Running a successful Shopify store is something to be proud of. After all, nearly half of Shopify businesses fail within the first five years.
With 28% of the US e-commerce market and 4.6 million active stores, Shopify isn’t slowing down — and neither should you. Even profitable stores need to step up their game to stay ahead of the curve.
Every year, customers want faster deliveries. Smoother checkout interfaces. Slicker mobile experiences. The good news? With the right knowledge and a little elbow grease, you have what it takes to level-up your Shopify store. 🕹️
9 Ways to Grow Your Shopify Store
- Shop Channel App
- Shop Pay
- Shop Promise Badge
- Shopify Plus
- Checkout UI Extensions
- Funding Options For Growth
- Apps and Integrations
- Advanced SEO Strategies
- Multichannel Selling
But First, Back to Basics
Since you’re here, we’ll assume you’ve already got your bases covered in terms of the following:
✅ Leveraging data and analytics. Shopify provides a variety of insights and reports to help you understand your customers and make smart business decisions.
✅ Experimenting with SEO. Keyword research and a basic content strategy are table stakes.
✅ Testing different page layouts, images, and offers. Conversion testing and iteration are your best friends.
✅ E-commerce marketing strategies. Social media, paid ads, and email marketing are starting points.
You’ve covered the basics, but have you checked out all that Shopify has to offer for growing your business? Here are nine areas to explore — from advanced Shopify features to growth-focused retail strategies.
Features and Strategies to Position Your Shopify Store For Maximum Growth
1. Shop Channel App
Shopify’s Shop Channel is an app that helps sellers promote their businesses and increase sales. Perks include:
- Customizing your store details
- Engaging directly with customers by replying to reviews
- Tracking detailed analytics
- Creating product bundles and loyalty programs
- Displaying personalized recommendations based on customers’ history
The Shop App is all about customizing your customer experience to increase discoverability and engagement.
🎯 Best for: Almost any seller. The Shop app is automatically added to your Shopify admin if you meet the Shop Merchant Guidelines — so it’s probably on your radar. Making the most of it is another story, as it opens up many different settings that improve your customers’ shopping experience. Shopify Plus users can check out Shopify Academy’s course Getting Started on Shop to discover all the opportunities.
2. Shop Pay
Shopify’s Shop Pay option is an accelerated checkout that lets customers save their payment info like email, credit card, and shipping address. They can opt in on any Shopify store as long as they provide an email address at checkout.
Every seller knows that removing friction from the checkout process is one of e-commerce’s golden rules for increased conversions. Enabling Shop Pay gets it done.
To activate it, go to your Shopify admin and select Settings > Payments. Select Manage in the Shopify Payments section, and then check Shop Pay.
🎯 Best for: Activating Shop Pay is basically all pros and no cons, but it’s particularly advantageous for businesses whose customers make frequent, repeat purchases.
3. Shop Promise Badge
The Shop Promise badge is a simple, no-cost way to build trust with your customers. Activating this feature will display information like:
- Expected delivery dates
- Products delivered in five days or less
- Real-time tracking
These days, customers expect to receive online orders faster than ever — 68% say they’re influenced by estimated time of delivery — so adding up-front transparency here can increase your conversions and sales.
🎯 Best for: There are a few requirements to be eligible to display Shop Promise. You must have Shop Pay enabled, ship domestically in the US, and use Shopify’s latest shipping settings. If you’re eligible, and particularly if you can boast fast shipping times on your best-selling products, displaying the Shop Promise badge is a smart move.
4. Shopify Plus
For growth-focused sellers, Shopify Plus is a common upgrade. It enables a central “mission control” for running your business and resources designed to help support merchants with higher revenue and sales.
With a monthly baseline price point of $2,000, upgrading to Plus isn’t cheap — and costs can go up from there based on your sales volume. But the wide range of benefits make the investment worth it for thousands of merchants:
- Ability to create a password-protected storefront just for wholesale customers
- More robust checkout customization options including personalization
- Advanced report-building and analytics
- Team account management options
- Shopify Flow automations for repetitive tasks
- Shopify Plus Academy training resources
In addition to these benefits, some costs are offset by lower payment processing fees and unrestricted sales limits.
🎯 Best for: Shopify Plus is geared toward enterprise sellers but can benefit shops of any size that are hyper-focused on growth. If you manage multiple stores, the central organization element is a necessity.
5. Checkout UI Extensions
If you’re interested in customizing your store’s checkout experience, exploring checkout UI extensions is a must. These extensions are a safe way to customize the appearance and functionality of your checkout page without compromising your customers’ security.
With checkout UI extensions, you can:
- Display custom messaging based on product tags and collections
- Add input fields for buyers, e.g. a gift message
- Offer upsells, free samples, and donations
- Accept discount codes and gift cards
- Run loyalty programs powered by the session token API
- Customize order confirmation messaging with digital product downloads, surveys, and social and referral links
🎯 Best for: Checkout UI extensions are only available to Shopify Plus sellers. You’ll also need to be familiar with the development side of using APIs on Shopify.
6. Funding Options For Growth
When it’s time to expand into new geographies, product offerings, larger order sizes, and more, you’ll want to explore your e-commerce funding options. There are a variety out there depending on your goals and current sales volume.
- Shopify Capital: Shopify offers its own funding program, Shopify Capital. These funds are only available to sellers pre-qualified by Shopify, so the only way to get access (and see your offer details) is to wait for Shopify to contact you.
- SellersFi Working Capital: Our funding provides up to $10M with no usage restrictions. Use it to stock up on extra inventory, launch a new product, reach more buyers with increased marketing efforts, or pretty much anything else you can dream up.
- Merchant cash advances: These loans are easier and faster to secure than traditional bank loans. Typically, they don’t even require a credit score or collateral. However, they’re often considered predatory due to their high factor rates and hidden fees.
- Traditional bank lines of credit: These traditional loans can be secured (requires collateral) or unsecured (doesn’t require collateral), e.g. Bank of America Small Business Loan. While banks are starting to embrace e-commerce, most still don’t offer the flexibility and fast approval most merchants need.
7. Apps and Integrations
If you’re after a specific functionality that Shopify doesn’t offer natively, no problem. One of the best things about the platform is its robust app store with thousands of third-party apps to customize your merchant experience.
Some of our favorite apps and integrations to explore include:
- Shopify POS (Point of Sale) for selling in-person
- Accounting software integration, e.g. Quickbooks
- Marketing apps like Privy and Shopify inbox for expanded communication capabilities
- Real-time customer service apps like Gorgias
- Integration with your CRM like Smile.io or Hubspot
- Integration with web3 features to incorporate NFTs and unique token-gated customer experiences into your storefront
The best part is that the base models of many of these apps are free, so you can experiment and determine which additions make the most sense for your business.
8. Advanced SEO Strategies
Basic SEO is a fact of life for most merchants, but are there new and advanced techniques you haven’t checked out yet?
Go beyond keyword research to consider:
- Optimizing your site for featured snippets, voice search, and generative AI search results
- Digging into long-tail keywords with lower competition to target niche and local audiences
- Running technical SEO audits on your site to identify easy improvements
- Satisfy search intent and earn more backlinks by producing engaging content like videos, graphs, and well-structured blog posts
Modern SEO is about more than keyword stuffing — it’s about crafting compelling page titles and descriptions that function like ad copy to generate clicks to your store.
9. Multichannel Selling
It’s no secret: We love Shopify. It’s a powerful platform that, for many merchants, is the core of their e-commerce business. But many sellers also choose to diversify their retail presence by selling on multiple platforms and e-commerce marketplaces.
A multichannel or omnichannel approach can expand your reach while mitigating the risk of having all your eggs in one basket. Today’s customers often expect an omnichannel presence, so delivering on this expectation can be good for your brand and revenue.
If Shopify is your right-hand platform, check out its integrations with other sales channels like:
- Amazon
- eBay
- Walmart
- Etsy
You can connect all these through Shopify’s Marketplace Connect app, allowing you to manage product listings, inventory, orders, and fulfillment from your Shopify dashboard.
Go Forth and Grow Your Shopify Store
Once you’ve mastered the Shopify basics, keep the momentum going by committing to continuous improvement. The most competitive stores are always innovating and testing new strategies to achieve maximum growth.
And you can too. Hungry for more on making the most of your Shopify account? Check out all our Shopify resources.
