Shopify best practices: a comprehensive guide (2024)

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Shopify best practices can help you optimize your store’s design, functionality, and user experience to drive conversions and revenue.

These practices cover various aspects of your online store, from site navigation and product presentation to checkout processes and marketing strategies. 

For instance, optimizing your checkout process for speed is best practice, as fast-loading pages significantly improve conversion rates. Likewise, it’s best practice to capture email addresses early during checkout to recapture abandoned carts.

Join us below for a complete guide to Shopify best practices, including advice and tips on turning your Shopify store into a conversion machine.

Shopify theme development best practices

Your Shopify theme sets the foundation for your store’s success, but it won’t be perfect after downloading it. You’ll need to make a few changes to make it look nice and do what you want. Here are some best practices to achieve that:

Clean code and file structure

Clean code and file structures make managing your Shopify store easier and contribute to a fast-loading site. You’ll spend less time wrestling with technical issues and more time integrating apps and features that improve your user experience and conversion rate. 

Here are some best practices to maintain clean code and files:

• Create separate folders for templates, sections, snippets, and assets
• Give theme files consistent names like product-card.liquid or collection-list.js
• Use individual files for single purposes rather than handling multiple functions
• Maintain consistent indentation and spacing to structure the code
• Leave helpful comments explaining or providing context for complex functions

Responsive design and mobile optimization

Your Shopify store should display correctly on all devices to provide a consistent user experience. Here’s an example from Stitch Fix:

Mobile version

Desktop version

Most new Shopify themes are responsive, meaning they size themselves to the display they are on. Still, even if you use a responsive theme, automatic responsiveness does not mean your website will display correctly by default.

You may need to configure your theme and adjust multiple elements in the Shopify editor to get it the way you want. Shopify’s theme editor has a Sections area that adjusts layout, content, and design elements for different page views, including mobile.

Some themes offer more detailed control over mobile layouts, while others have more rigid designs with fewer customization options. You should consider this before buying a theme. 

Speed optimization

Making your Shopify store load fast isn’t just best practice — it’s good business. 

A fast-loading site will benefit your SEO, user experience, and conversions, helping you attract more traffic and increase sales. 

Follow these steps to boost your site’s speed:

• Reduce your total page size by compressing images, minifying scripts, eliminating unused CSS, generating critical CSS, and removing unnecessary apps
• Optimize JavaScript by breaking up long tasks, deferring non-critical code, and minimizing DOM manipulation to reduce main-thread work
• Self-host fonts and videos so that third-party resources like Google Fonts and YouTube don’t extend loading times
• Implement lazy loading for images and videos to prioritize above-the-fold content and ensure they format correctly almost instantly 

If you want to examine your site in more detail, use GTMetrix to visualize its waterfall and locate resources that are slowing it down.

Another tool you can use is Google’s PageSpeed Insights to measure your site’s loading times and receive recommendations on improving your score.

Shopify Liquid best practices

Shopify Liquid is a templating language that allows you to create dynamic content in your theme, such as personalized product recommendations and discount codes. 

When you’re new to Shopify Liquid, focus on the basics of the templating language, such as learning how to output data using double curly braces {{ }}.

You can then start using Liquid to add functionality to your store. Here are some best practices to keep your code as clean as possible:

• Choose descriptive variable names
• Add comments to explain complex code
• Use Liquid’s built-in filters
• Apply if statements and loops carefully
• Directly access store data via Liquid objects
• Keep logic simple
• Maintain consistent code indentation
• Control whitespace for cleaner output
• Create reusable code snippets
• Use Liquid’s comparison operators
• Implement error handling with default filters
• Minimize database queries for better performance
• Use CSS and JavaScript assets efficiently
• Follow Shopify’s theme guidelines
• Test across various devices and browsers

Version control and theme backup

Keeping your Shopify theme updated ensures your store remains secure and optimized while providing access to the latest features and functionality.

Updating your theme is generally straightforward. When a new version is available, Shopify prominently displays a notification in your admin, which you can click to update. 

Version control is another system that allows you to track, manage, and collaborate on changes to your theme’s code over time. You can add version control for free by connecting your theme’s codebase to a GitHub repository.

Shopify tricks for success

Here are some tricks to boost your Shopify store’s success:

Research and select good Shopify apps

Shopify has thousands of apps that can save you time and money by automating tasks and enhancing your store’s functionality. 

However, overloading your site with apps can slow it down and create conflicts. Plus, some apps have poor optimization and infrequent updates that can negatively impact your store. 

Always read the reviews before downloading a Shopify app and compare apps that offer similar features to ensure they do what you want. 

Simplify navigation and user experience

Your Shopify store should be easy to navigate so customers can find what they want. 

Good navigation starts at the top of your store with links to categories and sales pages. Ideally, if your store has many categories, you should use mega menus with dropdowns. 

Here’s an example of good navigation from clothes retailer Allbirds:

A sticky header is helpful when users scroll your site, as is a search feature that returns results on the same page in real time to reduce new page loads. 

Unique ways to browse can also give you an edge over competitors. For instance, you could integrate product swiping on product pages to let customers quickly hop between products or use popups to recommend hot products based on browsing behavior. 

Use high-quality product images and descriptions

Hire a photographer to capture unique images of your products from multiple angles and add them as a gallery on your product pages. You could also add videos and animated 360° spin images to provide an immersive shopping experience.

For instance, smartphone case manufacturer BURGA uses high-quality images and videos on its product pages to demonstrate unboxing and installation:

But remember the most crucial of all Shopify image best practices: optimizing for site speed and search appearance. Compress your images and use keyword-specific file names and alt text to improve their chances of appearing in image search results. 

The written word also matters for sales. Craft compelling product descriptions by highlighting benefits, using persuasive language, and addressing customer needs. Keep content concise, specific, and optimized for readers and search engines to generate traffic. 

Leverage Shopify analytics and reports

Shopify Analytics provides a unified dashboard and reporting experience for recent activity, visitor insights, web performance, and transaction analysis. 

Here’s a snapshot of the Shopify Analytics dashboard:

You can use this data to increase sales revenue, optimize your store based on best-converting landing pages, and develop new merchandising tactics.

Diving deeper into your store’s data with custom data explorations will help you create reports tailored to your specific business needs. For instance, you could apply filters to particular periods, product categories, or customer groups.

Enable customer reviews and testimonials

Integrating positive reviews from real customers provides social proof, assuring potential buyers that your products or services are reliable and valuable.

Detailed reviews can help address common questions or concerns, giving potential customers more confidence in purchasing decisions.

There’s also the SEO side to reviews, where user-generated content can boost your store’s visibility in search results, potentially driving more organic traffic.

Set up automated email workflows

Automated email workflows triggered by abandoned carts, new signups, order status updates, stock alerts, and other customer touchpoints will help you create a personalized shopping experience that boosts engagement and retention.

Omnisend provides email marketing customization options to tailor these workflows, including trigger settings, audience filters, and advanced features like conditional splits and A/B testing to make improvements to your messaging over time. 

Watch this short animation to see how easy it is to create email automations:

Shopify also offers a built-in email marketing tool called Shopify Email, but it lacks the specialized ecommerce features that make Omnisend so powerful. 

Shopify SEO best practices

Shopify SEO best practices will help you rank for competitive keywords and generate website traffic. Here are some best practices to follow:

Optimizing page titles and meta descriptions

Your page titles and meta descriptions signal to Google what your pages are about, so they should include your most important keywords. 

Google only shows the first 60 characters of a page title and the first 160 characters of a meta description. You don’t need to max these characters out, but you should aim to use most of them effectively and with concise, descriptive language.

Improve URL structure

Include important keywords in the URL path, like product names or categories. 

For example, use /mens-shirts/blue-cotton-shirt instead of /product/123. Use query parameters for filtering and sorting, such as ?color=blue&size=medium. 

Use path segments (/t-shirt/green) or query parameters (/t-shirt?color=green) for product variants. Avoid temporary parameters like session IDs, which can create duplicate content issues and hinder effective crawling and indexing.

Remember to use hyphens to separate words in URLs and keep them lowercase for better readability and search engine optimization.

Image alt text optimization

Alt tags provide context for an image to search engines and help visually impaired people who use screen readers understand your web pages.

Your alt text should mention your keywords and be descriptive yet concise to represent the image content. For decorative images, use your brand name or a generic descriptor. 

Include relevant keywords naturally, but avoid keyword stuffing. Keep alt text under 125 characters, as some screen readers cut off after this point. 

Blog for SEO

Publishing high-quality blog posts targeting keyword phrases with good search volumes can significantly boost your Shopify store’s traffic. 

The basic formula involves researching relevant keywords, searching Google to see what types of content it shows for those keywords, creating in-depth content addressing these topics, and incorporating target phrases naturally throughout.

There are also a few more nuances, such as site authority, meta optimization, proper header tags, adding relevant internal and external links, and ensuring your content is mobile-friendly and loads quickly. Cover all these bases to grow your blog.

Structured data and rich snippets

Structured data, or Schema markup, is important to Shopify SEO because it helps search engines better understand your content and can lead to enhanced search results. 

Adding structured data markup to your pages provides search engines with machine-readable information about your page’s content. 

It’s particularly crucial for landing pages, as it allows you to display details like product prices, availability, and ratings directly in the search results.

Familiarize yourself with the Schema that Google supports and use the Google Schema Markup Testing Tool to test your markup and see how your pages look.

Optimize site speed and performance

Optimizing your website for speed has two benefits for SEO:

• Fast load times improve user experience and reduce bounce rates, sending positive signals to search engines about your site’s quality
• Fast load times let search engines crawl and index more pages on your site, potentially increasing your search visibility 

Keep an eye on your site speed after theme and app updates and optimize all new images and other media to keep your page sizes down. 

Local SEO for Shopify

You can attract local customers to your Shopify store by optimizing your website for location-based searches. 

For instance, you could build category pages for “vintage clothes for sale in London” to attract walk-ins — these pages could show up in Google’s organic results. 

To show up on Google Places, you need a Google Business profile and some optimization with local citations and customer reviews to build your profile’s authority. You could then appear for “London clothes shop” on Google Maps. 

Conversion rate optimization for Shopify stores

Conversion rate optimization (CRO) involves studying how people use your site and finding opportunities to increase the percentage of visitors who purchase. 

Here are some best practices to boost your conversion rate:

Streamlined checkout process

If your customers abandon their carts during checkout, your purchasing process may be too complex or time-consuming. 

Consider these steps to build a more streamlined checkout:

• Use one-page checkout to ensure page load times don’t lead to cart abandonment
• Use auto-fill for name and shipping addresses
• Integrate express payment options like Shop Pay and digital wallets to speed up transactions for tech-savvy customers
• Display a progress bar and offer guest checkout to manage expectations and reduce friction for first-time buyers
• Use countdown timers for any special offers and low stock
• Showcase social proof and automated discounts to motivate hesitant shoppers to complete their purchase

Use of urgency and scarcity

You can use urgency and scarcity tactics across your Shopify store with banners featuring countdown timers for sales, discounts, and special offers. 

Product pages can have low stock alerts (such as “Only 8 left!”), and your checkout page can use alerts like “Buy now, this product is selling out fast!” to encourage sales. 

You could also implement a reservation system that holds items in a customer’s cart for a limited time, displaying a countdown until the products return to inventory.

Personalization and upselling

The first step to personalization is using Shopify collections to organize and showcase products in your online store.

Collections group related products, making it easier for customers to find what they want and potentially increasing sales. You can create automated collections based on product attributes or manually curate specific items for custom groupings. 

Beyond collections, you can create product bundles with an app like Bundler. This app lets you combine multiple items into attractively priced packages, offering features like dynamic pricing and customizable bundle options. 

Trust signals and security features

Trust badges reassure customers about your site’s safety, encouraging them to complete their purchases. Popular options include Visa, Mastercard, and PayPal payment badges, ISO badges, and SSL security seals like Norton or McAfee.

Clear return policies and money-back guarantees further reduce risk, making your shoppers more comfortable purchasing. 

Data privacy is another opportunity to increase conversion rates. To give customers flexibility in providing information, offer guest checkout options alongside account creation. When asking shoppers to create accounts, detail your data protection measures and privacy policy. 

Implement and highlight strong password requirements, two-factor authentication, and encrypted data storage to assure users their data is secure. 

Email can build trust further by sending welcome messages to demonstrate responsive communication. You can also use transactional emails to inform customers about their orders and build confidence in your fulfillment process.