The ecommerce world has a lot of potential and opportunities for existing and new entrepreneurs around the globe. Although the ecommerce growth slowed down for a while due to the coronavirus outbreak, it has now come back with a bang with a growth rate like never before; and this growth shows no signs of slowing down. If you are planning to start a business, opting for the ecommerce industry could be quite rewarding. The best part is, you do not have to take the risks of buying a property or opening a physical store; you can do your business right at the comfort of your home and earn handsome revenue. But, the catch is, you need to know the art of selling online. No, we are not talking about something that is within you from the time you are born. We are talking about the skills an online seller must acquire before venturing into selling online goods and services.
The success of an ecommerce store depends on the number of conversions it achieves. You shall find dozens of ways to boost your conversion rates. However, a majority of those ideas could take you weeks, months, or even years to implement successfully. Some of the most common ideas you might come across would be A/B testing of the landing pages of your ecommerce website/ store, building a loyal customer base and the list goes on. While these strategies are worthy and surely must be a part of your business plan, there are many more key factors that help you sell more on your ecommerce site. In this article, we have included a few tips and tricks to help you get showered with increased sales in your ecommerce business.
Key tactics to sell more on your ecommerce site
Target the existing customers
The first step to selling more on your ecommerce website is to focus on your existing customers. The efforts required to motivate a new customer to purchase from you would be much more than convincing your already existing customers to make some more purchases. Although customer acquisition is a part of an ecommerce business plan, the impacts of working on your customer retention strategy would help you generate two-fold revenue in minimal time. If you compare the customers who have purchased only once from your ecommerce site to the loyal ones, you will note that the latter would add more products to their carts, contribute in higher conversion rates, and help in generating more revenue with their every visit to your ecommerce store.
Also, as an online seller, you must know that acquiring newer customers are more expensive than motivating your existing customers to purchase more. The reason we say that targeting your existing customers is more efficient is that they are already familiar with your brand, the products, and your services. Therefore, there is no learning curve. All you have to do is focus on enhancing their experience. You can consider coming up with customer loyalty programs that motivate the customers to spend more whenever they visit your ecommerce website.
Utilize Social Media Platforms
Social media platforms are the sites where people of all ages are spending the majority of their time; especially the millennial. Social media marketing is all about consistency; you need to regularly post (but not overdo) based on your customers’ schedule. This can help you reach the right customers for your online store and keep them engaged to add them to your loyal customer base. You do not have to use every social media platform that is there in the market. Instead, find the ones where your customers are spending the majority of their time. You need to focus on the social media channels your customers are using. You can easily track the channels your customers are using data-impelled tools such as Google Analytics. Pick the social media channels your customers’ love and post informative and engaging content for creating useful space for your customers and grab their attention.
You should also make sure to share links to your website and the relevant products to your posts. However, make sure that you do not saturate your customers with direct ads. Too much of self-promotions decrease the value of your social media account resulting in lower conversion rates from the best available marketing source in the market. Experts suggest that you should ideally maintain an 80/20 ratio wherein 80% must include informative and engaging content and 20% must include the promotional content with links to products and the ecommerce website. Many social media management platforms can help you with constant monitoring and regularly posting on your social media accounts. Using such platforms, you can schedule posts that will automatically upload your posts in the time you chose. Moreover, you can track the performance of your posts using these management platforms.
Up-sell the products
Most of us have shopped online at least once and we might have often come across the offers such as “Would you like to compliment your order?” This is an example of up-selling. It is a way to approach customers to motivate them for purchasing more premium products that the one they were already considering to purchase. Many ecommerce giants have accepted that up-selling has significantly helped them in selling more on their ecommerce site. How this works is, sometimes, your customers might not be aware that you are selling a premium product and would like to know how it is a better choice, compare them and pick the one that best fits their needs. And, most of the times, they are choosing the premium products, looking into the benefits it offer than the once they had earlier selected.
For instance, you might be having a bed sheet with better quality fabric than the one your customer has chosen. You can promote the products that can be a better choice for your customers in the shopping cart page or on the checkout page. However, you need to be sure that you are emphasizing the difference between the products they selected and the premium one you are suggesting them to consider purchasing. Two key elements to consider when up-selling is that the suggested products must be relevant to the ones your customers have selected and you must be considerate towards the price range your customers have chosen. The product you suggest must match the original requirements of the customers. The customers might not be interested in purchasing products with a higher price range if they have decided to stay with the anchor price. The anchor price is the one that the customer has first seen for the product they wish to purchase. The newly suggested product must be certainly a better fit than the already selected ones as the customers are surely comparing them with the first one.
Endorse Testimonials
Customer reviews are the most undervalued tool for optimizing an ecommerce website. Research suggests that only 33% of ecommerce businesses are actively looking for customer reviews. Reviews let ecommerce businesses to add new and unique content to the ecommerce website and persuade potential customers to convert and become your loyal customers for the long run. Moreover, testimonials have resulted to boost conversions up to 50%. Testimonials work as social proof for the potential customers as they are seeing that other customers have loved after purchasing products from your brand. As an ecommerce seller, you must encourage customers to leave reviews for the products they have purchased using follow-up emails. You can automate the emails sent to the customers using easy-to-understand and attractive templates to help them submit the review. You can also consider incentivizing the customers for their next purchase with a discount or coupon codes which shall not only help you get a testimonial but also get a customer returning to your ecommerce store. There are many ways of using these testimonials like using them in your blog posts, landing pages, home pages, or even your checkout page.
Consider PPC advertising
PPC refers to Pay Per Click which is a type of marketing where companies pay for every click their advertisement gets. Investing in PPC ads will; help you measure whether marketing campaigns are working well for you and helping in generating more traffic to your online store. The most widely used PPC advertising is Search Engine Advertising and the most popular PPC software is Google AdWords. It lets you create marketing advertisements that will be displayed on Google’s Search Engine as well as place your advertisements in an auction procedure. You will need to bid on a keyword and the advertisements are chosen based on the bid amounts and the quality score of the advertisement. You can link the analytics of your store to Google AdWords to measure your customers’ activity after they click on your Google advertisement. However, in PPC advertisements, you need to assure a continuous improvisation of your ad campaigns by keeping a regular check on these campaigns and ensuring that the click money you spend is being used wisely to generate more traffic as well as boost your sales.
