The size of ecommerce sales worldwide stands at 4.9 trillion USD! Starting an ecommerce business is no longer a tough nut to crack. However, building a website or an online store isn’t enough. You need to decipher the secrets of how to increase ecommerce sales. Spend a few hundred dollars and you will have your own brand new ecommerce website!
With a whopping 23 percent growth rate YoY, keeping calm in the ecommerce business seems difficult! Everybody wants to cash on the opportunities by taking their products and services online.
However, building a website or an online store isn’t enough. You need to decipher the secrets of how to increase ecommerce sales.
Expert tips to boost ecommerce sales
Once you’ve got an awesome online store, there are some easy and inexpensive ways to boost eCommerce sales. Let’s take a look at them!
Build brand awareness
Setting up an eCommerce store is not enough to drive sales. Just like any other form of business, you need to work on building brand awareness. The way you showcase your brand determines its trust factor among your targeted audience. When more people talk about your brand, the higher your sales will grow.
So, how to work on brand building? Quality is what drives trust. From the content that promotes your brand to the products, everywhere you need to focus on quality. Utilize the power of digital marketing to shout out loud about your brand. These are some ways to build your brand:
Leverage paid/non-paid social media marketing techniques to expose your brand to your potential customers.
Make use of referral programs to make more people know about your products/services.
Influencer marketing can help your brand get noticed by many.
Combine SEO and content marketing to improve your brand name’s visibility in search results.
Turn your employees into brand ambassadors.
Build an email list & use email marketing
Having an email list for your online store can help you bring in more sales for your business. It may look like a tough nut to crack in the beginning, but gradually you’ll find it easy. Once you have a list, you can retarget people who have already developed an interest in your products or services. It also provides you with an opportunity to create a community.
So, why does email marketing work so well? The reason being your customers select to opt-in to hear more about your brand and its offerings. This means, you have better control over your email list, which is not quite possible when it comes to social media platforms.
Having an email list can also help you with repeat purchases. You just need to target relevant leads and encourage repeat purchases. This way, you can bring down the amount of revenue you lose when a purchase is not made. Plus, it also offers you the benefit of further upselling opportunities.
Choose the correct social media channels
Does your eCommerce business have social omnipresence? Social media platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter can bring in tons of web traffic to your eCommerce store, thereby driving sales. But, it’s also vital to figure out the platform where your target audience is more likely to engage with your posts.
Your product, the personality of your brand, and your business type – all of these matter when choosing the right social media platform. If you sell something that is more visually appealing, platforms like Instagram and Pinterest would be more effective. If you are looking to offer great services, you should consider platforms like Twitter and Facebook.
Do not ignore SEO!
To increase organic traffic to your ecommerce website, you need to work on the SEO part. Once you optimize your eCommerce website for search engines, the number of visitors coming to your website will shoot up significantly. Some may think that SEO can be time-consuming and too complicated for a regular guy to understand. This is where SEO plugins can simplify the process for you.
Most of the SEO plugins are available for free, and when used, they can bring in excellent ROI for your business. If done correctly, SEO can help your website rank high in SERP (search engine result page) without you having to burn huge amounts of money. You can also use SEO for building customer loyalty, by improving their user experience. The speed of your website and its content play a vital role here.
Make your checkout process smoother
Focusing on your eCommerce website’s design and the interface can ensure your customers have a hassle-free experience. A clear flow at the checkout page can reduce the abandonment rate significantly. In case you don’t know, 68.9 percent is the average online cart abandonment rate! So, how to make the checkout process smoother? Here are a few tips:
Offer multiple payment options making payments convenient for your customers.
Optimize the checkout page for mobile-friendly UX.
Provide the option of guest checkout
Keep additional fees and surprise costs at bay
Highlight trust signals like security badges, SSL seals, etc.
Run promotions
Discounts and offers can convince your potential customers to turn into sure sales. To improve your eCommerce conversion rates, have a clear list of promotions you can run. For example, you can offer first-order discounts to new users. It can bring in the much-needed initial orders.
You can also hire influencers to attract shoppers.
They can create a brand value for your business and even talk out loud about the promotions and offers available. When you incentivize purchase, the flow of new audiences will improve considerably.
Start upselling & cross-selling!
Upselling is a great way to bring in more revenue. This technique is about offering your customer a higher version of the product they want to buy. It can also be some add-ons that may enhance the functionality of the product. If you’ve got great upselling skills, put them into use via your eCommerce website.
Through upselling, you can personalize your customer’s experience, optimize the monetary value of every sale, and retain more customers.
Work on reducing cart abandonment
It’s practically impossible to eliminate cart abandonment entirely. However, you should always try to find what’s stopping your customers from completing the payment process. The data you collect can help you improve your conversion rates.
Many customers find the lack of transparency as a deal breaker when it comes to completing a purchase. They opt out when no clear information is provided on shipping fees, additional costs, and taxes. It makes them re-think their purchase decision. Include all costs on the payment page to offer complete transparency. This way, your customers will feel more interested and invested in the checkout process.
Improve conversion rate by testing
Testing is an effective way to optimize your online store and improve the conversion rate of your marketing plan. It helps you figure out what’s working and what’s not! If you have not tried like 30+ changes to your approach to see how it affects your metrics, you have not experimented enough.
You should A/B test various versions of different marketing channels to truly isolate the aspects that aren’t working. This way, you can improve the conversion rate of your eCommerce site and drive more sales.
Provide excellent customer service to improve customer loyalty
Many shoppers feel happier and satisfied when they get an on-time response. This is where you can implement chatbots into your Ecommerce website. You can also leverage the power of engagement automation tools and convert more visitors into customers. Using such tools, you can push promotional content or even ask your website visitors questions. Focusing on these facets will help improve customer loyalty.
Have a ‘best sellers’ category on your website’s homepage
If you want to make your customers feel excited about your products, do not shy away from listing trending items in the ‘best selling’ category of your eCommerce website. Most eCommerce platforms integrate the bestseller metric into the reports. In these reports, you can find details of the bestsellers by vendor, sales, SKU, and other key metrics. Using them, you can create a Best Sellers category and drive more sales.
Get video testimonials & leverage them!
Did you know that over 70 percent of customers prefer going through online reviews before making a purchase? Whenever a purchase is made, prompt the customer to rate and review the product. It can be even better if you can get testimonials from them. Testimonials can be used for making your brand look trustworthy, which in turn can motivate more visitors to go for your products. You can also use the testimonials on your landing page.
Personalize your messages to your visitors in all the communications
Sending personalized messages to your customers can keep them coming back to your brand. You can get their attention by sharing interesting details about your products or talking in general about how your product or service can solve their problems. When you establish a personal connection with your customers, they feel more invested in your brand. This is how you can improve your ecommerce sales.
Make perfect use of remarketing on Facebook & Google
Regardless of whether you are running a Facebook ad campaign or a PPC one, any kind of digital marketing initiative is going to take time and effort. That’s why remarketing becomes essential. Using remarketing techniques, you can keep your brand at the forefront of your customer’s minds.
To sum it up!
Well, that was quite a lot of information. Using a combination of these techniques can deliver significant results. It’s also crucial to ensure your eCommerce website is both mobile-friendly and responsive. Boosting eCommerce sales should be a continuous process, requiring patience and relentless efforts. This is how you can crack it!