect of your website.

Is conversion rate optimization for you?

CRO is a crucial tool for business owners, but it isn’t right for everyone. In order for you to successfully optimize your online store, you first need to have enough traffic to properly conduct a test.

Without the right amount of traffic, your results won’t actually provide any real insight into how your customers are using your online store. To help you determine whether CRO is right for you, let’s take a quick look at its fundamentals.

If you don’t have enough traffic to run an A/B test, focus on getting more visitors to your store instead. Here are some tactics you can use:

The Basics of Search Engine Optimization for Your Online Store
6 Practical and Proven Ways to Drive Traffic to Your New Online Store
How Blogger Outreach Can Help You Grow Your Ecommerce Store
An Introduction to Facebook Ads for Ecommerce

An introduction to A/B testing

One of the foundational elements of CRO is a form of experimentation called A/B testing, also known as split testing.

A/B testing is a way of comparing two versions of the same webpage to see which produces better results. With A/B testing, two different versions of a page are shown to two similar sets of visitors at the same time. Eventually, the version that performs more effectively and produces a larger amount of conversions is declared the winner.

Before you conduct an A/B test, you’ll need to figure out if your website gets enough traffic to generate statistically significant results. If your sample size is too small, you won’t be able to learn anything from your results since they won’t accurately reflect how a larger population is using your site.

If you want to calculate how large of a sample size you’ll need to conduct an A/B test, you just need to drop your current conversion rate for the web page that you’d like to test into this calculator. If the traffic that the web page receives is less than the sample size required for the test, focus on driving more traffic to your website first rather than optimizing for conversions.

Finding the current conversion rate of a single page

To find your current conversion rate, you’ll first need to make sure that you have Google Analytics set up for your online store. With Google Analytics, you’ll be able to figure out the conversion rate for specific parts of your website, including the web pages that you’ll be testing.

Note: This method will just give you a glimpse of your current conversion rate and should not be used for measuring the outcome of your tests. Only use this piece of data for measuring whether or not you have enough traffic to perform a successful A/B test.

The quickest way to find the current conversion rate for specific pages of your website is by using the Landing Pages report in Google Analytics.

To get to Landing Pages, first go to the ‘Behavior’ section and then click ‘Site Content’. In the dropdown, click on Landing Pages. Make sure that the timeframe you’re looking at is the same amount of time that your test will be running. For the purpose of this part of the process, just use the past 30 days.

Now, select the web page that you’d like to test from the list of landing pages. For instance, if you’d like to test your home page, click on www.youronlinestorename.com.

In order to find the conversion rate for a specific goal that occurs on this page, you’ll need to add a secondary dimension to your report. Click ‘Add Secondary Dimension’ and type ‘Second Page’. The ‘Second Page’ dimension will tell us which pages visitors navigated to next and which percentage of visitors to your first page went to those pages.

For an example, let’s say that you’re interested in testing how many people navigate to the products page of your website from your homepage.

To find your current conversion rate for this action, simply choose your homepage as your initial page and then look for your products page under the ‘Second Page’ section of your report. The small grey percentage that’s listed in the ‘Sessions’ section will be your conversion rate for the action.

How to create Conversion Rate Optimization experiments

If your site has enough traffic to perform a successful A/B test, you can start experimenting on your online store.

To run an A/B test, you’ll need to use a tool like Optimizely, Convert, Adobe Target, or Google Content Experiments and set up goals for your online store using Google Analytics. Create a separate goal for every action that you’re trying to test on your website.

In Google Analytics, goals are a way of measuring how your website guides visitors to completing a specific task or objective. Goals can be anything: From a product purchase to a newsletter subscription to a simple navigation. By setting up goals for your test, you’ll be able to track and analyze the data behind the decisions that customers are making as they move through your site.

There are five different types of goals in Google Analytics: Destination, duration, pages per session, event, and smart goals. For the purpose of CRO, destination goals and event goals are the ones to focus on.

Destination Goals

These types of goals are used for tracking when a specific web page loads and track pageviews as conversion. You can use destination goals for tracking things like purchases or navigation.

If you want to track a purchase, simply set the ‘Thank You’ or order confirmation page as the destination and a conversion will be tracked every time a customer completes an order and is redirected to the ‘Thank You’ page.

To track navigation goals—like someone heading to a collection from your homepage—set the destination as your collection page.

Event Goals

Event goals can be used to track actions on your website that do not necessarily lead someone to a landing page.

For instance, if you want to track someone subscribing to your newsletter or adding an item to their cart, you can set the action of a customer clicking a specific button on your website as an event.

20 CRO Experiments to get you started

Optimizing your online store isn’t a one-and-done solution for ecommerce, it’s an ongoing process that will help you constantly learn more about your audience and how you can better serve them. It’s not a tactic with an endpoint—it’s something that you should always be doing to get better.

There’s no set rulebook for optimizing your website either. Tactics that work incredibly well for one store might have no effect on another. That’s why it’s important for you to start experimenting now, so that you can track your results and figure out how they can help you build a more successful store.

Be sure to keep a list handy of all the experiments that you’re planning on running in the future, so that you’re never without a new idea to explore.

To get your list started, here are some suggestions for different things you can potentially test throughout your online store.

Homepage
- Simplify the Experience
- Coupon Codes, Real Time Purchases, and More
- Add Testimonials to Build Trust
Product Discovery
- Use Intelligent Search
- Organize Your Categories Effectively
- Take Advantage of Your 404 Pages
- Add a Shoppable Instagram Feed
Product Pages
- Use High Quality Product Images
- Be Upfront About Price, Delivery Time, and Out of Stock Products
- Showcase Your Product Reviews
- Add a Curated Instagram Feed
Checkout Experience
- Prefill Your Customer’s Information
- Send Abandoned Cart Emails
- Optimize Your Thank You Emails
Shipping and Returns
- Offer Free Shipping
- Have a Clear Refund Policy
Additional Information
- Tell a Story with Your About Page
- Create a Comprehensive Contact Page
Website Speed and Performance
- Make Sure Your Site is Responsive
- Optimize Your Website’s Loading Times

Homepage

Think about your homepage as a physical storefront. It’s the front window of your store: Capturing attention, igniting curiosity, and pulling people in.

Your home page needs to feel inviting and make it easy for people to enter and navigate your store. It needs to be a visually appealing and consistent experience that works towards achieving a single goal: Get people further into your store so that they can find products they want to purchase.

1. Simplify the experience

When it comes to designing an effective homepage, simplicity is key. It only takes two-tenths of a second for a customer to form a first impression of your website, so you need to do everything possible to make those moments count. Avoid overwhelming your customers with excessive images and text. Instead stay on-brand and on-message with a simple, visual appealing design.

Just take a look at Province of Canada. For their homepage, they’ve used a large hero image that occupies most of the space above the fold. The copy is simple and straight to the point with a clear call-to-action that pushes visitors right to a collection.

If you’re not sure what to feature as your main hero, it’s usually best to go with either your best selling or most profitable products, or collections like new arrivals or current promotions. This is especially true since 86% of website visitors want to see information about products on the homepage of a website.

2. Show off coupon codes, real time purchases, and more

As soon as your customers hit your homepage, you have the opportunity to start building excitement and driving them towards your products. If your goal is to get more traffic to your products, there are a bunch of great apps for Shopify store owners that can help drum up demand and incentivize purchasing:

Welcome Bars: Apps like Welcome Header Bar and Quick Announcement Bar let you share sales, coupon codes, promotions and more with your customers as soon as they arrive on your site. These apps add a non-intrusive floating bar to the top of your homepage that will instantly grab your customers’ attention and push them exactly to where you need them to be. Promo codes can be powerful tools: Build.com was able to increase conversions by 6% for their affiliate traffic with a custom promo code.
Popups: Popups and popunders are fantastic for building your email list. Try using an app like Privy or POWr Popup to add a quick popup to your home page offering a coupon code in exchange for a newsletter signup. Email marketing is incredibly effective: According to a 2014 study, 80% of consumers who signed up for emails from a brand over a six month period ended up making purchases based on what they’ve received.
Real Time Purchases: Apps like Yo, Recent Sales Notification, and Notify add a small notification to the bottom corner of your store, showcasing real time purchases being made by other customers. These apps incite a sense of urgency while also giving customers social proof that other people are out there buying your products right this minute. Behavioural psychology researchers at the University of Kentucky report that urgent situations cause people to act impulsively and quickly.

For example, take a look at Atelier New Regime. They’ve used the Free Shipping Bar app to show off their free shipping threshold right on their homepage.

After a few seconds, visitors to their online store also get served this gorgeous popunder encouraging them to join the Atelier New Regime mailing list for access to news and exclusive deals.

3. Add Testimonials to Build Trust

Have you been featured on major publications? Are your products used by any high-profile influencers? Add testimonials, reviews, and badges to your homepage beneath your main content to build trust and project credibility. After all, 88% of consumers trust online reviews as much as they trust recommendations from their friends and families.

If you want to create more opportunities to get testimonials for your products, take a look at our guide to hacking the press or try reaching out to bloggers directly for features.

Product discovery

Once customers are on your homepage, they need to be able to find the products that they’re looking for and discover new products that they might be interested in.

Your customers need to be able to navigate your website through a well-thought-out search function, smart category design, and engaging ways to discover products.

4. Use intelligent search

If your customers are looking for a product on your website, the chances are that they might not know exactly where to find it.

During its own CRO analyses, UK apparel retailer Topshop noticed that customers were having difficulty finding and using its internal search box—and that customers who managed to use the search box typically converted 10x higher than others. With extensive testing, Topshop was able to improve its search box design, leading to a 5.8% increase in conversions.

If your store has a large amount of products, you might want to considering featuring your search bar prominently on your homepage, giving your customers the opportunity to head directly where they want to be rather than digging through categories.

With apps like Findify and Instant Search +, you can power up your search bar with predictive results that help your customers find what they’re looking for. Intelligent search bars suggest results and products as users are typing while taking into account things like spelling errors and alternate product names.

Sigler Music uses the Instant Search + app to help their customers find exactly what they’re looking for. Even after entering just a few letters, the search bar already starts suggesting categories, products, and related results (which is effective for upselling and cross-selling).

5. Organize your categories effectively

For your customers, navigating your website should be easy, simple, and—most of all—obvious. Try to avoid separating your products into too many different categories. Instead, opt for 4 to 6 broad categories that contain more specific subcategories as a dropdown.

Order your categories in your navigation bar based on their popularity, with your most popular category at the front.

6. Take advantage of your 404 pages

Are your 404 pages a dead end? Instead of leaving customers hanging when they hit a 404, try to guide them to other parts of their website that might be more useful. Customize your 404 page to feature links to your most popular collections, products, and promotions.

If you need help editing your 404 page, take a look at this video walkthrough or get in touch with a Shopify Expert.

7. Add a shoppable instagram feed

Instagram is an extremely useful tool for product discovery. Embedding a shoppable Instagram feed onto your website is a great opportunity to inspire your fans with gorgeous photos and show off your products in everyday scenarios.

Shoppable Instagram feeds are perfect for display user generated content which is starting to play a massive role in the purchasing behaviours of Millennials. Research indicates that 84% of Millennials report that user generated content on websites has an influence on what they purchase.

If you own a Shopify store, you can embed your Instagram feed onto your online store using apps like Foursixty, Like2Have.it, Springbot, SocialPhotos, and Showcase, just like the one above created by MVMT. With these embeddable Instagram feeds, you can promote your top products and link out directly to their product pages, giving your fans a visually engaging way to find new products.

Product pages

Each and every one of your product pages needs to built around clearly communicating the value of your products to your customers. You need to build immersive experiences that cover every aspect of your products while removing any opportunity for doubt or frustration.

8. Use high-quality product images

High quality product photos are the most important part of an effective product page. More than ⅔ of consumers say that high quality product photos are a very important part of the purchasing process—more important, in fact, than product details or reviews. Try to include images that show your products from every angle and accurately represent the look and feel of your products.

As a bonus, include a video that shows your product in action. For instance, if you’re selling t-shirts, add a video to your product page with a model walking around while wearing one of your t-shirts to give customers a better idea of what your shirts look like in motion. Customers are actually 85% more likely to make a purchase after watching a product video.

Bando has some great examples of well-executed product pages. Check out this page for a 17-month agenda, featuring a bunch of high quality photos and a fun, quirky video that really lets the product shine.

9. Be upfront about price, delivery time, and out of stock products

The worst thing that you can do is mislead your customers—28% of customers will abandon their cart if they get charged with unexpected shipping costs. Don’t be afraid to let them know the full extent of things like pricing, delivery time, and inventory. If you do an effective job of selling your products and communicating their value, your customers won’t mind paying a little extra for shipping or waiting a little longer for delivery.

If you own a Shopify store, you can also use apps like Restocked Alerts to give your customers the option to be notified when out of stock products are added to your store.

10. Showcase your product reviews

Product reviews are a great way to ease the doubts of hesitant shoppers and give your customers the social proof that they need to click “Add to Cart”. In fact, 90% of customers say that their purchasing decisions are influenced, in one way or another, by reading online product reviews.

Positive product reviews can make all the difference in convincing shoppers that a product really works and is actually worth purchasing, along with helping them make more informed decisions in regards to sizing, colour, and more.

Shopify store owners can use apps like Product Reviews and Yotpo to embed customer reviews directly onto their product pages.

Product reviews can be especially helpful for business in the beauty and skincare industry. Beardbrand, for instance, uses Yotpo to showcase reviews on every one of their product pages.

11. Add a curated instagram feed

Just like product reviews, curated Instagram feeds can also add an element of social proof to your product pages. When looking for information about a product, 51% of US consumers actually trust user generated content like Instagram photos over anything else.

Product page Instagram feeds are specially useful for beauty and apparel companies since they can show your customers how to style your products and give them a better idea of how they look and feel in real life.

To embed Instagram feeds on your product pages, try apps like Foursixty and Like2Have.it.

Checkout experience

The checkout experience is one the final steps of every customer’s purchasing process, so it needs to be as frictionless and flawless as possible to avoid having frustrated customers abandon their carts at the last moment.

At this point in their journey, your customers are display clear intent to make a purchase. You need to make that purchase happen quickly and conveniently without any stress or confusion.

12. Pre-fill your customer’s information

You can make it even easier for your current customers to make repeat purchases by prefilling their shipping and billing information with customer accounts. The less information customers need to enter, the better. One study from last year even reports that conversions increase 200% when businesses allow customers to autofill information on social media.

In your Shopify admin, head to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Checkout’.

Under ‘Customer Accounts’, select ‘Accounts are optional’. With optional accounts, your customers will still be able to checkout as guests, but it also gives them the chance to save their information for next time after filling out their personal details.

If you want to invite your current customers to make accounts, you can use the Bulk Account Invite Sender app.

13. Send abandoned cart emails

Unfortunately, customers sometimes fill up their carts with products and then leave your store with no intention of returning. With abandoned cart emails, you can remind those customers of the items that they’ve already expressed interest in and give them a little nudge to return to your store to complete the purchase.

Abandoned cart emails can be set up in the ‘Settings’ section of your Shopify admin. Go to ‘Checkout’ and then scroll down to the ‘Order Processing’ section. You can choose to send abandoned cart emails either 6 or 24 hours after a customer abandons a cart.

You can customize your abandoned cart emails in your Shopify admin as well, so that they fit your brand’s image and tone. Go to ‘Settings’ and then ‘Notifications’. Under the ‘Template’ column, you’ll see one for ‘Abandoned checkout’.

14. Optimize your thank you/order confirmation emails

In the same ‘Notifications’ section of your Shopify admin, you can also customize your Order Confirmation emails.

After a customer has placed an order, there’s still an opportunity to put them back into your purchasing funnel by optimizing your Order Confirmation email to encourage them to sign up for your newsletter, link them to content on your blog, or offer them exclusive discounts and promotions for future orders as a token of appreciation.

Shipping and returns

Even after a customer has gone through the checkout process, you need to remember that the purchase isn’t over until the product is in their hands. Think of how you handle shipping and returns as yet another opportunity to delight your customers and turn all of those one-time shoppers into lifelong customers.

Waiting for a package is an anxiety-inducing experience. Receiving a product that you’re dissatisfied with is even worse. You need to do everything in your power to make shipping and returns enjoyable for your audience.

15. Offer free shipping

Expensive shipping costs can be a huge pain point for customers and potentially hold them back from making purchases. Try offering free shipping to encourage your customers to put in an order, regardless of how far it has to travel. Free shipping can have a major impact on conversions: In one case study by SitePoint, offering free shipping increased conversions by 50%.

16. Have a clear refund policy

It’s no surprise that some customers are hesitant about making purchases online. When it comes to ordering things like clothing, it can be difficult to know exactly how a piece will fit in-person. To help relieve your customer’s concerns, make sure that your business has a clear refund policy so that they know exactly what they can do if they aren’t satisfied with an order.

Use Shopify’s Refund Policy Generator to create a refund policy for your store.

Additional information

Although optimizing elements like your homepage, product discovery features, and product pages is crucial for pushing your customers through the conversion funnel, you also need to make sure that your website contains additional information like contact details and an about section.

17. Tell a story with your about page

Your About Page is so much more than a brief summary of your store. It should tell a story to your customers about your products and your brand’s mission. The goal of your About Page should be to build a lifestyle around your products that your audience will want to be a part of.

Try to build a story around both your products and your customers’ relationship with them. Ask yourself questions like: Where did your idea come from? What makes them special? What does an average day in your ideal customer’s life look like?

Endy has a comprehensive About page that sells their mattresses from a number of different angles. At the top, you’ll find a great hero image, a concise summary of their products and what sets them apart, and a link to some customer reviews.

As you scroll down, you’ll see details about their shipping and return policy as well as a charming story about the origin of their name.

18. Create a comprehensive contact page

If your customers want to get in touch with you, they should be able to do so easily. In fact, 44% of visitors will leave a website if there isn’t contact information or a phone number available.

For customers, not being able to share their thoughts and feelings—whether positive or negative—is an extremely frustrating experience. Your contact page should include ways for your customers to reach out when something goes wrong as well as opportunities for them to engage with your brand in fun and exciting ways.

Here’s a quick checklist of everything that your contact page should include:

An email address or contact form
Your physical location, along with a map and directions
Your retail store hours
Links to your social media profiles
Support-specific contact options, including a phone number or email

Website speed and performance

The performance of your website is closely tied to your success as a business. In fact, if a website takes longer than 3 seconds to load, 40% of visitors will automatically leave. That’s a huge amount of traffic that you could be turning away without even realizing.

Imagine you were waiting outside a store and you had to wait for the owner to come to the door to let you in. Sure, you might wait one or two seconds for them to come to the door. But fifteen? Thirty? Try counting those seconds out loud and you’ll soon realize what you could be putting your customers through.

19. Make sure your site is mobile responsive

Being mobile responsive should be a massive priority for your business. In fact, 40% of people will choose another result if the one that they land on is not mobile-friendly. Thankfully, if you own a Shopify store, every Shopify theme is automatically optimized to be displayed properly on every device.

If you want to check if your website is responsive, just drop your URL into Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test tool.

20. Optimize your website’s loading times

The easiest way to check how long your online store takes to load is by using Google’s Pagespeed Insights tool. Pagespeed Insights will give you a detailed report of how fast your website loads, along with any issues that you can resolve to improve your load times. Alternatively, you can also use load time evaluation tools like WebPageTest and Pingdom.

While optimizing your store’s load times can be a complicated process, there are a couple things to always keep in mind. The size of your images can have a significant impact on how quickly your website loads. Try to compress and optimize every image using a tool like ImageOptim. ImageOptim strips away all of the unnecessary data in every image file, resulting in a much smaller file size with no noticeable visual difference.

Additionally, for Shopify store owners, try uninstalling any apps that you’re no longer using as these apps can still put an additional load on your website even if they’re disabled.

Start your first experiment

Now that you have some ideas, it’s time to start optimizing! Get out there, run experiments, and discover exciting new ways to increase your conversions.

Remember: Always be testing.

Shopify Tutorial

7 Inspiring Ecommerce Call to Action Examples and Why They Work

May 6, 2021 Ecommerce Call, Elksourcing by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/17156160-7-inspiring-ecommerce-call-to-action-examples-and-why-they-work

Your storefront looks great. You’ve spent a lot of time tweaking it and making sure everything flows properly.

But why aren’t any visitors adding products to their cart? You’ve taken time to advertise your store and it’s getting traffic, but it isn’t converting.

Perhaps your visitors are having a hard time navigating your store because there isn’t a clear call to action button. They simply don’t know where to click.

In this post, we’ll take a look at some inspirational examples of stores that have fantastic call to actions. You’ll be able to take their techniques and apply them to your own store.

Let’s get started.

What is a Call to Action?

Your call to action is what tells visitors what to do, where they should click, and what to buy. It’s what lights a path to your checkout and turns a visitor into a customer as quickly as possible.

The most obvious example of a call to action is a “Buy Now” button, or a “Shop Now” button on your storefront.

There’s no definitive answer on which button, phrase, styling or size works best, so it’s important to always test and optimize your storefront.

Let’s dig into what some of the basics are for an effective call to action.

Making an effective call to action: the basics

While this is something that can be tested, optimized and modified for years depending on your store, it’s good to have a basic understanding of what techniques should be used to make an effective call to action.

Urgency Increases Conversion Rates

When shoppers feel an opportunity is limited, they may be more inclined to purchase.

You see it in retail store displays all the time. Often, you’ll see end of season sales that run for a week. The same can be applied to your ecommerce store.

For instance, if somewhere on your storefront you included a stock level, or something that says “Buy now—only on sale until midnight” then you’re building on the sense of urgency.

A case study by the team at ConversionXL shows that by adding a sense of urgency to their product, they were able to increase their conversion rate by 332%. That’s a huge lift for any business.

Test different colors

While there’s no definitive color that converts best, it’s important to ensure that you’re using a color that resonates with your visitors, and your brand.

Here are a few tips to consider when determining which color to use for your CTA.

Use white space around your CTA to make it clear where to click
Make sure it stands out from the background
Don’t make it too crazy with colors and animations

Use simple buttons and copy

While most Shopify themes already include this feature, it’s good to make sure your CTA appears as a button and not just text. Even if its surrounded with a small border, it’s better than having just a text link.

There is a lot of data and studies that show that buttons work well for directing visitors to the checkout process.

Make sure to keep the text within the button short and sweet as well. A simple “buy now”, “add to cart”, “buy” works well.

Tip: You can cater your button copy to the market you’re selling. If you’re selling something like coffee, try changing the copy on your buy button to “Brew it” and see if that helps with conversions!

Hero images are important on your storefront

Hero images can be used to highlight a product or collection – in other words, they can be used as a massive call to action.

One study by Notre Dame University shows that the first image out of five images received 84% of all clicks on stores with rotating slideshows.

Be sure to have your hero image link to a product, or collection to get visitors to checkout faster.

Keep it “above the fold”

Try to keep everything above the fold if you can. The “fold” of a storefront is the point on any website that comes after scrolling down. Any content above the fold is what visitors immediately see upon entering your store.

If you can grab a visitors attention above the fold, chances are they’ll continue to click through and navigate through your store.

Let’s take a look at some stores that have achieved success and employ some of these techniques on their store.

Beastmode Apparel

Why it works:

By clearly stating that their hoodies in black and gold are limited edition, it immediately adds the notion of urgency and scarcity to the product.

Chances are, if you were looking to buy some Beastmode Apparel after the Superbowl and saw that, you’d be more inclined to complete a purchase.

Secondly, they utilize the idea of encapsulating the call to action button by surrounding the “Shop Now” text with a rectangular border. It stands out from the background, and grabs a visitors attention.

Sriracha 2 Go

Why it works:

Looking at the Sriracha 2 Go storefront, you’re probably inclined to click on one of their buy now buttons. You know exactly where to click. There’s no question of how to purchase their product.

They show what the product looks like, what it does, and how to buy it – all above the fold.

Bixbi Pet

Why it works:

They take advantage of some very bold colors on their storefront, and use a contrasting “purchase now” button to attract the attention of the visitor.

Another clever approach that Bixbi uses, is encapsulating their product collections with a banner.

Normally we see additional frontpage products lined up by name, but by making the entire collection a section of its own, a visitor is more inclined to click on them.

Department of Motivation

Why it works:

Department of Motivation takes advantage of keeping the most important aspects of their store above the fold.

By taking advantage of a powerful hero image, the visitor knows what the product is, what it looks like, and exactly where to click.

By using a responsive theme, their storefront looks great above the fold on any device at any resolution.

Carry on Cocktail Kit

Why it works:

Perhaps one of the most custom Shopify stores of the list, the Carry on Cocktail kit is a beautiful example of a powerful storefront that employs a simple, but effective call to action.

Upon entering their storefront, we see exactly what their product looks like. A simple “Scroll down” message is intriguing, so as a visitor we continue to scroll down to read more about the product.

It’s a fantastic example of a call to action that guides the visitor to the checkout. Plus, it is a fun spin on their branding and product.

Manpacks

Why it works:

The Manpacks storefront is an excellent example of all of the tips we went over. Their main call to action is located above the fold, is in their hero section, and is extremely clear.

They have a clear description of what they’re selling, a very apparent call to action, as well as a secondary option to get started using Facebook.

Grovemade

Not only does Grovemade use beautiful hero images that are full width, full bleed on their storefront, but they’ve managed to make a fun and fantastic call to action.

A visitor knows exactly where to click upon visiting their store, as their call to action is very apparent without being too distracting.

Furthermore, their navigation menu is very simple making it obvious where a visitor would need to click if they wanted to purchase a product.

Conclusion

Now that we’ve seen some call to action examples, it’s your turn to take action and apply some techniques when you create your ecommerce website.

Try testing a few variations of colors, text, and more on your own store to see how well it works!

Shopify Tutorial

4 Checkout Conversion Killers That Drive Your Buyers Away

May 6, 2021 Checkout Conversion, Elksourcing by 露露

This article is from Shopify, and was republished and shared through Elksourcing with the permission of Shopify.

Original link：https://www.shopify.com/blog/ecommerce-checkout

Few things are sadder than tuning into your analytics, excited to check out your sales numbers… and seeing data on thousands of abandoning customers. How did it come to this?

I mean, there you are, spending countless hours of work designing, optimizing, and A/B testing your online store. You’d think it would be enough to ensure good conversion rates and steadily grow your customer base.

But it isn’t.

As you may know, over 60% of buyers leave their shopping carts without completing a purchase. And they won’t come back to complete the checkout unless you incentivize them to do so.

That’s what most ecommerce brands try to do – win potential customers back. But in addition to that, what you must focus on is making it so they don’t want to leave in the first place.

I want to show you some simple ways to fix your checkout process, so you could reduce cart abandonment and boost your conversion rates.

Let’s look at 4 glaring mistakes that could be interfering with your checkout process. There are many more of them, actually, but for now let’s focus on the ones that are obvious and easy(ish) to fix.

Once you can prevent those conversion-killing rascals from driving away your customers, both your conversion rates and your overall sales (from first-time and repeat customers) will increase.

So let’s dive in and figure out how you can do just that.

1. Low-Key shopping cart button

You’d be surprised how often an interested shopper browses your store, picks an item, adds it to cart… only to forget all about it after 15-20 minutes. The fault usually lies with a shopping cart button that’s barely emphasized, and doesn’t turn attention to itself.

via greats.com

Here’s a great solution to the problem: a dynamic shopping cart that displays a pop-up every time an item is added.

How to fix it:

It should be 100% obvious to any website visitor that they’ve put something in their cart.

If you want to make a potential purchase unmissable to buyers, creating a small animation or a pop-up, displaying the cart’s contents and a “Checkout / Continue Shopping” call to action, would work best.

If you don’t want to code something quite so involved, the easiest way to make your shopping cart stand out is making the changes to your cart count more noticeable. Like so:

via greats.com

All you need is some basic skills with CSS and jQuery to make this happen. Basically, what happens is this: when the cart count becomes more than zero, the shopping cart button gets assigned a new CSS class that changes its appearance. In this example it’s color, but you can style it any way you want. Alternatively, check out the Shopify theme store and choose from many of the available themes that emphasize the cart button.

2. Slow / non-dynamic shopping cart

According to KISSmetrics, even a one-second page delay can cost your ecommerce brand millions in sales per year. And unless your target customers are the most patient, easy-going people in the world, refreshing your shopping cart to update shipping fees, items count, or coupon codes will make them much more likely to cancel the order.

Thing is, shoppers don’t want to update the number of items they are buying and wait for another 2-3 seconds until the cart refreshes (unless they want the item really badly). Customer psychology is enough of a minefield all by itself – you really don’t want to give them any additional reasons to abandon the cart.

via hardgraft.com

You can have a developer build a dynamic cart for you in Ruby on Rails, jQuery, or jQuery UI, and integrate it with your store. Alternatively, you can use third-party libraries that support Shopify, and let your website render the cart in real time – like Cart.js.

3. Disruptive registration

If you want every new buyer at your store to create an account before purchasing, you’re massively undercutting your conversion rates. According to this survey by eConsultancy, 25% of shoppers abandon their purchases because they are forced to create an account.

If you’re still not convinced, check out this case study by User Interface Engineering, where a “Register” button was replaced with a “Continue” button… and that one tweak brought in $300 million in revenue.

To understand what a big deal this is, look at the problem from a shopper’s point of view. They come to your website to buy stuff. When they see something they like and add that item to cart, they don’t want to be forced to make up a password and create an account.

They want instant gratification, not in-advance commitment to your brand.

How to fix it:

To make sure your checkout is conversion-friendly, you should always make account creation optional for your customers. You can easily do this in your Shopify account:

Go to “Settings -> Checkout -> Customer accounts”
Check the box “Accounts are optional”
There, it’s done! In several clicks, you’ve removed a big hurdle for potential customers!

If persistent accounts are part of your customer loyalty strategy, you can invite them to create one later, using the email they provided. To learn how, read this entry in Shopify’s manual.

Also, please note that you do want to ask for their email as quickly as possible, so you could follow up if they abandon the cart.

via sarahandabraham.com

4. Shipping costs

Personally, I’m not a fan of discounts: when used in excess, they can devalue your brand, and cripple your revenue in the long run.

There are many great alternatives to price-slashing, and free shipping is certainly one of them. Especially considering that consumers hate paying for delivery of their orders.

For example, in a report by ComScore, 61% of respondents said they would cancel an online purchase if not offered free shipping. Who knew, right?

Nobody likes to add a bunch of items to cart, fill out all the forms… and have a shipping fee suddenly applied to the order. It doesn’t matter if it’s tiny – it’s still more than the shopper has already committed to. It disrupts their thought sequence and affects the buying experience.

How to fix it:

Here are 3 conversion-friendly ways to handle shipping costs:

Make shipping free for everyone, everywhere (or at least nationwide);
Have a fixed shipping cost on all orders, no matter where the buyer lives;
Institute free shipping on all orders over a certain sum.

No “Calculate Shipping” buttons, no sudden surcharges, no disappointed buyers – easy!

via concrete-matter.com

Even a small additional charge can ruin the chances for a successful sale – much less a substantial 25 Euros on top of your existing order

And if you have to charge for shipping (I don’t know, maybe you are selling designer bathtubs or something), the best way to handle it is by being upfront and transparent about it.

Sure, a customer who has pre-committed to paying for an item might put up with an unexpected shipping fee… once. After that, they probably won’t buy from you again. Be very open about how much you charge, so your potential buyer won’t feel like you’re taking advantage of them.

via concrete-matter.com

Specifying free shipping conditions directly on the product page above the call to action is one way to do it. This pre-conditions the buyer to expert a surcharge, and mitigates possible frustration

Conclusion

In your ecommerce funnel, the checkout process is the stage that’s the hardest to optimize for maximum revenue. But if you focus on eliminating the worst conversion killers, you’ll see a bigger revenue lift than from small tweaks like button colors or product headlines.

Category: Shopify Tutorial

The 32 Best Entrepreneur Books of All Time

32 must-read entrepreneur books for 2020

1. The Power of Broke

2. Behold the Dreamers

3. The Virgin Way

4. Steve Jobs

5. Year of Yes

6. Beating the Odds

7. Female Innovators at Work

8. In the Company of Women

9. Grit: The Power of Passion and Perseverance

10. The Last Black Unicorn

11. Girl Code

12. David and Goliath

13. The 4-Hour Workweek

14. All Marketers Are Liars

15. Purple Cow

16. The Hard Thing About Hard Things

17. Rework

18. Trust Me, I’m Lying

19. The Lean Startup

20. The Startup Owner’s Manual

21. Crush It!

22. The Tipping Point

23. Good to Great

24. Getting to Yes

25. The Power of Visual Storytelling

26. Hooked

27. Ogilvy on Advertising

28. How to Win Friends and Influence People

29. The Art of the Start

30. Start With Why

31. Rich Dad Poor Dad

32. Zero to One

What are the best entrepreneur books you’re reading?

How to Support Small Businesses—with 100+ Gift Ideas to Get You Started

Why support small businesses

1. They make a positive impact to the local economy

2. They support communities and job creation

3. They are often sustainable shopping alternatives

4. They put customer experience first

5 ways to support small businesses while social distancing

1. Discover new brands

2. Buy gift cards

3. Share your favorite stores in your social networks

4. Reach out

5. Buy holiday gifts from small businesses

The ultimate independent gift guide—100+ ideas for every occasion, everyone on your list

Gifts for foodies

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Gifts for fitness buffs

Good gifts that give back

Gifts for entrepreneurs (and remote working life)

Tech gifts

Kid gifts

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Gifts for self care

Fashion gifts

Gifts for rainy Sundays

Gifts for pets and their people

Custom gifts

Beauty gifts

Gifts for grounded travellers

Gifts for outdoorsy types

Gifts for hunkering down for a long (and socially distanced) winter

BONUS: Staff picks for independent gifting

Braveen’s pick

Desirae’s pick

Shuang’s pick

Dayna’s pick

Adam’s pick

Get Inspired: 200+ Motivational Quotes To Encourage Your Success

200+ Motivational quotes to inspire your life in 2021

Deep motivational quotes

Motivational quotes for success

Motivational quotes for life

Motivational quotes for work

Motivational quotes for women

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