Running a successful e-commerce business can be a difficult task, and constantly expanding it even more so. With online businesses popping everywhere, the competition will make it really difficult to sell your products, but it’s still an achievable task. If you’re looking to boost your sales, what you need to start with is a good strategy to differentiate yourself from your competition and stand out from the crowd.
From increasing traffic to your website, to automating email campaigns, here’s our guide on how to quickly boost your e-commerce campaign and increase your sales.
#1. Focus On Selling Fewer Products
Having a wide range of products can be a good idea if you are running a big e-commerce business, and pack thousands of new visitors on daily basis. But if you’re struggling to sell some of your products, you should consider removing them from your main page and concentrate on one killer product. You can still offer your slow-selling products by using follow-up offers or just offer them from other web pages.
Having one lead product on your main page will allow you to have quality content that covers topics related to that product, thus making sales easier. Avoid trying to please everyone who visits your website, and has your marketing strategy built around a few high-quality products that will define you as a business.
Related: 15 Brilliant Web Design Hacks That Convert Traffic into Leads
#2. Improve Your Customer Support
Translating visitors into customers is tough enough task, but that’s not where it ends because retaining customers is actually more important than grabbing new ones. If you treat your customers far better than your competitors, they will most probably stay loyal to you and your products.
A good way to start is to add a live chat to your website. Having a call center is fine, but for some customers, it’s a bother and they might just give up before making a call. Emails, on the other hand, are slow. Live chat offers a live interaction between a customer and customer support representative while keeping things fast, simple, and cheap for you.
Related: Investing in Customer Support is a Must in the Modern Day Business
#3. Consider Free Shipping
Very much like with taxes, people just don’t like paying for shipping. Many recent studies have shown that people are much more likely to purchase from a site that offers free shipping, compared to those who don’t. There are many reasons why people just don’t want to pay for the shipping, with the number one being that they’re uncertain as it is to the quality of the product without touching it. Having an extra expense when customers are already uncertain whether to buy is just pushing them away from you. E-commerce giants like AliExpress made a career out of free shipping across the world, so it’s definitely something worth considering.
Related: How Amazon Sets the Standard for Customer Service Calls
#4. Add A Blog
Your store shouldn’t be just a place where you offer products. Customers who enter a site and start buying stuff are very rare, and definitely not something you should rely on. It’s imperative that you offer them high-quality content that is related to your products. Are you selling swimwear? Great, so have an article with all the health benefits of swimming, or how good it can be for getting your customer’s body into shape.
Having a blog is incredibly important because it can serve as a bridge between you and your customers. When visitors enter your store, they won’t immediately trust you. It’s up to you to gain their trust and hit their weak spots.
#5. Improve Your Traffic
Having high-quality products isn’t enough to actually sell them. If you’re not getting enough traffic on your e-shop, you won’t be selling quite a lot. Getting more traffic largely depends on optimizing your SEO (Search Engine Optimization), a specialized process which includes researching and using proper keywords in order for your website to appear higher when a potential customer uses them in the search engine.
If you do manage to optimize it though, it will grant you a lot more traffic and thus more opportunities to make sales. It’s a difficult task, and e-commerce businesses usually hire experts like this SEO company from Sydney to get them to the first page, thus boosting their sales.
#6. Have a Review System in Place
Potential customers will always trust your reviews more than you. Even if you don’t have reviews system on your website, there will be reviews about your brand elsewhere on the internet, and they’ll be quite easy to find. Reputation travels fast (especially bad one) and you need to stay one step ahead by having them on your website. Customer feedback can either make you a sale, or lose you one, but even bad ones are valuable if you’re looking to improve and fix the issues. A well written positive review is often worth more than a perfect copy, simply because people opt to trust their peers.
#7. Marketing Automation
Using a software to automate email campaigns or social media responses have become a go-to option for most online business owners, simply because it will save you a lot of time and money. When properly set, this software will allow you to target audience with ease and help you lead your audience on their journey from visitors, through leads to customers. Use it to send engaging content to your potential buyers, and make lead nurturing much easier than if you’d do it manually. Just remember, it’s just a tool, not a replacement for your business strategy, so make sure that you have one in place before even considering to use marketing automation software.
Conclusion
Whether you’re just starting an e-commerce business or you’re trying to expand already existing one, you’re looking at a tough road ahead. By following this guide you’ll make sure that you don’t leave anything to chance, thus increasing your chances for success.
Keep in mind that online markets change on daily basis and that the most valuable skill you can have is adaptability. If you keep in touch with the new trends and adapt your strategy to fit them, you’ll most likely succeed in your endeavor. Don’t be afraid to try out new things, because that’s the only way for small businesses to turn into e-commerce giants.
