You’ve found a product you want to sell and your online store gets ahandful of saleseach week. Now, you want to step on the gas and increase sales.
But there’s a finite amount of time in the day. Where do you start? This guide shares techniques bound to increase sales—and they don’t take a lot of time to implement.
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13 ways to increase online store sales
- Uncover your value proposition
- Quiz your customers
- Share customer reviews
- Answer questions via optimized blog content
- Offer free shipping
- Run abandoned cart email campaigns
- Use upsells and cross-sells
- Add trust signals to your online store
- Improve website navigation
- Speed up the checkout process
- Accept alternative payment methods
- Provide excellent customer service
- Offer a customer loyalty program
1. Uncover your value proposition
Yourvalue propositiondescribes why your target market would choose your brand/products. Uncover yours through quizzing existing customers. Why did they purchase your products over competitors’? What problems did you solve that others couldn’t?
Once you’ve found your value proposition, plaster it everywhere. That includes social media bios, above the fold on your homepage, and within product descriptions—like NOVO watch does on its online store.
NOVO watch’s value proposition is “We make watches from sustainable materials saturated in history.” You’ll see this reference in product descriptions.Gabriel Bertolo, founder ofRadiant Elephant, uses this technique to increase sales on client websites: “One site in particular, after designing the value proposition and adding it to the website’s copy, saw an increase in the overall conversion rate from 1.9% to 4%.
“Online sales are only getting more competitive, anything you can do to set yourself apart from the rest and address a potential customer’s desires or pain points works wonders for increasing sales.”
2. Quiz your customers
How much do you know about your potential customers? Quiz them using apps likeOctaneAIorRevenueHunt.
Ask questions that uncover pain points and recommend personalized products based on their answers. Follow up with email marketing campaigns that speak to those problems, using your product as the solution.
Skinny Mixes, for example, uses a recipe quiz to understand which dishes its potential customers like to make. Participants get an exclusive discount code alongside their personalized recipe recommendation, allowing Skinny Mixes to collect 13,000 customer emails anddrive $500,000 in revenue.
3. Share customer reviews
Did you know that the vast majority (93%) of new customers activelyseek out reviewsbefore buying a new product or service?
Email happy customers and ask them to leave a review on your Google Business, Yelp, or TrustPilot listing. Share these via the following channels to attract more customers:
- Email marketing campaigns
- Social media platforms
- Product pages
4. Answer questions via optimized blog content
Blog content is a low-cost alternative to expensive social media advertising. Instead of paying to attract customers that might not fit your buyer persona, invest incontent marketingto attract your ideal customers when they’re actively looking for your product.
Find keywordsyour target audience is searching for. Answer any questions they have on the topic and useSEO best practicesto improve your chances of ranking terms they’re punching into a Google search.
Noah Kain, founder ofNoah Kain Consultingsays, “We help our SEO clients increase website traffic and sales by creating a brand-specific strategy for creating new content, acquiring new backlinks, and addressing on-page and technical issues on the website.
“By aligning these efforts and applying them consistently, we’re able to drive traffic and sales for specific keywords that are directly tied to increased sales.”
Noah adds, “One of our clients that sells custom furniture saw a five times increase in website traffic and 100% increase in year-over-year sales in our first 12 months working together.”
5. Offer free shipping
No matter what you sell, shipping fees are harming your online sales. Research shows that two-thirds of shoppersexpect free shippingfor all online orders, and 49% willabandon their online cartsif extra costs (i.e., shipping) are too high.
Meet these customer expectations by runningmarketing promotionsaround free shipping offers. Have paying customers spend a certain amount to qualify for free shipping to increaseaverage order value.
Maria Shriver, co-founder and CEO ofMOSH, says, “Everyone likes to get a deal. And a generous discount for repeat business incentivizes people to take advantage of the convenience of regularly receiving their favorite products without the hassle of going through the purchase process again and again.”
Since implementing a 20% discount plus free shipping offer to email subscribers, Maria says, “Our sales have nearly doubled since implementing these subscription-based savings in late spring, helping us hit the milestone of one million bars sold in early September. But, more importantly, they are a terrific way to thank, reward, and retain our loyal customers.”
6. Run abandoned cart email campaigns
People can see a product they’re interested in on your online store, only to exit without buying. This happens for several reasons, from unclear pricing to simply getting distracted and forgetting to return.
Usecart abandonment emailsto remind people who added an item to their basket but didn’t buy. Give them a reason to buy now (like an additional discount), rather than later.
手榴弹, for example, encourages new customers to buy products they’ve previously viewed “before it’s too late.”
7. Use upsells and cross-sells
Potential customers often land on a product page that doesn’t perfectly match their preferences. Encourage these people to still make a purchase using these sales tactics:
- Upsells: Product recommendations that are more expensive than the one they’re currently browsing.
- Cross-sells: Product recommendations that complement what an existing website visitor already has in their shopping cart.
If someone is browsing a $19 iPhone 14 phone case, for example, upsell and recommend a $39 one with drop protection. Cross-sell and increase average order value with a matching $4.99 PopSocket.
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8. Add trust signals to your online store
New customers often find it difficult to trust unfamiliar websites. Prove your online store can be trusted with sensitive information—and increase sales—by displayingtrust signalslike:
- Money-back guarantees
- Customer reviews
- Return/refund policies
- SSL certificates
- Logos of credit card processors
NCLA Beautyuses this technique to increase sales on its online store. In the footer of its website, potential customers see logos of payment processors they’re already familiar with.
9. Improve website navigation
Your website navigation acts as the map for your online store. Help shoppers find what they’re looking for with your main navigation. Point toward main category pages with search/filter functions that specify exactly what they’re looking for.
Similarly, boost sales byenabling breadcrumbson individual product pages. That way, if someone lands on that page when they first interact with your store, they can discover products similar to the one they’re browsing.
10. Speed up the checkout process
Less confusion at the checkout page equals more sales.
Limit form fields to stop potential customers feeling overwhelmed once they reach the checkout page. EnableShop Pay填写一个购物者的德泰ls so they can check out in one click. Its checkout-to-conversion rate is1.72 times higherthan standard checkout.
Dan Potter, head of digital atCRAFTD London, suggests, “Simplify your page by asking for minimal information and allowing autofill to do its magic when it comes to card processing. Avoid cart abandonment by simplifying your checkout page.”
11. Accept alternative payment methods
Long gone are the days of punching credit card numbers into an online checkout form.
These days, consumers use a variety ofpayment methodsto buy products and services online. Increase sales by offering the most popular, including:
- Debit and credit cards
- Buy now, pay later (Shop Pay Installments, Klarna, or AfterPay)
- Mobile wallets (Shop Pay, Apple Pay, or Google Pay)
12. Provide excellent customer service
New customers will contact your sales team for a variety of reasons. Whether their product arrived damaged or they need help using the item they’ve bought, providing good customer service canretain customers and increase sales.
Be proactive, apologize for issues, and rectify them as quickly as possible. It plays on theservice recovery paradox: you build more goodwill with customers after solving their complaint than you would’ve done with no problem.
13. Offer a customer loyalty program
You’ve done the hard work of attracting new customers. Encourage them to purchase again with acustomer loyalty program.
Two-thirds of consumerssay the ability to earn rewards actually changes their spending behavior. Keep previous customers in your sphere of influence with rewards for their next purchase(s), encouraging them to action digitalmarketing strategieson your behalf.
That could mean rewarding them for:
- Generating word-of-mouth referrals
- Sharing your products on social media
- Making another purchase
Increasing sales for your online store is a continuous process
The best way to increase sales differs from store to store. Find out what works for your website and double down on it.
Talk with existing customers to stay one step ahead of their ever-changing preferences when shopping online. Whether you need to improve customer service or offer free shipping, it is possible to steadily increase sales.
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How to increase sales FAQ
How can I bring more online sales?
Run abandoned cart campaigns. Start a loyalty program for existing customers. Use one-click checkout. Offer free shipping for all orders. Accept alternative payment methods.
How does investing in post-sales customer service increase future sales?
Rectifying an unhappy customer’s problem can build goodwill and increase loyalty. This can make them more likely to make another purchase, recommend your brand to a friend, and shout about their positive customer experience on social media.
Why does speeding up the check out process increase sales?
The checkout page holds the greatest risk of losing sales. It’s estimated that the average shopping cart abandonment rate at the checkout page hovers somewhere between 65% and 96%. Removing friction, decreasing the amount of steps to check out, will allow your customer to buy what they want quickly and will add to your bottom line.