Despite a lagging economy, some eCommerce businesses have seen meteoric growth. Look no further than the kind of success Amazon has seen since the beginning of this year to appreciate that fact.
With fewer people going out and more people beginning to inch back towards stable employment, consumer confidence, particularly in the online shopping space, is building. Is your eCommerce venture prepared to cash in on the opportunity those conditions are likely to present?
We don’t need to tell you that eCommerce sales are never a given. In order to maximize your site’s/product’s performance, you need to invest in implementing strategies that make your consumer’s experience insightful, simple, and pleasurable.
Below, our team shares 8 tips that enable you to do exactly that.
Table of Contents
- 1 1. Target People That Have Shopped With You Before
- 2 2. Keep Checkout Simple
- 3 3. Invest in Testimonials
- 4 4. Create Helpful Product-Related Media
- 5 5. Keep Things Mobile Friendly
- 6 6. Keep Your Payment Options Diverse
- 7 7. Create Urgency
- 8 8. Sell Solutions
- 9 A Tweak to Your eCommerce Sales Process Can Skyrocket Profitability
1. Target People That Have Shopped With You Before
Acquiring new customers is far from a simple process. Sometimes, you need to invest serious cash in a variety of inbound marketing channels just to get a single prospect into your doors.
What’s easier than targeting new customers (and much cheaper) is to target customers that have already demonstrated an interest in your products. These are people that have purchased from you in the past and that you have the contact information of.
Make it a point to occasionally email customers that have made recent purchases. Those emails should thank them for doing business with you and also offer them opportunities to buy again at special rates.
You’ll be shocked by how high your conversation rates can be through this means of marketing.
2. Keep Checkout Simple
Nothing serves as a bigger turnoff to consumers than a checkout process that’s going to take 5+ minutes. Believe us when we say that if you subject customers to lengthy checkout times, they’re going to abandoned their carts.
In a perfect world, checkout should happen on a single screen and should require a minimal amount of information: name, email, address, payment information.
3. Invest in Testimonials
Any eCommerce sales guru will tell you that the power of social proof cannot be understated. Social proof is when you share other people’s positive experiences with prospective customers so they can more fully trust your products.
By having a section on your eCommerce site that showcases positive customer emails or video testimonials, you could see your sales grow considerably.
One of the best uses of testimonials we’ve seen is when eCommerce stores email people that have abandoned their carts with a testimonial letting them know the products they’re considering can truly solve whatever issues they’re experiencing.
4. Create Helpful Product-Related Media
One of the worst parts about shopping online is that it’s difficult for consumers to experience what they’re considering buying. It’s up to you to try and bridge that gap by offering as much helpful media as possible to give people a great idea of your products.
Media starts by using eCommerce tools to ensure product descriptions are up to date and descriptive. From there, you’ll want to add photos that showcase a product from every angle and even video of a product in use, if feasible.
5. Keep Things Mobile Friendly
People want to shop from their mobile phones. If your eCommerce platform isn’t accommodating that want, you’re losing money.
For those of you selling products through eCommerce middle-men like Amazon or eBay, you don’t have to worry about making your sales pages mobile-friendly. If you’re selling through your own site though, audit your eCommerce sales page performance across a variety of devices to make sure the purchase process runs smoothly.
If you’re noticing issues, bring on a professional to help you remedy the problem.
6. Keep Your Payment Options Diverse
Why limit people’s ability to buy because of the payment type they want to use? Sure, certain payment types charge more in transaction fees. Do yourself a favor though and just bake those transaction fees into your prices.
By eliminating just a single type of credit card from your checkout process, you could be saying no to millions of customers over a ~1% fee difference. That’s hardly a good way to run your business.
7. Create Urgency
People are more inclined to buy products if they feel they’re going to miss out. This urgency is something you can create by advertising scarcity around your merchandise.
Consider noting next to some of your popular product listings that you’re almost out of stock. You’ll immediately see that sales tick up as people try to get ahead of stock shortages.
If you use scarcity too often, people may catch on that the urgency you’re manufacturing is fake. Avoid that by rotating scarcity tactics and occasionally following through on limiting a product’s ability to be bought.
8. Sell Solutions
Sales 101 dictates that people are not shopping to buy stuff. They’re shopping to buy solutions.
Know the problems that people are trying to overcome when they purchase your product and lean on that pain point in your eCommerce sales funnel. If you can show people that you get what they’re going through, you’re going to capture more interest.
A Tweak to Your eCommerce Sales Process Can Skyrocket Profitability
We’ve shared with you several ways that you could potentially boost your eCommerce sales. Many of the strategies we’ve noted take nominal effort and can increase your bottom line substantially.
Therein lies the beauty of eCommerce online sales! Oftentimes, all it takes is a minor tweak in strategy to make your business viable and in some cases, even wildly successful.
We hope you’re able to make use of our advice and our team welcomes you to explore more insight on our blog!
