Click Frenzy, the Australian digital shopping day, generated online sales of over $200 million in 2015 and the end-of-the-year holiday sales with Christmas and Boxing Day shopping, surpassed $2.5 billion. Australian online sales are expected to reach approx. $24 billion by 2018.
Do these figures take you by surprise? Do you want to join the online sales bandwagon? Do you want to increase your online sales too, but you don’t know where to begin? Here is a list of 25 amazing ways to help you boost your online sales.
1. Optimise for Mobile
By the end of 2015, 35% of eCommerce shopping was done through mobile apps or mobile optimised sites. With mobile shopping becoming increasingly popular, you can’t afford to have a site that’s not optimised for mobile. The easier it is for customers to purchase, the more likely they will reach your checkout, and the higher your sales will increase.
2. Target Your Audience
A fool-proof way to increase online sales is by targeting your audience. Use what you know about your existing customers to target others with the same interests in your desired locations.
3. Create Personas
Creating buyer personas will detail who your customers are and what interests them. This will give you an idea of where to find them and where best to advertise and to top it all off, it will make targeting a whole lot easier.
4. Advertise!
This may seem obvious, but you need to advertise your product, whether it is through Google AdWords or Facebook advertising and similar advertising methods. You can even use ad extensions to receive more clicks and ultimately more conversions.
5. Remarketing
Remarketing has shown to be one of the most effective practices to increase online sales. It helps to give those undecided customers a gentle push towards your checkout, by giving them more opportunities to convert.
6. Be Honest and Detailed
Ensure that your sales copy is honest and detailed. The more your customer knows about the product, the more likely they are to purchase. Honesty is always the best policy so don’t give false information about your products either, it will only result in complaints and returned items.
7. Free Stuff!
That got your attention, right? People love free stuff, so offer freebies whenever possible. Tempt customers with free samples, free gifts with a purchase, free delivery or a discount on your next purchase. Freebies are a great way to improve customers’ perceptions of your brand.
8. Run a Survey
Surveys are a brilliant way to learn about your customers and their buying habits. Conduct a survey to get that all-important information and offer a discount voucher to participants. It’s guaranteed to bring in more sales!
9. Offer less
Believe it or not, but offering your customers fewer options can boost sales. Giving fewer options means that customers have fewer decisions to make, and can make them a whole lot quicker. Sometimes customers abandon a purchase because they simply cannot decide on which product they want.
10. A Simple Checkout
An over-complicated and frustrating checkout process is enough to put any customer off actually going through with the purchase. Trillions of dollars are lost each year due to abandoned online shopping carts of which 63% can potentially be recovered.
11. Give Them Payment Options
When shopping online, 85% of Australians pay through debit or credit cards and the remaining 15% use other digital payment methods. With so many payment options available for online shopping, you must meet the needs of your customer. By giving them the option to pay with the method they prefer, they are more likely to go through with the purchase. Not everyone wants to use Visa or PayPal, so make sure it’s easy for customers to pay you.
12. Quality Photography
Appearance is everything in a visually-driven world. So, invest in quality images to ensure your brand is visually appealing to your audience.
13. Remove the Risk
Many people prefer to shop in stores rather than online because they feel it is less risky. When shopping online, customers take on the risk of receiving a product that doesn’t quite match what they ordered. By offering a money-back guarantee or exchanges you can remove any risk for your customer.
14. Be Specific with Links
It’s time to do away with generic landing pages. When advertising a certain product, make it easy for customers to find on your site by using specific links to take them straight there. They are likely to abandon the purchase if it’s a hassle to simply find the product on your site.
15. Make it Urgent
Creating a sense of urgency can help convert customers quicker by making them feel like it’s now or never. Limited edition offers and time-sensitive specials are a great way to achieve this.
16. Strategic Pricing
Tiered pricing is a brilliant strategy to use for influencing your sales. Use “decoy pricing” to achieve this. Customers tend to avoid the most expensive and the cheapest options and settle for a product in the middle range. The cheapest products are decoys to influence customers’ decisions.
17. Show off Your Reviews
Testimonials are powerful tools to show off to new customers and validate your brand. Customer reviews are better for your brand than the best sales copy you could write, so showcase reviews to build up trust with your audience.
18. Pop-up Offers
Give visitors the opportunity to opt-in to receive your newsletter or join a loyalty program. This will help build your database and coupled with a great sign-up offer, can increase your online sales.
19. Follow-Up
Don’t let the journey end once you take a customer’s money. Send a follow-up email to find out if they are satisfied with your product and the process of purchasing. You could simply email just to say thank you and build up a great relationship.
20. Create Value
Most often, customers don’t care about buying things or your products; they care about solving their problems and making their lives better. Thus, you need to place a value on your product that will show customers how it will benefit them and improve their lives.
21. Embody your customer
The language you use in campaigns impacts conversion rates, so align your copy with your audience and how they will understand your content. Write and speak with their voice, this means to use the type of language and phrases from your audience . Get this information from your surveys.
22. Be Active on Social Media
There’s nothing worse than not receiving a response to your Facebook query, so don’t leave your prospective customers in the dark. Talk to them on social media and get involved in conversations to gain their trust and let them rest easy about the quality of your products.
23. Pinpoint Your Conversions
Use analytics to determine when and where conversions take place. Use this information to better your strategy and choose where to advertise. Remarketing can be linked to this point too.
24. Start a blog
Content marketing can have a great effect on your sales. Customers will trust your brand more if you show them you are knowledgeable by providing valuable content on a regular basis.
25. Build a database
By building an email list for marketing, you’ll be able to get information about your products to your customers delivered directly to their inbox. Companies have reported an estimated an 119% ROI because of email marketing.