Setting up an e-commerce store to become a successful entrepreneur is not for the faint of heart 💔 Once you have made that bold decision, the next step is to back up your ambitions with a solid e-commerce strategy.
Fortunately, it does not take advanced wizardry🧙♂️ to learn how to increase e-commerce sales and build a successful online business. Anyone can do it if they are willing to learn and put in the effort.
Here are 13 effective ways to increase your e-commerce sales and build an impressive online presence on the web and social media 🚀
👇🏻👇🏻 Let's go through them one by one 👇🏻👇🏻
1. Turn your store into a mobile app
In the digital era, the importance of a mobile app for e-commerce cannot be overstated, with 80% of e-commerce sales now occurring on mobile devices. This trend highlights the need for e-commerce businesses to adopt mobile apps as they not only engage customers better with personalized experiences but also foster loyalty and encourage repeat purchases.
Creating a mobile app might seem challenging, but fortunately, Shopify apps like Shopney, offer e-commerce stores an easy way to join this mobile-first trend with a drag-n-drop app builder. Its no-code platform allows for the quick creation of high-quality mobile apps, making it simpler for e-commerce stores to connect with their customers on their most used devices - smartphones.
By leveraging the mobile apps built with Shopney, e-commerce stores can improve their shopping experience to increase sales, offer app-exclusive deals to boost retention and loyalty, and utilize push notifications for cost-effective marketing.
2. Build an email list
Despite the enormous potential of email marketing to increase e-commerce sales, this tactic is still underutilized 😔
A strong email list can help target and retarget customers with a much better conversion rate. The click-through rates and customer acquisition potential in email marketing are usually higher than what you can achieve in social media.
Best of all, incentives for sharing customer information don't necessarily have to sound like sales. Offering website discounts, special incentives to read newsletters, adding sign-up boxes at checkout, and other similar tactics can organically help build a substantial email portfolio.
If you want to increase e-commerce sales, you can also personalize your emails with named greetings and create targeted email lists.
3. Create advertising campaigns for different social networks
As an e-commerce business, social omnipresence is critical. You should be present on all social media platforms to drive traffic and sales to your e-commerce store. This way, you can engage with your audience, leverage influencer networks, and increase brand awareness 🤩
Each social network has its own audiences, strengths, and weaknesses. TikTok might be a good place to have celebrities promote your products. However, Facebook and Instagram are where most conversions can happen.
Understanding the habits of your target customers on the different social media platforms can make a big difference in your e-commerce success.
The good news is that you're not alone. There’s plenty of online content for social media marketing and planning tools that can make your job easier and will help you increase your sales 📈
4. Use scarcity to get people to act
If you want to turn your e-commerce store into a magnet for excited shoppers, you need to create a sense of urgency for them. The easiest way to do this is through scarcity, which helps customers realize the perceived value of an immediate sale.
For example, you can display stock levels on product pages to create fear in customers that they are missing out. Sending emails announcing that a particular product is in limited supply can also encourage customers to take action.
Another way to leverage scarcity thinking is through competition. Some stores display how many people are viewing or have purchased a particular product.
Bottom line: if customers see your products as finite, disappearing goods, your e-commerce sales will boom 💣
5. Create a money-back guarantee
Building trust is the name of the game. Online shoppers can't physically touch or try a product. They need a special assurance to trust you as a reputable retailer.
Money-back guarantees help build that trust and show your confidence in the quality of your products. However, full or partial refunds also carry some risks. Some customers can see them as e-commerce loopholes and will try to take advantage of them 🤷♂️
One way to protect yourself is to provide a time limit. For example, you can limit the warranty to 30 days or two months, depending on the specifics of the product. You can also set specific conditions for the validity of the warranty, and even hire a lawyer to draft a clear policy for money-back guarantees.
6. Build trust by offering social proofs
Why would anyone choose your e-commerce store when there are so many online options?
Two words: Social Proof 😉
Today, the way customers perceive e-commerce products on social media sites can make or break a sale, sometimes even entire brands. You can harness the power of social proof to drive sales for your e-commerce business in a variety of ways.
Showcasing positive reviews on your social media pages and prominent recommendations is a good start. However, it's not advisable to get rid of negative reviews. Maintaining the authenticity of your review section is just as important as obtaining five-star customer feedback.
Also, the influencers you partner with should have a social personality that matches the needs of your target audience if you really want to increase your e-commerce sales. Asking the Kardashians to promote men's razors may not be the best choice, even if they are such a big deal on social media.
7. Use paid traffic to boost your sales
In addition to organic social media marketing, add paid social ads to your e-commerce marketing strategy 🚀
Only existing followers can see the content you share on your social media accounts. With paid ads, you can reach new audiences.
Social media platforms offer extensive opportunities to target the right people with sponsored content. You can target people by demographics such as location, buying interests, age, or gender to find your ideal e-commerce audience.
Also, make sure you publish your content regularly. People have short memories. They do not pay attention to brands that reach out to them once a month 🙄 Schedule ads and create a paid ad calendar to stay ahead of the curve and steadily increase e-commerce sales over time.
Remember, your paid campaigns do not always have to be about your products. Videos that give a behind-the-scenes look at your business also help build customer loyalty.
8. Start upselling
What if a customer completes the purchase of a coffee glass on the checkout page and receives a personalized recommendation for a bigger, better coffee glass - only for $5 more? ☕ He'll be tempted to upgrade his product.
Upselling is a great way to increase sales and build long-term relationships with your customers. This technique is highly effective because basically, you’re offering a better deal to a customer that already wants to buy from you.
The good news is that you don't necessarily need programming skills to integrate an upsell process into your online store. Several upsell apps fully integrate with WooCommerce, Shopify, and other popular e-commerce platforms. Take, for example, FoxKit, the Shopify app that offers advanced analytics, upsells with cross-selling tools, and a variety of sales-boosting features. Having all these features in one convenient app can make running your business much more efficient.
9. Install a chatbot or introduce live-chat
Intelligent systems like chatbots are a great e-commerce resource for conversational marketing and customer support 🤖 Chatbots do not just guide customers or ask basic questions. They also engage in long 2-way communication and build customer relationships.
E-commerce businesses can use chatbots to answer customer inquiries about products and facilitate purchases. You can also give your e-commerce chatbots "human names" to improve interaction rates.
Since AI chatbots are constantly learning from previous user interactions, they are able to customize future conversations. This makes them perfect for handling repetitive customer queries and resolving chat queues, reducing the burden on human support staff.
10. Offer free stuff!
That sounds a bit like a slap in the face. We're in business to make money online, not lose it, right? 🤷♂️ But what if you could increase your revenue by offering giveaways? Yes, freebies will help you make sales in the long run.
For example, free products help you gain customers' trust. And you don't necessarily have to give away free stuff. You can offer free trials so customers can learn the value of your products before they commit.
You can also offer free shipping and delivery for purchases over a certain amount to increase the average order value.
Think of this as a solid investment to create value with new customers, rather than a loss-leading practice to increase e-commerce sales.
11. Track user engagement and find out what works
There are several e-commerce KPIs and metrics you can track to improve your store's performance. Your online store, analytics software, social media, and other e-commerce tools are capturing a treasure trove of data that can drive sales.
Depending on which phase of your sales funnel you're targeting, the engagement metrics you track will vary. For example, in the conversion phase, metrics like cart abandonment and average order value take precedence over impressions and reach.
12. Work to reduce shopping cart abandonment
You can never completely prevent shopping cart abandonment. But if you understand what's keeping customers from completing their purchases, you can improve your conversion rate.
Lack of transparency is one of the main reasons customers abandon a purchase 👎
If customers don't see shipping charges, taxes, and other additional costs, they may reconsider their entire purchase. Make sure you include all costs on the order preview page for complete transparency.
Visual elements like progress indicators also reinforce transparency. They make customers feel more engaged in the ordering process while showing them the progress and duration of it so they know exactly what to expect.
13. Create a "best sellers" list
Listing products as "best sellers" is a great way to get customers excited about current items. Everyone wants to get what everybody else is buying.
Most e-commerce platforms have a bestseller metric built into their reports. These reports detail bestsellers by vendor, item type, sales, and other important metrics. You can use them to create a bestseller category or mark individual products as bestsellers on their product page.
Bonus: Add reviews on your site
We've already talked about the importance of authentic reviews and social proof 🗣
Before forming an opinion about a product, customers pay attention to the opinions of others. Therefore, it's essential that you post reviews on your social networks and e-commerce website. This ensures that customers' positive opinions of your brand are reinforced on every platform and at every touchpoint.
Use low-cost e-commerce review collection apps to integrate customer reviews and feedback into your online store. You can also ask your customers to leave a review via email.
Whichever way you choose, display reviews prominently. Ideally, the reviews should be the focus of the storefront for maximum impact.
📣 EXTRA BONUS TIP !! Product Personalization
Differentiation has become highly important, and it is also very difficult to achieve. Customers are becoming more demanding by the day and are starting to prefer personalized products over mass offerings.
Large companies have introduced personalizable products in recent years with great success. Personalization not only helps increase sales but also promotes customer loyalty to the brand while creating a unique product.
You can use a robust product personalizer like Customily to create customizable templates and let your customers create and buy their own unique and original products. You can try it for free on Shopify and Etsy, and if you are using any other platform, just request a free demo here.
Whew!! 😉 That was a lot of information to take in. But there's no need to try all these tactics today.
Start with the basic on-site tasks, such as making sure your e-commerce store is mobile-friendly and user-friendly. Then take care of email list building, social media marketing and advertising, and advanced chatbots.
Increasing online sales is a constant learning process 📈 The more you're willing to step forward and innovate, the better your chances of outsmarting and outperforming your competitors.
Have you tried other tactics that gave you great results? Feel free to let us know in the comments below!
ABOUT THE PUBLISHER
Customily Product Personalizer is the best solution to sell personalized products, both in the e-commerce and the print-on-demand market. With the widest range of personalization tools, free clipart designs, realistic live previews that increase conversions, and printing files that help you automate your printing business; Customily is the ally you need to boost your profit margins in a high-competitive market.
Visit our website to learn more about us.
Or try it for FREE on Shopify.
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