7 Proven Strategies for Increasing Your Online Sales

“I want to make fewer sales” – no one, ever.

We all want to make more sales in our online stores, right? At the very minimum, you need to bring more money in than you spend on outgoings, such as paying website builder fees to keep your site running, or paying shipping costs or staff salaries.

More sales means more turnover, which means more profit. Profit which we can reinvest in our stores, making them bigger and better than ever before.

Yet, it isn’t as easy as simply hoping that we can sell more. We need to take a proactive approach to getting more customers on our websites and find smart ways to show them why they really need or want to buy our products.

In this article, we offer some of our expertise on increasing online sales. Below you will find 7 proven strategies you can follow, along with some tips on how you can get the most from them for your own online store.

Ready to make more money? Read on…

Optimize Your Website for Conversions

When it comes to making more sales it is easy to think:

“We need to do more marketing”

Although this certainly is a great way to boost sales, all it will really achieve is helping you get more visitors to your site… and visitors don’t necessarily mean sales. This is especially true if your website isn’t optimized for conversions.

Let’s use a couple of examples to illustrate this point:

Example Website 1

The owners of this website have spent little time thinking about the customer journey. Their website design is lackluster and it is complex to navigate.

On average, for every 100 visitors to the site, they make 1 sale.

Example Website 2

This website sells exactly the same products at exactly the same price as Example Website 1. But the owners have taken time to optimize for conversions. The design is slick and it is easy to navigate.

On average, for every 100 visitors to the site, they make 15 sales.

As you can see, Example Website 1 would have to do enough marketing to attract 15 times as many visitors to achieve the same increase in sales as Example Website 2.

The lesson? Optimizing your website is one of the easiest/best ways to increase your sales.

Optimizing your website is all about making it appealing to customers and easy for them to find what they want and need. Here are some best practices you can use:

1. Make your website easy to navigate and user-friendly
2. Use clear and concise headlines
3. Make sure your content is easy to read and understand
4. Use high-quality images and videos
5. Use social proof, such as customer reviews
6. Include clear and prominent calls to action (CTAs)
7. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly
8. Offer incentives, such as discounts or free trials, to encourage visitors to take action
9. Continuously analyze and optimize your website based on customer feedback and data to improve conversions over time.

Find Out More

• Different industries have different average conversion rates, so it’s worth knowing what’s a good conversion rate to aim for in your industry. Learn more in our full breakdown of Average Website Conversion Rates In 5 Key Industries.

Utilize Social Media Marketing

Once your website is optimized to sell, it is time to start bringing more traffic to it. One of the best strategies for doing this is through social media marketing.

Why social media?

Because that is where your customers’ attention is.

Here are some stats to prove it (number of active users on top social media platforms):

• Facebook: 2.9 billion
• Instagram: 2 billion
• TikTok: 1 billion
• Snapchat: 635 million

This capture of attention makes it the perfect place to get your business in front of customers. Here are some best practices when using social media to promote your website:

• Create a social media strategy to ensure ongoing focus
• Post regular, high-quality, and relevant content
• Interact with customers and answer questions
• Amplify your messages with social media advertising
• Post a mix of promotional content and educational/entertaining content
• Include relevant links on your social posts/profiles to drive traffic

Offer Exclusive Deals and Discounts

Everyone loves to get a great deal on their favorite products. That is why exclusive deals and discounts can be a great way to make more sales and increase customer loyalty.

This approach is a powerful tool in two ways. Firstly, running a deal will help you attract new customers to your store who are looking to fulfill a want or need. Secondly, it will help you re-engage customers who have already had a great experience with you and who want to take advantage of getting a product at a reduced cost.

Which type of deal or discount you offer will depend on the type of ecommerce store you run. For example, if you run a store that offers low-cost products, then a straightforward percentage discount or a buy-one-get-one-free promotion would work well.

On the other hand, if you run a more luxury-focused store discounts of this type can be counterproductive. Instead, try offering exclusive deals to just a small handful of customers or running competitions to win products in order to generate a buzz around your brand.

Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Customer service is often overlooked as a powerful sales tool. Yet it is a great customer experience that keeps bringing customers back to buy more. In fact, many customers will opt to spend more on products simply because they have had a great experience with that brand in the past.

Investing in online customer service can help you drastically decrease your marketing spend. Here are some great ways to offer unbeatable customer service:

• Promptly reply to customer inquiries
• Use a friendly and empathetic tone when talking to the customer
• Personalize your communications
• Take ownership of customer problems
• Offer proactive communication and updates
• Train your customer service team to a high level
• Be consistent about customer follow up, and then act on feedback
• Request and listen to customer feedback
• Offer multiple channels for customer support (e.g. phone, email, chat, or social media)

Use Email Marketing to Nurture Leads

Email marketing is important for your brand because it’s a great way to nurture leads and drive conversions for your online business. By keeping consistent contact directly with your leads through email you can build your brand and reinforce important marketing messages.

Here are some best practices for nurturing leads via email marketing:

1. Segment your list on factors such as interests, age, and location. Use segmentation to send more relevant content to customers.
2. Use attention-grabbing email subject lines. However awesome your email is, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t get opened.
3. Keep your emails short and to the point.
4. Ensure your content tells or gives the reader something of value.
5. Personalize your emails as much as possible to make them more relatable.

Implement Upselling and Cross-selling Techniques

Upselling and cross-selling are powerful ways to generate more sales. Upselling focuses on pitching a more expensive or upgraded version of the product they intend to buy. On the other hand, cross-selling focuses on pitching additional, complementary, or related products to that which they intend to buy.

The biggest opportunity to upsell or cross-sell is when the customer checks out. This should be a non-pushy suggestion rather than a demand. Think of it that you are asking the customer:

“That product you are buying is great, but have you thought about this?”

Leverage the Power of Influencers

Influencers are fantastic marketing tools. In influencer marketing, the influential individual offers an independent and trusted point of view on your brand and products, as well as helps you reach a huge number of engaged individuals from within their audience.

Finding influencers is straightforward if you know how. The more relevant they are to your brand the better. So, start by browsing your follower list and those who have tagged you in their posts. This may help you find influencers who are already engaged with your brand.

To find more influencers you may use an influencer search tool such as Scrunch which allows you to find influencers based on specific criteria which are important to you.

Find Out More

• Learn How To Use Influencers To Drive Sales for more top tips on boosting your conversions using this method
• Did you know there are different “levels” or tiers of influencers? Learn the difference between Micro, Macro, Nano, and Mega Influencers in our full guide
• How much should you pay influencers – and can you afford it? Our guide on Influencer Rates can help you budget for this type of marketing

How to Increase Online Sales: Summary

Finding strategies for increasing online sales isn’t all that tricky. In this article, we have highlighted seven of the best strategies and approaches to do just that. Yet consistently applying these strategies can be easier said than done.

Take the time to test and assess which strategies are best for helping you increase online sales, then double down on them. This can be done by using website builder platform analytics and smart tracking technologies (such as Google Analytics) to see which strategies are helping drive the biggest boost in sales for your store.

FAQs

Written By

Owain Williams

I’m a freelance content writer at Website Builder Expert. I’m a bit of a business and marketing nerd and love sharing my knowledge and experience to help others achieve their business goals.

From complex engineering and brewing to international events and brand design agencies, I’ve worked in marketing roles for well over 10 years now. During this time I have set up my own content marketing consultancy and launched my own ecommerce business on Shopify.

Throughout my career, I have been lucky enough to contribute to the marketing space in many ways. This has ranged from speaking at top marketing events and contributing to industry whitepapers, to writing content for leading websites such as MarketingProfs, Small Business Bonfire, Digital Doughnut, Neal Schaffer, and Social Pros.

I have also written for top brands including RedBull, Nestle, and Dr. Jackson.

You can find me on LinkedIn here.Owain started his marketing career as an apprentice for an international engineering consultancy – this is where he developed a skill for turning complex (and occasionally dull) information into exciting, easy-to-understand, and actionable content. Since then he has gained extensive experience in various business leadership and marketing roles in several areas ranging from brand design to ecommerce.

In 2017, Owain decided to pursue his passion for content and helping businesses grow. Roughly 12 months later he launched MAKE IT MANA – his content strategy and writing business. Since then Owain has managed several large-scale content projects and researched and written hundreds (possibly thousands) of pieces of content.

Specializing in topics surrounding business and marketing, Owain has worked with many marketing agencies, business software providers, and media sites to help them create content that is both high-value and actionable. He has also worked with several top B2C brands.

Owain was offered the opportunity to work with Website Builder Expert in 2019 and jumped at the chance – sharing in their vision to bring well-researched, high-quality, easy-to-understand, and actionable content to businesses that want to grow online. Since then he has written several of their most popular guides and articles, as well as consistently contributed to the research and briefing process for other pieces of content across the site.

Meticulous in his approach to research and writing, Owain delivers quality content on a huge range of topics for Website Builder Expert. However, you will notice that his passion for key marketing areas such as influencer marketing, social media, and content truly shines through.

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