Post Covid-19, many big and small businesses have shifted their focus to digital space. And one of the biggest concerns of such businesses is to increase their online sales while the competition is high is also increasing. So, every other business owner is trying to figure out how to make the customers choose their product when a thousand other options are just a click away. To help you in that case, we have dug deep to find the 10 best tips to help you increase online sales.
10+ Tips to Help You Increase Online Sales
If you are planning to build or already own an e-commerce solution for your business, you need to learn how to efficiently present your product or service to your potential customers and make it easier for them to buy your product or service. To do so, check out the following 10 tips to help you increase online sales.
1. Determine your sales goals
The most important tip that we can give you is to first clearly determine your sales goals. It means what percentage of growth you want to achieve which is also directly related to your revenue goals. Then, sketch out some powerful strategies you want to use to achieve your goals.
One of the best ways to determine your sales goals is to look back and study your business performance to get a baseline idea of setting new goals. Otherwise, you can follow the strategies below.
- Conduct Market Research: Conducting market research is a powerful strategy to figure out your target audience, their interests, and their buying patterns.
- Create Buyer’s Persona: It is the best way to recognize and target your potential customer.
- Define Market Strategy: Based on your market research and your buyer’s persona, you can draw an outline of the strategy you can use to achieve higher sales.
2. Know Your Customer’s Persona
In order to reach your potential customer, you first need to recognize who they are. So, the first thing that you should do is to create a buyer’s persona. It is one of the best techniques to develop the online sales of your business.
If you want to create your first buyer’s persona, it should include the following information.
- Who is your potential customer: Identify who is your customer, where he belongs, what are his interests, his family situation, and more.
- How can your product or business help your customer: Find out how you can help your customer resolve their problem and also identify your objectives and challenges.
- What are your customer’s interests: Identify your customers’ objectives behind choosing your product and service.
- How can you reach your potential customers: Figure out ways and best marketing strategies and platforms that can help you reach your customers
If you already have an online presence, you can use your analytics to collect the above information to create your buyer’s persona. The analytics of your website can tell you about their age, gender, demographics, interests, and much more.
3. Make it Easier to Buy
Let’s face it, customers are super impatient. They are used to getting things within just a few clicks. So, if your customer has to go through several steps to get what they want, there is a higher chance that your customer is going to give up. As a result, your competition is going to get the advantage.
To overcome this problem, make sure that you follow the tips below.
- Make an easy purchase process: The fewer the clicks are the more easily your customer can buy your product. One of the best examples is the purchase process of Amazon. Within just a couple of clicks, you can get the product you want.
- Offer a number of payment methods: Make sure that you have a variety of payment methods such as PayPal, credit cards, cash on delivery, and more.
- Cut down additional charges: If there are any additional charges, try to cut them down. Or indicate it clearly.
- Offer low shipping costs: Customers love this. They will be happier to know that you charge fewer delivery charges than your competitors.
- Easy return policy: In cases, your customer is not happy with the product, you can offer them a return policy. Most importantly, offer them the easiest return policy in the market to make sure that your customers choose you over your competitors without a second thought.
- Fast Delivery: It is not only the process of ordering a product online but also getting the product that you customers have no patience for. So, make sure that your customers get their order as soon as possible.
4. Optimize Your Website
If you own an online business, you can choose different channels to offer your products and services to your customers. For instance, you can choose between distributor stores. However, the best option is to build your own website for your business.
But just building a website is not enough. You have to make sure that your website is well designed and optimized. Because a website that takes forever to load and does not offer enough information about products and services has a negative impact on your sales.
On the other hand, if your website gives clear and enough information about the services or products that you offer, will attract more visitors. There is a higher chance that the visitors will also turn into potential customers raising your sales.
Hence, make sure that your website is well optimized, user-friendly, and can easily be loaded on mobile devices. Because customers make most of their purchases on their phones.
5. Build Trust and Maintain it
This might seem super obvious but it can prove to be the backbone of your business. Even today, most people still believe that online shopping is nothing but a scam. They are somehow true.
Since customers are not able to physically view and touch the product before they buy it, they are usually deceived with a poorer quality product.
However, to build trust and maintain that in the market, you should not only give them the best service and product but also add as much visual information as you can. This is to make sure that your customer knows what they are giving their money for.
On your website, add clear pictures of your product from different angles and details that describe the product well enough. Besides, you can also go further and add 3D videos to better convince your potential customers.
6. Show Off Customer Testimonials
One of your strongest weapons to help you increase your sales is your satisfied customers’ reviews. You can use their reviews to attract more potential customers. And this has never been truer before.
In today’s social media-dominated environment, customer reviews play a vital role. So, make sure that you add your satisfied customers’ reviews and testimonials to your website. You can add them anywhere including landing pages, product pages, homepage, and even your customers are checking prices of your products.
This way you can help your customers to stop hesitating and get what they really want without a second thought. Moreover, you can also add any certification if you have any. Also, add them on your home page where anyone can easily view them.
In addition, there is no doubt that recommendations also play a crucial role in increasing your sales. So, when designing your website, you can add sharing buttons that your visitors or customers can use to share and recommend your product to their friends to bring more customers and increase your sales.
7. Give a Bulletproof Money-Back Guarantee
Usually, one of the most powerful factors that convince your customer to buy your product is the fact that they are not going to risk their hard-earned money. Before they check out, they go through thorough questions like why should they buy this product from your website or what if this product does not fulfill their expectations. So, there is a high chance that they will leave your website to save their money.
To overcome this, you can offer them a bulletproof money-back guarantee. Because the more risks you remove from their side the keener they will be investing in your business helping you to increase your sales.
8. Offer Fewer Choices
Too many people think that they can increase their business’ online sales by offering more and more choices to their customers. That is sadly not true.
In fact, offering a variety of choices can help your customer easily decide what they want to get. Otherwise, they will spend an enormous amount of time going through your products and be unable to decide what they should get.
Hence, efficiently optimize your online store and wisely categorize your products to make it easy for your potential customer to find what they have been looking for.
For instance, if you own a cosmetics brand, you can make categories for your products. For instance, you can categorize lip products, face products, hair products, and others in different places. Besides, you can also make a separate category for different seasons. Also, make categories for essentials, best-sellers, and trending products. But the main point is to show as few options as possible.
9. Add 24/7 Available Chatbot
Chatbots are an easy way to help your customers get what they are looking for and help you to increase your sales. All you have to do is install it in your e-commerce store. Wonder how it can help you in increasing your sales?
Here is how you can use a chatbot easily raise your online sales:
- Book Order: You can add a chatbot to your website to help your customers book orders for your products and services.
- Automated Sales Support: Whether your customer wants to know the price of a particular product or the delivery report of a product, you can help instantly help them any time of the day. It is most useful when your sales team is not available.
- Schedule appointments: If your customer needs to consult you, they can schedule an appointment through a chatbot on your website.
- Lead generation: Without making your customers fill out a form, you can easily collect the contact information of your customers. Then, pass the information out to your sales team.
and much more. All in all, chatbots are easy to install, save time, and can be easily customized.
10. Increase Online Sales with Mobile Optimization
There is no doubt that shopping on phones is never going out of trend. Therefore, one of the best tips to help you increase online sales is to optimize your online store on mobile too. So, make sure that it is easy for your customers to visit your online store on their mobile phones and buy what they are looking for. This also includes making sure that it is easy for your customers to checkout.
The best example is Amazon’s mobile website. It is user-friendly and has a sufficient amount of product image and description that is neither too much nor too little. This is also why most people prefer Amazon over other online stores.
11. Offer great deals & discounts
One of the last tips to help you increase online sales is to offer great deals and discounts. Because the price is the most important factor that we all consider before making our last decision to purchase a product and get a service. To increase offer great deals and discounts, you can offer:
- limited deals
- discounts and offers
to make sure that a visitor does not leave your website before buying something.
Because there is no doubt that a low price can easily convince a potential customer not to miss the chance. So, before you set the price tag, make sure that you are keeping your customers’ emotions in consideration too.
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