All eCommerce store owners, no matter how successful they are, want to boost their sales and make a bigger profit. While that’s easy to say, it can be hard to achieve. Not many businesses know which steps they need to take and which eCommerce metrics they need to track to achieve desired financial goals.
According to eCommerce stats for 2020, The truth is that only 2.86% of eCommerce website visits convert into a purchase. While a lot of people may come to your website, only a few of them leave purchasing something.
However, there are many ways you can increase that number. Here are some simple but efficient ways to boost your eCommerce sales.
Look at your website design
One of the reasons why your website isn’t generating as many sales as you want could be its design. Web design is an essential part of any eCommerce store’s success. It’s what most customers base their first opinion on. A bad design with hard-to-read fonts and a bad color scheme is simply unappealing.
Every good website is built with the end-users in mind and their overall satisfaction. There are three factors important for user satisfaction: website usability, navigational ease, and visual appeal.
To achieve this, your website needs to have the following:
- Minimalistic design. Visually complex websites are usually seen as untrustworthy and unprofessional. Websites with minimalist design are more visually appealing and often see more conversions. This type of design means you need to take away any unnecessary content and stick to the bare minimum.
- Simple navigation. Visitors won’t convert into customers if they can’t find their way around your website. That’s why navigation needs to be simple, to-the-point, and the menu needs to have as few pages as possible.
- Mobile optimization. Over 40% of online transactions are done on mobile devices. If you don’t make your website mobile-friendly, you will lose a lot of potential revenue. Fully responsive design is a necessity, just make sure that all the pictures look good on different types of devices.
- A good color scheme. Make up a color scheme of three colors, but not just any. Use primary colors for those places where you want to attract your users’ attention, secondary colors to highlight less important information and neutral colors for the text and background.
Set up customer loyalty and referral programs
It’s not a coincidence that most successful eCommerce stores have a referral and a customer loyalty program. These are great for customer retention and boosting profit, as loyal customers have more trust in your brand and are willing to spend more money than a casual website visitor.
Customer loyalty programs usually work on a system that measures points or how much money a customer has spent on your website. After a customer has met certain criteria, they can choose a prize such as free shipping, a free product, a discount, or anything else you can think of.
As for referral programs, they work on a system where each customer has their own referral code, and when someone purchases an item with that code, the referral gets a reward. This is a very powerful tactic as 77% of consumers are more likely to buy a new product after learning about it from friends or family.
Encourage your customers to invite as many people to sign up with their referral link, and set up the JavaScript contact picker that will make it easier for them to invite people without ever leaving your website.
Include customer reviews and testimonials on your website
Marketing is so much more than what you have to say about your company. It’s also what the customers have to say. Word of mouth is a powerful tool that marketers have used for decades. There are so many instances where bad reviews have ruined businesses and good ones skyrocketed them into success.
Every eCommerce website has a place for customer reviews, but only some have them proudly displayed on a page of their website. This is a tactic that has proven to build trust between a customer and a company. The average consumer reads as many as 10 reviews before deciding to trust a business.
Here are some reasons why you should include positive customer reviews and testimonials:
- They prove people buy and use your products. Since there are a lot of online scams, website visitors want to see that your business is legitimate and that people actually buy products from it. It’s not only important that they are buying the products, but also that they are satisfied with them.
- They reflect the real-life value of your products. Each website visitor has specific needs when they are shopping, but they can’t be sure if your products can meet those needs. Testimonials can show them how others’ needs were met and show the real-life value they received.
- They’re great for SEO. While most SEO takes a lot of effort, updating and adding customer testimonials doesn’t take too much work, but their keyword-rich content is invaluable for SEO.
Start a blog
A lot of websites already have blogs, but most of them aren’t using their full potential. While some use their blogs to post about news and events, others take a different approach and use their blogs as one of the ways to generate more eCommerce sales.
There are many reasons to have a blog, as 81% of US online consumers say that blogs are a trusted source of information and advice. Additionally, blogs help you boost SEO and establish authority in your field.
Here are some things your blog needs to have:
- In-debt articles. Your blog is worthless if it’s filled with poorly-written content. You need to create unique in-debt articles that build trust between you and your customers. Those articles need to be entertaining and filled with useful information.
- Long-tail keywords. Most blogs use head keywords that are overused and don’t have too much effect on SEO. Long-tail keywords which are more descriptive give you better chances for a high-ranking position, but also have a buyer-intent nature.
- CTAs. After you’ve educated your audience with great in-debt articles, include a powerful CTA at the very bottom of the page that encourages the reader to act. The CTA encourages them to purchase a product or maybe sign up for your customer loyalty program.
- Interesting visuals. Humans are visual beings. Nobody wants to read a blog post that’s just a wall of text. Include visuals such as infographics, pictures, and gifs to break the monotony and give the reader a break from the text.
Final thoughts
Even if your eCommerce website isn’t doing as well as you hoped right now, there’s no need to give up. With just a few changes and fixes, you can start selling items from your website better than ever before.
