“Can I sell services on Shopify?”
Yes, you definitely can.
Some people might only know that Shopify is a product-based eCommerce solution. In fact, it doesn't matter if you are selling physical items, virtual products or services on this platform.
After all, what Shopify does is to bring your business to the web in order to reach a greater number of customers and reach higher sales and revenue.
Perhaps you’ve heard about the popular freelance service marketplace called Fiverr. If you are a copywriter, designer, accountant or even a joke writer, you can easily set up an account and make money as a freelancer on the site.
But what if you want to have your own website in the long run? Or what if you want to provide a more professional online service and grow your business? Well, Shopify could be the choice to consider.
That's the reason why in this article, we are going to give you an overview of how Shopify can help with your service business and a tutorial video about setting up a good Shopify service store.
Check out:
Contents
- What Services to Sell on Shopify?
- How to Sell Services on Shopify?
- Sell your service as a product
- Set variants and options to personalize booking experience
- Utilize booking apps
- Put a Service Shopify Store into Practice
- Shopify Service Store Examples
- Conclusion
What Services to Sell on Shopify?
As mentioned earlier, people can sell almost anything on Shopify. So, if you have an incredible service and want more people to be aware of it, why don’t you go ahead and create an online store?
Here are some examples of the services:
Credit: Tooth Doctor
Credit: Petsfolio
You can learn more about the types of services to sell on Shopify in this article.
Related article:
- Selling Digital Products On Shopify: A How-To Guide
- How To Scale Up Your Sticker Business And Sell Stickers Online Like A Pro
How to Sell Services on Shopify?
Sell your service as a product
You can think of it this way: you’re selling an “intangible" product. You can add your service on Shopify as a product, but you uncheck the box labelled “this is a physical product" in the “Shipping" section.
For the “product description”, you should pay attention to the value of your service. The benefits and outcomes that customers will gain during and after using your service is important.
You are selling promises, so having a compelling description is an essential factor that affects customers’ decision-making process. People will come to use your service when they find the potential value that matches theirs.
Credit: Petco
Set variants and options to personalize booking experience
You can't miss the variants and custom requests part. The flexibility of your service is one of the reasons why customers choose you. You can offer them different booking times, locations and service types.
Also, for each variant, you can set up a certain price. For example, you have 2 types of training lessons: 60-minute ($65) and 90-minute ($75) courses. You can set up the price changing on the product page when users choose different courses.
Another thing to remember is that you can add more fields and forms for customers when they have custom requests.
Utilize booking apps
One great thing about Shopify is that it has a huge ecosystem of app providers. When you sell services on Shopify, you can make use of the great form builder and booking apps for personal service requirements.
For the custom product builder, you can use Product Personalizer by Zepto to add more fields for custom requests.
Credit: Product Personalizer App
Otherwise, there is another popular app: Form Builder App by POWR.io. It lets you create order forms, wholesale quote forms and more. Also, this app offers a free plan, so you don’t have to worry about monthly-charged fees for your store.
In terms of appointment booking apps, a couple of quick searches on the Shopify App Store reveals multiple options for you. Some recommendations are:
Put a Service Shopify Store into Practice
Get a proper theme to set up your store
There are many ways to find a suitable theme for your service store on Shopify. You can get one in the Shopify Theme Store, or from theme marketplaces like MOJO or Themeforest.
Or, you can refer to these themes below. We’ve hand-picked 5 examples of Shopify themes (both free and paid) that are fitting for services.
Brooklyn is a great choice for a service Shopify store because this theme creates a lot of space for large imagery and other custom content to visually describe your service. You can also show videos (YouTube or Vimeo) on the homepage to educate people about your business.
Check out this article: Shopify Brooklyn theme features review
This theme provides you with a slideshow and promotion banner. You can display multiple brand
images with a captivating heading about your service to draw people's attention.
Read this article: Shopify Venture theme in-depth review
If you’re running a business like a cleaning service, Hygene might be the best choice. You can showcase many services with special discount offers right from the homepage.
Garden Center is a “green" choice for your “green" service. If you are operating a landscaping service or selling gardening equipment, the theme is a decent one. There are many content sections on the homepage where you can add big images and blog article previews, which help you to advance the visual storytelling aspect of your service.
PetFood is a friendly theme for pet lovers and is also designed to be a great web layout for pet caring services.
5 Steps to Building a Shopify Service Store
Now you’ve settled on a theme, let’s get down to business.
Step 1: Add your services as products on Shopify
This first step is important because it makes it more convenient when you build your homepage later, which needs to showcase the services on the main site. You can add services as normal products, with descriptions and images.
Go to Products > Add product > Change the title, description and add media
Showcase the most stunning photos of your service and add a detailed description with valuable information to attract your customers.
Also, remember to uncheck the box “This is a physical product" in the “Shipping" section.
Step 2: Using variants and third-party apps to customize your service
If you are selling courses, how many types of lessons can you offer your customers? If you open a hair salon or spa service, what specific time can customers book appointments? And what service types can you offer them?
There are likely many variants that you can think of. The good news is, you can create and manage them easily on Shopify.
Flexibility is also important for a Shopify service business. People like unique things, and they might want a diverse service capability from you. For this, having a form or a field to fill in custom requests is essential.
To this end, installing an app is the perfect solution. For example, you can use the Product Personalizer by Zepto to add fields or form boxes in the product details for more requests.
Step 3: Build a compelling homepage
When you sell services on Shopify, it pays to have an immediately convincing homepage. Obviously, it still has to be responsive and user-friendly, but the key point here is to show what value customers can get from a quick look at the homepage.
Two of the elements that can help reinforce customer trust are testimonials or reviews on the homepage. After reading all the introductions of your service, people will want to see some previous outcomes. They want to know if it is worth spending the money on your service.
Credit: Garden Center Theme
Step 4: Get an attractive ‘about us’ page
Why? Because the About Us page is the place for your story to shine. This page is where you can add more information about your business so that people can learn and understand your missions and values.
Helpful text and images on the page are great, but adding team members’ images and some brief descriptions about them gives a natural and friendly feel to your store.
Credit: Engine Studios
If you want to customize the About Us page, you can choose a page builder app like PageFly to make it look more interesting and responsive. PageFly gives you tons of cool templates for your About Us page, and you can easily customize it with the drag-and-drop tools on the app's simple and clean interface.
Step 5: Check your store on mobile
Since more than 60% of internet users use shopping apps on their mobile devices, you should keep an eye on the mobile version of your website. You need to check the loading speed and also the responsive looks as well. Believe us, you don't want to miss any opportunity of getting more sales with the great number of potential mobile-loving customers.
Read more: Are you looking for in-demand trending products to sell in 2021? Here are top 20 trending product that you need to know
Shopify Service Store Examples
Eat Well Nashville
This is a food delivery and catering service store using Shopify. You can pick the menu with its seasonal dishes and easily place your order to get the food delivered to your front door every Sunday or Monday.
In one of the more recent Shopify articles, Spencer, the restaurant owner, shared his thoughts about the importance of an attractive online store to gain more customers for a successful business:
“Felix: What are the most important pages or parts of your website for getting conversions, whether that be the first time customers or returning customers?
Spencer: All comes down to the menu, and a lot of it honestly is just photography. Your eyes have to have a response to the way the menu items look because we're introducing a lot of new items and if those items don't look great, we're not going to receive orders even if they taste great. So our menu pages, we've got a handful of menu pages. We've got our regular breakfast, lunch and dinner menu, which is our highest converting page. But we also have built your own options where customers can pick the protein and the two sides they want for their meals. We've got family-style options, we've got kids options, bulk options. So all of those pages really convert well. But it's all on the main menu page and then the sub-menu pages are where all the conversions happen.”
Engine Studios
Engine Studios is a web service company that helps build your own website and also gives you consultations for eCommerce problems.
They have been working with so many popular brands such as DHL, MTV or FOX International Channel.
Fitzroy
Fitzroy is a rental service. People can rent a dress from normal to designer brands in a certain number of predetermined days. There are many variants on their product pages for customers to choose from, such as sizes, number of rental days or which date to get the dress.
If you want to sell Shopify store, here are some best practices for you to get started.
Conclusion
As a reputed eCommerce solution, Shopify can be a platform that helps merchants sell both physical and non-physical products. As you’ve seen, selling services on Shopify is totally possible and might be a great choice for some people if they know how to take advantage of it.
So, if you come up with an idea of launching your service online at the moment, why don’t you try to set up a store on Shopify first, and then decide whether or not to keep running your service store with the eCommerce solution?
