If you would like to see an increase in your eCommerce sales, then you will have to implement the right strategies. The very first step, however, is knowing exactly where you stand now.
You need to have solid internal insight into your numbers and data, and external knowledge of where you stand among the competition in your niche. To get this and more, our team of digital finance experts is standing by to help!
Once you know where you are, you can focus on where you want to go next. Use these Top 5 Ways to Increase Your eCommerce Sales in 2021! Clever tactics can give you the edge over others, and we are here to share those with you now:
1. Enhance Your Sales Funnel
You should design your sales funnel in such a way that it improves user experience and bolsters trust. Having the right kind of sales funnel is imperative for sustained online sales.
The phrase sales funnel might sound complex to the uninitiated. However, it is a fairly simple concept.
Sales funnel basically describes the customer journey. The journey begins with online marketing (ads or content) to lure prospects. The journey ends with sales. Along the journey are several steps through which you can induce prospects to buy from you.
Here is a very brief outline to give you a better idea of what the sales funnel implies.
The visitor clicks on an ad / consumes content -> visitor checks your product page -> visitor clicks to buy product -> visitor proceeds to checkout.
The process above is what the visitor goes through before making the final transaction. You should improve every step of the sales funnel to maximize your conversion rate.
One of the best things you can do to convince people to buy from you online is to nurture trust. Your sales funnel should revolve around this key premise. Your strategy should gradually build up visitor trust at each step so that they are ready to purchase online from you and thus complete the customer journey.
There are several ways that you can go about this. Starting with the product page, you can show reviews so that visitors know exactly what to expect from specific products that interest them. Displaying customer reviews and testimonials is a great way of building trust. Reviews give prospects the confidence they need to make an informed decision by giving them a good idea of the typical user experience. Social proof is a powerful concept that works well for online sales. We inherently believe that if countless other customers are satisfied then the seller must be doing something right. In fact, with the advent of the internet, it is hard to find a customer now who does not peruse online reviews before buying something.
2. Live Chat and Seals of Trust
Customer service in turn is the number one factor that convinces people to buy from a business. Thus, live chat is at the core of your online sales success card – customer support.
Since live chat is so convenient and quick, it is the preferred mode of customer service. Getting help is as easy as clicking on the icon at the bottom right corner. Don’t you just love efficient customer service? With live chat, expert advice and support are just seconds away.
In order to increase customer confidence even further, make sure that you place seals of trust at the very top (and bottom) of your product and checkout pages. Online security is a major issue and a big majority of people who abandon shopping carts do so because of apprehension over payment security. Your seal of trust will allay such concerns, reduce cart abandonment, and give visitors the confidence they need to buy from your site.
3. Paid Traffic
While awesome content is a great strategy for boosting online sales, it can take several months before Google takes notice and ranks you higher on its search results. Thus, you cannot rely on content alone.
You will have to augment your online marketing strategy with paid traffic. Online ads when done right is a proven way of driving web traffic to your online platform.
Of course, online ads are not free. You have to pay for them. However, the extra cost is worth it if you do it right. You may have heard of people who did not observe actual returns from their ad campaign. The trouble is that they are not using the right tactics, plus they are making common mistakes that can hurt your ad campaign.
Using the right tactics, you can get several times the return on your ad investment. The good news is that online ads can work far more quickly than content marketing.
To get your ad campaign on the right track, you need to be aware of novice mistakes. The biggest mistake that anyone can make is to commit too much too quickly to ads.
With online ads, you will need to test the waters. This will help you to know what works and what doesn’t. Make sure that you spend relatively small amounts on this testing phase so that you do not lose too much money.
Injecting huge amounts of cash into online ads right from the get-go will likely not work. Thus, you need to start slowly and gradually and keep scaling up as your success rate improves. You could start with as little as $50.
You should set up different ad variations to find out which ones provide the best results and highest traffic. This testing methodology can give you insights as to which demographics to target, sales copy that works, and so on. Check out analytics for all your campaigns and add variations to follow the metrics. Monitoring metrics will help you to understand which plan is bringing results.
Once you spot ad types that work, you can increase expenditure on such ads.
Targeting prospects is essential for bringing results from your online ads. You should know about your prospects according to demographics and target them likewise. Online ad platforms provide you with targeting options that you can leverage to drive traffic to your website. But for these targeting options to work, you need to get into the minds of your prospects.
Online ads boost traffic when you show the right ads to the right crowd. This will also increase the conversion rate on your eCommerce store.
You should try establishing various buyer personas for different demographics to understand what they desire and how you can fulfill the same.
To gain further insights, you can send out surveys to your email subscribers. This will give you a solid understanding of your audience and help you to know the best ways of targeting them.
The problem here is that people don’t like filling out forms. To induce them into completing surveys, you should think about giving away discounts, coupons, freebies, and other such incentives. This will motivate them to take your surveys. Also, add in a personal message showing how much you appreciate their honest and unbiased opinion. Tell them how much of a difference their opinions can make for you.
4. Better Checkout and Subscriptions Pages
The easier the checkout and subscription process, the more the number of people who will buy from you. With countless eCommerce accounting options available, visitors will not stick around if your checkout and sign up process are too long.
Ecommerce retailers note that having the minimum possible fields to fill in works best. Even if you reduce the form by one field, you will find that the conversion rate will improve substantially. The truth is that no one likes an onerous checkout process.
Your checkout process should facilitate newcomers. If newcomers proceed to checkout only to run into a signup page, then many of them may end up abandoning their carts. So you should not force newcomers to sign up first. Newcomers should easily proceed through checkout without further ado. By improving customer experience this way and minimizing frustration for your customers, you can enjoy higher online sales.
Your customers should have to fill in certain details multiple times. For example, if the billing address of the customer is the same as the delivery address, there should be an automatic option for this (like a checkbox for instance). Think of each field as a hurdle. The fewer hurdles and hoops that your customers have to jump through, the higher your conversion rate will be.
You should also show a progress bar on top. This will allow your customers to know where they stand at checkout. Allowing customers to ascertain progress instead of having them run into numerous consecutive pages. The latter is sure to test their patience.
5.Email Marketing
There is a reason why email marketing continues to be as relevant today as it was during the advent of the internet. When done using the right tactics, email marketing can provide a good ROI in the long term.
For successful email marketing, you will have to divide your customers into two groups. The first group will comprise existing email subscribers. The second group consists of entirely new prospects.
You may already have a list of emails from your existing customers. Visitors to your online store will provide their email address to track their order. You should include an option for them to sign up for your newsletter.
To create an email list of new prospects, you can run a targeted online ad campaign. On your landing page, you can convince people to sign up for your emails by using incentives like free giveaways and draws where you are giving away something valuable like a new iPhone. These incentives can work nicely provided you pull in the right crowd through well-targeted ads.
These are two basic ways of creating your email list. Once you have an email list, you can start targeting subscribers in different ways.
One of them is the concept of cross-selling. This is a powerful marketing tactic and can bring awesome results if you are smart enough.
Cross-selling is targeting existing customers by pitching products that are complementary to the items they purchased from you. For example, if someone bought an iPhone from you, it would be a good idea to pitch air pods, mobile covers and other accessories. This marketing trick works since it enables buyers to make the best use of the previous product that they have bought from you.
Cross-selling via email can work since the right complementary products can increase customer delight and improve their experience with the initial product. For example, you can cross-sell Bluetooth projectors to customers who have bought a laptop from you so that they can project the computer screen anywhere they like for a truly spectacular experience.
Another tactic that you can make use of is upselling. For instance, if someone bought a 128 GB hard drive, you can suggest a 1 TB hard drive. This method works nicely because even satisfied customers want to look for better alternatives after some time has elapsed. Thus, a compact car buyer may want to progress to a sedan while a sedan owner will want to progress to a luxury car after some time.
Cross-selling is about pitching better and newer products. Since you already know what the interests of your customers are (based on their browsing and buying history on your website) you will know exactly what to cross-sell and up-sell.
Your email campaign can be a great way to cross-sell and up-sell. To pitch exciting new products successfully, you can send emails for products (that are according to individual subscriber interests) showing product descriptions, reviews, and articles that will evoke a positive response.
Conclusion
The aforementioned 5 ways to increase eCommerce sales are they are truly some of the best-proven ways of boosting your eCommerce revenue and traffic. If you are seeking an executive advisor that is also a digital finance expert to join your team and help navigate you through your eCommerce journey, contact Fully Accountable or set up a 30-minute strategy call.
Vinnie fisher is an entrepreneur, author, husband, and father of 4. A lawyer by trade, for almost ten years, Vinnie focused on tax planning, corporate formation and operation of closely held businesses. Vinnie was a principal partner in his law firm that he wound down to pursue a career as an entrepreneur. After the creation of a series of successful internet and e-commerce companies, he discovered a much needed service for business owners.
In 2014, Vinnie opened Fully Accountable, an outsourced accounting and finance firm for e-commerce and digital businesses. Today he serves as the CEO of the company. Fully Accountable a cutting edge firm that offers done for you services that includes everything from master bookkeeping to fractional CFO services. We are digital experts specializing in high transaction businesses. Our clients are all over North America. We offer a complete accounting back office for your business costing less than the price of an entry level person in your company. Our data analysts and accountants do the work and provide the proactive, forward thinking feedback you need to make the right decisions to increase your growth and double your profit margin.
