One Product Shopify Store: How to Build & 03 Successful Examples

If you think eCommerce is just a playground for multi-product sellers, or hold an idea to run a one product Shopify store but are still doubtful about its possibilities, then you might want to reconsider. Why? Because selling only one product online can be profitable as running a colossal e-store with various types of items.

Million-dollar online businesses like Casper or Spanx all started up with just one kind of product that people still remember their signature mattress or pantyhose until today. So, why don’t you just try to build a great single product online presence to grow your business now?

In this article, we are going to give an effective way to create a single-product store, using the Shopify platform to expand your business in the future.

Table of contents

• What is one product Shopify store?
• The benefits of having a one product online store?
• How to build an active store
• Get your one product
• Have a branding plan
• Prepare website content
• Start designing your online store
• Best Practices To Build An One Product Shopify Store
• One product Shopify dropshipping store?
• 3 successful single-product Shopify store
• #1: Ratio Coffee
• #2: Truff Hot Sauce
• #3: Dryrobe
• Summary

I. What is One Product Shopify store?

Well, the name says it all. You sell only one product, then build a website based on Shopify to get people to buy your product online.

There is no specific rule of which kind of product to sell, but here are some of the most common cases where merchants can take the fullest advantage of a single product Shopify store:

• Digital products: educational products (ex: ebooks, courses), services (ex: mediation session, yoga video lessons, etc.), arts & music, software tools (ex: page builder app like PageFly)
• Niche products: effective branding by focusing on a distinct group of customers. Vegan snacks, pet accessories, or gamer chairs are some excellent given examples.
• General products: water-proof phone cases or backpacks are items that can meet many different kinds of customers, for example.

And to “spice up” your business, you can have variants such as sizes, colors, or materials to widen the range of choices. 

>>> Get the most creative out of Product Landing Page Examples

II. The Benefits of Having One Product Online Store

Let’s look deeper into what value you can gain with a single product Shopify website:

• Help utilize time, energy, and human resource, to focus on developing your only product, also known as the flagship. You just have to sell one thing, do it well. The online store is a channel where you can exploit effectively to deliver your product to customers with the utmost values. 
• Reach a wider audience. The internet is a vast platform for you to bring your product closer to a significant number of people. That’s why sellers don’t want to miss the opportunity of scaling up their business and start running an online store, even when their physical store is working well. 
• Help create a strong branding. As mentioned before, because you have time to focus on just a product, it will be easier to build brand awareness, create an advertising plan. People will know what your business is all about and what value they can get right after visiting your website. Especially in niche markets, if you spend time and effort investing in a site that is actively engaging with the segmented customers, then it would be more effective than trying to please everyone. 
• Designing and managing one product store could be less complicated. Instead of creating many collections and catalogs like a multi-product store, you just have to make and perfect one product page, which lessens the amount of work at your end. Also, managing orders and stocks for only an item is much “easier to breathe” and saves a lot more time. 

Take this zipper hoodie product on the Kickstarter website (a platform that helps anyone who comes up with great ideas bring their projects to life by getting funding from communities) as an example. 

Right after landing on the website, you will see the project is a hoodie product with 20 innovations. You can see Adv3nture is the creator and how many people have pledged to this project. 

Scrolling down the website, you can see all the information about the product, such as descriptions, colors, materials, size charts, and international order. 

After reading all the information, if you want to pre-order, just click on the CTA button at the top and select a perk on the directed Indiegogo website. 

You can see how customers can get an easy and quick experience when it comes to purchasing on a one product online store like this. 

III. How To Build One Product Shopify Store

It’s time to step in the real work. How should you create a useful single-product Shopify store from scratch? Here are some of the factors you need to take into account seriously. 

3.1. Get your one product 

If you are already running a business with just a product, it’s great! But remember to make sure that you know who your targeted audience is, how your product is different from other competitors, and bring them a value that is worth buying. 

Ask yourself if I run my store online with this product, what shipping policy do I need? Can I sell it internationally? How should I design a user-friendly website with this product? How and who can manage this website to gain more visitors that you can convert to customers in the future?

For those who need to find a winning product idea, you should draw a detailed picture of your buyer persona. Find out what their pain point is, what solution you can show them. Do research more about what happens in your industry and find out any area in the industry that people haven’t discovered.

Join Facebook groups, industry forums, and read more related blog posts, comments to know what are the most popular topics of discussion at the moment. After doing a significant amount of keyword research and narrowing down to possible ideas, start sketching a full plan of your product.

3.2. Have a branding plan

Define your brand key positioning in the first place. What is the core value here? This value proposition is what your business stands for, so you should hardly change it.

Since you are building a brand for just one product, it will be easier to make customers remember you. Why? Because they can see what you are selling right after entering your site. So, having a grand strategy of using a professional but conversational and empathizing voice with your own story is essential for brand awareness.

Also, creating an identical logo is important to help provoke customers into thinking of your brand whenever they see it.

3.3. Prepare website content

Content is a pivotal part of the plan. You should consider even small details like what sections should be in the navigation bar, what images for “Hero banner,” how the introduction video or animated gif can be entertaining but educational.

The blog section is crucial as well because this is where you can be creative with articles that can engage with visitors.

Also, pay attention to content for ads. Think of how your advertisements can be enticing and distinctive. Do A/B testing using methods (like Google Drafts & Experiments for Google Ads, or AdEspresso for Facebook Ads) to optimize your budget.

3.4. Start designing your online store

Here is the fun part. It’s time to transform your plan into a more visually appealing site look. Below are the following steps to help you effortlessly create a one product Shopify store:

Step 1: Get the right theme

Having a prominent but suitable theme to attract visitors is very important. Your store should bring a friendly and straightforward experience when customers navigate around the website.

The menu bar should be simple. The CTA buttons should be clear and on point, and make sure images and videos are in high resolution.

The great thing is you can easily find such themes on the Shopify theme store or other theme markets. But here are the top 5 Shopify themes (both paid and free) that we suggest for your single-product store: 

Debut

Debut is one of the most popular free themes on Shopify. It has a “home page video” feature where you can put a product showcase Youtube video on the home page. 

Also, you can make a strong impression on your brand by putting the product at the center of the home page.

Learn more about the Debut theme here.

Narrative

If you view the demo of this theme, you will find it fit right away with a one-product store because it is originally for stores with only a few products. Its mobile version is very user-friendly as well.

Story

This theme is a robust branding tool because it has “story-focused product page” and “tell your story” features.

Elomus

An elite author of ThemeForest develops this theme. It is suitable for products like drones, smartwatches, beauty & fashion items, scooters.

Mixture

One of the cool things about this theme is the 360 product view, which creates an interactive and attractive engaging shopping display.

You can also find well-designed Shopify stores that you want to learn from, use this Shopify Theme Checker tool to find out which Shopify Theme those stores are using and try them out. 

Step 2: Build your home page

Once you choose the right theme for your store, you can build a responsive home page quickly. Pay attention to your images, color scheme, CTA buttons. The home page should be enticing and can promptly highlight the critical value of your product.

 You can learn more about creating an optimized Shopify home page here.

Step 3: Add product page

This step is where people are becoming customers, and their purchasing process should be perfect. That’s why you should create a high converting product page. 

There should be high-quality product images and a strong CTA button. Also, a compelling product description is important because customers always look for more product details before the final action.

You can use icons as a compact design to describe the product. One more thing, you should show reviews from previous buyers, if possible, because this is a factor that helps increase more than 250% chance of other people purchasing your product.

Step 4: Have social proof on your website

Social proof is an effective way to validate your business. It raises your brand credibility and the rate of buying activity, as mentioned earlier.

You can display the feedback or reviews on the product page or home page. Especially the latter because it will be more effective when they are aware of how good your product or service is in their learning journey, which more quickly leads to the next buying actions.

Step 5: Consolidate the look of your store

Make sure every part of your website is consistent. The color and image sizes should be the same and high-quality. Check your product page, homepage, and other page content in order to make sure that you use the same tone of voice to customers. 

Also, you should check the site loading speed and the mobile version as well. Adjust the store design if there is any lagging problem on both desktop and mobile devices.

You can check the tutorial video below to have a step-by-step guide on how to easily build a one product Shopify store:

IV. Best Practices To Build A High-Converting One-Product Shopify Store

4.1. Use Appealing Photos

The first impression always lasts. You can lose customers in a second with a boring landing page. So, filling your landing page with attractive images is a prerequisite for high conversion rates. Generally, you had better consider the following tips:

• High resolution is the first and foremost thing.
• Try to illustrate the features and benefits of your product via images
• Use photos that deliver an emotional connection with your shoppers
• Make sure your photographs go with the color scheme of the site

4.2. Pay Attention To Your CTAs

Call-to-action buttons are among the most significant elements of your site. They encourage shoppers to take action, and that’s how conversion begins. In short, your CTA button must be prominent, specific, and tempting. To do so, you should bear in mind:

• The CTA must be in a different color with other elements on the website
• Place the buttons throughout your page or make it stick to a corner so users can always see it while exploring your store
• Do A/B testing to find the most effective version of your CTA button
• Keep your CTA copy concise and action-oriented (e.g., Try For Free, Get Started, Treat Me Now, Take A Tour)  

4.3. Add Testimonials

According to Bizrate Insights, 91% of their 2021 surveyed participants say they read at least one review before making their purchase. It means failing to include customer feedback on your store will hurt conversion rates. 

However, it’s not a good idea to cram your site with too many lengthy reviews. You can show from three to 10 of them on the homepage based on your product’s nature. For example, you might need 10 or more testimonials in the food industry as shoppers always want to make sure whether your cuisine tastes good. Each review box must display the customer’s name and date. You can consider inserting some images if it’s needed. 

To sum up, positive feedback will increase the credibility of your brand and encourage users towards impulse purchases.

4.4. Clear Uncertainties

The reason people buy your product is simple: They trust you. Shoppers will rush to their cart when there are no doubts left for them. So, it’s necessary to ease whatever hinders the visitor from a buying decision. There are several ways you can do it, including:

• Set up a live chat: If you are selling clothes, customers might have concerns over your product’s size, color, or material. A live chat can resolve their worries instantly.
• Answer frequently asked questions: It’s necessary to clear any confusion about shipping, payment, return & exchange policies, or other matters that you know the shoppers will ask.
• Offer discounts for first-time orders: Price is always a barrier to any product. Shoppers hesitate because they wonder if it’s worth their spending. A discount code applied for the first-time order can solve the problem.

4.5. Simplify The Checkout Process

Research shows that 18% of American online shoppers abandoned their cart in the past quarter of 2021 due to a complicated or too long checkout process. Not a single business owner wants to lose customers because of such a silly reason. The good news is you can have this issue resolved just by taking a few steps.

To simplify the process, you should ask yourself what information you really need customers to provide to complete the purchase. Make sure you won’t ask for the same information twice. For example, if you need the buyer’s name for both payment and shipping, don’t make them type their name twice. In case the shopper has the same billing and shipping address, there should be a check-off box to indicate that.

Another solution is shifting to a one-page checkout, which allows buyers to complete purchases on one page. As more and more shoppers now make their orders via mobile devices, single-page checkout will make your site perform better.

4.6. Write A Compelling Product Description

To make customers like and trust you, you must have a killer product description. The advantage of a single-product store is that you need to focus on only one product. So, an attractive description means so much to your sales. 

The key to writing a compelling description is to show how your good’s features make the consumer’s life easier. For instance, a high heel brand should highlight how their high heels allow wearers to walk confidently without feeling pain. The writer should describe it to the level that readers can really feel that feeling of comfort in the words.

Read more: How To Write A High-Converting Shopify Product Description With Formula

4.7. Leverage Psychology Tactics

Smart business owners never fail to boost conversion rates by using some psychology tricks. Simply speaking, they are tactics that make people craving for your product without directly persuading them to buy. Leveraging just one psychology tactic is enough to bring you a surprising increase in sales. So, take a look at the following principles to see what works best for your one-product store.

• Scarcity - the urge to buy before goods are sold out. A common strategy is selling limited edition products, which makes shoppers feel they may miss something special without buying now.
• Urgency - the need to buy before it’s too late. An example is selling items at discounted prices in just a few hours. It could quickly lead people to an impulse purchase!
• Social Proof - the demand to buy because people around you have purchased that product.
• Price anchoring - the practice of showing a price point to which people can refer for making a purchase. If a discount is like “$50 $29”, it means $50 is the anchored price for $29.
• Other tactics can be Authority, Framing Effect, Reciprocity, etc.

4.8. Optimize Mobile Version

You shouldn’t launch your one product Shopify store unless you have it optimized for mobile. Besides choosing a suitable theme, there are some tactics you can utilize to improve your customer’s shopping experience.

• Ensure a smooth checkout: A multiple page checkout may discourage buyers from finishing the process. As mentioned above, shifting to one-page checkout can resolve such an issue. Also, you must display add-to-cart buttons in the front and center of your product page.
• Minimize text on the product page: As you have much less white space for the mobile version, cramming your site with lengthy content can hurt conversion rates. If possible, you should narrow down the content to remain essential information only.
• Speed up the site: If your store takes more than 2 seconds to load, your sales are taking a hit. While images and videos are engaging for desktop viewing, they are against your mobile version. The best tool for testing your store’s load time on mobile is Test My Site by Google.
• Simplify the navigation: So many navigation levels can make your menu look complicated. For a more seamless shopping experience,  you need to keep only the most essential pages at the forefront of your navigation.

V. One Product Shopify Dropshipping Store?

You may have heard a lot about dropshipping business. And it is common to see one product dropshipping model. The big difference between a normal store and a dropshipping store is that dropshippers don’t stock items themselves but customers will get products delivered by a third party.

If you want to choose just one product to sell for your Shopify dropshipping store, find product ideas on big marketplaces like AliExpress or using a tool like SaleSource to look for a profitable item. 

After that, use Shopify to build the website with the mentioned steps.

Read more: Top Successful Dropshipping Stores for Inspiration

VI. Top 03 successful Single-Product Shopify store

Do you know what it takes to create a winning Shopify landing page? Check out the video below before jumping into the inspiration list below.

#1: Ratio Coffee

You can see what Ratio Coffee is selling right after entering their website. It's a coffee making machine. The store has a simple navigation bar and a big animated banner which showcase their Ratio Six product. 

Also, when you click on a product page, it has all necessary descriptions with images and also many 5-star reviews from their customers showing how their coffee is better after using the product.

#2: Truff Hot Sauce

Truff Hot Sauce knows how to get visitors’ attention with a big image on top of their home page. They show you the line of truffle oil-infused hot sauces with a captivating slogan “The pinnacle of heat experience" and a clear CTA button “Taste Truff". 

Further reading: Selling Food Online: How To Build Your Own eCommerce F&B Business 

#3: Dryrobe 

Dryrobe is selling high-quality waterproof and windproof robes for sport lovers, especially water sport athletes. Visitors will love their online presence because of the professional animated hero image that contains fantastic scenes of surfing and swimming people wearing Dryrobe products.

Also, this UK-based brand has partnered with many huge names like “RedBull" or “GoPro" to supply them with their kit at the Rio Olympics 2016.

Summary

Selling one product online gives more advantages than you ever thought. You will have time to be creative with your brand and make it special. You can easily build an intuitive and attractive website using the Shopify platform. So, if you already plan out everything from product idea to content strategy, why don’t roll up your sleeves and start building your store on Shopify right now? You can use the free trial first. Also, check out this article to understand Shopify pricing plan to make sure if you are in the right investment.