7 Skills For Running a Shopify Store You Need to Master

It’s never been easier to start your own business – at least in theory.

We’re living in a digital landscape where anyone can launch a store or company in minutes. All you need is a website, a social media profile, and a way to manage your transactions, and you’re all set.

However, there’s a big difference between creating an online business and making it a success.

Tools like Shopify will give you the platform you need to build your store. However, it’s up to you to figure out how you’re going to increase your average order value, attract new customers, and increase revenue.

That’s why it helps to go into entrepreneur life with the right set of skills.

Here are some of the talents you need to master when running a Shopify store.

Problem Solving

Fundamentally, running a successful business is about knowing how to solve problems.

You need to figure out which problems your customers have and how you’re going to offer a solution. You’ll also need to have a strategy in place for handling issues that arise on the road to success. Even the most talented business owner can suffer from issues like supply chain restrictions, reputation hiccups, and shipping errors.

So, how do you become a better problem solver?

• Be objective: Know how to approach each issue without emotion. Be logical, focused, and analytical. List all of the obstacles you’re facing and tackle them one at a time.
• Look for the opportunity: More often than not, great opportunities exist within massive problems. When Salesforce noticed an inequality issue in its ranks, it changed it’s strategy immediately. Now, Salesforce is renowned around the world.
• Reverse engineer: Most problems aren’t solved in a linear way. Learn how to picture the ideal working scenario, then work backwards.

Listening

As a business owner, you’re responsible for listening to a lot of people.

Since you own your company, you might think that everyone should listen to you – not the other way around. Unfortunately, that route often leads to failure.

Here are just some of the people you really need to listen to if you want to achieve your goals:

• Your team: Your employees might interact with customers and the marketplace more than you. There’s a good chance they have insights that might make your business more successful. Getting insights from different parts of your company is the key to creative, out of the box thinking.
• Your customers: Listening to your customers gives you a view into what they care about, and what they need. That way, you can produce the content, tools, and products that your target audience wants. Logic Monitor knew that it’s customers wanted to know how to handle the crisis of 2020, so they produced a report:

• Competition: Yep, you need to listen to your competitors too. While you should never just copy what other companies are doing, it helps to pay attention to other brands. They might give you ideas and inspiration for making your Shopify store stand out.
• Determination

As we mentioned above, almost anyone can start a business these days.

That doesn’t mean that running a successful company is easy.

There are tons of alternative companies out there, all competing for the same customers as you. The chances are that you’re going to spend a while struggling before you break through into your chosen market. The key to success? Knowing how to stay focused.

Staying determined with your Shopify store might be easier than you think.

We recommend getting familiar with the analytics and reports available on Shopify’s backend, so you can review all of your store’s recent activity.

While you might not see a lot of action at first – you will begin to see slight jumps in interest and attention over time. Being able to track this progress and visualize the success you’re achieving with graphs and charts will help to keep you motivated.

If you have an online store with Shopify you can even access Live view, which means that you can see how your store is performing in real-time.

Adaptability

Adaptability is one of the most important skills that any business leader can have. However, this talent is particularly important when you’re running an online store. Services like Shopify will give you the tools you need to excel in the digital world, but the functionality of Shopify is continually changing.

Adaptability will mean that you’re always ready to shift strategies when a new method of online selling becomes available. You can also use this adaptability to take advantage of new add-ons and plugins that appear on the Shopify app store.

Adaptability is also essential when things happen outside of the digital world that might impact your company. For instance, COVID-19 caused many companies around the world to stop receiving products from their suppliers. Items weren’t getting to warehouses or customers.

When problems like that happen, it’s important that you’re ready to shift to a new strategy. Knowing how to pivot quickly will help you to survive in tough times.

Basic Digital Knowledge

You don’t necessarily need to be a coding expert to run a Shopify store, but you do need to know the basics. Tools like Shopify give you an all-in-one environment where you can set up your entire store without any complicated coding.

The more time you spend in your Shopify backend the more comfortable you’ll feel with things like product descriptions, titles, tags, and even inventory management. Shopify even gives you the freedom to add extra functionality to your website with specialist add-ons and plugins too.

Most business owners eventually reach a point where they’ll have a technical professional to manage their website for them. However, it’s a good idea to familiarize yourself with all the functionality of Shopify to begin with.

Figure out how things like payments work, and what you need to do to make your product pages look professional. Experiment with reports and analytics and check out the tools that Shopify has to help you calculate and manage your taxes.

Time Management Skills

Business owners in any environment often end up with endless tasks and not enough time to do them in. Unfortunately, that’s still true for entrepreneurs running efficient digital stores.

Learning how to properly manage your time and your resources is the key to getting ahead in a competitive landscape. Start by figuring out exactly what you’re going to be responsible for in your business. At first, it may feel like you need to do everything on your own, but you can always outsource some of the projects you’re not great at.

For instance, if you want to focus on finding clients, sourcing suppliers, and developing your products, then you can hire someone else to handle your marketing, accounting, and sales strategies. Being a resourceful business owner also means knowing when to delegate when you don’t have the right skills or time to give an issue your full attention.

Once you know which tasks you’re going to focus on, and which you can send elsewhere, you can begin to organize your day more effectively. Consider using calendar and scheduling tools to help you keep track of your day.

Advertising

Finally, if you want a successful Shopify store, then you’re going to need to know how to market it. Unfortunately, most business owners only understand the basics of advertising, and nothing else.

It’s no surprise. Creating powerful ads for your company isn’t easy. You need to assess your audience carefully, figure out how to segment your campaigns, create powerful content, and so much more. On top of all that, you’ve got countless measuring and testing processes to go through before you start to find a plan that works.

A powerful ad strategy will give you the tools you need to attract, nurture, and convert your target audience. However, just because you’re a business owner doesn’t mean you know how to be a marketing professional too.

Since knowing how to make your brand shine online is crucial to your chances of success, you can’t afford to take any risks.

Working with a marketing professional is the only way to make sure that you can get the most out of every campaign, without wasting countless amounts of time and money. Working with a professional agency that already understands how your chosen platform works will ensure that you can get results fast.

That means you spend less time trying to figure out the difference between SEO and SEM and more time growing your company.

Ready to Launch?

Tools like Shopify make running your own online store easier.

However, you’ll still need a few essential skills as a business owner if you want to boost your chances of success. The seven skills mentioned above will help you to get more out of your business, whether you’re running a store with Shopify or selling anywhere else online.

For the things you can’t handle yourself, like building your brand reputation, developing a world-renowned marketing campaign, and enhancing engagement, reach out to The Graygency.