Getting more and more customers is the ultimate goal for all Shopify store owners. But what happens when you start getting visitors from locations that you do not ship to or want to sell to?
They become unwanted guests, right? And you would want them to stop visiting your store using a country blocker app.
Table Of Content
1. Article Brief
2. Reasons Why You Need To Use A Geo-Location Country Blocker App
3. 5 Benefits Of Using A Country Blocker For Your Shopify Store
4. Wrap
One way this unwanted guest affects a store merchant is that it inflates the visitors you get on your store per time. You might have high traffic and wonder why the traffic does not birth you more sales. Having this experience shows that your store is getting traffic from countries that are not within your sales jurisdiction.
If you do not sell worldwide or you sell to selected countries, you need to streamline the traffic you get on your store to your target customers. This way you can know the real-time traffic of potential customers and work towards converting them to regular buyers.
Creating A Block List For Your Shopify Store With Geo Location Apps: Storebundle VS Open Geo
Not having a real traffic count might not help with ascertaining certain e-commerce metrics such as customer retention rate, churn rate, average order value, etc. Using an inflated customer count will come with a wrong result that does not tell the true picture of your store.
To keep your Shopify traffic count sane, you might need to restrict access to users from locations that do not bring sales to your store. Once such locations do not have access to your store, you got a better chance to get more results from marketing activities.
There are several reasons why Shopify store owners restrict certain customers from chosen locations from gaining access to their stores. Some of which we would be discussing in this article.
Reasons Why You Need To Use A Geo-Location Country Blocker App
1. Block Spam Bots
Spam bots are one of the many contributors to false or inflated customer count for Shopify stores.
When spam bots are not properly handled, there is quite some damage they can cause to your store. Spam bots inflate the customers/visitors count you have on your Shopify dashboard which might pose a false report of true strength when it comes to customer acquisition. Some bots go as far as creating fake accounts, generating orders that are unreal, and causing difficulties for store owners to track.
How To Get Rid Of Amazon Bots That Spam Your Shopify Store’s Traffic.
Some store owners gnash over how spam bots flood their comment or message sections with messages. When this occurs too much, merchants can lose out on real customers when things become really overwhelming.
Hence, blocking spam bots on your Shopify store can help you take away this hurdle and give you the real picture of your customer count.
To block spam bots, you need to track their location source and block that area from accessing your store. Spam bots also access websites using a proxy connection (VPN), you can restrict VPN access on your website to reduce traffic from bots.
What do you do when this area is your major market?
You can put up a message on how real customers (humans) can request a ban lift. This way you can whitelist such customer’s IP address using the whitelist feature on StoreBundle. Although, this blacklist might be for a while as spam bots will reduce over time.
2. Restrict Traffic From Unwanted Locations
Some store merchants are not capable or have no plan to sell internationally or sell to countries outside their locality due to shipping issues and other reasons. So gaining traffic from countries you do not ship to would be unnecessary and put much pressure on your store.
The moment you get more traffic than your e-commerce platform can bear, you might experience slow site speed which can negatively affect your original target market. And once customers find your site very difficult or slow to load, it might stand as friction to continuing with their orders.
When you get bogus traffic you might be bothered if the sales conversion rate is not commensurate with the traffic count. Since you have visitors from locations that are not within your target, it might be difficult to get the real customer count that is within your target location.
Using this feature can help you keep your customer count in shape and also help you know the true state of your store as well as determine other valuable e-commerce metrics.
3. Shipping Restrictions/Challenges
When customers order products, it is left to the store owner to arrange how to get the order to the buyer. Shipping is a major challenge for Shopify merchants, especially to countries that are quite far from their source warehouses or distribution centers.
With this in mind, a store owner can decide not to sell to locations that might pose difficulty to ship orders to. Sometimes the reason for streamlining selling to a certain location is due to the high cost of shipping. The farther the location, the higher the cost.
When customers see that the shipping fee is too expensive for the item they order, they might halt their buying. To avoid this from happening frequently, store owners can restrict traffic from those locations to reduce the weight of work they might be getting as a result of that.
4. Streamline Your Marketing Strategy To Potential Customer
Using the blacklist feature for certain geographical areas can help you reach more target customers within your preferred location. When your marketing reaches the right market, your chances of gaining more conversion is higher compared to when your marketing reaches people who are not within your target market.
Rather than scrambling among people in places you do not ship to, you can just restrict traffic to untargeted areas or use the redirect feature to send them to another location that befits their location.
Redirecting such traffic is very prescribable if you own multiple stores that cater to different locations. This also helps you keep this traffic and bring more sales for your store overall.
5. Not Set Up For Certain Geographical Markets
As wide as the e-commerce platform gives retailers the chance to market their products to every part of the world, some retailers prefer a chosen small target market for the product category they sell. Retailers even go as far as selling to certain locations.
Some of the reasons why online retailers do this are listed above. Also, when their product category is not appealing to the general e-commerce market, retailers are prone to restrict store traffic to countries that find their product type interesting.
5 Benefits Of Using A Country Blocker For Your Shopify Store
1. Reduced Fraud: Using the country blocker feature for your store can help reduce fraudulent activities that can happen due to spamming on your store. By restricting spam bots, you can reduce the chances of having fake orders or customer counts. Also, you can prevent orders and traffic from countries with a high incidence of fraud. This can help protect your store from chargebacks and other fraudulent activities.
2. Increased Security: Building trust with your customers is a way to increase sales and customer loyalty. To gain customers’ trust, you need to prove to them that your store is safe with their private information. This includes personal data and credit card details associated with online payments.
A country blocker can also increase the security of your store by preventing hackers and other malicious actors from accessing your site from certain countries.
3. Shipping Costs Reduction: If your store only ships to certain countries, using a country blocker can help reduce shipping costs by preventing orders from countries where you don’t ship. With this, you won’t have to spend unnecessary expenses on your store when shipping costs are too bearable for you.
5 Reasons Why Your Shopify Store Might Need A Country Blocker
4. Better Customer Experience: Instead of outrightly showing visitors from locations you do not sell to the blacklist page, you can use the redirect feature to explain the reason why they are viewing the page. A country blocker can also improve the customer experience by redirecting visitors from countries where your store doesn’t ship to a custom landing page with information about your shipping policies.
5. Increased Revenue: By focusing on countries where you can provide the best customer experience and also gain quality customers, you can increase your store’s revenue by targeting the most profitable markets. However, this will require that you carry out a detailed analysis of profitable markets that can help you reach customers who are interested in your products.
Wrap
It is important to evaluate the pros and cons of using country blockers and make a decision that aligns with your business goals. Because you might lose out on potential customers if you do not weigh the situation properly.
