How to select the next tactics to grow your Shopify store

When you're ready to grow your Shopify store it can be overwhelming to pick the tactics you'll use for that growth.

Here's a process you can use. It's designed to be simple, flexible, and give you a few ways to win.

First, define what you mean by growth. Does that mean doubling your sales by the end of the year? Or a steady month-over-month growth of 10%? Or are you thinking 10x profit?

Knowing what you want is important, even if it's wildly inaccurate and crazy.

Second, think about how you've reached where you're at now. Knowing that your growth came from a successful Instagram strategy or SEO would be helpful.

Even a one-off bounty of luck should be noted, as you might be able to repeat it.

Next, look at your analytics to find your sources and if you have it, your conversion rates per source. You might not have enough data to do anything with but sometimes you'll find some customer sources that really pay off.

Before I focused on SEO I looked and noticed that the majority of my traffic and conversions were coming from organic traffic. That had me bump up the importance of SEO for my business.

Next, list all of the different ways you can think of that would help you grow. This is where you can go crazy and write down any weird idea.

One important rule, you can't go searching for new ideas. Only write down ones that are in your head or that you've heard of before.

Once you have a list of ideas, score each idea from 1-3 on each of these factors where 3 is positive/good and 1 is negative/bad:

• could I enjoy this?
• could this reach my goal?
• do I have the resources to do this? (e.g. time, money, skills)

Finally, it's picking time.

Any idea that scored a 1 in any factor, cross off. There's no sense thinking about an idea If you're not going to enjoy it, it won't help you reach your goal, or you don't have the resources for it.

Look at all of the remaining ideas with a score of 3 for enjoyment. Pick one. Whichever one you like.

Look at all of the remaining ideas with a score of 3 for your goal. Pick one of those too.

Finally for a bonus idea, look at the remaining ideas. Is there one that you have all of the resources to do (score of 3) and that you've had some success with already? Pick that one.

Now you should have 2-3 ideas for growing your store:

1. one idea that you'll enjoy
2. one idea that will help grow your store efficiently
3. one idea that you're already doing and had success with

For the next three months, these three ideas are what you're to focus on for your store growth. Split up your growth time and effort between them however you want but make sure you give each one the attention it needs.

When the three months are up, you can repeat this process and pick the next set of ideas (or pick these again).

One improvement that always pays off is to learn more about your customers.

The better you understand them, the better you'll be able to help them through your products and services.

If you haven't installed Repeat Customer Insights yet, it can help.

Its analysis will help you find groups of customers so you can begin to understand their actual behavior.

Eric Davis