5 Of The Best Shopify Stores and What We Can Learn From Them

In the vast landscape of ecommerce, Shopify has emerged as one of the reigning ecommerce platforms for businesses looking to build an online presence. Thanks to its user-friendly interface and its wide range of features and functionality businesses of all sizes can easily set up and customise their own online stores and start selling products in no time.

But with millions of businesses utilising Shopify (over 2 million in fact), what helps a store set itself apart from the rest and provide customers a better shopping experience above others?

Let’s take a deep dive into some of the best Shopify stores from how they’ve been designed to their CRO tactics to see what makes their online storefronts so successful.

Gymshark

Gymshark is a British gym wear brand that was founded in 2012 by Ben Francis in a garage in Birmingham. 12 years on, they now have over 18m total followers on social media, 14 online stores and company value of £1bn.

The Gymshark brand has grown massively in the last few years, so big in fact that their website crashed for more than 8 hours one Black Friday as so many customers were eager to get their hands on some discounted gym clothes.

The brand has been successful in building an engaged community of fans, but what is it exactly about their Shopify store that makes them so successful?

First things first, they’re relatable. Their copy across their website is short, to the point and highlights relatable issues consumers experience with their gym wear. Addressing these issues helps to appeal to potential customers and highlights that their product is the solution.

Gymshark also makes it super easy for customers to add products they like to their baskets. All they have to do is hover over their item of choice in the collections menu, select their size and it’s added straight to their basket! Functionality such as this is great for increasing conversion rates as it provides a simple solution for customers to buy their favourite products.

Allbirds

Allbirds is an eco-friendly and sustainable footwear brand founded by Tim Brown and Joey Zwillinger in 2014. Their product initially launched as a Kickstarter campaign, raising $119K in 5 days. Now, their online store is home to hundreds more products, with physical stores opening across the world.

If there’s one thing that Allbirds do extremely well on their Shopify store, it’s telling a story. The brand has been very clear at documenting their environmental journey, their sustainable initiatives and their practices. 

With sustainable shopping trends on the rise, Allbird’s has successfully managed to stand out in this market, mentioning their sustainable values, materials and processes across all aspects of their website. By adding these pages to the menu navigation and footer of their website, they’ve made these pages easily accessible and easy to find for potential consumers.

Kylie Cosmetics

Pretty much everyone has heard of Kylie Jenner and if you haven’t, where have you been? Part of the famous Kardashian family, youngest sister Kylie launched her own cosmetics brand in 2015 to global success, using Shopify as her chosen ecommerce platform.

So what can we take from the Kylie Cosmetics Shopify store? The main thing is that visuals matter. Investing in professional photography and capturing your products in appealing ways helps to create interest and enhances the value of your product to potential customers. Kylie Cosmetics does a great job of this, using photography to show product swatches, before and afters and what the product looks like on the skin.

Better yet, customers can even take advantage of AR technology to try products on themselves by using the camera on their device to find the right shade for them, enhancing the customer experience.

Bootea

Bootea is a health and fitness brand who specialise in selling ‘Teatoxes’, a product that aims to detoxify your body and helps you to lose weight. Looking at their Shopify store, it’s immediately clear that it is well designed, featuring clean and fresh visuals that align perfectly with their brand and product sets. 

The website is easy to navigate and the user experience has been given good thought, with CTA buttons and product details that are clear to the customer, providing a seamless shopping experience. 

Something that Bootea does well on their website too is using social proof effectively to showcase customer testimonials and reviews of their products. These can be seen across the homepage and on every product page, highlighting to potential customers the benefits and real-life experiences of their products, encouraging them to make a purchase.

MVMT

MVMT offers stylish and affordable watches that are minimalist and timeless in design. This is reflected in the design of their website, which also has a minimalist and sleek design and clean layout to showcase the brand’s personality. The website is therefore easy to navigate and provides a seamless shopping experience for the customer.

A great CRO tactic that MVMT uses is delivering a pop up to users as they open the site, offering them the chance to unlock 20% off their purchase by signing up to their newsletter. It’s functionality such as this that can be the difference between a customer completing a purchase or abandoning the website.

Shopify Tactics We Can Learn From These Stores

So what can we take away from these 5 successful Shopify stores? Let’s summarise:

• Content is king. Not only should content be SEO focused to boost your websites search engine rankings, but it should reflect your brand’s personality and appeal to your target audience. If your brand has a story, then tell it! Just like Allbirds, this will resonate with audiences and persuade them to purchase your product.
• Use functionality to allow customers to quickly add products to their basket in an effort to improve CRO, just as Gymshark does.
• Invest in professional photography and utilise a range of photo styles to showcase your products in different ways.
• If relevant to your product, use AR technology to allow customers to try their products in their home or on themselves so they can see what it looks like before purchasing.
• Use social proof across your website to show potential customers the positive experiences others have had, instilling trust in your brand.
• Think carefully about the user experience and design your website with this in mind, making CTA buttons and important information easy to access for the customer.
• Ensure that your website design reflects your brand and showcases your business personality.
• Don’t be afraid to use pop ups across your website to capture customers’ attention and encourage a conversion. This could involve offering them a discount code or flashing up a countdown timer to invoke FOMO (fear of missing out) on a sale or limited time offer.

It may seem like it takes a lot to build a successful Shopify store but with the right strategy, features and functionality, anyone can create a thriving online business. By drawing inspiration from these Shopify stores and applying their proven tactics to your own brand, you can create a strong foundation for developing your own successful online store that will thrive in the competitive ecommerce landscape.

Are you in the process of working on a Shopify project and are in the need of a helping hand? Whether it’s help developing a Shopify store or you require a custom app building to provide certain functionality, we can help. With years of Shopify experience between us, we can help to unlock your Shopify store’s potential and provide a solution that is bound to drive results. So what are you waiting for? Drop us a message and let’s get started.