7 Strategies to Skyrocket Your eCommerce Sales

Setting-up an eCommerce store is an excellent way to make money online. However, just setting it up is not enough; you need to undertake certain measures to boost your eCommerce sales. When we say certain measures we mean implying the knowledge and tactics to market your store and drive traffic and sales to that particular store.

We’ve compiled 7 strategies worth considering if your really want to take your eCommerce sales to the next level.

1.       Upsell Your Products

Upsell and cross-sell offers make an average of 10-30% of eCommerce sales. However, upselling on eCommerce sites is 20 times better than cross-selling. This is according to Econsultancy.

Two main things you should know about upselling are: relate your upsells to the original product and know the price range of your customers. The product that you are selling must fit the original needs of your customers. Bear in mind that your customers may not like being offered a higher product price, especially if they already have a certain price in mind. Make sure that the new product is indeed better than the original.

Encourage the customers to spend some more money to buy a better version, or an upgrade of the product they are buying.

A nice example is the way Apple sells iPads. The options in the red box are Apple’s attempt to persuade customers to buy an iPad.  

For Apple is easy, we get it. For you we can suggest using some of the many Shopify upselling apps. The Shopify app store is a valuable resource if you are looking for a solution to boost up your eCommerce sales. Good news is that a lot of them are free like: Recover Cart Pusher, Kit, Smile.io. etc.

Spending $0 is not so bad if it means getting an immediate boost in sales, right?

2.       Paid Traffic

Have you considered paid traffic to quickly generate sales for your ecommerce store?

If done correctly, paid traffic can really increase your eCommerce sales. People will tell you that it is expensive and that you will spend a lot of money without any results. Very often, those people who have failed with paid traffic have made some common beginner’s mistakes.

We have several advices that you need to know about paid traffic:

• Spend small amounts of money just to scan and test the situation. There is no need to spend a lot of money just to see if this concept is right for you.
  
• Have multiple campaigns and multiple ad variations. Never spend all your money on one ad variation.
  

Facebook, for example, is one of the most effective marketing method available, in many cases much better than your own website or email lists. However, paid traffic can come from more than just Facebook, though. Just some of the big ones:

• Display ads, appearing on the side of the page;
  

• Paid search like Google AdWords or Bing Ads;
  

• Social media ads, the sponsored content that appears in your Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook feeds;
  
• Sponsored content — a type of content marketing aimed at specific targeted audience;
  
• Influencer marketing —  where certain social media influencer promotes your product or brand to their audience thus driving bigger eCommerce sales for your brand;
  

You must know who your target customers are. Always tend to understand the needs of your customers. We will elaborate on targeting your customers in more detail in the next item.

3.        Target your customers

The key is to target your customers as wisely as possible.

You cannot treat all your customers equally. Identify the most valuable types of visitors to your website and keep showing them the right content on important pages in order to keep their attention. Showing your ads to the right people will increase the sales on your eCommerce site.

Try to focus your efforts on customer retention instead of customer acquisition.

This is important, because unlike the new customers and customers who will make only one purchase on your page, loyal customers add more items to their shopping carts, they have higher conversion rate and they will definitely generate more revenue with every visit to your page.

In the picture above, we can see how the loyal customers affect an eCommerce site.

Let’s get one thing straight, having new customers is not a bad thing. On the contrary, it’s great; however, that is a more expensive strategy. Focusing on your existing customers is more cost-efficient, because they are already acquainted with your products and familiar with your brand.

A good idea is creating a customer loyalty programme which will motivate the customers to spend more money.

4.    Increase eCommerce traffic with social media

Using the big platforms for social media marketing such as Facebook or Instagram can help you generate sales.

Facebook Exchange is Facebook’s proprietary platform advertising service for desktop users where online advertisers place ads on the Facebook sidebar or directly on the users’ timeline. This platform is very effective in reducing shopping cart abandonment.

Facebook Exchange leaves a cookie on the user’s computer when they visit some page on your site. Let’s say the user adds a certain product to the shopping cart, but doesn’t buy it. A cookie will be left on their computer which will alert Facebook to show an ad on the user’s timeline which is to motivate them to complete the order.

With approximately 800 million active users monthly, Instagram is a fantastic place to skyrocket your eCommerce sales. Instagram gives brands 25% more engagement than any other social media platform. In fact, Instagram announced that they are establishing a team of 50 persons who will focus on the eCommerce features for the app.

Engage with your users by running campaigns and contests, use the right hashtags and filters and post at the right times. This will increase the number of followers on Instagram.

5.       Use video demonstrations to display popular items

Images are good, but they don‘t guarantee sales. If you want to boost your eCommerce sales, you need to add more details in your item presentation. Prepare promotional videos where you are going to display your best items. This may take some time, but videos will increase your sales and conversion rates.

Making videos for your products does not have to be complicated. However, if you want your videos to look great, ask a professional to make them for you.

Customers love videos and they spend more time on pages that contain videos which increase their engagement and interest in what you are selling. Customers are more likely to remember what they watched rather than reading about it, because videos provide better explanation about the product.

6.    Optimize your site for mobile devices

Ecommerce does not mean that customers are solely shopping from their computers. In practice, they do most of their online shopping on their mobile phones and tablets.

A research shows that 40% of the mobile users have purchased something online from their devices. Therefore, if you want to increase the eCommerce sales on your website, optimized it for mobile devices. Otherwise, there is a chance you will experience a decline in sales.

Even better idea is to build a mobile app for your site.

Check out these numbers:

Notice that customers prefer apps compared to mobile websites.

Optimizing your website for mobile eCommerce will improve your customers’ experience on your website. Find the way to focus on the needs of the customers. And what do customers actually need? They need:

• Personalization
  
• Speed
  
• Benefits
  
• Entertainment
  
• Convenience, etc.
  

Implementing the aforesaid items will get you increased sales.

7.       Discounts, discounts, discounts

Offering discounts is never a bad idea, if you want to increase the number of visits on your eCommerce website. Discounts will improve the loyalty and lifetime value of your customers.

Just do the old and simple trick, raise the base price of the products and put it on sale.

Or, provide a discount for customers who will decide to purchase a more expensive option rather than a cheaper one.

Discount can also persuade people who have abandoned their carts to complete their purchase.

This is a great opportunity to implement exit offers. No matter how good your eCommerce store is built and looking, there will always be people who will think that a certain product is too expensive.

So, when the customer tries to leave your store, you can make a special offer or a discount pop-up that will try to convince the customer to buy the product.

Wrap-up

Bear in mind that the customers must be comfortable entering their personal information and credit card numbers on your website and you have to provide that comfort.

Always try to find new and creative ways to market products and services on your eCommerce site. Give yourself a couple of weeks to try all of these tricks and tactics and then evaluate, analyze and figure out which one of them is best for your business and will yield best results.