February 22, 2023
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Do you have an e-commerce site that you want to squeeze more sales out of? If you're not planning a huge rebuild and don't want to make bigger changes like implementing responsive design, you can do the following to increase sales.
I think it's so frustrating that many small and medium retailers don't implement tactics like we've outlined below. An increase in sales could be achieved easily!
There are tons of things you can do, but here are some of the most simple and effective.
Firstly, let's consider how you can increase the 'footfall' at your ecommerce store. This may be enough to give you the lift you need.
Here are the basics of blogging - and yes, it really does work, but requires commitment.
Produce quality interesting or useful content on a regular basis. 3 posts a week should be enough.
Consistently doing this will increase your Google ranking as you will be rewarded by their algorithms for producing fresh, good quality content.
Once you become a prolific blogger, it's only a short step to the next powerful visitor acquisition technique.
Find blogs on other sites with audiences that may be interested in your content. For example, if you sell binoculars:
The good thing about this online PR is that it appeals as much to search engines as it does to people.
You could get direct click throughs from people wanting to learn more about your product and guest blogging is great for "brand awareness".
Additionally, the number one thing in SEO is still how many inbound links to your site you have, though social media presence is becoming more important all the time.
Google's break through in search quality was to measure a site not just on its content but more on what other pages are linking to it. If you can build links from related websites, this will help Google in determining what your site is about (often it trusts what other people 'say' about your site when linking to it, over your sites keywords).
Links from high profile sites are also effective in boosting your credibility, from the point of view of both search engines and visitors.
Whatever you do, don't ever pay for links, Google will detect this and you will be penalised.
Stick to good old fashioned PR, once you've received attention from your blogging you can try approaching 'traditional' publishers like newspapers and magazines. This may be particularly effective if you have an interesting story about your business or your industry is currently in the news. These publishers are crying out for content and if you can lend a hand you'll be rewarded with links and visitors in whose eyes your expertise has already been verified.
You're probably sick to death of hearing this one.
But as I say, the major search engines are quickly adopting 'likes' and share as a key measure of how 'good' a site is. If real people are sharing and liking your content, you must be producing something good. Search engines use these indicators along with keyword analysis when determining what pages to show.
The more inbound links and social media attention you can get, the more likely it is your pages will be served on Google. This means more visitors.
Social media is also about serendipity and discovery - people will often come across your posts by chance and if they like them or see you sell something they are interested in, they will pay you a visit. Try these techniques:
These channels can also be used as customer service mechanisms but this requires a dedicated strategy in which you monitor the channels that are important to you and respond to comments same day. Not for the faint hearted.
Social media is great but email still rules. Email lists are gold dust because they go direct to the individual and if you can make the content appealing, the open and click through rates are still quite high.
However, you will need to provide an incentive for people to join your list. This means giving something way.
There are two ways I recommend doing this:
I advise you put this value proposition in your footer, just above your mailing list sign up box. Some e-commerce sites even put the email address box above the page content, this underlines how important mailing lists are in building a following.
Once you start gathering a list, begin sending out your most interesting blog content. This will keep you in the mind of your audience whilst building your credibility.
Every so often, you have license to do a bit of self promotion, so don't be afraid to do this but you should ensure this is less than 20% of the content you send out.
Your email mailing list can become an incredibly consistent way to encourage sales. It can act as a reminder to people who have a purchase on their to do list and if you can successfully associate your brand with excellence in your industry, you may even get word of mouth from it.
People will forward on particularly interesting content. Some brands even produce content exclusively with the aim of making it forwardable, or 'viral', however loosely related to their product line.
Most importantly, you can use your mailing list to send out special offers like temporary discounts and coupon codes, which can be used to reduce seasonal dips, get rid of stock and promote new lines.
The basics of search engine optimization don't require that you make code changes. However, once you've started acquiring inbound links and social media likes and shares, it may be worth having your site checked over for improvements you can make in Search Engine Optimisation.
Typically the suggestions will be:
A description meta tag:
What's shown on Google:
This gives you control over what people see when you show up in search results.
Everything above aims to increase your traffic by improving search rankings. Looking at the graphic below, if you were in position 12 and did a sufficient amount of blogging and social media campaigning, you could raise yourself up to - say - position 8.
In this case, you'd be going from receiving 1.5% to 3.5% of search traffic for that term - that would be 3 times as much traffic!
That could equate to 3x more revenue.
Don't just think about your main keywords, for example in our case, "e-commerce London" - also think about all the things people may search for, so for us that includes "how to increase e-commerce conversions", "how to quickly increase sales", "how to write an e-commerce specification", "what do I need to know about PCI compliance" and so on.
Phrases like these, with more than 3 words, are often called 'long tail search terms' and you may find it easier to dominate a few of these and receive good focused traffic than aiming for a more general and highly competitive term.
Since these terms are so specific, they may even convert better than the more competitive general terms.
To come up with long tail keyword ideas, you could use Ubersuggest or Adwords Keyword Planner to help find undeserved but popular search phrases.
Now that you're starting to attract more traffic, you need to make your website more effective. This means boosting your conversion rates.
Your basic conversion rate is the number of people that visit your store vs the number that eventually buy. The industry average is apparently 2%, so for every 100 visitors, 2 make a purchase, but this is actually quite hotly debated as no one knows where this figure comes from!
What you should aim for is simply to raise your existing conversion rates - set a goal and measure your progress towards it using Google Analytics or similar.
A recent eConsultancy survey claims that only $1 is spent on increasing conversions rates vs $92 on acquiring traffic. That means for every $92 spent on SEO, Search Engine Marketing (paid ads), social media campaigns, offline campaigns and all the rest of it, there is only $1 spent on making the website more effective.
Ludicrous! There's so much that can be done and much of it is easy. Imagine if you can raise your conversions by just 1%. That could mean a doubling of revenue - how hard can it be?...
As we discussed earlier, ideally you differentiate your site on something other than price, though given the ease with which you can compare products across stores on the web, price will always be an issue.
Anyway - one way to achieve this is to provide rich and in-depth descriptions for your products, that include:
There's a good article here on improving product descriptions.
Coupon codes are a powerful way of encouraging sales.
If you're using one of the big open source e-commerce platforms (Drupal Commerce, Magento etc...) or a closed platform with this functionality available, you should make use of it.
A common concern is how to stop prospective customers dropping off your checkout when they see a coupon field. This is a known phenomenon and can be solved in two ways:
This is a great way of improving the customer experience as well as lifting sales.
This is quite an undertaking but can really help with conversions. Most people won't use it, but just like including your phone number, it's a good way of reducing buyer anxiety.
The problem is that you need to be around to answer any queries that come through. Some companies can monitor your chat for you if you don't want or have the capability to do it in house. Zebra and The Chat Shop are two we can recommend in the UK. This ensures your visitors can always get an answer to any pre-purchase queries.
You can use a service like LiveChat for the actual technology.
Make sure you're ready way in advance of potential demand, for example if you sell ski gear or back to school clothes, be ready three to four months in advance of the season start.
This can be used with conjunction with the blogging and SEO efforts mentioned above, for example, "where to find pre-season ski deals" or "tips when choosing a school uniform that will last".
During the quiet periods, use coupon codes and other offers to lift sales.
This is still relatively state of the art but there are a few providers making it easy. One of those is Nosto, which we use on our e-commerce sites.
Here's how it works:
Above are examples of recommendations in use on one of our client sites. These can boost your sales significantly, sometimes by up to 30%.
If you really can't get this working automatically on your site, you could add a manually selected set of relevant products beneath each product. You'd need to add a new field on your product pages in your content management system, this would allow you to choose products to display beneath the product in question.
Many consumers are beginning to expect free shipping as standard, as popular retailers like Amazon and ASOS routinely offer it.
Since it's free, it doesn't need to be fast shipping. If you can, price this actual shipping cost in with your products.
You could use a threshold for free shipping, such as "Free shipping for orders over £150", this can increase basket amounts as customers try and qualify for free shipping by buying more, including any tentative purchases they have in mind.
If you don't want to offer this, ensure the customer has a clear idea of the shipping prices you will charge before checkout. "Hidden" costs like this, which only appear at checkout, are by far the greatest source of checkout adandonment.
Some people are in a rush, they're desperate and they'll pay a premium if you can guarantee next day delivery.
This is a great way to improve your margins.
It could also be a good way of differentiating yourself if you stock a product that is available from other websites - If you can beat them with more appealing shipping you could get the sale.
If you decide to offer this, ensure it's prominent on your site by including it in the header on all pages.
It's certainly more hassle for you but this will reduce friction on checkout and you may not get as many returns as you expect.
The idea here is to reduce buyer anxiety and make the decision to purchase easier - "I can easily send it back". The number of people that actually do return items will depend from industry to industry.
If you sell clothing or shoes, this could be a great way of improving conversions.
Here's how to do it:
If you do decide to do this, make sure you include it on your checkout sidebar to reassure customers as they pay.
Speaking of ASOS, their carrier DPD use this technique for spreading the word when they do well and for picking up on anything that needs improving.
They include 'tweet your experience' links in it their order update emails.
However, when doing this it's important to meet a service level. People on social media will expect a response same day, particularly when it's bad feedback, which does happen.
DPD try to decrease the risk of this by including 'opening hours' on their twitter page, on the left.
They key point here is to imagine purchasing through your shop, think about all the 'touch points' the customer has with your business and consider how they can be improved and how at each stage you can ask for feedback, or for the customer to share their experience with their friends.
Convincing people that have already bought to buy from you to buy again is way easier than convincing new customers, providing you've done a good job during the last purchase (i.e. phase II above).
The other good thing about repeat customers is you know their purchase history and can therefore market related or complimentary products. So if they just about a camera from you, batteries, memory cards and lenses would be a good bet.
Many articles like this one simply concern themselves with selling more in the first place, but with the right after order care you can easily maintain repeat custom and increase word of mouth, which could make up a sizeable chunk of revenue.
Give away coupon codes with your orders that offer a discount on the next order. Since this customer has already bought from you, this could be just the thing to encourage the repeat purchase.
Obviously what you're selling has an impact on the frequency of repeat custom. Customers may return every 2 months for printer cartridges, but only once every few years for furniture.
Even so, you could still enclose a few cards with discount codes that the customer can give to family and friends, this will create a word of mouth effect and may improve the customers' perception of you as a thoughtful supplier.
Consider your next experience when buying something online.
Where did you get the most hands on experience? Probably when the package arrived. After the experience of ordering, other than email updates, the key touch point is when the package arrives with the customer.
You can continue to make an impact here by standing out from the rest. In addition to the coupons mentioned above, other things you could include are:
If you have the technical capability, you should send personalised emails for given events, for example:
We use Nosto to do this, which requires minimal development effort, but there are also other providers out there.
Always keep a mailing list of past customers, in mailchimp or similar. You can then send mailshots offering rewards to existing customers in the shape of early previews of new collections or special offer coupon codes.
That was quite a journey, thanks for reading! If you made it this far I really like you.
Some of those suggestions above are easier than others, but whichever you try should yield an improvement. I'd love to hear if you did follow any of the advice here or on the rest of our e-commerce advice blog.
