Opening a Shopify Store is an electrifying move for entrepreneurs wanting an online presence. As of 2025, there were over 4.8 million live Shopify stores across the globe. Whether you're opening a new e-commerce store, or you already have a thriving business with a brick-and-mortar store, Shopify is an incredible platform for businesses of all types to sell online! It has generated more than $319 billion in global economic impact in recent years. Despite how easy Shopify is to use, along with its features, a lot of Shopify store owners make common setup mistakes that can cause lost sales, and missed opportunities.
This blog post will outline seven common mistakes owners make when setting up a Shopify store. We'll provide you with statistics you can trust, as well as real-world examples and analytics of Shopify and other e-commerce websites. We'll give you takeaways that can help steer clear of these common mistakes, and help you create a successful online store!
Why Shopify Store Setup Matters
A Shopify store that has been set up correctly is the foundation of a successful e-commerce business. Shopify powers over 175 countries, with Shopify merchants racking up $11.5 billion in sales on Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2024! While the potential to earn unbelievably large profits is outstanding, studies show that only 5-10% of Shopify stores make it long-term, and they tend to do that because of simple preventable errors in setup.
With all that in mind, it is very important to address these issues as early as possible to help improve user experience, conversions, and visibility! So let's go through seven mistakes to avoid and how to fix them.
Mistake 1: Neglecting Market Research Before Launch
The Problem
One of the most common mistakes a new Shopify store owner will make is launching a Shopify store without doing thorough market research in advance. A Statista report details that 42% of startups fail due to market need. Without researching your target audience, competitors, or market trends, you run the risk of selling a product, service, or experience that nobody is interested in which will lead to low traffic and absolutely no sales.
The Impact
If you don't take the time to research your market, the result can be products that don’t fit, pricing that doesn’t work, and a website that doesn't resonate with your audience. A store selling high-end pet accessories might not do so well if its audience prefers low-priced alternatives. When there is a disconnect, it can easily lead to bounce rates and low conversion rates since studies show that 38% of online consumers abandon a website if it has a poor design or is irrelevant to what they’re trying to achieve.
The Solution
Before starting your Shopify store, it's super important to do some market research. Check out some free resources like Google Trends, Answer the Public or SEMrush or purchase tools such as RetailMinded to help find products that are trending, what your customers like, and what your competitors may be doing. Research your target market. Who are they demographically and give thought to what they would normally buy, or want.
For instance, if you are selling thrift items or eco-friendly items, would your customers want sustainability certifications or are they happier with green alternatives at a lower cost? Create buyer personas to narrow down product selection, pricing, and overall marketing strategy. More importantly, assume that your products will be consistent with market demand and ultimately attract the right consumers.
Mistake 2: Ignoring SEO Optimization
The Problem
SEO, short for search engine optimization, is an essential and low-cost way to drive organic traffic to your Shopify store, but most store owners ignore it while setting up. According to the 2024 BrightEdge report, 52% of website traffic comes from organic search, and 75% of users never scroll to the second page of Google search results. When you do not optimize your store for SEO, you're taking your products and burying them in search results. This not only conceals your products but also leads to much lower visibility with sales.
The Impact
If you dont follow through with SEO, there's gonna be no way your store ranks for the relevant keywords. This can make it almost impossible for potential customers to find your store! For example, let's say you sell handmade candles. If you sell candles but don't optimize your product description or meta tag, your store won't even show up when a customer may search for "handmade soy candles"! That's a whole lotta missed sales opportunities since 89% of online shoppers started their purchase journey with a search engine.
The Solution
To improve my Shopify store's SEO effectiveness, I need to pay attention to these things:
Keyword Research: Use a tool (like Ahrefs or Ubersuggest) to find keywords in your niche, like "handmade soy candles" or "eco-friendly candles." Use keywords naturally in product titles, descriptions and meta tags.
Unique Product Descriptions: Don't use manufacturer's descriptions. You need to create unique and informative descriptions, with keywords, describing the products' attributes such as size, materials, benefits, etc.
Image Optimization: Use file names that describe what is in the image (i.e., "soy-candle-lavender.jpg"). Use alt-text so search engines can understand what it sees.
Site Structure: Establish a structure in the Shopify store that is easy to use and that search engines can crawl; create categories and subcategories to improve cache ability.
The Shopify platform already has many easy-to-use tools for optimizing for SEO included, such as being able to edit meta tags and generate sitemaps. I also need to routinely audit my Shopify store and use Google Search Console to identify and resolve SEO performance issues.
Mistake 3: Using a Non-Responsive Theme
The Problem
In 2025, a mobile-friendly site is simply mandatory as mobile commerce is predicted to make up 74% of all UK e-commerce sales. Many Shopify store owners will opt for themes that look great on the desktop space but do not perform well on a mobile view, and unfortunately, this leads to a bad mobile experience.
The Impact
Using a non-responsive theme can lead to slow load times, jacked up images, and navigating around mobile becomes a chore sending customers looking for other options. Did you know that Forrester Research identified that a well designed interface can increase conversions by upward of 210%, but for each second delay in loading time, a related 38% of people shopping via mobile will abandon your site. This is particularly important given that mobile shoppers are typically impulsive buyers or practitioners relying on a mobile device as their primary means of researching or shopping.
The Solution
When learning how to set up a Shopify store, always choose a mobile-responsive theme from the Shopify Theme Store. Try out and test your store on multiple devices, using GTmetrix or Google’s Mobile-Friendly Test to confirm that it is working and looks right on phones and tablets. I would also select themes with larger buttons, more legible fonts, and simple menus for small screens.
Run image compression tools, like TinyPNG, to help minimize file sizes and speed up loading times, without sacrificing quality. And lastly, I would recommend routinely testing and checking the mobile experience of your store, to maintain the mobile shopping experience.
Mistake 4: Overloading with Unnecessary Apps
The Problem
Shopify's App Store has a ton of apps to extend functionality (think SEO, chatbots, etc.). However, having too many apps will slow your site down and make it difficult for users to engage. This matters because 53% of mobile users abandon websites that take longer than three seconds to load and will look for alternatives if a site is sluggish.
The Impact
Having too many apps will also lead to excess HTTP requests, causing a slower overall load time and increased bounce rate. Furthermore, some apps may conflict with one another causing technical issues, leading to problems like broken links or errors during checkout. If you have a store that has frequent technical glitches it can frustrate customers and decrease conversions. Browsing should be as seamless as possible, as that will keep users engaged.
The Solution
Be careful when adding apps to your store. Look first for apps that can do multiple things (i.e., choosing an app for SEO that also has analytics capabilities). Frequently review the apps that you've on-boarded and delete those that you don't use. After you add a new app, always test the speed of your store with a tool like Google PageSpeed Insights. Finally, if you need a certain functionality that you cannot find in an app, consider hiring a developer to create a custom solution instead of piling on apps. This will allow your store to stay fast and user-friendly.
Mistake 5: Neglecting Discounts and Promotions
The Problem
Many Shopify store owners aren't utilizing discounts or promotions in their store at all, and in doing so, they are missing out on a proven way for businesses to boost sales. A study by RetailMeNot found 80% of shoppers are more likely to purchase from a brand offering discounts. Without offering discounts and promotions, your store may not be able to attract new customers or get customers to come back for more purchases.
The Impact
Not using discounts promotes a lower conversion rate due to lost opportunities for clearing out inventory or attracting price-sensitive customers. For example, if a store never has seasonal sales or loyalty discounts, they will lose customers to businesses whose prices are more favorable. Additionally, discounts can help increase average order value because it provides customers with an incentive to add more items to their cart to meet spending thresholds or take advantage of discounts.
The Solution
Be strategic when integrating discounts into your Shopify store setup:
Seasonal Sales: Use discounts to your advantage during peak shopping retail seasons like Black Friday or Christmas to attract new customers.
Discount codes: Use them to entice customers to perform actions (sign-ups to the newsletter) or engage with your social media presence.
Loyalty Discounts: Give your loyal customers exclusive discounts as a reward for shopping repeatedly as a way to foster loyalty.
Product Bundles: Group products together in a bundle where each product is discounted in order to get larger purchases.
Utilize apps like AOID – All Automatic Discount to make discount campaigns easy. After implementing some discounts, look at the reports available in Shopify to see the impact any discounts provided on certain incentives you rewarded to customers. You’ll also be able to determine if your discounts were effective (increases sales) while not losing too much profit on discounts overall.
Mistake 6: Poor Product Image Quality
The Problem
Product images are the first thing a customer sees when they arrive at your store, and unfortunately, many owners have used bad images, low-quality images, or done a bad job optimizing the images. Statistics show that a high-quality product image is a top determining factor in e-commerce purchases. In fact, 67% of consumers stated that the quality of the image was “very important” in their buying decision.
The Impact
Low-resolution, blurry, or downright bad images can appear unprofessional. It can also deter customers when you have bad images. Bad images also hurt your SEO; search engines use the alt text and file name to index pictures. If your images aren't optimized, your products may not even appear in image search results (which is how people find new products), which lessens visibility.
The Solution
You should spend a fair amount of time having quality product photography so your product is clearly represented. Make sure lighting, backgrounds, and angles are consistent to represent a professional look. Make sure you are optimizing your files for the web! Use a tool like TinyPNG to compress the file size of your images without losing quality.
Be as descriptive as possible when naming your files, as well as the alt text (and meaning no spaces). For example, you should have a file name of red-v-neck-t-shirt-men.jpg (and alt text of Men's red V-neck T-shirt). There are many places like Unsplash where you can download royalty-free images, or place holder images, but it is always best to have your own pictures of your item to develop trust.
Mistake 7: Complicated Checkout Process
The Problem
One of the biggest causes of cart abandonment is a complicated checkout process, including high shipping costs and surprise fees. A study found that 70% of shoppers will abandon their carts when they have a bad experience at checkout, including hidden costs, forms with a ton of fields or other hassles at checkout.
The Impact
An awkward or clunky checkout process is an obstacle for customers, which negatively affects your sales. If customers are shown shipping costs at the last moment, they feel cheated and bounce. Having people create accounts or requiring them to fill our long forms are deterrents to impulse buyers and won’t help your conversion.
The Solution
Make your checkout process as streamlined, simple, and transparent as possible. Here are four things to think about to make the experience as smooth as possible for your customers:
Transparent Pricing: Wherever you can, display your shipping costs on product pages, or have a shipping cost calculator visible to help lid surprises in the checkout process.
Guest Checkout: Working with a login to your site can increase friction for customers. Referencing Shopify's guest checkout, you should be making allowances for customers that want to purchase without going through a length process.
Streamlined Forms: Using the least amount of form fields possible in order to collect the required name, address, and payment information is going to reduce friction for customers.
Offering check out and payment options - (like Shopify Payments, PayPal, or Apple Pay) will help meet the needs of customers' payment preferences!
Test and review your checkout process by placing test orders as outlined in Shopify's onboarding guide to ensure that it is a smooth, customer experience. While not essential, this will reduce friction in the checkout process, should you choose to use an application like Shopify's one-page checkout app. We speak about this next about Stellar Eats in Chapter 5. Their checkout flow had a 3.5% improvement in conversion after installing a single page checkout!
Final Thoughts
Getting started with a Shopify store is an effective way to launch your eCommerce business, but small errors sometimes have big ramifications. Speed bumps that can cost you sales include lack of market research, SEO optimization, choosing a mobile-responsive theme, being selective with apps, poor discount offerings, low-quality images, and inefficient checkout processes.
Shopify is a very user-friendly platform, so expect to see built-in tools for SEO, along with analytics, that helps you tackle these roadblocks early on so you can build a store that converts.Be sure to review your Shopify store setup for the mistakes above and take the mistakes and solutions seriously, and if you don't know where to start ask a Shopify Expert to help, or even use Shopify for free for 14 days to play with configurations.
Planning and optimizing your store setup will help you get to the 5-10% of Shopify merchants that see long-term success and will be driving traffic, conversions, and revenue in 2025 and beyond.
