You have done a great job in launching your eccommerce business. The website is up and running, products are listed, and even more are in the pipeline, ready to be showcased. However, expecting to generate sales from day one, as you may have envisioned, can be a bit unrealistic.
Most ecommerce entrepreneurs lose motivation due to a lack of early sales, which raises the question of how to increase ecommerce sales. Luckily there are proven strategies that, if well executed, can gradually raise your ecommerce sales graph.
This blog will focus on the strategies, expert tips, and essential insights to help you increase ecommerce sales from the get-go. Want to know more?
Let’s get started!
3 Phases of Increasing Ecommerce Sales
Ecommerce sales don’t happen overnight, it’s a gradual process that requires a combination of strategies to steadily improve your sales. To simplify the process, we’ve organized these strategies into three key phases.
- User Attraction: Market your product and, most importantly, your brand to ensure people know you exist.
- Audience Conversion: Implement steps to turn your audience into paying customers.
- Improve CLV: Encourage visitors to return to your platform and make additional purchases.
17 Proven Strategies to Increase Ecommerce Sales
Now that you know the different phases of increasing ecommerce sales, let’s explore the strategies involved in each of the phases and how to implement them.
Phase 1: Let People Know You Exist
1. Content Marketing
Content is the true king for reaching people, both in organic efforts and paid strategies. Around 66% of marketers report that content marketing has helped them grow their audience. Content provides potential customers with a clear picture of your business and the products you offer.
High-quality content including proper keywords helps improve your presence in SERP (Search Engine Result Pages), leading to a better click-through rate.
It also caters to users’ needs and interests while fostering a sense of community around your brand. This, in turn, enhances the trustworthiness and recognition of your product and business.
2. Social Media Marketing
Social platforms like Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok are more than just spaces for likes and shares, they are essential sales channels. Establishing your business presence on these platforms gives you access to an already thriving audience.
Your job is to find ways to engage them in your brand, to do this you can post regularly, interact with your audience, run promotions, and share reviews. The more visible and active your brand is, the more likely it is for people to visit your store.
Enabling in-app shopping will also allow users to browse and buy directly from their favorite social media apps.
3. Collaborate With an Influencer
Influencers are well-known figures on social media, forums, and content creation platforms. Collaborating with influencers can greatly enhance your brand and credibility.
This strategy becomes even more effective when the influencer’s niche aligns with your product type and genre, giving you access to a ready-made audience with a high potential to convert into customers.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
Some 2.71 billion people around the world are shopping from ecommerce websites and social media stores on a routine basis. Whenever people search for something online, they usually click on results from the first page of search engines.
That’s why, in addition to quality content, it’s crucial to optimize your website and product pages to rank higher in search engine results.
Common Search Engine Optimization practices include:
- Use catchy, keyword-optimized headings to attract users.
- Keep on-page SEO consistent with strong meta tags and internal links.
- Optimize relevant images and videos by compressing for faster load times.
- Organize a clear sitemap and avoid duplicate product links.
- Choose a reliable server to prevent errors or lags.
- Interlink-related products to create a seamless product funnel.
- Build inbound links from reputable sites to increase domain authority (DA).
5. Run Paid Ad Campaigns
Paid ad campaigns are one of the most effective marketing methods for quickly reaching your target audience. You can run these campaigns on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram or through search engines like Google.
Additionally, you can compare ads based on various criteria to determine which products or offers generate more interest. This insight allows you to refine your strategies and optimize your product inventory accordingly.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate marketing is an effective channel for promoting your products. Affiliates are individuals who work independently to market others’ products and earn a commission, based on the sales generated from their referrals.
Like influencers, affiliates often have an established audience that may find your products appealing and be interested in purchasing them at a discount. By offering affiliates a commission for each sale they drive to your website, you can watch your customer base grow.
Phase 2: Turn Clicks Into Purchases
7. Revamp Your Website’s UI/UX
User interface (UI) and user experience (UX) are crucial in reducing bounce rates, which occur when users quickly leave your website. Around 70-80% of users exit a website within the first two minutes due to poor UI or UX.
To keep visitors engaged, your site needs a well-planned layout, simple checkout steps, and brand-consistent colors. For a great UX, ensure your site loads quickly, navigation is smooth, and all features and buttons function error-free.
Major UI/UX practices include:
- Ensure clear, intuitive menus and category structures.
- Minimize steps and offer guest checkout options.
- Improve product search with filters and sorting options.
- Compress images and optimize performance for speed.
- Use bold, direct call-to-action buttons on key pages.
8. Provide Social Proof with Reviews
Your ecommerce product might be attracting visitors, but low sales could indicate that your audience hasn’t yet developed trust in your platform.
To gain that trust, showcase positive reviews from previous customers, whether about specific products or overall service ratings. Customer reviews work as social proof to establish trust within your target audience.
Showing testimonials and positive feedback on your product pages assures potential buyers that others had great experiences with your product and that you (the audience) can purchase it too.
9. Mobile Responsive
More and more shoppers are using their phones to make purchases online. Make sure your site is mobile-responsive, meaning it looks great and works smoothly on any device.
Research has shown that 79 out of every 100 ecommerce users order their product online via their mobile phones. So, if your site isn’t mobile-friendly, you could be missing out on a large volume of potential sales.
10. Reduce Cart Abandonment
One of the biggest challenges in ecommerce is to keep the cart abandonment rate as low as possible. Now what’s a cart abandonment? It means when someone adds any product to their cart but doesn’t end up buying it. There could be multiple reasons for them to abandon the cart.
- Unexpected costs like hidden fees or high shipping.
- Complicated checkout process.
- Limited payment options.
- Website errors or slow loading.
- Concerns about payment security.
Here are some ways you can reduce your website’s cart abandonment rate –
Start by simplifying the checkout process, offering guest checkout, displaying shipping costs upfront, and sending abandoned cart emails reminding customers to complete their purchases.
Use pop-up notifications to remind users of their abandoned carts and highlight bonuses to encourage purchases.
11. Purchase Incentives
People are always looking for discounts, bonuses, and gifts. Often, they will buy things they don’t need when they find a great deal. You can use this to your advantage to boost sales for your online business.
Here are some common offers ecommerce businesses offer their customers to get more sales –
- Limited-time Offers
- Discounts
- Free Shipping
- Buy One, Get One
- Clearance Sale
- Year-end Sale
You’ve likely experienced these types of deals before and know how they create a sense of urgency and excitement, encouraging customers to make faster purchasing decisions.
12. Highlight Top-Selling Items
Highlighting top-selling products lets others know which products are in high demand. In general, people tend to follow the crowd, so when they see popular items, they’re more likely to trust and buy them.
Place the top-selling products section at the top of your website so that visitors see them immediately upon entering. You can also include these products in pop-up notifications with incentives to encourage customers to reconsider their choices.
Phase 3: Boost Customer Purchases and Repeat Business
13. Personalized Feed
A personalized product feed customizes what each visitor sees by considering their search history, previous purchases, viewed items, wishlists, and cart activity. This creates a customized shopping experience and increases the chances of conversion.
When returning customers see products based on their past behavior, it creates a personalized shopping experience. Use APIs and plugins to recommend products they might like based on their previous purchases, which helps increase the chance for repeat purchases.
14. Upselling and Cross-Selling
One great way to increase ecommerce sales is to showcase relevant products to customers. For instance, when someone purchases a laptop, suggesting complementary items like a case or laptop cooler increases the likelihood that they’ll buy those products along with the laptop.
This not only increases the total order value but also creates a positive impression of your website by providing everything customers need in one place.
If it weren’t for your website, they would have searched for those products independently and bought them from another website.
- Up-Selling: Encourages customers to buy a higher-end or more expensive version of a product they are already considering.
- Cross-Selling: Recommends related products/accessories to what the customer is purchasing.
15. Email Marketing
Despite the rise of new online marketing strategies, email marketing remains a powerful way to connect with your audience.
Focus on growing your email list, especially from existing customers. Send personalized, targeted emails with special offers, product recommendations, or updates on new arrivals. Well-timed and relevant emails can encourage repeat purchases and enhance customer loyalty.
16. Customer Service
Studies have shown that about 70% of consumers have purchased from businesses based on their customer service.
That is why you must offer multiple channels for support (live chat, email, phone), respond quickly, and resolve issues efficiently. Satisfied customers are more likely to return for repeat purchases and recommend your store to others.
17. Loyalty Program
A loyalty program for your ecommerce business rewards frequent customers, making them feel valued. This program can offer points, memberships, discounts, mystery boxes, and gifts. By encouraging repeat purchases and referrals, a good loyalty program increases both sales and customer lifetime value.
For example, a customer can achieve the “Gold Member” status after spending X amount of money, which will give them access to exclusive discounts on price, shipping fees, and early access to sales.
3 Essential Steps to Keep In Mind
When applying the strategies mentioned in this blog, there are a few steps you need to keep in mind to ensure these phases run smoothly and provide your business with a much-needed increase in sales.
1. Understand Customers’ Pain Points
Knowing your customers is essential for increasing ecommerce sales. This includes understanding their spending habits, preferred products, pricing range, and effective marketing channels. These insights can help you tailor your offerings to better meet their needs.
2. A/B Testing
Always keep an open mind when experimenting with what works best. Test different versions of your product pages, marketing channels, checkout processes, or promotional campaigns to see what attracts the audience most. Even small changes can have a big impact on conversion rates.
3. Create a Community
Focus on establishing a user community i.e. Facebook groups, sub-reddits, WhatsApp channels, etc. Post blogs, product guides, or videos that answer your customers’ questions or solve their problems.
This approach helps attract a larger audience, as customers will see your brand as a trusted source of knowledge. Once that happens, they are more likely to return and make repeat purchases.
That’s a Wrap!
Creating an ecommerce website and showcasing products is only half the challenge of launching an online business. The other half and most important part is ensuring that your sales continue to grow steadily over time.
To increase ecommerce sales, you need to work on attracting the audience, converting them to buyers, and lastly increasing customers’ lifetime value. We believe the strategies and tips mentioned above can help you excel in your ecommerce success.
We’d love to hear how effective they were for you in the comments. Until next time, happy selling!
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Which ecommerce is most profitable?
Here are the top 5 most profitable ecommerce niches –
- Fashion and Apparel: Unique clothing and accessories can yield high profits.
- Home and Garden: Home decor and gardening supplies often have strong profit margins.
- Beauty and Personal Care: Skincare and cosmetics profit from strong branding and loyalty.
- Electronics and Gadgets: Popular electronics can be lucrative with effective marketing.
- Digital Products: E-books and courses have high-profit margins without shipping costs.
How do I get more customers for my ecommerce?
To attract more customers to your ecommerce store, optimize your website, make use of social media, deploy email marketing, and offer discounts and referral programs to boost customer acquisition and sales.
How to get sales on Shopify without ads?
Use organic methods such as – focusing on SEO, creating valuable content, utilizing email marketing, and social media presence, and engaging with customers through promotions and referrals.