20 Effective Tips for How to Increase eCommerce Sales

20 Effective Tips for How to Increase eCommerce Sales

Over the last decade or so, eCommerce sales have soared exponentially, emerging as a critical component of the global economy. Unlike brick-and-mortar shopping, online businesses allow for far greater convenience and accessibility. These days, consumers can get whatever they want with the simple click of a button. 

If you’re in the eCommerce space, you’re probably well-aware that the industry is becoming increasingly saturated. It’s harder than ever for businesses to stand out – and keep up with consumer behavior, which is ever-evolving. The competition is steep in the online marketplace, and as more businesses join the digital realm, differentiating and grabbing the attention of consumers is a challenge, no doubt.

That being said, eCommerce business owners can proactively adopt a number of practical strategies that will help boost their sales. Keep reading to learn more about how to bring your eCommerce business to a new level of success and longevity. Based on our extensive experience in the eCommerce field, these are our top 20 tips for how to increase eCommerce sales.

1. Set Targeted Pricing

For starters, properly pricing your product is essential if you want to boost eCommerce sales. Setting optimal prices is a non-negotiable – and one way of doing this is by considering the geographic location of your customers.

This strategy – called GeoPricing – tailors pricing based on the IP address of a consumer. It’s a nuanced approach that recognizes the diverse economic landscapes around the world, the differing consumer behaviors in specific areas, and the purchasing power across varying regions. Specialized pricing for different regions can boost sales and increase revenue. Here’s how: 

Tapping into local economies

GeoPricing allows businesses to adjust pricing according to the economic conditions of specific areas. Recognizing the varying levels of disposable income and cost of living, companies can offer more competitive and appealing prices to consumers in different regions. 

Navigating currency fluctuations: 

Currency fluctuations can heavily impact international transactions. GeoPricing mitigates risks associated with currency volatility by adjusting prices to reflect the current exchange rates, ensuring that customers are not dissuaded by unfavorable conversation rates. 

Competitive edge: 

GeoPricing allows companies to stay competitive by strategically positioning their prices to align with local market dynamics. This approach can give businesses a significant edge over competitors who maintain a uniform pricing structure around the globe.

Addressing regulatory variances: 

Certain regions have distinct tax structures and regulations impacting the final price of products. GeoPricing allows businesses to comply with local tax laws and regulations, preventing legal issues and ensuring transparent and accurate pricing for customers. 

Personalized offers and discounts: 

GeoPricing can help businesses tailor promotions and discounts based on various regional preferences and other market conditions. This personalized approach can significantly increase customer engagement and drive sales. 

Improved customer loyalty: 

By showcasing an understanding of local economic variables, businesses can build stronger connections with customers. This generates a sense of trust and loyalty, encouraging greater consumer retention.

Market expansion: 

Using GeoPricing helps businesses strategically expand into new markets. By understanding and adapting to the economic landscape of each region, companies can tap into previously undeveloped consumer bases. This will drive growth and increase sales.

Data analytics: 

In the eCommerce world, data is king. GeoPricing relies heavily on sophisticated data analytics to assess market trends, consumer behavior and economic indicators. This data-driven approach empowers businesses to make more informed decisions – thereby improving sales in the long-run. 

2. Build an Email List

Email marketing is a fantastic and often underutilized eCommerce tool that can help boost sales. Beyond being useful for communication purposes, email marketing serves as a strategy to connect with consumers, drive conversions and foster brand loyalty. 

Email marketing can unquestionably drive conversions and sales. Well-crafted emails can showcase new products, highlight promotions and strategically guide customers through the sales funnel, ultimately leading to increased revenue over time.

The best way to grow your email list is by offering incentives. Encourage visitors to subscribe to your newsletter by teasing exclusive discounts, early access to sales or freebies. Contests and giveaways are other great incentives. Clearly communicate the value consumers will receive in exchange for sharing their email address. 

It’s also useful to personalize emails based on various factors such as demographics, purchase history and engagement levels. This type of segmentation enables businesses to deliver highly customized and relevant content to specific shoppers.

An important note: make sure the sign-up process for email newsletters is streamlined, seamless and highly user-friendly. Keep things simple and ask for minimal information beyond their email address. 

3. Social Media Promotion

Social media is another incredible promotional tool that can considerably boost eCommerce sales. In a lot of ways, social media campaigns have become the most essential marketing campaign for online business owners. Social media truly provides endless opportunities for businesses to connect with diverse audiences. 

Platforms like TikTok and Instagram, in particular, boast billions of active users worldwide, offering businesses an expansive and diverse audience to engage with. From local to global reach, these platforms facilitate the rapid dissemination of promotional content to a broad spectrum of prospective customers. 

It’s useful to tap into targeted advertising on platforms like Facebook, Instagram and Twitter, which allows you to reach specific demographics, interests and behaviors. Precision targeting ensures that promotional material is being delivered to the most relevant consumers.

4. Use Scarcity Marketing

The power of scarcity marketing should not be overlooked. Essentially, scarcity marketing is marketing that capitalizes on a customer’s concern that they might be missing out on something. It gives them a sense of urgency through limited stock quantities or competition. Scarcity marketing really follows the psychological triggers that drive consumers to take immediate action – thereby boosting sales.

5. Offer Money-Back Guarantee

Establishing a sense of trust with consumers is essential to running a flourishing eCommerce business. A well-crafted money-back guarantee policy with specific conditions can work wonders for building trust and potentially increasing sales.

Money-back guarantee policies mitigate a sense of risk felt by some consumers, offering them reassurance that if the product or service is not satisfactory, the customer has the option to seek a refund. This instills a greater sense of confidence in product quality, and always leaves a positive customer perception. Reduced purchase hesitation inherently means sales will be boosted. 

Your money-back guarantee policy should be prominently displayed in all your marketing materials, product pages and checkout processes. Make it a visible and reassuring element of the customer experience, as it emphasizes that customer satisfaction is a paramount part of your business. 

6. Leverage Social Proof

These days, most people won’t make an online purchase without carefully perusing the reviews – otherwise known as “social proof.” Positive reviews and endorsements wield a ton of influence on consumers’ purchasing decisions. 

For one, strong reviews and testimonials foster trust between a brand and potential customers, as well as reassurance that reduces the perceived risk of buying a new product. Social proof serves as validation of a product’s quality, which has emerged as a crucial factor in influencing the decision-making process.

The best way to leverage social proof is by amplifying your brand’s reach. Getting endorsements from influencers, for instance, is one way to do that. You could also offer special promotions to customers who leave a review for your business. The more social proof you have, the more visible and discoverable your brand will be – and the more your sales will increase.

7. Utilize Paid Traffic

While promoting your eCommerce business on social media is perhaps the easiest path for marketing your products, sometimes, leveraging paid traffic pays off more. Paid advertising is a powerful strategy for businesses hoping to broaden their reach and drive sales.

One of the most significant advantages of paid advertising on social media is the ability to precisely target certain demographics. Businesses can truly tailor their campaigns to reach the most relevant audiences for their products or services. In general, paid advertisements can lead to improved brand visibility, ensuring your offerings are seen by potential customers who may have otherwise never discovered them. 

8. Upsell Products

Strategic product recommendations have proven to be a useful tool for increasing revenue. Upselling has many advantages, including that it encourages customers to consider higher-priced complementary products – which bolsters a businesses’ bottom line. 

Recommending higher-priced or complementary products to consumers allows an eCommerce company to maximize the value of each consumer transaction. By guiding customers towards premium or additional purchases, companies can increase the average order value and improve overall sales.

Believe it or not, upselling actually enhances the shopping experience for consumers. Recommending complementary products or upgrades demonstrates a commitment to meeting customer needs. When customers see an upsell as something that is genuinely beneficial to them and aligned with their interests, it typically leads to improved customer retention and brand loyalty.

9. Revamp Checkout Process

Online shopping should be a seamless experience for consumers, and if it’s remotely complicated, they’ll be far less inclined to make a purchase. That’s why revamping your company’s checkout process can work wonders to increase sales. 

A user-friendly checkout process plays a major role in reducing cart abandonment – a common problem for all eCommerce businesses. Creating an efficient and hassle-free experience for consumers at the last shopping stage is essential for converting leads into completed transactions. 

One key component of a user-friendly checkout is having a guest checkout option. Many customers prefer a quick and anonymous purchase process without the desire to create or use an account. Providing a guest checkout option accommodates this preference and eliminates a potential barrier for many shoppers. 

It’s also important to offer multiple payment options, which will appeal to a broader consumer base. Auto-fill is another great way to streamline the checkout process and simplify the data-entry experience. This functionality not only saves a customer time, but it also mitigates errors.

Clear progress indicators are also important. Make it clear to consumers where they are in the checkout process by displaying steps and indicating when a stage has been completed. This reduces frustration and uncertainty.

Since so many people shop on their mobile devices, make sure to optimize the checkout process for mobile users. Lastly, be transparent about shipping costs! It’s important to clearly communicate any additional fees or shipping costs from the get-go to avoid cart abandonment later on.

10. Diversify Payment Options

Beyond offering a multitude of payment options at checkout, it could also be useful to tap into the trending “buy now pay later” protocol. BNPL options come with the strategic advantage of meeting the varied preferences of customers, ultimately leading to increased sales. 

The BNPL trend has gained significant traction recently, especially among millennials and Generation Z shoppers who seek the flexibility of breaking down payments into installments. Many BNPL services offer interest-free installment plans, which are highly appealing to many customers. BNPL offerings can dramatically reduce cart abandonment, increase the accessibility of your brand and promote trust and loyalty.

11. Experiment with Gmail Ads

If you’re hoping to increase eCommerce sales, it’s important to experiment with a slew of tools. Gmail ads, for instance, might be just what your business needs to expand its reach.

Gmail ads have emerged as a useful strategy for promoting eCommerce businesses. With the ability to reach a massive audience directly in their email inboxes, businesses can leverage clickable and interactive content to attract potential customers and drive engagement. Not to mention, Gmail ads allow businesses to target specific audiences, and this approach ensures promotional content is being presented to users who are more inclined to purchase the products or services being offered. 

Gmail ads can integrate eye-catching visuals that are highly interactive. High-quality images, vibrant colours and visually striking content can make your Gmail advertisement pique the interest of  prospective customers. In addition to strong visual elements, ensure your copy is catchy, too. Crafting compelling calls-to-action (CTAs) with engaging language can urge consumers to click, explore and learn more about your eCommerce business.

12. Install a Chatbot or Introduce Live Chat

Having a robust customer support system in place is a critical part of running a successful eCommerce business. People have very little patience these days, so offering immediate customer support through chatbots or live chat is a great way to engage with customers in real-time and address their concerns promptly.

As mentioned above, customers expect fast responses and resolutions from eCommerce companies. Delayed support can lead to frustration and distrust, whereas immediate customer support fosters strong brand loyalty and trust. Chatbots and live chat services operate around the clock, ensuring that customers can seek assistance any time, irrespective of where they are located. This availability is particularly important for global businesses with diverse audiences in different time zones. 

In conjunction with offering efficient issue resolution, chatbots are also cost-effective for businesses, since they are automated. Businesses can provide immediate support without the need for extensive human resources. 

13. Maintain Consistent Messaging

Communication and consistency are essential for establishing a strong brand image for eCommerce companies. Communication with your customers – whether in the form of email marketing or social media promotions – promotes brand recognition. Consistent branding ensures your eCommerce store is instantly recognizable to customers. 

From your logo and colour palette, to typography and visual elements, a cohesive identity strengthens brand recognition, making customers more intuitively identify with your brand. Giving your business a memorable personality – including a consistent look and feel – across social media channels, emails, and advertising, will help to establish perceived reliability, professionalism, credibility and trust with customers.

14. Offer Freebies

Who doesn’t love getting free stuff?! Turns out, shelling out free goods serves an important purpose for eCommerce companies.

Providing customers with free products, trials or shipping can pack a major punch for building trust and customer confidence. While it may seem like this strategy is solely serving consumers, in the long run, it can boost sales in a big way.

We highly recommend giving customers free products as a gesture of appreciation. Whether it’s a complimentary sample, a limited-time giveaway or a bonus item, customers see these freebies as a value-add that will encourage them or spend more money at your business down the line. 

Depending on the nature of your eCommerce business, providing trial periods are another great way to allow a customer to explore and experience your offerings with minimal financial risk. This strategy is particularly effective for subscription-based services.

In all, these freebie initiatives have the potential to considerably increase average order value. If customers feel appreciated by a company, they will be more likely to buy additional products and services. Essentially, free gifts create a positive feedback loop, in which satisfied customers are more likely to become loyal to a given brand.

15. Track User Engagement

The success of an eCommerce business relies a lot on its ability to adapt, innovate and consistently meet customer demands. A great way to keep up with the evolving eCommerce landscape is by analyzing key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics on a regular basis. 

The more insights you have into customer behavior, the more opportunity you will have to optimize your company’s performance and identify areas for improvement. Metrics such as conversion rates, bounce rates, and average order value offer invaluable information about how customers interact with the website. This allows businesses to then tailor their user experience, improve product offerings and refine marketing strategies to better meet customer desires.

In addition to measuring user engagement and customer satisfaction, it’s also important to analyze revenue and profitability. Revenue-related metrics, such as total sales, average order value and customer lifetime value, are important for understanding the financial health of an eCommerce business. Knowing these numbers can help companies make data-driven decisions that will increase sales.

16. Optimize Mobile Browsing Experience

Gone are the days when online shopping was exclusively done on computers. Now, more and more consumers are shopping on eCommerce sites from their phones. As such, creating a user-friendly mobile browsing experience is a great way to generate sales.

Did you know that the majority of internet traffic originates from mobile devices? With that information in mind, businesses are much better positioned to succeed if they prioritize mobile optimization – which directly contributes to an enhanced user experience. An easy-to-use and highly intuitive user interface on mobile devices encourages prolonged engagements and increases the likelihood of conversions. 

It’s also important to note that major search engines like Google favour mobile-friendly websites in their rankings. So, having a mobile-friendly eCommerce store improves your SEO performance, leading to higher visibility and traffic to your site overall.

In the increasingly competitive eCommerce landscape, having an optimized mobile store will help you stand out. Whether your website is mobile-friendly, or you create an app to create an even more seamless cross-device experience, captivating the mobile shopper is key to increasing sales.

17. Highlight Best Sellers

Turns out, bragging about your brand’s best-sellers is an excellent tactic for driving sales. There are many reasons to maintain a “Best Sellers” list on your website featuring a curated selection of popular and trending products. For starters, when customers see that certain products are popular among their peers, it creates a sense of validation and reassurance. 

The “Best Sellers” list also taps into the Fear of Missing Out (FOMO) phenomenon, which is ever so real among today’s consumers. When customers see that certain products are beloved by others, they feel a strong sense of urgency and excitement about hopping on the bandwagon. If a customer is torn about what – if anything – to purchase from your site, browsing a “Best Sellers” list can help guide customer decision-making.

Plus, a well-curated “Best Sellers” list can strategically spur upselling. By featuring related or complementary products within the list, businesses can draw customers to more than one product.

18. Incorporate Customer Reviews

We already discussed the importance of leveraging social proof, but as a business, there’s more you can do to incorporate customer reviews into your marketing strategy. By filling your website and social media profiles with positive customer reviews and testimonials, you can further build trust and generate excitement about your business and all it has to offer. 

Of course, customers can take it upon themselves to go and read your reviews online, but it’s also a useful strategy to showcase stellar customer testimonials. That way, those who don’t take the time to read reviews are still exposed to the many wonderful things that people have had to say about your brand. 

19. Conduct A/B Testing

Nailing your marketing strategy can be a process of trial and error, and A/B testing is a great way to decipher what’s working – and, likewise, what’s not. 

A/B testing, also known as split-testing, is a strategic method that allows businesses to optimize design, content and functionality. This continuous testing and tweaking methodology empowers eCommerce stores to refine their business, enhance the user experience and ultimately boost conversion rates. 

A/B testing is all about data-driven decision making. By comparing two versions (A and B) of a webpage, for instance, companies can identify what resonates more with their audience by tracking how they react to it. 

20. Insights from eCommerce Experts

Being open to the thoughts, opinions and experiences of other eCommerce experts is a great way to increase sales in your own eCommerce endeavors. Generally speaking, eCommerce experts are in alignment about the most important business elements that drive sales, including: 

Exceptional products: Of course, offering products that are high-quality, unique and relevant to a target audience will help your business flourish. Subpar generic products are often a common culprit for low sales.

Targeted traffic acquisition: Experts say investing in strategic marketing efforts, including search engine optimization (SEO), social media marketing and online advertising will help you reach the right audience. Without a carefully considered traffic acquisition strategy, even awesome products can fly under the radar of consumers. 

Optimized user experience: At the end of the day, it’s all about keeping customers happy. Make sure your eCommerce store offers users a sophisticated and seamless shopping experience, and make sure your business is equipped with stellar customer support. Taking a customer-centric approach to your eCommerce business will unquestionably drive sales.

Competitive pricing and value proposition: Naturally, pricing is a major factor that customers consider when making a decision to buy a product. Experts advise eCommerce stores to offer competitive prices, while also highlighting the unique value proposition of their products. Clear communication is key!

Conclusion

Although it can be tough to distinguish yourself as an eCommerce business owner, as you can now see, there are a number of things you can do to drive sales and set yourself apart. Mainly, we urge you to focus on your customers first – as customer satisfaction is essential for a successful and long-lasting eCommerce endeavor. And remember, a big part of customer satisfaction is smooth shipping and fulfillment. Reach out to us today for more information on Stalco’s stellar services.