With the ever-growing competition in the e-commerce industry, spying on your competitors’ Shopify stores has become essential for staying ahead of the game. Fortunately, there are various Shopify spy tools available that can provide valuable insights without breaking the bank. In this article, we will explore the best ways to spy on Shopify stores for free in 2024 and how these tools can be leveraged to gain a competitive edge.
Spy on Shopify Stores
How to use a Shopify spy tool for competitor research
A Shopify spy tool is a game-changer when it comes to competitor research. By using these tools, you can gain valuable insights into your competitors’ strategies, product offerings, and marketing tactics. When conducting competitor research, it’s crucial to focus on key metrics such as store traffic, sales performance, and product popularity to identify areas where your business can improve.
Benefits of spying on your competitors’ Shopify stores
Spying on your competitors’ Shopify stores can provide a multitude of benefits for your own business. By analyzing their store layout, product pricing, and customer engagement strategies, you can gain a better understanding of market trends and consumer preferences. This valuable information can then be used to refine your own marketing and sales tactics, ultimately driving higher conversions and revenue.
Top Shopify spy tools to use for free
When it comes to accessing free Shopify spy tools, there are several options to consider. Tools like Commerce Inspector, Koala Inspector, and Chrome extensions offer free plans with basic features that can still provide valuable insights into your competitors’ Shopify stores. These tools are user-friendly and can be easily integrated into your browser to start monitoring your competitors effortlessly.
Shopify Store Analysis
Using a spy tool to analyze successful Shopify stores
Analyzing successful Shopify stores can offer a wealth of knowledge for store optimization. By using a spy tool, you can delve into the strategies employed by top-performing Shopify stores, including their product selection, ad campaigns, and customer engagement techniques. This analysis can then be used to fine-tune your own store for improved performance and customer satisfaction.
Optimizing your Shopify store with insights from spy tools
Spy tools provide a comprehensive overview of your competitors’ store metrics, enabling you to identify areas that require improvement in your own Shopify store. Leveraging these insights, you can optimize your store layout, update product offerings, and enhance your marketing strategies to attract more traffic and boost sales.
Unlocking winning products by spying on top Shopify stores
By spying on top Shopify stores, you can uncover winning products that are driving significant sales for your competitors. Utilizing spy tools to identify these products, along with their customer reviews and pricing strategies, can offer valuable inspiration for expanding your own product line and capturing new market segments.
Ad Spy and Competitor Research
How to spy on Facebook ads of Shopify stores
Facebook ads play a pivotal role in the marketing strategies of Shopify stores. With ad spy tools, you can gain visibility into the ad campaigns of your competitors on Facebook. This includes insights into ad creatives, targeted demographics, and ad spend, allowing you to craft more effective and compelling ad campaigns for your own Shopify store.
Using ad spy tools for Shopify competitor research
Ad spy tools provide in-depth analysis of the ad strategies used by Shopify competitors, enabling you to gain insights into the types of ads that are resonating with their target audience. By leveraging this information, you can tailor your own ad content and placements to maximize engagement and drive conversions.
Identifying successful ad campaigns using Shopify spy tools
Successful ad campaigns can serve as a source of inspiration for your marketing initiatives. With Shopify spy tools, you can uncover the ad campaigns that have yielded high conversion rates for your competitors. By analyzing the messaging, imagery, and call-to-action elements of these successful campaigns, you can adapt and optimize your own ad content for improved performance.
Dropshipping Insights
Spying on dropshipping stores to find successful products
Dropshipping is a popular e-commerce model, and spying on dropshipping stores can offer valuable insights into trending products and niche markets. Using spy tools, you can identify successful dropshipping products, assess their demand, and capitalize on emerging trends to expand your own dropshipping product line.
Using spy tools to research keywords for dropshipping stores
Keyword research is crucial for optimizing your dropshipping store’s SEO and driving organic traffic. Spy tools provide visibility into the keywords and phrases used by successful dropshipping stores, allowing you to refine your own keyword strategy and enhance the discoverability of your products.
Exploring top dropshipping stores with Shopify spy tools
Shopify spy tools offer the ability to explore top-performing dropshipping stores, providing insights into their product offerings, pricing strategies, and customer engagement tactics. By analyzing these stores, you can gain inspiration and ideas for enhancing your own dropshipping business and tapping into lucrative market segments.
Free Shopify Spy Tools
How to maximize the features of free Shopify spy tools
Free Shopify spy tools may offer limited features compared to their premium counterparts, but they still provide valuable insights for competitor research and store optimization. To maximize the benefits of these tools, it’s essential to explore and familiarize yourself with their functionalities, such as store analytics, product research, and ad monitoring.
Utilizing free trial periods of Shopify spy tools
Many Shopify spy tools offer free trial periods, allowing you to experience their full range of features before making a purchase decision. Take advantage of these trial periods to explore the tools’ capabilities, evaluate their compatibility with your business needs, and assess their effectiveness in providing actionable insights for your Shopify store.
Top Shopify spy tools with free plans for store analysis
Several top Shopify spy tools offer free plans tailored for store analysis. These plans typically include basic features such as competitor monitoring, product trend identification, and ad campaign insights. By leveraging these free plans, you can gain valuable data to inform your strategic decisions and enhance the performance of your Shopify store.
By harnessing the power of Shopify spy tools, business owners can gain a competitive advantage by staying informed about their competitors’ strategies, customer engagements, and successful products. Whether you are new to the e-commerce landscape or seeking to boost the performance of your existing Shopify store, utilizing free spy tools can provide valuable insights to propel your business forward in 2024 and beyond.
7 Ways to Spy on Shopify Stores
This article explores the various techniques you can use to spy on your competition. Some require you to spend money, while others need some inspiration and creativity.
Any technique you choose will help you find valuable information to help grow your business.
Alright. Enough of the talk. Let’s learn something new!
1. Use spy tools
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This is, by far, the most popular method. It involves selecting a Shopify spy tool from the sea of tools in the market. You pay a subscription fee and use it to spy on one or more Shopify stores.
It is preferred because it is straightforward. Subscriptions can cost you as little as $20 and as much as $700. It depends on your budget, team size, and the information you seek.
Examples of Shopify spy tools include but are not limited to:
- Sell The Trend. They are known for identifying winning products. However, the company also offers a tool called Store Intelligence, which you can use to analyze your competitors.
Anstrex. It primarily focuses on product research but can help you discover successful products in other Shopify stores.
BigSpy. Focuses on ad spying.
Meta Ad Library. It is not built as a spy tool but can be used for that purpose.
Ali Hunter. Browser extension for checking the revenue other Shopify stores generate and additional essential information like best sellers.
Each tool has been built with a specific purpose in mind.
Some focus on spying on ads, while others focus on the products Shopify stores sell. Your needs ultimately determine which tool is suitable for you.
2. Use Google text search
“Wait, what? You mean I can spy on Shopify stores with Google?”
Oh yes, good old Google. It works like a charm if you know what to ask. You’ll see what we mean.
Remember that this technique is appropriate in the market research phase. You don’t know what to sell yet, but you have an idea of the niche you want to get into.
Suppose you are looking for product ideas in the sunglasses niche. Here’s what you need to do.
- Find a keyword that most stores in your niche of interest will likely have on their website. Let’s go with ‘polarized’ from polarized sunglasses. Single-word keywords cast a wide net with plenty of relevant results; we want this.
- Build a query to give to Google. How, you ask?
- We want results from Shopify stores only. And we know every Shopify website is assigned a subdomain on myshopify.com by default. For instance, alo-yoga.myshopify.com is the Shopify domain for aloyoga.com.So, the appropriate Google query to restrict the search is site:myshopify.com.
- Then, we want product results only from different websites. To achieve this, we tell Google to only return results from websites with URLs that include ‘/products/‘ (without quotation marks). All Shopify store product pages have the same URL structure that includes that phrase.The Google query, in this case, is inurl:/products/
- After that, we request Google only to return results that include the word ‘polarized‘ in their text anywhere on the product page.The query that achieves this is intext:”polarized” (wrap your keyword in double quotation marks if it has more than one word).Note: If you have several keywords, create similar queries for each keyword. Using all your words in the same query won’t yield any results. Google will assume your text to be one keyword.
- If you have done everything described in the previous steps, you should end up with something like this ‘site:myshopify.com inurl:/products/ intext:”polarized“.’
- Press enter and let Google do its magic.
After getting the results you want from Google, click on different results and check out their products.
Use tools like Similarweb to check out the traffic on the website, their marketing channels, and other stats.
3. Identify the products on the carousel on the home page
We know. This sounds too obvious. Why would anyone lay bare their winning product for all to see? Shouldn’t they make it harder for competitors to find their best sellers?
Think about it.
As a store owner, your main priority is not your competitors. Your highest priority is your customer. You want to give them the best experience so they can return, right?
This is precisely why you take an image of your best-selling product and incorporate it into your carousel’s design.
Doing this makes the product pronounced; customers can point it out faster when they land on your website.
Consequently, the sales of that product are likely to skyrocket!
This, of course, assumes that you have significant quality traffic on your website. Not sure how to get high-quality, organic traffic?
Now, we are not the only ones who think this logic works. Many store owners know that making it easy for customers to find your best seller is a good idea. After all, one product can account for most of your store’s revenue.
Some stores will turn this off, but you can read here how to beat them!
So, the next time you visit a Shopify store you’re spying on, check out those pronounced products. They are bright and always begging for you to click on them. They are not pronounced by mistake.
There is a caveat to this tough. Not all stores do this. Some don’t even have carousels, to begin with. But this information should always be at the back of your mind.
Note: Even when you visit non-Shopify websites, this information will help you easily identify winners. The logic is the same across different stores on the internet!
4. Use Google lens
The Google Lens search is simple. It is suitable for your product research phase.
Before proceeding, we recommend you have an idea of the product you wish to sell and a few photos.
This method is even better if the product is sourced from a standard site like AliExpress.
Google Lens can find the supplier for you. It doesn’t happen all the time, but you can get lucky.
Here’s what you need to do:
- Go to google.com and click the small camera icon on the right of the search text box.
- Drag and drop the product photo in the box that appears. Click Search.
- Google Lens will list all web pages where that image or similar images appear. Perfect!
- Go through the list and explore the stores that show up.
Remember, you can combine this method with the Google text search for refined results.
5. Order two items from a competitor a month apart
Let’s say you want to launch a new business. Your gut tells you it can work, but your mind is insistent on finding proof.
Your proof will come from identifying some stores and investigating their daily, weekly, or monthly revenue.
To do this, you must first use the Google search text method we reviewed earlier to find similar businesses online. You could also pick the ones you already know.
Pick one website, then browse it to identify the cheapest-selling product. ‘Cheap’ may vary greatly depending on the niche you’re in.
Make an order for the item and note the date and time. Then wait.
After 30 or 31 days, find the same item and make another order. Wait for it to arrive.
Each order comes with a receipt that contains a receipt number. Ideally, the receipt number is incremented for every order. (Usually, you will receive an email with the number as well)
If you subtract the receipt number on your last order from your first, you should have the total number of orders the Shopify store has had in between.
Given your understanding of the business, create a list of potential average order values for the store. Multiply each average order value by the number of orders, and you will have a list of possible revenue values from the store.
This process may take a long time but provides tangible proof of a business’s average revenue. However, it might be expensive if:
- You intend to use it in multiple stores.
- The products in your niche are expensive, even the least expensive ones.
Disclaimer: There is no guarantee that the store you spy on will calculate receipt numbers incrementally.
If this is the case, use other numbers on the parcel documents that could suggest incremental use, like invoice numbers.
6. Use the revenue formula to determine the average Shopify store revenue
Another nifty way to estimate the revenue is to use the revenue formula.
It is simple to use and provides a straightforward answer. However, you need to get a few things right to get the closest estimate:
- Shopify store traffic. You will need to use a tool for this. There are plenty of tools that will estimate the traffic of a website at no cost. For instance, Similarweb is a popular, reliable, and reasonably accurate tool.
- The conversion rate of your niche. Each niche has a unique conversion rate guided by the average price of products in the niche. For instance, a niche with high-ticket items like lawnmowers will have a lower conversion rate.A niche like apparel has a higher conversion rate because apparel is cheaper.
- The average product price on a Shopify store. This figure can be a bit tedious to calculate, but it is easier if you have some experience in the niche. Calculate the sum of all prices on the website and divide by the total number of products.If you have some experience in your niche, you probably already know the average product price. Use that.
How do you calculate a Shopify store revenue?
Shopify store revenue = Estimated monthly traffic X Conversation rate X Average product price
Assuming the estimated traffic is 10,000, the average conversion rate is 2%, and the average product price is $20. The store revenue will be:
Shopify store revenue = 10,000 X (2/100) X 20
This gives an average revenue of that store as $4,000.
The accuracy of the results you get highly relies on the figures you provide. Take your time to find the most practical numbers before investing in that niche. Using tools with a good reputation can help you find reliable results.
Additionally, we recommend using this method and other revenue-spying techniques to get a clearer picture of a store’s revenue.
So far, we have looked at several strategies you can use to find competitors, discover what your competitors are selling, and calculate average Shopify store revenue.
However, you can learn more about a competitor from their social media pages than you think. Most Shopify stores will list their social media pages in their footers. From these pages, you can:
- Determine a business’s content strategy. You can assess a business’s content to determine its publishing frequency, the focus of its content, its content creation techniques, etc.
- Determine its marketing strategy. It is difficult to unearth a business’s entire marketing strategy. However, you can collect clues on its goals depending on where it publishes and its target audience.
- Examine the quality of its customer support. You can make attempts to interact with your competitors through their social media platforms. Ask them questions that will help you determine the strength of their customer support.
- Estimate the financial capabilities of a business. If a business has sufficient financial power, it will be evident from the quality of its content. Companies with more access to capital tend to have higher-quality content.This can be a tricky metric to use because some businesses with less capital will find creative ways to create quality content, which can be misleading.Be sure to check out other signals of financial power, such as employee headcount and office location and size.
- Find valuable unintended information. Looking around a competitor’s social media platforms, you can find helpful information you weren’t privy to.For instance, you might realize that your competitor is gaining public trust faster than you because they are collaborating with a certain influential individual.
Conclusion
No matter how valuable, information only means something if acted upon. The methods we have reviewed in this article are simple but powerful.
As an established business, you’re probably better off using paid tools. Tools meet your needs faster. They also have robust reporting capabilities that present the information you need in valuable ways.
If your goal is to find winning dropshipping products other Shopify stores are selling, we have an article on The 17 Best Winning Dropshipping Product Research Tools.
It wouldn’t hurt to use one of the free methods for exploration occasionally. Each method has its strengths that could prove useful to your cause.
Beginners, in contrast, especially those on a budget, are better off using the free methods to spy on competing Shopify stores. Not only do you get the information you need, but you also acquire much-needed qualities and skills in the process.
Beginners can gain qualities like patience and intuitiveness. Additionally, research and critical thinking skills can also be acquired. These things are crucial to a business’s success.
