Smart ways to boost sales in your ecommerce store

By Henry Brown

For e-commerce stores, success is defined by selling enough products to lead to profit. This means you will need to cover your outgoing costs and still have income leftover. The best way to ensure this happens is to do everything in your power to maximize your sales. The good news is you can find some of the most effective ways to get more sales in the post below. Read on to find out what they are.

Cross-sell and upsell effectively

To maximize sales in your eCommerce store you need to make use of the upsell and the cross-sell. The upsell is all about getting a customer to upgrade their purchase, encouraging them to buy something with a higher value than their original choice.

One way to do this is to set up your site to offer a larger package of products, but for a lower unit price. Then the customer will benefit from paying less per item, while your business has secured a higher value sale.


Cross-selling, on the other hand, is all about offering additional products that enhance the client’s initial purchase. A great example of good cross-selling is when you buy a new pair of shoes and the site you are using offers you a shoe cleaning kit.

To be as successful as possible with cross-selling, it’s best to set your site to suggest lower-value useful or fun items that encourage an impulse buy. The reason is that you can build off of the dopamine hit your customer will be experiencing with their initial sale.

Minimize friction at check out

We live in an instant age, where people expect not to have to wait for things. Of course, this expectation will apply to your eCommerce site’s checkout process too. Indeed, if you have a lengthy or complicated process you risk losing your customer and sale before they have made a payment.

To the end, you need to keep your buying process as short and sweet as possible. Utilize one-click purchasing wherever you can. It also makes sense to offer a choice of third-party payment providers such as Apple, and Paypal so clients don’t have to go away and sign up for anything else. If they do wish to use their credit or deceit card, adding a card scan feature can help make this process as quick and efficient as possible.

Happily, it’s no longer difficult to put fast payment strategies like the ones mentioned above into practice. The reason is that most payment providers offer apps that easily integrate with the most popular eCommerce platforms with much fuss or the need to rewrite any code.

Maximize your CRO (conversion rate optimization )

Getting people to visit your site is important in eCommerce, but what is vital is ensuring as many of those visitors convert into paying customers. That is where CRO comes in. Indeed, a good CRO means you can maximize sales with lower amounts of traffic.

All you need to do is use strategies such as
-Using effective calls to cation
-Use repetition of important phrases relevant to your product
-Point out the benefits of your product rather than just its features
-Keep sections short and easy to read

Use headlines with benefits or promises as opposed to just plain old statements

Provide fast and free delivery and returns

No customer wants to have to second guess their decision to buy from your eCommerce store because they have to pay for delivery and returns. If they can find a similar product elsewhere without these additional costs they will likely navigate away from your eCommerce site.

With that in mind, offering free delivery and returns in today’s market is a no-brainer. Yes, this may add some additional cost to your product, but the benefits customers perceive from free delivery and returns should offset this with no problem.

Just be sure to give your delivery and return business to a reliable distribution services provider, such as Shape’s fulfilment services. After all, customers want to receive and return things as fast as possible, and you can ensure further sales later down the line by offering this.

Optimizing your site for SEO

SEO or search engine optimization as it is also known is all about making sure that your e-commerce site is easily discoverable on Google. SEO refers directly to the organic placement of your site in the search engine results pages (SERPS), while PPC and paid advertisements can also be used to provide additional advantages.

There are many things you can do to boost the SEO of your eCommerce site, and these can be split into two main categories: on-page SEO and off-page SEO.
One particularly useful type of on-page SEO is including long-tail keyword phrases which are currently prioritized by Google. Additionally making sure your site is fully optimized for mobile use, and is fast to load can help you work your way up the rankings.

It is also worth noting that Google got wise to keyword stuffing a long time ago, and this means that any content you provide whether in the form of a blog or product listing needs to be unique and original. The best way to achieve this is to create unique content that deals with a particular subject in-depth, something that can also help to build up the business kudos as an expert in your field as well.

Off-page SEO on the other hand focuses on getting links from other high authority sites back to your own. Many people think this is important because it refers clients to your site, yet the real value of backlinks is that they act as a kind of reference system for the search engines. That is, if you have backlinks from a high authority site, the search engine will count this in your favor and boost your place in the listings.

Of course, if all of these tactics are a little beyond your expertise you can always get a specialist SEO agency to help you with these tasks. Indeed, their expertise and knowledge of current trends can be invaluable when it comes to gaining an advantage over your closest eCommerce competition.

Consider customers in terms of lifetime value

It always takes more effort and cost to convert a cold lead than one that is warm. What this means in terms of your eCommerce store is that previous customers are just as important in your mission to boost sales as new ones. Indeed, instead of seeing customers in terms of the value of a single purchase, you need to switch to viewing them in terms of their lifetime value.

This means doing everything in your power to impress them, offer them great service and value, and ensure that they make repeat purchases from your eCommerce site.

You may also wish to consider implementing a loyalty scheme to help you retain customers over the long term. You can offer free products, percentage discounts, or even vouchers for your store in return for a certain number of purchases.


In particular, loyalty programs help customers to justify making their purchases with you, as they will be getting something extra in return. It also helps encourage them to come back to you and not your competitors as they will be missing out on a potential benefit if they shop somewhere else.
Use effective calls to action on your site

Last of all if you want to secure as many sales in your eCommerce store as possible you will need to pick and use effective calls to action on your site. Calls to action are phrases designed to direct your customers to make their next move along the buying process and can help encourage and guide them.

Of course, you must choose calls to action that will appeal to your target demographic and fit with your site. The most obvious of these is to make use of an ‘add to cart’ button underneath the products that you have on sale. Although there is a range of other phrases and techniques you can use to help boost your sales.
____
Henry Brown is an online marketing executive. When he isn’t talking shop, he’s roaming the streets of London, uncovering the extra-ordinary in the ordinary.

Leave a Reply

The Self-Employment Survival Guide can help you succeed. Learn all about it here.

Self-Employment Survival Guide book cover