Essential tips for running a successful Shopify store

Running a successful Shopify store comes down to a few habits: make products easy to find, keep the store usable for everyone and on every phone, keep checkout short, stop orders you can’t deliver, and let Shopify’s own reports tell you what to fix next. These essential tips show where each setting lives in the Shopify admin, as of November 2026.

In short:

• Clear menus, search filters and a look at what customers search for

• Readable contrast, real alt text and link text that says where it goes

• Guest checkout, fewer fields and address autocomplete left on

• Rules that stop undeliverable addresses before payment, and a monthly look at your reports

Make products easy to find

Shoppers buy what they can find quickly. A short menu, working filters and a regular look at search terms do most of the work.

Keep the main menu short

Edit menus under Content → Menus in the Shopify admin. Group products the way customers shop, by type, use or audience, not by how your warehouse is organized. Keep the top level to a handful of items and put the rest in drop-downs.

Add filters with Shopify Search & Discovery

Shopify Search & Discovery is Shopify’s free app for storefront search and filters. It lets shoppers filter collections and search results by availability, price, product type, brand, tags and your own product data. Shopify’s filter guide lists the limits: up to 25 filters per store, filters don’t show on collections with more than 5,000 products, and your theme has to support them.

Check what customers search for

Shopify’s behaviour reports include “Searches with no results” and “Searches with no clicks”. Look at both every month. A term with no results usually means a missing synonym, a product named differently from how customers say it, or a product you should stock.

Design for accessibility

An accessible store is one that people with low vision, colour blindness or a screen reader can use, and it is easier for everyone else too. Shopify’s accessibility guidelines for themes, written with the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) in mind, give clear targets:

• Body and button text: a contrast ratio of at least 4.5:1 against the background

• Headings and large text (24 px and up): at least 3:1

• Body text no smaller than the equivalent of 16 px

• Text links underlined or otherwise clearly distinct from regular text

• Alt text on every meaningful image, written as if you were describing it to someone with their eyes closed

Write link and button text that says what happens: “Add to cart” or “Read the returns policy”, never “click here”, which tells a screen reader user nothing.

In Ontario, businesses and non-profits with 50 or more employees have had to make public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA since January 1, 2021. Even if that rule doesn’t apply to you, the targets above are a good baseline.

Build for phones first

Check the share of sessions by device in Shopify’s reports. If phones bring most of your traffic, design and test on a phone first and treat desktop as the second screen.

• Buy something on your own store with your phone, from the home page to the confirmation page, at least once a month.

• Make sure text doesn’t break awkwardly and images don’t push the price and buy button off the first screen.

• Show accelerated checkout buttons such as Shop Pay, Apple Pay and Google Pay on product pages. Shopify’s guide to accelerated checkouts explains how they let returning shoppers skip the cart and pay with saved details.

• Count the taps from product page to order. Every step you remove is one less chance to change their mind.

Keep checkout short

Shopify runs the checkout itself, so your job is to keep its settings lean. Three settings matter most.

Keep guest checkout

Signing in is optional by default, and it should stay that way for most stores. In Shopify’s checkout form options (Settings → Checkout), requiring sign-in limits customers to email as their contact method and hides accelerated options such as Apple Pay from the cart. Offer an account after the order instead.

Remove fields you don’t need

On the same page, set the company name, address line 2 and phone number to Don’t include, Optional or Required. Ask only for what you or your carrier really use. Shopify warns that making address line 2 required, or removing it, can stop some customers from completing their purchase.

Leave address autocomplete on

Address suggestions are on by default in 23 countries and regions, including Canada and the US, and checkout can also flag shipping addresses that look wrong (Shopify’s address collection settings). Don’t run Shopify’s validation and a third-party validation app at the same time; Shopify notes that the combination can lower checkout conversion.

Stop orders you can’t deliver

An order you can’t ship costs more than one you never took. The most common case is a PO Box: UPS, FedEx and DHL Express can’t deliver to one, so if your rates are all couriers, those orders come back.

You can stop them at checkout with Shopify’s own address rule, by hiding courier rates for PO Box addresses, or with an app. Read how to block PO Box addresses in Shopify →

msmtech’s Ultimate PO Box Blocker runs inside Shopify checkout and can also block parcel lockers, military addresses and postal codes you choose, with rules by product or shipping method. It is a monthly or yearly subscription with a 30-day free trial.

While you’re there, check that every product has a weight and that each shipping zone has the rates you expect. Read how to set up Shopify shipping profiles, zones and rates →

Use Shopify’s data to decide what to fix

Shopify already records where shoppers drop off and who your best customers are. Three places are worth a monthly visit.

Recover abandoned checkouts

Shopify counts a checkout as abandoned when it stays incomplete for more than ten minutes after the customer has entered an email address. Turn on the “Abandoned checkout emails by Shopify” automation under Apps → Messaging → Automations, and review the list under Orders → Abandoned checkouts (Shopify’s guide). If one product shows up again and again, look at its price, shipping cost and delivery time before you send another discount.

Find the customers most likely to buy again

In customer segments, the predicted spend tier sorts customers who have bought into High, Medium and Low, based on how often and how recently they ordered and how much they spend. It needs more than 100 sales (Shopify’s guide to predicted spend tier). Send your next launch or early-access offer to the High tier first.

Watch the conversion funnel

The Conversion rate breakdown report shows how many sessions add to cart, reach checkout and complete it. The weakest step is where to work. Read how to find the bottleneck in your Shopify funnel → If it’s the product page, these five product page tweaks are the place to start.

A monthly checklist for your Shopify store

When we hand a Shopify store over at msmtech, we leave the owner a short routine like this one:

1. Place a test order on your phone and note anything slow or confusing.

2. Read the searches with no results and fix the top three.

3. Check the abandoned checkouts list for products that repeat.

4. Look at the conversion funnel by device and compare it with last month.

5. Confirm that shipping rates still match what labels cost you.

Frequently asked questions

Is Shopify Search & Discovery free?

Yes. Search & Discovery is made by Shopify and free to install from the Shopify App Store. Filters only appear if your theme supports them, which most current themes do.

Does my Shopify store have to meet accessibility rules in Canada?

It depends on where you operate and your size. In Ontario, businesses with 50 or more employees must make public websites meet WCAG 2.0 Level AA. Rules elsewhere differ, so check with a legal adviser if you are unsure.

Do I need apps to run a successful Shopify store?

Start with what Shopify includes: Search & Discovery, Messaging for abandoned checkouts, customer segments and reports. Add an app only for a specific gap, such as blocking addresses your carriers can’t reach, and remove apps you no longer use, since each one can slow the store.

How long does it take to see results from these changes?

Settings such as guest checkout and address autocomplete work from the next order. For changes to pages and menus, give each one at least two full weeks before you judge it, and compare the same days of the week.

Want a store set up this way from day one? msmtech’s Ecommerce Suite builds the site and the store together, typically in one to two months.