If you’re like most ecommerce businesses, you’ve already established some form of social media presence. Most ecommerce companies share images and videos of their products to get them seen by more internet users, develop a following, and direct potential shoppers to their website. However, this is only one dimension of a social media strategy .

Here’s our guide on how ecommerce brands can use social media to develop a following, directly influence sales, and improve the customer experience. We’ll share examples from each social media platform, plus best practices and actionable tips to help you get started or refine your existing efforts.

How to use social media in ecommerce: 6 impactful ways

Most ecommerce stores start using social media to share photo and video content with the hopes of growing their audiences. However, that’s only one way you can use social media in ecommerce.

Here’s a more comprehensive list:

1) Organic social media marketing

Organic social media marketing includes posts from your social media accounts that you’re not paying to promote as an ad. This will be the bulk of your social media posts — your daily updates, photos, and videos. The advantage of organic social media marketing is that it’s free to use on platforms like Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, and Facebook. This kind of non-paid posting is a form of content marketing.

The main goal of organic posts is to build brand awareness on social media platforms. This is an opportunity to showcase your brand, products, and unique voice and build a following.

Organic social media marketing can includes posts about:

• New products or services
• Sales and promotions
• Your products in action

For example, here is a post from lingerie brand Parade promoting their sleepwear line. It’s a series of photos modeling the line and a caption that highlights the brand’s unique selling proposition of fun, comfy, and sustainable clothing. Without paying to boost the post as an ad, Parade reached their target audience who know and love the brand.

2) Paid social media advertising

Every major social media platform has an option to place ads. This can be done by either boosting an existing post from your feed or by crafting a brand new post to be placed as an ad. 

The cost of this varies by platform but they all offer sophisticated metrics to track the success of your ads. Platforms typically also let you select and refine a target audience to make sure the right people see your ad. 

While ads used to be a major strategy for direct-to-consumer ecommerce brands, this is no longer the case due to the rising cost of advertising on Instagram, Facebook, and other social media platforms. 

Paid social media advertising may cost money, but the advantage is that the ads are promoted beyond your existing following to social media users who may not have even heard of you. It’s a great way to expand your following and reach potential new customers. Paid ads can be used to promote products or sales.

Here’s an example from Facebook of an ad from plus-size retailer Torrid promoting their Black Friday sale. Note that the post is marked as “sponsored” which tells users this is a paid-for ad.

3) Social commerce

Major ecommerce service providers such as Shopify and BigCommerce have integrations with social media platforms that allow merchants to list products for sale right on the platform.

The goal with social commerce is to make it easier for followers to convert to customers. Rather than seeing an item in an Instagram post and having to navigate to the website and search for it, social media users can find the item on Instagram itself and make a purchase, leading to faster conversions.

That seamless shopping experience is incredibly valuable. According to Insider Intelligence, social selling sales are expected to reach $45.74 billion in the US for 2022. As well, half of US adults are expected to make a social commerce purchase.

This is an example from jewelry brand Mejuri. On this Instagram post, they have tagged products from the photo that they’ve uploaded to their Instagram catalog.

When a user clicks on one of these product pins, they’re brought to another page where they can easily navigate to a purchase link either on the ecommerce website.

4) Customer service

Social media can be used as another channel to connect with customers and solve issues or give customers the information they’re seeking. This can be done through comments or direct messages (DMs) on various social media platforms. 

Many customers prefer to contact brands directly on social media rather than going through traditional channels like calling or sending an email. Responding to these messages meets customers where they’re at, creating a more seamless customer service experience.

Many brands use Twitter, for example, as a place to provide customer service. Have a look at David’s Tea. While their main feed is organic posts promoting products and brand awareness, their replies show them engaging with customers.

Here are two examples. In the first reply, they help a customer find a location. In the second, they help a customer track down their order.

📚Recommended reading: 

• 10 Best Practices for Providing Exceptional Customer Service on Twitter
• Facebook Messenger for Customer Service: Benefit, Best Practices, and Set-Up

5) Social listening

Social listening is tracking mentions and discussions of your brand on social media. This can be achieved with something as simple as searching for your brand name on social media or by using a more sophisticated social listening tool.

Customers won’t always tag your brand directly on social media, so social listening will reveal more than simply checking your mentions. You can take this a step further by also looking for mentions of your industry and competing products and brands.

The purpose of social listening is to see how users talk about your brand, whether good or bad. This provides valuable insight into what customers want from you, what problems you can address, and what your competitors are offering that you don’t.

For example, if you sell matcha powder, you could keep track of mentions of “best matcha powder” on Twitter. Looking at the results, you would see:

• Who your top competitors are
• Tweets you could reply to with a promo code
• Potential influencers you could work with

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📚Recommended reading: How to Track and Monitor Social Mentions

6) Influencer marketing  

Influencer marketing is engaging with social media personalities to promote your brand to their audience. Typically influencers are offered either payment or free product in exchange for showcasing your brand.

Influencer marketing gets your brand in front of new eyeballs but it’s also a proven way to convert new customers and build trust. According to Matter Communications, 61% of buyers are more likely to trust a recommendation from a friend, family member, or influencers on social media.

For example, here’s a sponsored post from beauty influencer Mikayla Jane. She’s promoting Briogeo hair care and tagged the post #briogeopartner.

📚Recommended reading: Forming Partnerships to Grow with Influencer Marketing

Best social media platforms for ecommerce brands

It seems like a new social media platform pops up approximately every few months, and it can be a lot to keep track of. Every ecommerce business has to start somewhere, and that place is probably on the list below. 

If you’re a smaller brand, choose one or two platforms based on your target audience’s preferences (which we share below). You’re far better nailing one platform than barely gaining traction on five.

These are the most attractive social media platforms for ecommerce marketing.

Facebook

Most people are on Facebook, even if they don't actively post. Parent company Meta’s recent earnings report reveals almost 3 billion monthly active users on Facebook alone. Yes, billion — that’s quite an audience.

Why Facebook great for ecommerce brands

If nothing else, it's great because more than a third of the earth’s population is active on the platform monthly. Facebook may have its problems, but there’s no arguing with that reach. Facebook Shops are also worth investigating for on-platform social commerce.

Example: GoPro uses Facebook to share videos sent in by customers

The videos not only showcase the capabilities of the product but gets customers excited at the possibility of having their videos shared to GoPro’s huge audience.

Twitter

Born as a short-form, text-driven social platform, Twitter is more about ideas and conversations than it is about ecommerce. It was very late to the ecommerce game, officially launching Twitter Shops in 2022. The platform also has a smaller user base and a very skewed demographic (heavily male, urban, and college-educated).

Why Twitter is great for ecommerce brands

Twitter is great for connecting with fans and building brand awareness (Remember Wendy’s?), but it’s not the best sales platform unless you’re selling products that really resonate with Twitter's specific demographic.

Example: ASOS has over a million followers on Twitter and regularly posts memes and other fun posts

This is a great place for organic social media marketing and engaging in trends, like this meme format, builds brand voice.

Pinterest

Pinterest calls itself a “visual discovery engine” where users can find all kinds of stuff and pin it to one or more boards. People use it to store recipes, fashion inspo, décor trends, and all sorts of other things — including your products if you leverage the platform properly.

Why Pinterest is great for ecommerce brands

Social media marketing on Pinterest is vital, but it’s a little different than on the biggies listed above. Shopify put together a Pinterest Marketing 101 guide that’s worth a look. Key highlights include that 90% of Pinterest users use the platform as a part of their purchasing decision process. Be aware that Pinterest users skew heavily female.

Example: Ruggable is a popular brand on Pinterest and regularly posts home decor images

It’s a great use of the platform because Pinterest is all about inspiration and Ruggable posts collections that tie into different decor aesthetics. 

Instagram

The visual-first sibling to Facebook is heavy on photos, carousels, and videos and is comparatively light on text. Its user base is also in the billions, though not as large as Facebook’s. The visual-forward nature makes it a great fit for social ecommerce.

Why Instagram is great for ecommerce brands

Businesses can create an online store on Instagram and include products in collections. U.S. customers can purchase directly from this store without leaving the Instagram app. Stores can also show off their products in attractive ads that take up the entire dimensions of the news feed.

Example: Makeup brand ColourPop uses Instagram to post photos of customers and influencers wearing their products

Instagram is all about aspirational imagery and these posts inspire potential customers to purchase the products to recreate the looks they see.

TikTok

TikTok is the new king of short-form video content, which can be extremely easy to create — but very complicated to create in controlled, professional ways. It’s a great platform to generate buzz and has high virality potential.

Why TikTok is great for ecommerce brands

TikTok is about exposure, connection, and virality. It’s not about direct ecommerce, as it recently shelved its attempt, TikTok Shop. However, you can link your online store to your TikTok for Business page and sell via advertising and social sharing.

Example: Gymshark uses TikTok to post funny inside jokes about gym culture

Getting users to laugh is a great way to have a TikTok go viral and these videos also showcase Gymshark apparel without directly selling them, which doesn’t play well on the platform.

Snapchat

Snapchat’s original differentiator, messages that disappear after a time, doesn’t seem like a natural fit for ecommerce, but the platform has evolved quite a bit since launch. With a smaller, younger user base, Snapchat isn’t for every ecommerce seller. But its advertising tools are flexible and robust, ranging from photos and videos to ad-based lenses and filters.

Why Snapchat is great for ecommerce brands

If you’re marketing to Gen Z and the youngest portion of the millennial cohort, Snapchat is worth a look because its user base is concentrated in those ages.

Example: Fashion brand Shein posts young influencers showing off their products

This takes advantage of Snapchat’s “shop” button so potential customers can immediately purchase the items they see.

Benefits of using social media to market your ecommerce store

Why use social media marketing at all for your ecommerce store? The obvious answer is sales, but there are several other benefits, too.

Social media marketing can:

• Help your brand reach a wider target audience than traditional marketing
• Expand your brand’s social trust
• Offer customer support where your customers already are
• Strengthen your brand through non-product content like memes and user-generated content
• Increase online store traffic by driving clicks

6 best practices for using social media for ecommerce marketing

Getting your brand on the right networks is the first step, but real success requires doing the right things once you’re there. Follow these best practices to enhance your ecommerce marketing efforts on social media.

1) Optimize your bio for discoverability and links

Social media networks typically offer you only one place to put a link to your ecommerce website in your bio. 

Rather than simply linking to the front page of your store, you can use a “link in bio” tool to maximize the potential of that one link. Tools like Later, Linktree, and Shopify’s LinkPop let you curate a list of links on a landing page. Using this, you can link to particular sections or product pages..

When it comes to writing your bio, keep it short and snappy but also by include keywords relevant to your brand for good search engine optimization (SEO).

Ohh Deer’s Instagram is a great example that:

• Hits all the major key words (Cards, Stationary, and Gifts)
• Explains why they’re unique (collaborating with artists)
• Links to more information (with LinkPop)

📚Recommended reading: Learn how Ohh Deer generates $12,500 per year through great customer service with Gorgias. 

2) Create platform-native (and platform-appropriate) content

Repurposing social content across networks is a good idea, but simply republishing content isn’t. Facebook users have seen the Reels that clearly came straight from TikTok, and screenshots of Tweets make the rounds elsewhere. But for the greatest reach, build your repurposed social content in native formats for each social media platform.

Reels are huge on Instagram, for example, but are ancillary at best on Facebook. Vertical video is just right for Instagram but looks off on Facebook, etc.

3) Share user-generated content like pictures and videos

Are your fans talking about you on social? Share those posts (with permission, in some cases)! Real people love seeing other real people more than yet another social ad (sorry, but it’s true), so use it if you got it.

 Social listening is the best way to find user-generated content, so regularly search for your brand on social media platforms or make use of a tool like Hootsuite to keep tabs on your mentions.

For example, skincare brand Blume uses before and after photos taken by users to show the effectiveness of their products.

4) Add relevant hashtags and tags to increase discoverability

Hashtags work a little differently on each platform, but they’re worth using anywhere that accepts them. On many networks, hashtags are clickable or tappable, allowing users to discover other posts sharing that hashtag. This means that people clicking a hashtag from another brand’s post could end up on yours, no advertising dollars required.

Similarly, tagging customers featured in user-generated content, celebrities seen using one of your products, or other brands can expand the reach of your social media profile. 

 For an example, look at this post from cereal brand Magic Spoon on Instagram.

In a separate comment, they’ve inserted a series of hashtags to help those who follow certain diets discover their post.

5) Include shoppable links when you post about products

Many social media networks allow brands to add tags or links to let customers directly shop for products from posts.

Shopify, for example, allows brands to upload a catalog of their products to Instagram and Facebook and tag products as shoppable links. That seamless experience means a faster checkout and higher conversions.

According to a Sprout Social report about pandemic shopping habits, 68% of customers made a purchase directly from social media in 2021. Also, virtually all shoppers — 98% — plan to make a purchase through social shopping or influencers in 2022.

6) Combine organic and paid strategies

Organic social traffic happens based on user actions: shares, likes, comments, and discovery-based clicks (reels, pins, hashtags, and more). You don’t pay for that traffic — beyond what it costs to create content. Paid social strategies are (can you guess?) anything you pay for in terms of ads.

Both have strengths and weaknesses, but the best approach is to combine them to yield better results.

For example, you might use paid advertisements to boost posts beyond their organic traffic. Then you might personalize interactions via direct messages with the users that contact you after interacting with a boosted post.

5 tips to use social media for a better customer experience

Social media marketing strategy is important, but it’s only the tip of the iceberg for how your brand can grow with social media. Consider leveraging social media to improve your brand's customer experience.

Below are several tips for accomplishing this. Note that some of these tips won’t be possible with the stock tools various social networks provide to businesses; you’ll need to add external apps. Shopify store owners should check out these 11 powerful social media apps for Shopify.

1) Let customers contact customer support through social media

Social media has made brands even more available to consumers, so much so that people expect near-instant availability from most brands. Not only that, customers want to reach brands on any and all channels — whichever is convenient at the moment.

A helpdesk like Gorgias streamlines this by pulling in comments and messages from Facebook and Instagram, into one shared inbox. That means your customer service team can quickly respond to customers from one location.

2) Engage customers who didn’t even reach out to your brand directly

Social monitoring looks at brand mentions on social media beyond the scope of direct messages. Sometimes, in your social monitoring efforts, you’ll notice a complaint or a flat-out inaccurate claim about your ecommerce business being blasted online.

It’s often worthwhile to reach out to these customers in a visible way (such as a tweet reply or comment reply). Doing this gives you the chance to set the record straight on any factual inaccuracies, and you just might turn a frustrated detractor into a satisfied fan.

📚Recommended reading: Social Media Customer Service: How-To Guide & Useful Tools

3) Move escalated conversations to private channels

Explain that customers are likely to share bad experiences online, and when they’re escalated, you want to manage the interaction privately. Acknowledge their issue in the public channel but move it to DMs or email ASAP. To avoid violating privacy policies, ask customers to send you a message to start the conversation. 

4) Welcome new followers with a DM (and a discount!)

When a new customer follows you on social, it usually means they’re expressing interest in your brand. They’re statistically much more likely to be potential customers (or existing ones) than the average social user, so don’t leave them in the cold!

Rather than waiting for them to reach out, you can proactively make the first move.

Our own research and platform data show that ecommerce businesses that send this kind of welcome DM increase brand revenue via social by 4%.

Read our post on welcoming customers proactively with a DM to learn how beauty brand Glamnetic lifted revenue with this digital marketing strategy, and how you can pull it off, too. Not sure what to say? Just say hey, introduce your brand, and sweeten the deal with a new follower discount code.

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Upgrade your customer experience and social media marketing with Gorgias

Social media marketing for ecommerce stores is a broad discipline with significant potential to increase sales and revenue, build social trust, and enhance your brand’s presence online. Mastering social media marketing isn’t easy, but the results tend to pay for themselves many times over when you do it right.

One thing you’ll need to succeed in social media marketing and social commerce is the right set of digital tools. Without them, posting and interacting via social at scale can quickly become overwhelming.

Gorgias is the customer support and helpdesk platform built for ecommerce platforms. Gorgias helps brands respond to social media support messages and comments from within an all-in-one customer service platform, with access to rich data on existing customers, powerful automations and scripts, chatbots, and more.

Gorgias also integrates with social media marketing apps like Recart and ShopMessage, helping you leverage your social efforts even further.

Ready to see what Gorgias can do for your CS, CX, and social media marketing efforts? Sign up now and see Gorgias for yourself.

Ecommerce inventory management often seems simple enough on the surface: Make sure that you have enough products to meet demand without being overstocked, and you're good to go — right? Not quite.

In reality, striking this balance is challenging. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, U.S. retailers sit on $1.26 of inventory for every $1.00 of products sold. Of course, even worse than overstocking is not having enough available stock to meet customer demand.

Creating an effective inventory management strategy is key to building a successful ecommerce business and leads to an optimized supply chain. 

To help you create an ecommerce inventory management strategy that works for you, we'll take a look at both warehouse management tips as well as the top inventory management solutions.

What is ecommerce inventory management?

Inventory management is the process of ordering, storing, and selling inventory for your company. It also includes tracking amounts, pricing, and location for all your products and your workflow for keeping tabs on it all.

A good inventory management process should ensure that you always have enough inventory on hand to meet customer demand without overstocking.

It may come as a surprise to learn that 43% of small businesses in the United States do not track inventory or do so using a manual system, according to Conveyco Technologies. 

If you would like to position your ecommerce store ahead of the competition, identifying your reorder points — the pre-determined level of inventory at which you order a restock — as well as improving inventory forecasting and supply chain management, are great place to start.

5 common types of inventory management

There are several methods for dealing with inventory management for ecommerce businesses. Compare the following types to determine which is best for you.

1) Just-in-time inventory

Also simply called JIT, just-in-time inventory management is like it sounds. Rather than keeping a large inventory on hand, the JIT method is when a business receives goods only as they’re needed.

In ecommerce, for example, that could mean only ordering in a supply of Halloween decorations in time for expected demand in October, rather than stocking them all year. 

The goal of JIT inventory management is to keep inventory — and the cost of that inventory — to a minimum. This can be a great benefit for your expenses but the tricky part is being able to accurately predict demand. 

Not having enough stock if demand goes up means upset, empty-handed customers. Having too much stock defeats the purpose of the entire method. Therefore, JIT inventory management only works if demand is very predictable.

📚Read more: 

• Order Fulfillment for Ecommerce: Definition, Process, Tips, and Tools
• Ecommerce Shipping: Creating a Shipping and Fulfillment Strategy

2) Just-in-case inventory management

This is the opposite of JIT inventory management. Just-in-case, or JIC, inventory management means keeping more stock on hand than you might need to be able to respond to unpredictable demand.

Also called safety stock, having extra products means it’ll be no sweat if there’s a sudden uptick. Say, for example, an influencer surprises you with a great review and hundreds of orders flood in for a product. It sounds like a dream, but only if you can meet the demand.

The upsides of this type of inventory management are obvious, but so are the downsides. This method can lead to deadstock — items sitting in your inventory that you can’t sell.

3) ABC analysis inventory management

Classifying your stock-keeping units (SKUs) based on ABC analysis is one of the best ways to determine which products deliver the most value to your business, a key inventory management consideration.

Under ABC analysis, three categories of products deliver the highest value to a retail business: 

• High-value products with a low sales frequency
• Moderate-value products with a moderate sales frequency
• Low-value products with a high sales frequency

Of course, it's also possible for a product to not fit into any of these categories. For instance, you might have a low-value product with a low frequency of sales. In this case, it might be best to remove this product from your catalog altogether. 

ABC analysis is meant to help you manage inventory levels for your ecommerce store’s most important products, and any product that falls under one of the following categories deserves special emphasis in your inventory management strategy.

(A) High-value products with a low sales frequency

Products that yield an especially high profit can be incredibly valuable to a company, even if they have a low frequency of sales. For instance, a product that generates $1,000 of profit offers just as much value as selling 100 products that generate $10 in profit each.

It's recommended that products in this category constitute 10-20% of your total inventory.

(B) Moderate-value products with a moderate sales frequency

The second category of high-importance products is moderate-value products with a moderate frequency of sales. 

It's recommended that products within this category constitute 30% of your total inventory.

(C) Low-value products with a high sales frequency

Low-value products with a high frequency of sales is the final ABC analysis product category — and the one that most retail products fall under. 

It's recommended that these products constitute 50% of your total inventory.

📚Resources: 

• Free SKU generator
• Ecommerce Product Categorization: How To Organize Your Products

4) Dropshipping

This is a no-inventory inventory solution. Ecommerce dropshipping is when a business doesn’t hold its own stock. Instead, orders are passed directly to the manufacturer or wholesaler who takes care of fulfilling those orders.

This completely eliminates the cost and space needed for keeping your own inventory or restocking shelves, making it great for first-time operations or for testing a concept. 

The downside is that order fulfillment — and all the ways it intersects with the customer experience — are left to a third party. If you want complete control over orders from beginning to end, this isn’t the method for you.

5) First in, first out inventory management

First in, first out, also called FIFO, is an inventory system that prioritizes the products that have been in your inventory the longest to be shipped out first.

FIFO is, of course, a great method for ecommerce businesses selling perishable goods like food or cosmetics. It lowers the risk of a product expiring while still on your inventory shelves, leaving you to eat the cost of unsold goods.

However, this method can be used by any type of business to keep goods moving. 

‍📚Read more:

• 9 Revenue-Driving Ecommerce Shipping Best Practices
• How To Deal With Lost Ecommerce Packages

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6 steps to create a successful inventory management system

Exactly how you manage your inventory is an important business decision, including which method you choose to implement.

If you would like to create an inventory management strategy that is sure to boost your retail business's bottom line, here are six inventory management optimization tips worth considering.

1) Consider implementing an inventory management tool

Today, many excellent inventory management software solutions are available to business owners. Their useful automation features can help streamline your inventory management process and eliminate human error. 

Many also include inventory tracking features that make it easy to follow what flows in and out of your warehouses. 

We’ll cover some of the top inventory management software later on. For now, it's important to understand that leveraging inventory management software solutions is one of the simplest ways to optimize an ecommerce store's inventory management process.

2) Conduct product demand research

Understanding product demand is key to effective inventory management. If you place purchase orders for all of your products in equal amounts without considering customer demand, you will likely end up with too much of some products and not enough of others. 

Instead of falling into this trap, base your inventory replenishment strategy around in-depth product demand research.

Utilizing a tool such as Google Analytics is a great place to start your product demand research. Under the "product performance" section of Google Analytics, you will find a wealth of metrics on how your various products perform, making it easy to estimate product demand.

However, if your online store is relatively new and does not have a lot of past sales to analyze in this manner, research on product demand might be a little more of a guessing game at first. In this case, estimate product demand based on your best analysis of which products will sell the fastest until you generate more sales.

3) Forecast future demand based on historical data

We've already mentioned that analyzing past sales via a tool such as Google Analytics is the best way to forecast future demand. As you begin to analyze this information on a regular basis, you'll have more data to build your forecasts from.

When forecasting future demand based on historical data, there are several important factors to consider. For one, it's important to identify outliers and anomalies that might lead to inaccurate projections. 

For example, let's say that a viral marketing campaign leads to a large number of sales for a particular product. Based on these results, your forecasting demand for next month's sales might lead to overstocking once your marketing campaign winds down. 

Similarly, forecasting demand for January based on December sales without considering the holiday season's impact might also lead you to order more products than you should.

As long as you perform a thorough analysis of your inventory data and pinpoint any outliers that might skew your forecast, analyzing historical data is the most effective way to achieve accurate inventory demand projections.

4) Determine reorder points and minimum viable stock levels

The next step is to determine your reorder levels and minimum viable stock levels. 

• Reorder points are the pre-determined levels of stock at which you place another order
• Minimum viable stock levels are the minimum amounts of product that your online store needs to have on hand to keep up with customer demand without running out of stock

It's also important to consider production times and order fulfillment times. The lead time for products to arrive at your warehouse and the time it takes to process, prepare, and ship products can both impact your minimum viable stock level calculations. 

For example, let’s say you know it takes about six weeks after a purchase order is placed before those products are ready to ship to customers. You will need to place a purchase order for new stock at least six weeks before the date you project you'll run out of inventory.

It's also important to note that meeting minimum viable stock levels does not mean stocking the bare minimum product needed to meet forecasted demand. No matter how much research you conduct or historical data you analyze, no demand forecast is 100% accurate. 

Only stocking enough products to just meet forecasted demand means that you will run out of stock if actual demand ends up being higher than what you forecast. To prevent this, companies purchase "safety stock," or extra inventory beyond what they forecast selling.

To calculate how much safety stock you should purchase, you first need to determine your desired service level. Service level indicates the percentage of time a retailer has products in stock. 

Using this chart, you can use the desired service level to calculate a service factor. Multiplying this service factor by your demand forecast will tell you how much stock you need to order.

According to SKUVault, most retail companies aim for a service level of 90-95%. Assuming that you would like to achieve a service level of 90% and that you forecast selling 100 units per day over the next month, then your minimum viable stock level calculation will look like this: 

Minimum viable stock = 1.282 (the service factor for a 90% service level) x 100 units per day x 30 days 

Minimum viable stock = 3,546 units

By plugging your own numbers into this formula, you can determine exactly what your minimum stock level needs to be to achieve your desired service level for a given period.

5) Strategize around seasonality

A company selling pool supplies is likely to see much higher sales during the summer months, while a company selling Christmas ornaments may generate almost all of its sales during the holiday season.

In these two examples, it's easy to determine how seasonality will affect demand. In other cases, strategizing around seasonality isn't always straightforward. 

While it's helpful to analyze your products and customer base to determine obvious reasons for seasonal demand fluctuations, the best way to strategize around seasonality is to examine historical inventory data. 

Suppose you notice demand trends based on seasonality and determine that these trends are due to the time of year and not some other anomaly. In this case, you should certainly take these seasonality trends into account in your inventory control strategy.

📚Related reading: Our guide to Black Friday logistics (for beginners). 

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Main challenges to ecommerce inventory management

Here are a few challenges your ecommerce business may face when managing your inventory.

Scaling with a system in place

When you start small, it seems to make sense to simply track everything manually on spreadsheets or even written documents. But if you dream bigger, you need systems in place to match.

As your business scales up, your inventory management process needs to scale with it. Manual management just isn’t going to cut it when you’re processing hundreds, thousands, or even millions of orders and tracking inventory along the way.

Overstocking or overselling

These are two sides of the same coin. Overstocking means having deadstock you can’t sell, which equals wasted money. But overselling without enough inventory means not being able to fulfill orders, or missing out on orders altogether.

Not enough data

Accurate product demanding forecasting requires historical data or at least a trends forecast to give you some insight. Just going with a gut feeling could lead to over or understocking.

Ecommerce inventory management software can help with this, as we’ll discuss later.

Lack of oversight across your whole operation

Keeping an eye on your inventory when you’re running your business out of your garage and selling on a single website is one thing. But as your business gets more complex, so will your inventory management needs.

Having multiple sales channels — such as selling on your own ecommerce website, Amazon, and eBay at one time — means your inventory records need to sync across all those places. If not, you could sell out on one platform, but have plenty available elsewhere.

The same is true if you’re large enough to have multiple warehouses. You need to be able to track inventory across all of them in sync.

Again, inventory management software can help with both these challenges.

Best ecommerce inventory management software

If you would like to improve your inventory management and warehousing processes, using inventory and order management software solutions is one of the best approaches to take. 

Several inventory management solutions are offering high-quality tools with exceptional functionality. If you would like to start using inventory software to help you streamline, automate, and improve your overall inventory management process, then here are seven great tools.

📚Read more: 12 Best Software Tools for Ecommerce Stores

QuickBooks Commerce

QuickBooks Commerce is an inventory management platform that is ideally suited for multi-channel ecommerce businesses. 

With QuickBooks Commerce, you can manage product listings across multiple sales channels from a single platform, easily track products from inventory to fulfillment, integrate across multiple ecommerce platforms, and access a wealth of insightful sales data. 

Key features

• Stores both supplier and customer information in one easy-to-access location
• Offers a native iOS app that enables businesses to manage their inventory on the go
• Comes equipped with inventory automation, warehouse management, supply chain management, wholesale management, and stock-tracking features

Sellercloud

Like QuickBooks Commerce, Sellercloud is a comprehensive inventory management platform that enables ecommerce businesses to manage listings across multiple sales channels from a single dashboard. 

With Sellercloud, you'll be able to sync inventory across multiple marketplaces and automatically track your inventory from receiving to shipping. 

Lastly, Sellercloud's purchasing features make it easy to manage your relationships with vendors by enabling you to manage purchase orders, track the cost of purchased products and raw materials, and stay ahead of customer demand with automated predictive purchasing.

Key features

• Purchase order management functions complete with automated predictive reordering and low stock alerts
• Ability to manage listings, customers, and inventory across multiple sales channels
• In-depth reporting module that provides a broad spectrum of insightful analytics
• Robust warehouse management system that enables you to keep an accurate inventory count, track inventory as it moves in and out of your warehouses

📚Read more: 9 Best Returns Management Tools for Easier Returns

ChannelAdvisor

ChannelAdvisor is an inventory management platform capable of syncing numerous catalogs of products across multiple marketplaces. 

ChannelAdvisor makes it easy to streamline and automate your order fulfillment process with support for numerous third-party shipping solutions and warehouse integrations. 

This software also automates purchase order management for both wholesale and dropshipping vendors and includes forecasting features to help you determine just how much inventory you need to order. 

Along with these inventory management and order fulfillment features, ChannelAdvisor also offers powerful digital marketing features that make it easy to create and manage marketing campaigns for multiple sales channels. 

Key features

• Demand forecasting features for optimized inventory management
• Automated purchase order management
• Exceptional marketing features complete with advanced automation to streamline campaign creation and management and multi-channel marketing insights

nChannel

nChannel is a cloud-based SaaS solution that enables ecommerce stores to sync data and automate processes between their ecommerce platforms and ERP, POS, and 3PL systems. 

You’re able to integrate with 3PL suppliers and dropshipping vendors for automated purchase order management, sync inventory levels across sales channels, syndicate product catalogs and product listing updates, and eliminate the need for manual data entry.

Key features

• A long list of powerful integrations with ecommerce platforms, POS systems, ERP systems, and 3PL systems
• Exceptional 24/7 phone-based customer support
• Offers the ability to split and route orders to optimize fulfillment

DEAR Systems

DEAR Systems is a cloud-based ERP system designed to help companies connect their sales channels, manage their supply chains, and scale their operations. 

The platform gives you instant visibility into stock levels and order status, allows you to create a branded B2B portal for retail and wholesale customers, sync orders and stock levels across multiple marketplaces, and much more. 

Key features

• Automatically calculates the cost of goods sold (COGS) as inventory is entered
• Offers a broad range of customization options, making it easy to adapt the solution to your unique inventory management needs
• Tracks inventory from the moment a PO is placed to the moment it arrives at the customer's door

Ordoro

Ordoro is a well-known order fulfillment and inventory management solution that provides several noteworthy features. 

To start, Ordoro enables online stores to utilize barcode scanning for fast accurate order fulfillment. Ordoro also consolidates inventory and orders across sales channels and makes it easy to set up automated rules to dictate where orders will ship from. 

Lastly, Ordoro automatically tracks inventory levels to eliminate the need for spreadsheets and manual data entry. 

Key features

• Offers the ability to construct product kits and bundles and is capable of accurately adjusting inventory when a kit or bundle is sold
• Simplifies the process of creating purchase orders and offers the ability to set up automated backorder POs for when a customer purchases a product that is out of stock
• Provides support for UPC barcodes and barcode scanning

Orderhive

If you are looking for a multi-channel inventory management solution that offers an especially impressive range of features, you will find a lot to like about Orderhive. 

With Orderhive, ecommerce store owners can utilize preset triggers to automate a number of inventory management and order fulfillment tasks. 

View and manage inventory across multiple marketplaces from a single dashboard, create automated purchase order triggers, access insightful inventory and order fulfillment insights, and do much more within this platform.

 If you are looking for a well-rounded and feature-rich inventory management solution, one of Orderhive's four available plans may be a great option.

Key features

• UPC barcode support
• Automated tracking updates for both orders and returns
• Automated low-stock and out-of-stock alerts

📚Read more: 10 Ways To Reduce Ecommerce Product Returns With Great CX

Manage your ecommerce business's inventory and customer service with Gorgias

Inventory management and customer service are often two processes that go hand-in-hand. 

A clear and executable inventory management process means faster service, fewer fulfillment issues, and higher customer satisfaction. No inventory management solution is complete without a robust customer support solution to back it up. 

Gorgias's comprehensive customer support platform allows you to manage customer inquiries regarding order tracking, returns, and order status from a single dashboard — effortlessly keeping your customers looped into your order fulfillment process.

In the help desk itself, you can track inventory numbers across all your products in real time, and even edit orders right withing the helpdesk. Here’s what your product inventories — separated by store, if you have multiple — will look like within a ticket in Gorgias.

This is helpful when making product recommendations, processing returns and exchanges in Gorgias, and more. Plus, when you edit orders within Gorgias, your Shopify (or BigCommerce) inventory levels will automatically reflect the change:

This powerful feature comes in addition to a broad range of other capacities Gorgias provides, including live chat support, rules and macros to automate time-consuming customer support processes, intent and sentiment detection, and much more. 

To learn more about how Gorgias can help you optimize your store's inventory management and customer service, check out Gorgias for Shopify stores, Gorgias for Magento stores, or Gorgias for BigCommerce stores.

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In customer service, few things are as valuable as great self-service.

• For customers, great self-service means easily accessible information without relying on an agent. 88% of customers want some sort of self-service, so they can do things like check the status of their order or answer a pre-sales question without typing out a message and waiting for a response. 
• For your team, great self-service means only a fraction of your tickets actually require human effort. Your team has more time to handle complex and urgent issues, and is on standby to answer follow-up questions.

The most central hub for self-service is the Help Center. It’s a powerful knowledge base for customer support articles, supercharged with a customizable Contact Form and (if you use Gorgias Automate) advanced order management and Article Recommendations. 

We sat down with Toby Moors, Customer Happiness Specialist at Loop Earplugs, a Belgian DTC company that’s redefined what earplugs sound, look and feel like. We discussed their Help Center — one of the top 10 most visited Help Centers of any Gorgias merchant. 

We’ll share what makes Loop’s Help Center so successful, and give you actionable tips you can implement to drive more of your traffic toward this self-serve channel to improve CX and make your customer service program more efficient. 

Why you should study the Loop Earplugs Help Center

Before we dive into how Loop set up and optimized its Help Center, you might wonder why this particular Help Center is worth emulating. 

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• It funnels traffic away from time-consuming support channels. As Loop optimized the Help Center, their overall contact rate fell from over 10% of overall website traffic to just 3%. So, overall ticket volume (especially email tickets) went way down, saving time for the team thanks to the power of self-service. 
• It resolves a huge portion of overall tickets. Loop’s automation rate is over 40% of all interactions. This includes automated interactions on other channels, like in the chat widget, but the Help Center plays a major role in the overall automation rate.
• It structures support requests to give agents all the information they need. Loop used to receive nearly 35k monthly email tickets — messages like “Can I get a refund?” with no additional info. Since embedding the Contact Form in the Help Center, these unstructured email tickets have dropped to 10k per month. They're replaced by Contact Form tickets, which prompt the customer to give all the necessary context up front, help agents resolve the issue in one touch. 
• It’s localized across 4 websites. Loop is an international company with websites spanning different languages and continents. The Help Center is effectively deployed and localized for each website. 
• It maintains Loop’s high CSAT score (4.8/5). Help Center sessions don’t trigger CSAT surveys, so this isn’t a direct measure of the Help Center’s CSAT. But as Loop increases the amount of automation and self-service, customers are just as satisfied — at a fraction of the effort per interaction. 

Now, let’s take a step back. Here’s the story of how Loop chose to migrate to the Gorgias Help Center and set it up for success. 

Loop migrated from the old system because of a few key advantages of Help Center

Before using the Gorgias Help Center, Loop used a Shopify app for FAQs. They decided to switch after realizing a few advantages of the Gorgias Help Center:

A more accessible self-service solution

The old FAQ page had plenty of useful content, but customers had a much harder time finding it. Like the Gorgias Help Center, it was broken down into categories. But beyond that, there was no structure — just a long list of questions and answers.

This was a great start, but Toby from Loop said customers had to “doomscroll” to find the right question, a big barrier to accessible self-service. He said customers often ended up contacting the support team anyway because they couldn’t find the answer to their questions.

This is especially problematic for brands like Loop Earplugs, with innovative products that customers often have questions about both before and after a purchase. 

Better insights with much less effort

With the old helpdesk, Loop had to build custom Google Analytics queries and export them to Excel spreadsheets to understand the Help Center’s performance. 

With Gorgias, Loop has more insights about the impact of their Help Center. For instance, customers can leave feedback on each article (with a thumbs up or down) so the team understands which articles need more work. Plus, they can see which articles get sent to customers with AI Article Recommendation in the chat (more on that later). 

Note: We’re hard at work to make Help Center Statistics even more powerful and easy. Keep an eye on our product roadmap for updates. 

A headache-free way to manage content (across 4 online storefronts) 

For Loop, the ability to consolidate tools and manage knowledge base content within Gorgias was a great incentive to switch. And because content management in the Help Center happens within Gorgias, they can update it themselves instead of relying on the website team to update a separate FAQ page.

Loop also has websites for the US, Europe, Japan, and Australia. Each of these domains needs a Help Center with a lot of overlapping content, but some localized elements — like local language and policies specific to each region. 

With the old system, Loop had to manage each website’s FAQ page independently. This led to a lot of copy-pasting for every single website, plus plenty of room for human error and accidentally missing an update on one of the Help Centers.  

With Gorgias, Loop has control over whether they want to mirror changes across all 4 Help Centers (for global updates, like a new product) or just edit one domain’s Help Center (for local initiatives, like supporting Klarna in Europe but not elsewhere). 

How Loop set up its Help Center for success

Once they decided to switch to the Gorgias Help Center, Loop took the following steps to make sure it's effective.

Loop built its Help Center around the theme of accessibility

Once Loop chose to migrate, the Customer Happiness team went through the customer journey themselves to design a standout Help Center. Quite quickly, they identified a major theme: accessibility.

Accessibility is important to Loop for two reasons:

• 1) If a self-service solution like the Help Center isn’t easy to use, it misses the point. Customers must be able to find an answer easily, or they’ll end up contacting support after getting frustrated by a wild goose chase. ‍
• 2) Loop pays extra attention to accessibility to accommodate neurodivergent customers. Many neurodivergent people use Loop in daily life, so Loop strives to make every element of the website and CX is as accessible as possible.

This theme of accessibility comes through in a few ways:

• Specific, unambiguous categories: When people land on the Help Center, they shouldn’t wonder which category to click
• Searchable and non-collapsible: This is true for all Gorgias Contact Forms, but Loop knew it was important to have a Help Center with a functional search bar and without collapsable tabs so people could Ctrl+F to find something specific
• Concise, focused answers: The copywriting team at Loop handles all Help Center content to ensure it’s to-the-point and not one word longer than needed
• Visual navigation. A clear icon serves as a helpful visual aid to illustrate each article category
• Contact Form and chat widget: Customers should always be able to get in touch with an agent, even in the Help Center — as you see below, the Contact Form and chat widget are available on every page of the Help Center

Loop added order management and tracking with Automate

For Automate subscribers, the Help Center has extra functionality: Your customers can easily track the status of their order, request returns and cancellations, and report issues. 

Order tracking deflects one of the most common questions in ecommerce customer service — where is my order? — by giving customers real-time information about the status of their orders. 

And when customers request returns and cancellations or report issues, they are prompted to fill out forms that give your team all the context they need up front to resolve the issue without additional back-and-forth. 

These order tracking and management features are available to customers in the Help Center as well as the chat widget, for customer ease and accessibility:

✨ Learn more about Automate.

Loop upgraded the Help Center with some HTML customizations

The Help Center is a turnkey solution for most brands, but it is customizable for brands that desire.

“Gorgias gave us a great wireframe, and we adapted the look and feel from there. The code was easy to adapt and implement — shoutout to our Shopify developer Nathan, who turned our Help Center from good to great in one day.”


— Toby Moors, Customer Happiness Specialist at Loop Earplugs

Nathan was able to develop HTML code to easily modify the Help Center within Gorgias:

Using this built-in editor, Loop made two major customizations:

First, Loop added icons to each of the categories to make the Help Center more visual and accessible. We think this is a brilliant decision — so much so, that we’re excited to share that you can now add images to articles and categories in your Help Center.

Second, they embedded the Contact Form directly in the Help Center. Normally, the Contact Form is just one click away from any page in the Help Center. But with Loop’s customization, it’s available on every page of the Help Center.

How Loop gets the most mileage out of the Help Center

With a highly accessible Help Center customized to fit Loop’s standards, they were off to a great start. But a great Help Center might not have great results if it’s not in the right spots.

Here’s how Loop turned a Help Center with a lot of potential into a Help Center with high-impact performance.

Embed the Help Center on the website’s homepage

While many brands simply link the Help Center in the website footer, Loop prominently links it in the top navigation, greatly improving the Help Center’s discoverability. Keep an eye out — embedding your Help Center directly on your website will soon be much easier.

Before embedding it on the homepage, Loop’s Help Center received about 16k monthly visits. Now, it’s up to 70k — that’s 70k customers learning more about the product, resolving pre-sales objections, resolving issues with their earplugs, or get the basic information they need to submit a support ticket with a more advanced question. 

Plus, it’s 70k customers not turning to the support team as the first line of defense.

If you’re currently trying to make your Help Center more discoverable, also consider linking it in your customer support email signatures and any order confirmation emails. 

Activate Article Recommendation Flows to deflect chat questions

The content in Loop’s Help Center is valuable outside the Help Center, thanks to Automate’s Article Recommendation feature. When customers send a question in the chat widget, AI scans the message’s contents and suggests a relevant article from the Help Center when appropriate. 

If customers still have questions, the support agent is only a click away. 

Over the last two months, nearly 16,000 articles were recommended to customers in chat, most of which were successfully deflected (meaning the customer did not have any follow-up questions). 

The success rate of Article Recommendations are 15% higher for Loop than the average merchant. That means 70% of customers who receive an article recommendation click through and don't answer follow-up questions, compared to an average of 55%. This is thanks to Loop's robust, clearly labeled Help Center.

Plus, remember how Loop has 4 domains, spanning different languages? Each of those domains has its own chat portal (hosted under one Gorgias account), linked to the appropriate Help Center. So customers get served article recommendations in their language, and associated with their region’s Help Center. 

What’s next for Loop’s Help Center

Loop is on the cutting edge of customer experience, so the team is always looking for new ways to improve. Toby had a couple of ideas of what’s next to explore:

First, they’re excited to take advantage of Quick Response Flows in The Help Center, a recently released Automate feature. With this new feature, your Help Center can provide instant answers to FAQs, just like the chat widget. Plus, Quick Response Flows can be interactive, providing personalized answers based on customer inputs. 

For example, you could create a product quiz that suggests the right product based on each customer’s unique goals, challenges, and preferences. Here’s a mock-up:

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Last, Loop is excited that Gorgias is exploring features that let users generate responses with AI trained on Help Center content. Loop’s got a great head-start here, thanks to their robust library of Help Center content.

‍Feeling inspired? Your Help Center is just a few clicks away. Go to Settings > Help Center (under Channels) to get started. Reach out to our customer support team if you need help along the way!

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According to Constant Contact, email marketing offers an average ROI of $36 for every $1 spent, making it by far the most cost-effective digital marketing strategy that businesses have at their disposal. If you’re running an ecommerce store, email marketing can be an incredibly effective way to excite potential customers and re-engage current customers.

That said, sending out individual emails to everyone on your subscriber list is simply too time-consuming to be feasible. Instead, you can leverage automated email campaigns to deliver the right messages at the right time without the manual work. 

We’ll help you get started creating an effective email marketing strategy driven by the power of marketing automation. We'll take a look at everything you need to know about email automation for ecommerce stores, including eight examples of email automation series built to attract and retain more new customers. 

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What is email automation and how does it work?

Email automation is the process of building emails and setting them to automatically send to your email list based on the criteria you choose. It’s used for both transactional and promotional emails, as part of a broader email marketing strategy.

Automated emails can be sent at specific times and triggered by specific criteria. Triggers might include a recipient’s newsletter subscription, purchase history, clicks on links, time since their last purchase, and more. For transactional emails, a typical automation example is sending a user a shipping update or password reset email. 

While email automation is relatively straightforward to set up for businesses of all sizes — which is a big part of why email marketing can offer such a high ROI — there are a couple of things you’ll need to put in place before you can begin sending automated messages. 

First, you’ll need to use an email automation tool that will allow you to deliver one-off messages and multi-message campaigns to your subscribers. We’ll cover some of these below. Second, you’ll need to create email templates for your automated campaigns targeted to specific audience segments. 

With the right automation platform and high-quality message content, email automation is something that any ecommerce business can leverage for outstanding results. It can help boost your store's conversion rate, reduce cart abandonment rate, improve your customer experience, and beyond.

8 Email automation flows to get you started

To help you get up and running, we’ll walk through eight of the most important email automation series for reaching your revenue, customer satisfaction, and retention goals. As you build emails for each of these flows, make sure to read up on email marketing best practices for tips and inspiration.

1) Nudge shoppers with automated abandoned cart emails

Given that nearly 7 out of every 10 ecommerce carts are abandoned, salvaging even a small percentage of your store's abandoned carts can yield substantial returns. Turning those exits into sales could be as easy as setting up automated cart abandonment emails. According to Mailchimp, cart abandonment emails yield 34 times more orders per recipient than through standard marketing emails alone. 

Many times, simply reminding customers that they still have products in their shopping cart is all that it takes to convince them to complete their purchase. Many ecommerce stores also choose to offer discounts to encourage conversions.

Goals for abandoned cart emails

The main goal of abandoned cart emails is to reduce your cart abandonment rate, a metric that should be easy to track via the analytics features of the ecommerce platform you use. Conversion rate and click-through rate can also be used to gauge whether your abandoned cart emails are as compelling as they should be. 

Tips for setting up your abandoned cart emails

• Send an initial abandoned cart email 24 hours after a customer has abandoned their cart, reminding them that their item is still available and ready to buy.
• Send a second abandoned cart email 48 hours after a customer has abandoned their cart, addressing common objections that might be keeping them from checking out.
• Send a third abandoned cart email 72 hours after a customer has abandoned their cart offering a discount code or other perk. 

2) Send customers personalized product recommendations

Automated email marketing is a great way to present would-be and current customers with personalized recommendations that pique their interest. It pays off: According to Barilliance, average order value (AOV) increases by 369% when prospects engage with a single product recommendation. 

In addition to helping you form more robust customer relationships, product recommendation emails can help you upsell or cross-sell a new product to the customers most likely to buy them. 

Goals for product recommendation emails

The goal of product recommendation emails is twofold. One, product recommendation emails encourage repeat purchases from customers who have already given your online store the stamp of approval. Tracking clicks and conversions on each recommendation is an excellent way to evaluate these emails. 

Two, product recommendation emails let customers know that you’re paying attention to their interests and value their business. No one likes seeing suggestions for products they’d never consider buying. A customer survey could help you measure whether your customers feel your tips are on target. 

Tips for setting up your product recommendation emails

• Constantly tailor your product recommendation emails to the customer’s specific purchase data. You could suggest products that complement their purchase, products similar to their purchase, products other people purchased after viewing the original product, and so on.
• Experiment with when you send personalized product recommendation emails. You could start with a couple of days after a customer makes a purchase or even include recommendations in the order confirmation email. 

3) Automate discount emails based on customer behavior

Strategically sending discounts is one of the most popular ways to utilize automated email marketing. According to Adoric, 44% of consumers check branded emails for discounts and other valuable offers.

To really capitalize on the benefits of discount emails, though, your offers should be triggered based on customer behavior. If a customer has been browsing a specific product, for example, you could send them a discount code as a welcome. 

As we touched on above, you can also send discount codes to customers who have abandoned their cart or on their previous purchases. It’s also common to automate discount emails to send if a certain amount of time has elapsed since a customer’s last purchases, whether it’s two weeks or two months. There are endless possibilities when it comes to tailoring discounts. 

Goals for discount emails

The goal of a discount email is simple: to encourage conversions by offering customers savings on the products they’re most interested in. This makes tracking the success of your discount emails as simple as monitoring the conversion rate and click-through rate of the discount emails you send out. You can also look at average order value (AOV) and customer lifetime value (CLV) to see how discounts impact overall spending. 

Tips for setting up discount emails

• Discount emails that are triggered based on specific customer behaviors are much more effective than generic discount emails that are sent en masse to your entire email list.
• Sending discount emails to customers who have already purchased a product from your store is a great way to reward your loyal customers and encourage their repeat business.

4) Greet and excite new customers with an automated welcome series

Welcome emails that greet your new subscribers have an average open rate of 50%, making their open rate 86% higher than standard newsletters. Wordstream reports that are 320% more revenue is attributed to welcome emails compared to other promotional emails. 

Simply saying hello to new subscribers and providing product highlights is an excellent way to get them excited about what your store has to offer and let them know that you’re happy to have them in the fold. It’s also a prime opportunity to offer welcome discounts, planting the seeds for their first or next purchase.  

Goals for automated welcome emails

The ultimate goal of a welcome email series is to convert subscribers into loyal, paying customers. This makes conversion rate an important factor to consider when sending out these emails. 

Beyond this, welcome emails are also a great way to let your audience know the benefit of engaging with your messages (discounts, exclusive sales, first looks at products, etc.) and make them more likely to open subsequent emails. So, the open rate is an important metric to watch.

Tips for setting up automated welcome emails

• Welcome emails should be sent automatically and immediately anytime a new subscriber subscribes to your email list.
• Thanks to their high open rate, welcome emails also present a prime opportunity to promote high-value products. Depending on your email automation tool, you can tailor your featured products based on the customer’s web activity. 

5) Keep customers updated with confirmations, receipts, and shipping emails

One of the most significant benefits of email automation is streamlining and speeding up transactional email sending. Unlike marketing emails, your customers expect to receive lightning-fast order confirmations, receipts, status updates, and more. 

For example, email receipts that are sent out when a customer makes a purchase have an average open rate of 70.9%, making these emails more likely to be read than any other type of message. Even small delays may decrease confidence or lead to customer service tickets filling up your queue. Email automation lets you proactively inform customers of changes and get ahead of questions. 

Goals for update and confirmation emails

The most important objective of update and order confirmation emails is to provide detailed information and answer customers’ questions. You can track email metrics like open rate as well as customer service metrics like the number of tickets related to receipts, shipping status, and so on.

Tips for setting up update and confirmation emails

• An order confirmation email should be sent immediately after a customer makes a purchase and should include a detailed receipt.
• A shipping confirmation email should be sent whenever the customer's order has shipped and will ideally include a tracking number that customers can use to follow their package.
• While not the primary purpose of update and confirmation emails, these emails offer the chance to market additional products to customers who have already purchased from your store.

6) Engage your repeat customers with a targeted email series

According to data from a Stitch Labs report on customer loyalty, repeat customers make up almost 25% of a store's revenue despite only making up 11% of a store's customer base on average. 

This makes it especially important to engage your repeat customers and ensure that they continue coming back to your store. For this purpose, automated email campaigns that are targeted based on the behaviors and interests of your repeat customers can be highly beneficial. Your email series could include interesting blog reads, product ideas or inspiration videos, promo codes, featured customers, and more. 

Goals for repeat customer emails

The goal of repeat customer emails is to encourage repeat business from your store's most valuable segment of customers. Open rate, click-through rate, and conversion rate are the most important metrics to track when sending out these emails.

Tips for setting up repeat customer emails

• Send a check-in email two days after a customer's order has arrived to make sure that they are satisfied with their purchase.
• Send a personalized product recommendation email four days after a customer's order has arrived to encourage a repeat purchase. Personalized product recommendation emails can also be sent out periodically to your entire segment of repeat customers.
• Include discount codes or special offers that are tailored to your repeat customers as a reward for their continued business.

7) Send customer feedback emails to gain valuable insights

Few things are more valuable or actionable for an online retailer than in-depth customer feedback. With automation, you can schedule email surveys that collect this all-important data on a regular basis, whether monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You can also schedule them to send after key interactions like purchases, returns, or customer service conversations. 

Customer feedback emails are also a good opportunity to request that customers leave a review on the products that they've purchased. Small discounts, gift cards, or prize drawings can be valuable incentives for customers to share their thoughts. 

Goals for customer feedback emails

While the goal of most ecommerce email marketing campaigns is to encourage conversions, this isn't the goal of customer feedback emails. Instead, the goal of these emails is to gather feedback from your customers in the form of either survey responses or online reviews. This makes open rate and click-through rate the most important metrics to track for these email campaigns.

Tips for setting up customer feedback emails

• The first email in a customer feedback email campaign should be sent out one week after a customer's order has arrived.
• Customer feedback emails can link to a survey form to collect feedback for your business. Consider linking to review sites to make it easy to leave feedback and steadily build social proof for your products.

8) Retain customers with a re-engagement email series

Eventually, some subscribers may start to ignore the emails you send if they don’t find them valuable. Often, segments of subscribers aren’t even receiving your emails because their contact information is outdated.

If you notice that your open rate is starting to suffer, re-engagement or "win back" email series can help. These emails are all about understanding what drives customers to engage with your emails, confirming contact details, and reigniting the interest of your subscribers. There are many different approaches. You can offer product recommendations and discounts, ask readers to verify their email addresses if they like your content, and more. 

Goals for re-engagement emails

The goal of re-engagement emails is to motivate inactive subscribers to take action, whether buying, browsing, or unsubscribing. Monitoring the open rate, click rate, and the number of unsubscribes for these series is crucial. You can also gauge the success of these campaigns by tracking conversions.

Tips for setting up re-engagement emails

• The first email in a re-engagement series that is sent out to subscribers who are no longer opening your messages should serve the purpose of reminding them what they’re missing out on.
• The second email in a re-engagement series should present subscribers with a fantastic offer that will encourage them to check subsequent emails for similar offers.
• The final email in a re-engagement email series should politely inform customers that you’re going to unsubscribe them if they aren’t interested in your emails.

Email automation tools worth integrating with your online store

Automation begins with great software. You’ll want to look for options that integrate seamlessly with your other ecommerce automation tools, such as your customer service or inventory management platforms. Today, the top email automation tools include the following:

• Klaviyo: Klaviyo is an email marketing platform that allows you to collect and analyze data from your customers then use that data to create highly-targeted email marketing and SMS campaigns. If you’re looking for an email marketing solution that will enable you to utilize your data to its full potential, then Klaviyo is an excellent option to consider.
• Omnisend: Omnisend is a marketing automation platform that empowers automated email marketing in addition to SMS messaging, WhatsApp messaging, social media messaging, and beyond. If you would like to use an all-in-one platform that will allow you to send automated messages across a wide variety of channels, then Omnisend could work well.
• Autopilot: Autopilot is a cloud-based email marketing automation platform that allows you to create automated emails series using simple drag-and-drop commands. Autopilot is easy to use considering its impressive range of features, making it a good option for those new to email marketing.
• Mailchimp: Mailchimp is one of the most popular email marketing solutions available today, in part because of its low cost and user-friendliness. The base version of Mailchimp is free to use, making it a great way to test the waters of ecommerce email marketing automation without investing any money. 
• Drip: Drip is an email automation platform that includes a visual email builder for creating attractive automated email templates. Drip allows you to automatically send emails based on detailed customer actions, making it one of the more capable email automation tools available today.
• Convertkit: Convertkit is a marketing platform aimed at content creators and artists that includes email marketing automation features. It allows you to easily migrate your existing list of subscribers to the Convertkit platform so you can start launching automated email series. 

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Benefits of email automation

Automation lets your business enjoy all the unique, worthwhile benefits of email marketing without demanding more human power or a more significant time investment. Here are the specific advantages of automating your email campaigns. 

1) Offers a high ROI

We mentioned earlier that email marketing is unrivaled when it comes to ROI, yielding an average of $36 for every $1 spent. This statistic alone is more than enough to convince most ecommerce businesses to invest their efforts in this channel.  

One reason why email marketing offers such a high ROI is that email marketing is an incredibly low-cost marketing avenue. Once you have a list of subscribers, the only real expense associated with email marketing is the cost of paying for a subscription to an email marketing automation platform. 

These platforms are available at a variety of price points, including free options with robust feature sets, and let you send to hundreds or thousands of customers every month. When the "I" in "ROI" is this low, there’s potential to achieve a substantial return on your investment.

2) Keeps customers satisfied and engaged 

Automated emails, transactional and promotional, are vital for creating a customer-centric brand. 

Fast transactional emails, such as responses to customer service requests, make your subscribers feel heard and valued. They're a great form of customer self-service. Nearly 50% of customers say they expect an email response from businesses in less than four hours. Automated messages speed up your customer service response times. 

Email automation is also effective at keeping customers interacting with your brand. For example, 45% of subscribers who receive “win back” (re-engagement emails) will go on to open subsequent emails, according to data from Return Path. By scheduling regular messages, you can retain customers who might have otherwise been lost.

3) Built for upselling and cross-selling customers

Automated email marketing also allows you to segment your list of subscribers based on factors like web activity, purchase history, and interests in order to create targeted cross-selling and upselling opportunities. Ecommerce platforms and CRMs offer plenty of data to inform triggered campaigns. 

Say you have a segment of customers who purchased a winter coat from your store. You can set up an automated, personalized campaign that recommends scarves and mittens to pair with their purchase. This is a great way to raise average order values among your existing customer base. 

4) Saves time for your sales and marketing teams

With the right tools, all of the above benefits of email marketing can be accomplished with minimal manual input from your company's sales, marketing, or customer service staff. 

Once you’ve created the necessary email templates and set up criteria to trigger email sends, automated email campaigns practically run themselves. This frees up your teams to focus on tasks that truly need a human touch (and larger projects like SEO for your store) while making them faster and more efficient at repetitive but essential tasks.

Offer top-notch customer support from a single platform with Gorgias

At Gorgias, we’re committed to helping businesses make the most of ecommerce automation and hands-free email marketing through our convenient central hub. Our helpdesk platform integrates with popular marketing automation platforms. It makes it easy to manage email communication, SMS communication, and social media messaging, allowing you to provide the kind of customer service that turns visitors and newcomers into loyal shoppers. 

Want to learn more about how Gorgias empowers your online store? Book a demo. 

Finding the best Shopify theme for your business may feel like a huge undertaking — and it is. You have to identify themes, test them, and determine criteria as you go. It can easily start to feel overwhelming. 

To make this process a little easier for you, we’ve analyzed 13,191 Shopify stores and hand-picked the 26 most popular themes to help get you started. But before diving in, it’s important to understand how to approach choosing the right Shopify theme for your business. 

The top ten Shopify themes we recommend are:

1. Mojave
2. Retina
3. Flow
4. Paper
5. Parallax
6. aiga
7. Testament
8. restige
9. Impulse
10. Motion

How to choose the right Shopify theme 

A free theme or a premium one? A template or a custom theme? Which one you should choose actually depends on many factors. 

If you’re looking for a Shopify theme for your store but don’t know where to start, answering the following questions might help:

• What is your product category? A clothing store’s design is different from a store selling online courses.
• How big is your product catalog? Are you running a one-product store or a store with multiple product categories?
• What features do you need? Do you want a slideshow on the homepage, an opt-in form, a mobile-friendly, intuitive design, or an embeddable video?
• What are your competitors doing? Knowing how your competitors’ stores look might give you an idea of your store’s appearance. Detect their themes to find out. 
• What’s your budget? Are you willing to invest in a custom Shopify theme?
• Can you manage the theme yourself? Do you need help with the technical side? Do you want immediate support whenever you have a question? 

There is no “one size fits all” strategy for choosing a theme because every business is unique, so take time to figure out the questions above to narrow down your options. 

Pro tip: Get inspired from established stores by using a Shopify theme detector to identify the theme they’re using. You’ll get a lot of ideas to build your own ecommerce store, for sure. 

26 best official Shopify themes for your ecommerce store

Shopify hosts a limited selection of themes on their website. These official Shopify themes go through intensive testing for quality and bugs. Usually, they sell at a premium pricepoint compared to non-approved themes — but offer merchants the most effortless and professional-looking stores. 

1) Mojave

Price: $350

Website: Mojave Shopify Theme

Mojave is a flexible, modern, premium Shopify theme designed by DigiFist. It’s built with fashion, health and beauty, apparel, and clothing brands in mind. Mojave’s modern design features a detailed product page with large images, clean lines, and minimalist fonts that will capture (and hold) your customer's attention. Mojave supports all the new Online Store 2.0 features, such as drag-and-drop sections and blocks to create custom pages in your store without special coding. Mojave comes with flexible, well-designed blocks for images, products, videos, quotes, and more.

Additional key features

• Unlimited free trial and lifetime free theme updates
• Compatible with Online Store 2.0
• Over 20+ conversion-increasing features

2) Retina

Price: $220

Website: Retina Shopify Theme

Developed by Out of the Sandbox, Retina is an ideal choice if you’re selling apparel or furniture and housewares. Retina offers four styles: Austin, Montreal, Melbourne, and Amsterdam, with different color palettes. 

Each style includes useful features like product recommendations, multiple home page videos, custom promotion tiles, product image zoom, and slide-out cart. You can also create a self-service FAQ page so customers can find answers to common questions themselves. 

If you choose Retina, you can be sure your ecommerce website is mobile-friendly and leveraging Search Engine Optimization (SEO) to reach more Shopify customers. 

Additional key features

• Modern boutique mobile-friendly design
• Simple setup and customization 
• Testimonial sections and featured product callouts options

3) Flow

Price: $350

Website: Flow Shopify Theme

Flow offers three sharp and minimalist designs (Queenstown, Byron, and Cannes) that help your products stand out. This theme is great if you’re selling high-end items or you want to direct customers to unique features of your products. 

Flow allows you to feature a YouTube or Vimeo video on the homepage, display your products in a masonry-style grid, and showcase information about a specific collection with a page sidebar. You can also add a slide-out cart so your customers can easily add products to their shopping cart without leaving the current page. There is a promotional banner where you can set up to promote your latest offers.

Keep in mind that you can contact the Flow developers team via email only. The phone and video call support aren’t available. 

Additional key features

• Ideal for high-volume stores, flash sales, and selling internationally
• Easily customizable by utilizing drag-and-drop sections and blocks to create custom pages without coding
• In-depth marketing and conversion features (back-in-stock alerts, blogs, promo pop-ups, promo tiles, etc.)

4) Paper

Price: $260

Website: Paper Shopify theme

‍Paper is an easy-to-use and modern Shopify theme designed by Brickspace Lab. Paper’s clean and thoughtful design features large imagery with in-depth branding customizations. You will be able to take advantage of new Online Store 2.0 features and build custom templates with expertly designed drag-and-drop sections.

Additional key features

• Unlimited free trial and lifetime free theme updates
• Conversion-boosting design
• Performance-optimized page speeds
• Features to help you sell more, such as in-cart upsells

5) Parallax

Price: $240 

Website: Parallax Shopify Theme

If you want to build a modern ecommerce site, think about Parallax. This theme offers a striking parallax scrolling effect, enhancing your brand’s style and making it more appealing to customers. 

Parallax offers four styles: Aspen, Madrid, Vienna, and Los Angeles. These styles share features like parallax effect, a multi-level menu, promotional banner, multiple homepage videos, and slide-out cart. 

Parallax is also developed by Out of the Sandbox, so you can be sure you’ll receive excellent customer support from the team.

Additional key features

• In-depth creative control (full-width images, slideshows, video, testimonials, featured promotions, and more)
• Slideout cart, quick shop, and promotional banners for ease of use for customers
• Distinctive scrolling style for long-format home page layouts 

6) Taiga

Price: $350

‍Website: Taiga Shopify theme

Taiga is a blazing-fast and mobile-first premium Shopify theme for D2C brands designed by award-winning Shopify Plus agency Woolman. It gives you outstanding visual freedom: over 10+ video-supporting sections with unparalleled access to define your design settings. Zero customized code to make your brand feel unique.

Taiga is developed for the needs of modern merchants. Quality code powers winning speed: two components you need as a fast-growing sustainable business.

‍Additional key features

• Outstanding design settings
• Lightning-fast speed and performance
• Modern sections like Banner grid with video, Quick view, Countdown timer, Cart upsell, and Visual menu

7) Testament

Price: $260

Website: Testament Shopify Theme

Testament offers four styles (Genesis, Exodus, Revelation, and Deliverance), aiming to help you create a seamless shopping experience for your customers. 

Testament supports quick view, multi-column menu, color swatches, collection page sidebar, and homepage video. The theme comes with the sticky navigation feature, allowing you to keep menus fixed to the top of your page as you scroll down.

Additional key features

• Designed for stores that process high amount of transactions in a specific time period
• Visual storytelling elements 
• Designed specifically for stores that do in-person selling

8) Prestige

Price: $350

Website: Prestige Shopify Theme

Prestige is a premium Shopify theme designed for high-end ecommerce businesses and is great for businesses in clothing and accessories, health and beauty, as well as business equipment and supplies. It supports three styles (Allure, Couture, and Vogue) and is great for editorial content, visual storytelling, and physical stores.

Additional key features

• Image hotspot linking: Drag hotspots to tag images, making it easier for customers to discover your products
• Built-in timeline tool: Use this feature to tell the story of your brand
• Optimized for larger images: Display high-resolution product images hassle-free
• Homepage menu lists: Display menu lists on store homepage

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9) Impulse

Price: $350

Website: Impulse Shopify Theme

Impulse is great if you often run promotion campaigns because it allows you to display custom promotions in different places in your store. 

Impulse allows you to display promotional content on collection pages and promote sales with custom promotion tiles. Its features also include homepage menu lists, collection sub-listing, custom collection sidebar filters, and pickup availability.

Additional key features

• Designed for high-volume stores
• In-depth marketing and merchandising features (promo features, customizable contact form, animation, product videos, and more)
• Product discovery features like MegaMenu and sticky headers

10) Motion

Price: $350

Website: Motion Shopify Theme

If you want to use animation and video in your store, consider the Motion theme. It’s a premium Shopify theme designed and supported by Archetype Themes.

Motion includes many interesting features that aim to bring your brand to life regardless of catalog size, including multiple text, image, and page animations as well as multiple auto-play YouTube and videos on homepage.

Additional key features

• Filter products by tag without reloading pages
• Support high-resolution images
• View product information in a pop-up
• Visual storytelling 

11) Symmetry

Price: $320

Website: Symmetry Shopify Theme

Symmetry is another great Shopify theme for stores selling different product categories. It supports four styles: Salt Yard, Beatnik, Chantilly, and Duke. 

One of Symmetry’s best features is reorderable homepage rows, allowing you to display products, blog posts, or promotions in any order with customizable rows. Besides, this theme provides slideshow, long-form design, quick buy view, and multi-column menu.

Additional key features

• Built specifically for OS 2.0
• Ability to customize page tabs, metafields, size and price catalog filters, and more
• Over 20 drag-and-drop sections to choose from

12) Envy

Price: $350

Website: Envy Shopify Theme

Envy offers an intuitive design with four styles: Oslo, Copenhagen, Stockholm, and Gothenburg. It’s perfect for stores that focus on regular promotions and featured products. 

Envy features include display discounts, free gifts, and other promotional content with a pop-up or a banner as well as the ability to tag images using image hotspot linking. 

Additional key features

• Help customers easily navigate through the store with a multi-level menu
• Hover over a product image to zoom out
• Optimize for smaller devices and mobile commerce

13) Atlantic

Price: $280

Website: Atlantic Shopify Theme

Atlantic is great for high-volume stores. It’s designed to help you grow and scale your business faster. 

Atlantic supports four styles (Organic, Light, Modern, and Chic). Features include a multi-column menu, slideshow, quick buy, modular-style homepage, and pickup availability. This theme receives many five-star reviews on the Shopify theme store because of its excellent customer support.

Additional key features

• Perfect for product discovery with features like image zoom, live search, and multi-column menus
• Ability to handle medium to large catalogs; ideal for growth
• Uncluttered design 

14) Modular

Price: $300

Website: Modular Shopify Theme

Modular comes in three styles (Chelsa, Mayfair, and Hoxton) that are well-suited for a wide range of products. It also focuses on clean and minimalist design. 

Using Modular, you can give customers a better experience with scrolling between product pages, adding items to their carts without leaving pages (one tactic to help recover abandoned shopping carts), and quickly filtering products by brand, price, etc. You can also add customer testimonials to build trust with first-time shoppers. 

Additional key features

• Cart notes and stick cart
• Marketing features like back-in-stock alerts, blogs, FAQ page, press coverage, and more
• In-depth product discovery options like breadcrumbs, enhanced search, MegaMenu, and product filtering and sorting 

15) Empire

Price: $340

Website: Empire Shopify Theme

Designed and supported by Pixel Union, Empire allows you to create a store that offers customers the same shopping experience as Amazon. Empire comes with three styles (Graphic, Supply, and Industrial) optimized for stores with large catalogs. Empire offers features like homepage menu lists, pickup availability, live search, advanced product filtering, and quick add-to-cart functionality.

Additional key features

• User-friendly, responsive design made specifically for dropshippers 
• Many predefined color pallets and controls to create custom color schemes 
• Integration with Shopify product ratings and reviews app

16) Pipeline

Price: $320

Website: Pipeline Shopify Theme

Pipeline is another minimalist Shopify theme with parallax effect scrolling and three unique styles (Light, Bright, and Dark). This theme is best suited for stores with a large number of products. 

Like many other themes in this list, Pipeline offers a multi-column drop-down menu, a modular-style homepage, and advanced product filtering. The theme also supports large images, which means those images fit seamlessly into your pages.

Additional key features

• Optimized for mobile commerce
• Designed for stores that sell internationally as well as in physical stores
• Flexible, well-designed blocks for ease of customization 

17) District

Price: $220

Website: District Shopify Theme

No matter what you’re selling, the District Shopify Theme could be great for your shop if you have large catalogs and a desire to showcase featured products and collections. District features Shopify’s Online Store 2.0, which uses drag-and-drop sections to create custom pages without coding.

Additional key features

• Flexible, well-designed blocks to spotlight images, products, videos, and quotes and support digital storytelling
• Cart notes, quick buy, and in-store pick up options
• In-depth marketing, conversion, merchandising, and product discovery features

18) Icon

Price: $260

Website: Icon Shopify Theme

If you’re looking for a Shopify theme to highlight images and other content, Icon may be perfect for you — especially if you’re also in the fashion, health and beauty, or home and garden industries. Icon is also uniquely set up for stores with large catalogs and dropshippers. This theme also features numerous marketing and conversion features like promo banners, in-menu promos, cross-selling, blogs, back-in-stock alerts, quickview, FAQ page, and store locator.

Additional key features

• Visually striking design
• Quick and easy launch with minimal steps required
• Extensive merchandising and product discovery features like image galleries, image zoom, lookbooks, MegaMenu, product filtering, and infinite scroll

19) Responsive

Price: $240

Website: Responsive Shopify Theme

Looking for a focus on your products? You may want to check out the Responsive Shopify theme as it puts your products and brand at the forefront, utilizing full-width imagery. Responsive is ideal for fashion, beauty, and sports and recreation shops with large catalogs. Even better, the Responsive theme looks stunning on every screen across devices. 

Additional key features

• Wide-layout with features like image zoom, hero videos, and promo banners
• Highly customizable layouts, typography, and featured promotions
• Editorial content capabilities with longer-form text sections for storytelling

7 more non-official Shopify themes for your ecommerce store

Merchants can also find themes that aren’t in Shopify’s official theme library. These themes are often high-quality (especially those with a many reviews and high ratings, like the ones below) and usually a bit less expensive. But they aren’t vetted by Shopify, and therefore may be a little rougher around the edges. 

1) Vendy

Price: $77

Website: Vendy Shopify Theme

Vendy is a premium multipurpose Shopify theme for fashion. It’s developed for comfortable use and flawless online store creation. Even if you are not tech-savvy at all, with Vendy you can launch a store of any complexity. Plus, this theme is perfect for dropshipping

What’s more? Vendy is a synonym for “responsive clean design.” Also, Vendy allows flexible editing in the Shopify Visual Builder and the number of pre-made layouts. Without a doubt, you will like varied page templates, catchy web forms, product wish lists and lists, and other perks. As well, this Shopify theme for fashion is packed with unique lookbook and blog templates. Just try it and customize it as you prefer!

Additional key features

• MegaMosaic section
• Dynamic filtering system
• Header and footer customization

2) Ella

Price: $89

Website: Ella Shopify Theme

Ella offers +17 homepage layouts, +16 child themes, +7 category pages, +10 product pages, multiple headers and footers, and more. It’s an all-in-one Shopify theme, ideal for any stylish fashion and clothing stores. 

Ella allows you to design your store using features like quick shop, quick edit cart, quick update car, multiple languages, multiple currencies, product recommendation, upsell bundle, etc. This theme also includes smart search and suggestion features, enhancing the shopping experience.

Additional key features

• Over 22 homepage layouts and skins, including child themes
• Frequently bought together feature and upsell bundle with discount options
• Before-you-leave pop-up capability 

3) Shella

Price: $79

Website: Shella Shopify Theme

When it comes to Shopify themes for fashion, Shella can be considered one of the best. This theme is developed with fashion in mind, meaning everything on it is optimized to help you get your fashion stores noticed. 

Here is what makes Shella worth checking out:

• More than 89 pre-designed pages for layouts, collection pages, product pages, blog, gallery, and other pages
• Strong integration with dropshipping apps like Printiful, Privy, Dropshipper, Shopzie
• Conversion optimization features like countdown timers, number left in stock, free shipping progress bar
• Vertical MegaMenu, four levels for navigation menu, blocks for homepage, product filter options (title, description, price, vendor, type, and tags), and more

Additional key features

• Great for dropshipping
• MegaMenu
• Price and stock countdown

4) Basel

Price: $99

Website: Basel Shopify Theme

With plenty of design options, Basel allows you to design your store in many different ways. For example, Basel supports the drag-and-drop page builder, making it easy for you to add/remove/replace elements on pages. It also comes with several header variations, colors, and backgrounds. 

Additional key features

• AJAX search, color swatches, product quick view, and 360-degree view
• 30 ready-to-use layouts, four blog styles, seven portfolio styles, four product hover effects
• Instagram widget, Twitter widget, testimonial slide, styled banners shortcode 
• Developed with SCSS

5) Porto

Price: $99

Website: Porto Shopify Theme

Porto is a popular Shopify theme used by more than 45,000 ecommerce merchants. It’s built with amazing UI and UX experience and is continuously being updated. 

Porto’s highlight features:

• +20 modern and classic demo concepts
• Optimized for speed performance 
• Bunch of collections and product detail page variations
• MegaMenu and vertical MegaMenu

Additional key features

• Fully responsive with any mobile device 
• Powerful admin panel
• Unlimited colors and skins 
• RTL support, testimonial slide, AJAX loading, Google Fonts integration

6) Wokiee

Price: $89

Website: Wokiee Shopify Theme

As a Premium Shopify theme, Wokiee is not your basic theme; it can act as a powerful design tool to help your business grow. Even with its in-depth premium features, it is still easy to create fast, responsive, and mobile-friendly websites to provide a top-notch user experience. 

Additional key features

• Full control through your own content management system, which allows for customization of navigation, site content, images, products, and more
• Over 80 predefined skins and layouts
• MegaMenu, instagram shop, wishlist, related products, and more

7) Roxxe

Price: $59

Website: Roxxe Shopify Theme

The Roxxe Shopify theme is a versatile choice for a shop that wants options but also desires a robust yet modern look. Roxxe has over 70 pre-built homepages, as well as 50 pre-designed layouts with sections you can rearrange and combine as you see fit. Needless to say, Roxxe is a fairly simple theme to use that also comes with plenty of easy-to-follow instructions. 

Additional key features

• Fully responsive and option for retina-ready pages 
• MegaMenu and customization in footer area to make newsletter subscription simple
• Quick-view option for customers to review product details in a lightbox pop-up without leaving the page they’re on

Take your Shopify Store to the next level with Gorgias

There you have it! We hope this list of the best Shopify themes made it easier to find what you need to get your online shop up and running. And check out our guide on Shopify vs. Shopify Plus if you're interested in additional ways to customize your site beyond these themes. As you continue building your brand and updating your website based on the needs of your customers, you’ll also want to review your customer service process. 

Luckily, you can tap into a Shopify helpdesk app like Gorgias to level up. 

Gorgias’ customer service platform is uniquely positioned to help Shopify owners with all of their customer service needs, from automating your most common tasks to using machine learning to better help customers. 

Learn more about Gorgias for Shopify stores.

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TL;DR:

• Customers add items but leave before buying (the average cart abandonment rate is around 70%)
• The top reasons include unexpected fees, friction in checkout, trust concerns, and limited payment or delivery options
• Reducing abandonment requires diagnosing drop-off points with analytics and session replays, then streamlining checkout UX and building trust
• Recovery tactics like abandoned cart emails, SMS reminders, and retargeting ads help win back lost sales
• Continuous A/B testing and speed optimization keep your checkout competitive and converting

Shopping cart abandonment is one of the biggest revenue leaks in ecommerce. Customers browse your store, add products to their cart, and then disappear before completing checkout. With abandonment rates averaging around 70%, the impact on your bottom line is real.

But abandonment isn't random.

It's driven by friction in your checkout flow, unexpected costs, trust gaps, and limited payment options.

This guide shows you how to diagnose abandonment causes and streamline your checkout. You'll learn to build shopper confidence and recover lost sales through proven strategies.

What is shopping cart abandonment?

Shopping cart abandonment is an event that occurs when a shopper adds items to their online cart but leaves the website before completing the purchase.

It's distinct from checkout abandonment, which refers specifically to customers who enter the checkout flow but exit before finalizing their order. While checkout abandonment is a subset of cart abandonment, both represent significant lost revenue opportunities.

According to a Baymard Institute study, the average shopping cart abandonment rate for ecommerce stores is about 70%. The metric varies across industries, with the automotive industry reporting the highest shopping cart abandonment rate (89.11%), according to Statista.

What does that mean in terms of revenue? Reducing cart abandonment by 33% is equivalent to growing your customer base by 23%. Completely eliminating cart abandonment (while not feasible) would in theory triple most online stores' revenue. Reducing cart abandonment may not be easy, but it's a whole lot easier and less expensive than acquiring tons of new customers.

How to calculate the cart abandonment rate

The cart abandonment rate formula is straightforward:

Cart abandonment rate = (1 - (completed purchases / initiated checkouts)) × 100

"Initiated checkouts" refers to the number of shopping sessions where a customer added at least one item to their cart, while "completed purchases" counts the transactions that were finalized.

For example, if you had 1,000 initiated checkouts and 300 completed purchases, your cart abandonment rate would be (1 - (300/1,000)) × 100 = 70%.

Why shoppers abandon their carts

Understanding the causes of cart abandonment is the first step to reducing it. Most abandonment happens for predictable reasons that fall into four main categories:

Unexpected fees and price shocks

Unexpected fees are the number one reason shoppers abandon their cart. These include surprise shipping costs, taxes, and handling fees revealed at checkout. When the final price doesn't match expectations set earlier in the shopping journey, buyers lose trust and leave.

Friction in checkout (too many steps/fields)

Checkout friction from long forms, multiple checkout pages, and forced account creation slows buyers down and makes the process more difficult. Every additional click or required field increases the risk that a shopper will give up and navigate away.

Trust and security concerns

Trust signals like Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) certificates, recognizable payment gateways, and clear return policies are essential for converting hesitant shoppers. When these elements are missing or unclear, customers worry about security and legitimacy, leading them to abandon their cart.

Limited payments or delivery options

Payment flexibility matters: missing a shopper's preferred payment method (digital wallets, buy now pay later options) or offering only slow or expensive shipping options creates friction. When customers can't pay or receive their order the way they want, they're more likely to shop elsewhere.

Find and validate the causes of cart abandonment

Before implementing fixes, you need to diagnose your specific abandonment drivers. Analytics, session replays, and customer feedback reveal where and why shoppers drop off. This data allows you to prioritize the changes that will have the biggest impact.

Analyze funnel & behavior signals

Funnel analysis helps you identify which stages lose the most shoppers — product page, cart page, or checkout. Track behavior signals like rage clicks (repeated clicking on non-functional elements), error messages that block progress, and unusually long time spent on checkout pages. These patterns reveal specific friction points.

Tools like Google Analytics, Shopify Analytics, or dedicated helpdesk platforms let you track:

• Drop-off rate by funnel stage
• Rage clicks and error interactions
• Time spent on checkout pages

Session replays, heatmaps & VoC

Session replays let you watch real user journeys to spot friction points you might miss in aggregate data. Heatmaps reveal where users click, scroll, and hesitate, showing you which elements draw attention and which are ignored. Voice of Customer (VoC) tools like exit-intent surveys and post-purchase feedback let you ask shoppers directly why they left or what almost stopped them from buying.

Effective VoC methods include:

• Exit-intent surveys
• Post-purchase feedback forms
• Live chat transcripts

A/B test checkout hypotheses

A/B testing validates which changes — like removing a form field, adding trust badges, or reordering checkout steps — actually reduce abandonment. Test one variable at a time for clear results, and let tests run long enough to reach statistical significance. Continuous testing helps you iterate and improve over time.

Streamline your checkout

The goal is simple: make checkout as fast and frictionless as possible. Reducing steps, fields, and clicks directly lowers abandonment.

Reduce steps & clicks

A one-page checkout or minimal-step flow keeps shoppers moving forward. Every additional page or click increases drop-off risk. Where possible, combine shipping and billing information on one screen to minimize navigation.

Minimize form fields & enable autofill

Remove unnecessary fields like phone numbers or dates of birth that aren't essential to completing the order. Enable browser autofill and address verification to reduce manual typing and speed up completion.

Guest checkout + accelerated wallets

Forcing account creation adds friction and drives abandonment. Offer guest checkout as the default option, allowing customers to complete their purchase without setting up an account. For even faster completion, integrate accelerated wallets like Shop Pay, Apple Pay, and Google Pay that enable one-click checkout for returning customers.

Popular accelerated payment options include:

• Shop Pay
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• PayPal

Progress bar & inline validation

A progress bar shows shoppers how close they are to finishing, reducing anxiety about checkout length. Inline validation provides real-time error messaging so users can fix mistakes immediately instead of hitting a wall at the final submit button.

Editable cart & easy store navigation

An editable cart lets shoppers adjust quantities, remove items, or return to browse without losing their progress. Locking users into checkout without easy navigation back to the store increases frustration and abandonment.

Optimize for mobile

Mobile abandonment rates are typically higher than desktop, often reaching 85%. Use mobile-first design principles: large tap targets, minimal typing requirements, and fast load times. Test your checkout on real mobile devices, not just desktop browsers resized to mobile dimensions.

Boost trust & transparency

Eliminate doubt and surprise so shoppers feel confident buying. Trust signals, clear policies, and upfront costs reduce hesitation at critical decision points.

Show all costs early (no surprises)

Displaying upfront costs — including shipping, taxes, and fees — on the product page or cart page prevents sticker shock at checkout. According to research from the Baymard Institute, unexpected costs like shipping and taxes are the top reason customers abandon their carts.

One option is to charge a flat rate for shipping and taxes. This lets you display final costs on product pages, so customers don't have to wait until checkout.

While this might have a higher upfront cost, the reduction in cart abandonment could more than make up for the investment.

Another option is to design your cart page or checkout page so that customers can input their address immediately, allowing your system to calculate shipping costs and taxes right away.

Display estimated delivery upfront

Showing delivery estimates on product pages or in the cart helps shoppers decide if the item will arrive in time for their needs. Unclear delivery dates create doubt and increase the likelihood of abandonment.

Clear returns & money-back guarantees

A generous, easy-to-find return policy reduces purchase risk, especially for first-time buyers. Money-back guarantees build confidence by eliminating the financial risk of trying a new product or brand. Shoppers return 30% of all products ordered from online retailers. For this reason, a clear and customer-friendly return policy is key to building trust.

Parachute includes a clear label to show off their free and carbon-neutral shipping and returns:

To make returns and exchanges even easier for your customers and agents, consider a dedicated returns management app. Our favorite apps are Loop, Returnly, and ReturnLogic. They are comprehensive, affordable, and integrate with Gorgias for a centralized returns process.

Trust badges & secure payments

Display trust badges like SSL/TLS certificates, Payment Card Industry Data Security Standard (PCI DSS) compliance seals, and payment processor logos (Visa, Mastercard, PayPal) near the payment button. These visual signals reassure shoppers that their payment information is secure.

Social proof on PDP/checkout

Social proof like customer reviews, star ratings, and testimonials on product pages and checkout reduces doubt about product quality. Real-time social proof (e.g., "10 people bought this today") creates urgency and validates the purchase decision.

Offer flexible payment options (wallets, BNPL)

Payment flexibility means offering multiple payment methods to accommodate different shopper preferences. Customers expect to find their preferred payment method at checkout, whether that's credit cards, digital wallets, or buy now pay later options.

Popular payment methods include:

• Credit/debit cards
• PayPal
• Apple Pay / Google Pay
• BNPL (Klarna, Affirm, Afterpay)

Choosing a payment processing solution that can accept various payment methods is the simplest way to offer your customers this level of flexibility. For example, with PayPal, ecommerce stores can accept credit card payments, debit card payments, payments via a PayPal account, and payments via PayPal credit cards.

Shipping costs and delivery timelines

Offering free shipping — or a clear free shipping threshold (e.g., "Free shipping on orders over $50 USD") — reduces abandonment significantly. Showing multiple delivery options (standard, expedited, same-day) gives shoppers control over speed versus cost trade-offs.

Read more: Want to reduce shipping costs? Read our guide on how to offer free shipping.

Live chat to resolve last-second doubts

Live chat on product pages and checkout helps shoppers get instant answers to questions that might otherwise cause abandonment. Ecommerce customer service that can catch customers at critical moments is key to reducing online shopping cart abandonment. AI-powered chatbots can handle common questions 24/7, ensuring customers receive timely support even outside business hours.

A customer support platform like Gorgias lets you add live chat to your website. This enables customers to instantly connect with a support agent. This timely support can nudge shoppers toward completing their purchase.

Having live chat support ready is especially important when high average order value (AOV) customers are on the fence.

Check out our customer story on CROSSNET, a Gorgias customer that once secured a whopping $450,000 through a live chat conversation:

Recover abandoned carts

Re-engage shoppers who left without buying through proven recovery channels. Email, SMS, and retargeting ads bring customers back to complete their purchase.

Abandoned cart emails (best practices)

Abandoned cart emails remind shoppers of items left behind and encourage them to complete checkout. Send the first email within 1 hour while intent is still high, then follow up at 24 and 48 hours if they don't return.

Best practices for abandoned cart emails:

• Send first email within 1 hour
• Include product images and shopper name
• Clear CTA: "Complete your purchase"
• Add urgency or discount in follow-ups

Many email marketing solutions like Klaviyo and ActiveCampaign make it easy to create automated abandoned cart recovery campaigns.

As far as the copy, check out the cheeky email our friends at Braxley Bands send to customers who leave items in their cart:

They also follow this email up with a text message that offers a 15% off discount.

SMS/WhatsApp reminders

SMS and WhatsApp messages have higher open rates than email, often exceeding 90%. These channels work well for time-sensitive reminders (e.g., "Your cart expires in 2 hours") and should include a direct link to the abandoned cart.

Retargeting ads (DPA)

Dynamic product ads (DPA) on Facebook, Instagram, and Google show shoppers the exact items they left behind as they browse other sites. Retargeting keeps your brand top-of-mind and provides additional touchpoints to bring customers back. For best results, combine retargeting with email and SMS for multi-channel recovery.

Exit-intent offers and on-site incentives

Exit-intent pop-ups detect when a shopper is about to leave and offer a discount or free shipping to keep them on-site. Urgency messaging (e.g., "10% off if you buy now") can convert hesitant shoppers. Use this tactic sparingly to avoid training shoppers to wait for discounts.

Our analysis of 300 Shopify store owners showed 50% of online stores use website pop-ups to engage visitors. This isn't surprising since pop-ups can yield a conversion rate of between 3% and 11%, compared to standard rates around 2%.

Your ecommerce platform will have pop-up tools like SmartPopup or Pixelpop available for integration. If you use Shopify, check out our list of Shopify pop-ups for a complete rundown of the best tools.

Test and scale what works

Continuously improve checkout and recovery tactics through testing and optimization. What works for one store may not work for another, so ongoing experimentation is essential.

A/B test checkout & recovery flows

A/B testing lets you compare two versions of a checkout page or recovery email to see which converts better. Test one variable at a time (e.g., CTA button color, number of form fields, email subject line) and wait for statistical significance before declaring a winner.

Monitor speed & Core Web Vitals

Slow page load times increase abandonment — every second counts. Core Web Vitals (Largest Contentful Paint, First Input Delay, Cumulative Layout Shift) are Google's benchmarks for page speed and user experience. Use tools like Google PageSpeed Insights or real user monitoring (RUM) to track performance and identify bottlenecks.

Many tools can optimize page load speeds, including Google's PageSpeed Insights. Ensuring that you are using an ecommerce platform or checkout solution that offers an optimized UI and fast loading times is also crucial.

Leverage recovery apps/integrations

Recovery apps and integrations available on ecommerce platforms like Shopify and BigCommerce automate cart recovery workflows. Email automation tools, SMS platforms, and retargeting pixel integrations reduce manual effort while increasing recovery rates. Gorgias integrates with Shopify and other platforms to centralize customer data and automate recovery flows across channels.

Turn conversations into conversions with Gorgias

Gorgias is a conversational commerce platform built for ecommerce brands that need to scale support, drive revenue, and reduce cart abandonment. Here's how Gorgias helps:

• Centralizes customer conversations from email, chat, SMS, and social media in one inbox
• Use AI Agent to answer pre-purchase questions 24/7 (e.g., "Does this jacket run large?" or "When will this ship?")
• Automates abandoned cart recovery emails and SMS reminders with personalized product recommendations
• Provides live chat on product pages and checkout to resolve last-second doubts
• Integrates with Shopify for real-time order data, enabling agents to see cart contents, order history, and customer details instantly

Gorgias's AI Agent can handle up to 60% of support inquiries, freeing your team to focus on high-value conversations that drive revenue.

To try our customer service platform free for seven days, sign up for Gorgias today.

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TL;DR:

• Checkout is where your retention strategy begins. A strong post-purchase experience helps turn first-time buyers into repeat customers and reduces returns.
• Make support fast, visible, and proactive. Offer live chat, clear FAQs, and updates so customers don’t have to chase you for answers.
• Use post-purchase touchpoints to build trust and drive repeat sales. Optimize confirmation emails, clarify delivery timelines, and send timely order updates.
• Give customers control and keep your UX friction-free. Ensure checkout works smoothly on all devices and allow self-service order changes to reduce support load.
• Stay engaged after delivery to boost loyalty and growth. Use remarketing, create a memorable unboxing experience, and ask for reviews to keep customers coming back.

Your job doesn't end once a customer makes a purchase.

Of course, the marketing work you do pre-purchase plays an important role in establishing a well-rounded shopping experience, but there's a world of tactics to employ after your customer hits the “buy” button that can help you entice first time shoppers to make a second purchase.

Remember that without designing an inclusive experience that encourages customer retention, you may struggle to create a solid growth path for your business. If you want to keep new customers coming, reengage past shoppers, and reduce returns, here are nine tips for delivering an outstanding post-checkout experience. 

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9 ways to create a better post-checkout experience for your customers

1. Offer amazing customer support
2. Keep your checkout button visible on every device
3. Make the most out of your confirmation email
4. Make delivery dates and next steps clear 
5. Send customers order updates before they have to ask
6. Let customers manage their own order changes
7. Stay in touch later with remarketing
8. Enhance the “unboxing” experience
9. Ask for reviews and follow up after the item arrives

1) Offer amazing customer support

First and foremost, let’s make sure you’re offering great customer support before we explore other options for improving your post-checkout experience. While you might already be doing everything you reasonably can to ensure your customers don’t experience disruptions or problems after a purchase, sometimes hiccups happen. It’s not so much about avoiding problems entirely but rather how you deal with them when they occur. 

Sometimes your shoppers will reach out to you after a purchase with questions about their item’s delivery or how to return something. (This is much easier with the right returns management and order management software.) And they may be frustrated or impatient. Make it easier for them (and ultimately better for you) by offering ways to contact you on the channels they prefer. Also, offer proactive customer service in the form of FAQ pages and clear return policies to confusion (and save your agents time).

For instance, if your analytics tell you that your audience is most active on Facebook, make sure your page makes it clear how to reach your support team. You can do this by including the relevant links in the About section and of course, be turning on a chatbot function. 

But even so, customers may make contact simply by posting on your page or commenting on your posts. Employ a catch all approach by integrating your Facebook page to your Gorgias helpdesk and you’ll be able to automatically publish personalized answers in the comment threads.

And if you don’t have one, get live chat on your site! Gorgias can also help with that by allowing you to seamlessly integrate a live chat into your website, with also a list of customizable rules. The live chat button will show consistently on all pages of your site, both on mobile and desktop. 

Your customers don’t need to hunt down a special contact page or dig up an email address. They always know exactly where to go when they need help. Also, using live chat is useful to create a personalized, human-centric, accessible, and fast shopping experience, which the value of can’t be discounted!

2) Keep your checkout button visible on every device

This one sounds obvious, but it's easy to miss: live chat widgets, cookie banners, and other third-party apps that sit fixed at the bottom of the page can overlap your checkout button — especially on mobile. If a customer can't tap "Buy now" or "Proceed to checkout" without dismissing something first, some of them simply won't.

Audit your mobile checkout experience regularly, particularly after adding any new app or widget to your store. Check that fixed UI elements don't stack on top of each other on smaller screens, and that your checkout button always has enough breathing room to be tapped comfortably.

3) Make the most out of your confirmation email

While the confirmation email should always include basic information (think an order summary and delivery timeline), you can add a few extras to empower your customer to make the most out of their experience with your brand. 

If you’re working with a recommendation engine and already produce editorial content, this would be a great opportunity to attach one or two relevant blog articles to the lower third of your confirmation email. Not only serving as a helpful encouragement to spend more time on your site, but sending relevant content helps to reinforce the idea that you are an expert in your field. 

You may also wish to consider including a promo code as a thank you for ordering - it can be a small expense that ensures a customer returns. 

4) Make delivery dates and next steps clear 

Once your customer purchases an item from your site, you would benefit from having a system in place that allows them to review their item’s delivery status. This could be as simple as a “vanity” order confirmation page that appears once the purchase is confirmed. Show a simple timeline that displays where they are at in the delivery timeline starting with an origin destination and ending with their home address.

Even if they didn’t register on your site and never return to this page, showing them such an order tracking timeline leaves a good impression on your customer by reinforcing the concept that what they’ve purchased really exists and is on its way. 

5) Send customers order updates before they have to ask

WISMO — "Where's my order?" — is one of the highest-volume support ticket categories for ecommerce brands. Often, impatience doesn't drive these tickets, it's tracking that hasn't updated. If customers have no idea where their order is, they worry and go straight to your support team.

Set up proactive shipping notifications at every key milestone: confirmed, in transit, out for delivery, delivered. If a delay happens, let customers know before they come looking. Pair that with a branded tracking page instead of a generic carrier portal, and you eliminate most WISMO tickets before they're ever written.

6) Let customers manage their own order changes

After checkout, customers often need quick fixes, like updating a shipping address, swapping a size, or canceling before the item ships. If they can't do this themselves, it becomes a support ticket.

Give customers a self-service portal where they can manage these changes without contacting your team. Just make sure any update syncs across your systems automatically — manually updating Shopify, your warehouse, and your 3PL separately is how errors happen.

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7) Stay in touch later with remarketing 

You may have been under the misconception that setting up remarketing ads was reserved exclusively for your bounced traffic. While that’s certainly an effective way to recapture lost traffic, you can also use them to remind previous customers about your products when it makes sense to do so for you. 

For example, let’s say you’re a cosmetic company and you’ve just launched a new moisturizer. By setting up a remarketing ad that targets those customers who purchased a similar product from you three months ago, you’re finding them again just as they may be in need of restocking. This helps place customers who may have otherwise forgotten about your brand back into your marketing funnel with the goal of getting them to buy from you again.

8) Enhance the “unboxing” experience

Let’s embrace the fact that we’re living in the age of social media by applying it to your shipping experience. Make your orders feel like the gift that they are by packing your product in a customized box and filling the empty space inside with fun, yet recyclable fillers like crinkle paper or business cards, personalized notes with instructions on how to leave a review or something simple but enjoyable like brand stickers. When relevant, you may also want to consider including a sample of an upcoming item into your box, or a flyer advertising its existence. 

When you create an “unboxing experience” you’ll not only trigger those loyalty-building positive emotions in your customer’s brain but you’re also encouraging them to post about your brand on their social feeds - free advertisement to a similar audience of future customers!

9) Ask for reviews and follow up after the item arrives

Reviews are one of the most effective ways to increase sales and encourage new customers to shop with you. You need them to grow your business. But not everyone, even happy shoppers, are hardwired to follow up a purchase with a review. In this instance we like to follow the simple manta: ask and you shall receive. 

Asking for reviews doesn't have to seem desperate (even though we all desperately want them). Start by building a review request into your post-checkout email workflow that automatically delivers a request to review the purchased product after delivery occurs. Play around with the sound of your email and don’t be afraid to employ a curious but humble tone that expresses your genuine desire to know that they enjoyed what they bought or how they like to see it improved in the future.

We hope you find these nine tips useful when it comes to making the most out of your post-checkout experience. As always be patient and in time, you’ll reap the rewards of a job well done. Keep an eye on your retention rate to measure your post-checkout success.

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TL;DR:

• Zendesk is built for large support teams. It centralizes email, chat, phone, and social into one powerful ticketing system with advanced automation and AI.
• Feature-rich but complex to implement and manage. Setup can take 3 to 6 months and usually requires dedicated admin or IT support.
• AI and add-ons significantly increase total cost. Copilot, automated resolutions, Voice, QA, and WFM are priced separately and can push annual costs into six figures.
• Strong for enterprises, less ideal for fast-moving ecommerce teams. It is flexible through integrations but lacks native ecommerce features and quick, plug-and-play setup

Zendesk is one of the most recognized names in customer service software, and for good reason. Its ticketing system is battle-tested, its feature list is long, and its reputation precedes it in almost every helpdesk evaluation.

That doesn't mean it's the best choice for every business, though.

Tickets are slipping through the cracks, your team is cobbling together information across multiple tabs, and every integration you need seems to come with an added cost. It makes sense that Zendesk is on your radar. But the more you dig in, the more questions come up.

This guide breaks down what Zendesk offers, what it costs, and how to know if it's the right fit before you commit.

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What is Zendesk used for?

Zendesk is a cloud-based customer service helpdesk that consolidates customer inquiries from email, chat, phone, social media, and messaging apps into a single interface. 

It's designed for support teams handling high ticket volumes across large organizations, giving agents, team leads, and operations managers one place to track, manage, and resolve customer issues. 

The platform has grown well beyond basic ticketing to include AI-powered automation, self-service knowledge bases, and integrations with enterprise tools like Salesforce and Oracle. Getting the most out of it takes some technical know-how.

Use cases include:

• Centralizing customer inquiries from email, chat, phone, and social media
• Managing support tickets with SLAs, routing, and automation
• Enabling self-service through knowledge bases and help centers
• Scaling support operations for large teams

What features does Zendesk have?

Here's what Zendesk offers across its Suite plans.

Core platform features:

• Ticketing - manage, track, and route customer issues at scale
• Messaging and live chat - real-time support across web, mobile, and social
• Voice - phone support built into the platform
• Self-service knowledge base - help center for customers

Advanced and add-on features:

• AI agents - automated bots that resolve customer conversations end-to-end
• Quality assurance - automated review and scoring of support interactions
• Analytics - pre-built dashboards that track customer support metrics
• Workforce management - scheduling and staffing tools for support teams
• Data privacy and protection - compliance and security controls‍
• Integrations - connects with tools like Salesforce, Shopify, Slack, and more

Ticketing

Zendesk's ticketing system combines inquiries from email, chat, social media, voice, and messaging apps into a single interface called the Agent Workspace. It gives support teams a unified view of every customer conversation.

Capabilities

• Unified inbox across all channels
• Custom views for organizing tickets by priority, status, or team
• Skill-based routing to assign tickets based on agent expertise
• Collision alerts to prevent duplicate responses
• SLA policies with automated escalations
• Macros for pre-written responses and bulk actions
• Custom fields to capture order IDs, product types, or issue categories

Pros

Users consistently praise Zendesk for its reliable ticket management and strong automation. Triggers can automatically route tickets, apply tags, and escalate issues, making it most valuable for teams handling high volumes across multiple channels.

Cons

The setup process takes time and requires a dedicated admin to configure and maintain. G2 users consistently flag a steep learning curve, noting that getting Zendesk exactly the way you want it requires significant research and time. The ticket-based model can also feel rigid for teams that prioritize ongoing customer conversations over isolated support requests.

Messaging and live chat

Zendesk offers two distinct chat solutions: Live Chat, which is session-based, and Messaging, which supports asynchronous, ongoing conversations. Both are managed from the Agent Workspace.

Capabilities

• Real-time chat for instant customer responses
• Asynchronous messaging for ongoing conversations
• Proactive triggers based on visitor behavior
• AI-powered response suggestions
• Integration with WhatsApp, Facebook, and Instagram

Pros

Users consistently highlight how the platform's automation and reporting make support faster and less chaotic.

Cons

Setup isn't always straightforward, with some users reporting days of back-and-forth just to get live chat running. Teams moving from Live Chat to Messaging should also plan for re-configuration, as the transition can disrupt existing workflows.

Voice and IVR

Zendesk's Voice is a built-in cloud phone solution accessible directly from the Agent Workspace, so you can avoid a separate phone vendor.

Capabilities

• Inbound and outbound calling from the Agent Workspace
• Interactive voice response (IVR) menus to route callers
• Call recording and transcription for QA and training
• Voicemail and callback requests
• Real-time dashboards for call queues and wait times
• AI summaries for instant call insights
• Conference calling and call transfers

Pros

Users consistently praise call quality as one of Voice's strongest points. Having phone support built directly into the same workspace where agents handle tickets, chat, and email is a genuine advantage, keeping all customer context in one place without switching tools.

Cons

Cost is the most common complaint on G2. Beyond the base subscription, every phone number, inbound and outbound call minute, call recording, and voicemail transcription carries additional per-use fees, which can add up quickly for teams with high call volumes. Pricing becomes especially noticeable for smaller teams who don't need enterprise-level call capacity.

Self-service knowledge base

Zendesk's Help Center lets customers find answers independently through searchable articles, FAQs, and community forums, with the goal of deflecting common questions before they become tickets.

Capabilities

• Easy-to-use article editor with images, videos, and code blocks
• Content hierarchy with categories and sections
• Searchable knowledge base for customers
• Multilingual support across 40+ languages on higher tiers
• Community forums for crowdsourced answers
• Knowledge surfaced in Agent Workspace for agents to link articles in responses
• Analytics on article views, searches, and deflection rates

Pros

The Help Center is straightforward to set up and organize. Zendesk's AI integration with the knowledge base surfaces relevant articles to customers even before a ticket is assigned to an agent. For teams managing multiple brands or languages, the structure scales well.

Cons

Customization has limits. Basic changes like colors, logos, and fonts are easy enough, but anything more advanced requires coding knowledge or a developer. G2 users also flag limited customization options as a recurring source of friction, and some note that the self-service AI can fall short when customers have more complex questions.

AI and automation

Zendesk offers AI Agents, bots that resolve tickets without human intervention, and Copilot, an AI-powered assisting tool that suggests responses and summarizes conversations. Beyond AI, the platform offers triggers, macros, and workflows for automating repetitive tasks.

Capabilities

• AI Agents for autonomous ticket resolution across channels
• Copilot for agent-assist including response suggestions and conversation summaries
• Triggers for automated actions based on ticket conditions
• Macros for pre-written responses and bulk updates
• Workflows for multi-step automation
• Intent detection and sentiment analysis
• Auto-tagging and categorization

Pros

Copilot gets positive mentions for helping agents resolve tickets faster with AI-powered summaries and suggested actions. Teams that invest in proper configuration can expect faster processes and more efficient workflows. 

Cons

AI features come at a high cost. Copilot is a paid add-on, and automated resolutions are billed per use after a limited monthly allowance. However, using the more advanced parts of Zendesk can require developer assistance to set up properly. Teams that underestimate the setup and maintenance time might see underwhelming results.

How much does Zendesk AI actually cost?

Zendesk's AI features are priced separately from its core plans, and the total adds up faster than most teams expect going in.

Here’s their AI pricing breakdown:

• Automated resolutions: $1.50 per resolution (committed resolution) or $2 per resolution (pay-as-you-go)
• Copilot: $50/agent/month billed annually
• Suite plans with AI agents included: Suite Team ($55/agent/month), Suite Professional ($115/agent/month), and Suite Enterprise ($169/agent/month)

What it looks like for a real team using Zendesk with AI:

20 agents, 10,000 tickets/month, AI resolving 30% of ticket volume (3,000 tickets):

That's using committed resolution pricing. At pay-as-you-go rates ($2/resolution), the total climbs to $8,800/month. And that's before adding Voice, Quality Assurance, or Workforce Management, each of which is a separate line item.

Quality assurance

Zendesk QA uses AI to automatically score customer interactions and surface coaching opportunities across your entire support operation. It's designed for teams that need consistent, scalable quality review without relying on manual spot-checking.

Capabilities

• AI-powered conversation scoring
• Customizable scorecards for agent performance
• Coaching workflows with structured feedback

Pros

QA can review every conversation automatically, not just a sample, which gives managers a more accurate picture of team performance. Customizable scorecards mean scoring criteria can reflect your specific support standards, and coaching workflows make it easier to turn insights into structured feedback.

Cons

QA is a paid add-on at $35/agent/month, which adds up quickly on top of an already expensive base plan. Some users also report performance issues at scale, and teams already paying for Suite Enterprise often find the additional cost hard to justify.

Analytics and reporting

Zendesk Explore is the platform's analytics tool, offering pre-built dashboards and a custom query builder for deeper reporting. It tracks key customer support metrics across tickets, agents, channels, and customer satisfaction.

Capabilities

• Ticket volume, first response time, and resolution time
• SLA compliance and breach tracking
• Agent performance including tickets handled and CSAT scores
• Channel breakdown across email, chat, phone, and social
• CSAT and NPS trends
• Custom reports with drag-and-drop query builder
• Data export capabilities

Pros

Explore gives teams wide visibility into support performance. Pre-built dashboards cover most common use cases, and the custom query builder lets teams dig into the data in meaningful ways. The depth of reporting is a significant advantage for managers.

Cons

Reporting feels basic unless you're on a higher-tier plan, and Explore itself has a steep learning curve. Reviews consistently flag the interface as difficult to navigate, with some teams spending significant time just trying to pull the reports they need.

Workforce management

Zendesk's workforce management tool (formerly Tymeshift) uses AI to forecast staffing needs, automate scheduling, and track agent activity in real time. It's built directly into the Zendesk interface, so planning, monitoring, and reporting all happen in one place.

Capabilities

• Demand forecasting based on historical ticket data
• Automated shift scheduling down to the minute
• Real-time adherence tracking and activity monitoring
• Occupancy and utilization metrics
• Agent self-service for viewing schedules and submitting time-off requests
• Multi-channel and multi-site scheduling support

Pros

Having forecasting and scheduling pull directly from Zendesk data is a genuine advantage. There's no manual data transfer or switching between tools, and predictions are grounded in actual ticket patterns across channels. For large teams managing multiple shifts, automation significantly reduces manual planning work.

Cons

WFM is a paid add-on at $25/agent/month, and the interface has a steep learning curve. Scheduling automation struggles with irregular or complex shifts, reporting customization is limited, and the mobile app lacks key features available on desktop.

Data privacy and protection

Zendesk's Advanced Data Privacy and Protection (ADPP) is a paid add-on for teams with stricter compliance and security requirements. It builds on Zendesk's standard security features with more granular controls over how customer data is stored, accessed, and deleted.

Capabilities

• AI-powered PII detection and redaction suggestions across tickets
• Role-based data masking to limit agent access to sensitive information
• Custom data retention and deletion policies
• Access logs to monitor who views what data and when
• Bring your own key (BYOK) encryption for enterprise-grade data control
• Automatic redaction of PII from Voice call transcripts
• GDPR, CCPA, and HIPAA compliance support

Pros

For teams handling sensitive customer data at scale, ADPP provides meaningful controls that go well beyond standard security. AI-powered redaction removes the burden of manual PII review, and granular access logs give compliance teams the visibility they need to manage risk and meet regulatory requirements.

Cons

ADPP is only available on Suite Enterprise plans and above, making it inaccessible to most small and mid-sized teams. For organizations that don't operate in heavily regulated industries, the add-on may feel like paying for features that should come standard.

App integrations, REST API, and webhooks

Zendesk's Marketplace offers 1,500+ apps, a REST API for custom integrations, and webhooks for real-time data sync, making it possible to connect with virtually any tool in your tech stack.

Key integrations:

• CRM: Salesforce, HubSpot
• Ecommerce: Shopify, Magento
• Collaboration: Slack, Microsoft Teams
• Project management: Jira, Asana
• Custom: REST API and webhooks

Pros

Zendesk's 1,500+ app marketplace is one of its most praised features, giving teams the flexibility to connect support data across their entire tech stack.

Cons

Some integrations can be hit or miss, with users reporting issues that complicate management across multiple teams. The Shopify integration, in particular, functions more as a data display than a native connection.

Is Zendesk worth it?

Zendesk is powerful once it’s all set up, but getting there takes time. Most implementations run for three to six months and require a dedicated admin to configure everything.

What to expect:

• Setup and configuration can take weeks to months, depending on complexity
• Data migration and agent training add to the timeline
• Ongoing admin work doesn't stop after launch
• Most teams need admins or outside consultants to manage it long-term

For smaller or fast-growing teams — especially in ecommerce, where support needs spike seasonally — the overhead can be pricey.

Pros and cons for ecommerce teams

Here's how Zendesk stacks up for ecommerce support teams:

When to choose Zendesk (and when not to)

Zendesk makes sense if you have:

• A large support team (500+ employees) with complex workflows
• Dedicated admins or IT resources to manage configuration
• Budget for enterprise-grade software and paid add-ons
• Need for deep integrations with tools like Salesforce, Oracle, or SAP
• 3–6 months for implementation and change management
• Multiple brands or business units requiring separate instances

Consider alternatives if you need:

• A simple, plug-and-play helpdesk that works out of the box
• Fast implementation (days, not months)
• Affordable pricing without expensive add-ons
• Purpose-built ecommerce features (Shopify order management, product recommendations)
• Transparent pricing with no hidden costs
• Responsive support without requiring premium plans

Looking for a helpdesk built for ecommerce?

Zendesk is a strong platform, but getting the most out of it takes serious time, resources, and ongoing admin work. 

If that overhead isn't something you can absorb, Gorgias might be a better fit. 

It's built specifically for ecommerce, with native Shopify integration, in-chat order management, and a setup that takes days instead of months.

Book a demo to learn more.

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