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How To Increase Online Sales
Increasing online sales is that the primary goal of countless businesses, large and little alike. Either you run a mom-and-pop retail work or a business for a big eCommerce giant like the Amazon, increasing sales through the means of online channels may be a bit like bowling a strike – it’s tons easier than it literally is.
Increase sales online
Fortunately, there are dozens of the way you’ll make more sales online, many of which you’ll implement directly. a number of the following pointers specialize in specific strategies you’ll implement, whereas others are more generalized. during this post, we’ll be watching 25 such strategies, so whether you sell physical goods or run a service-based business, here are 25 actionable techniques you’ll use to extend online sales performance.
1. Be Honest in Your Sales Copy
This might sound painfully obvious, but it’s amazing to me what percentage sites write checks their products can’t cash. Also, it is not only is honesty in your copy crucial to your business’ reputation, but it also fosters and builds trust in your brand. Don’t make claims you can’t substantiate, and don’t use hyperbole lightly – today’s consumers are hypersensitive to marketing BS, so be honest, straightforward, and approachable altogether your sales copy, from your homepage to your email campaigns.
This also applies to how you put yourself in a position in a business. Ever encounter a site that’s obviously traveled by one or two people, but features copy that might be better suited to a multinational enterprise company? This approach not only causes you to look foolish, but it also damages your brand’s credibility. If you’re a little company, pride oneself therein and be upfront about it – many consumers are turning to smaller businesses precisely due to the more individualized, personal service they will offer. Don’t attempt to be something you’re not.
2. Get More Ad Clicks with Ad Extensions
If you’re selling stuff online, ad extensions are a no brainer – this feature (available in both AdWords and Bing) allows you to form your ad bigger with more places to click. And it doesn’t cost any extra! AND it increases your ad’s click-through rate! Amazing, right?
In the above example, the links to “Men’s Sunglasses” and “Women’s Sunglasses” give people that are looking to shop for a replacement pair of Ray-Ban’s two additional places to click. this protects the potential customer a step and makes it easier and faster to seek out exactly what they need (so they are going to your site rather than a competitor’s).
3. Boast On Customer’s Testimonials and Trust Signals
If we look At today’s social media environment, Your customer feedback has never been more important. Fortunately, this suggests that your satisfied customers can provide you with one among the foremost valuable weapons in your arsenal – testimonials.
Increase sales online include customer testimonials
Legions of satisfied customers are considerably more influential than even the best-written sales copy, so confirm you include gushing testimonials and reviews from your hardcore brand evangelists gushing about how wonderful you’re. These might show up on your product pages, pricing pages, landing pages, even on your home page. For more info, inspect my post on the facility of customer testimonials.
Similarly, the inclusion of trust signals is often a superb thanks to increasing online sales, because it creates a more favorable perception of your brand within the mind of the prospect and may potentially overcome hesitations preemptively. If your business has any professional accreditations (even something as routine as a far better Business Bureau certification or membership to your local chamber of commerce), put these trust signals front and center on your site. If you’ve got a powerful list of satisfied clients, confirm your prospects realize it.
4. Create a way of Urgency
It’s important, to be honest, and transparent about who you’re and what you are doing, but there’s no rule against creating a way of urgency to influence prospects to shop for from you immediately.
Increase sales online by creating a way of urgency
Many consumers respond positively to incentives that make a way of urgency, from time-sensitive special offers to limited-edition products. Although the ways you’ll accomplish this are as diverse because the products you’ll buy online, some strategies could also be simpler than others. for instance, if you don’t (or can’t) make a limited-edition product to entice prospects, maybe you’ll offer a financial incentive to customers who plan to a sale directly, like free shipping or a reduction.
In AdWords, you’ll use ad customizers to display a countdown on a seasonal offer or limited-time sale:
Increase sales online use ad customizers
However, you select to try to to it, creating a way of urgency may be a good way to extend online sales.
5. Offer a Bulletproof Money-Back Guarantee
Oftentimes, during an ll|one amongst|one in every of”> one among the foremost powerful factors in a consumer’s decision to not buy something is risk aversion – the will to avoid a possible loss. Most times, this perceived risk may be a financial one. Why should someone buy your products? What if they don’t work, or the customer doesn’t like them? Even small purchases can carry the danger of “buyer’s remorse,” so overcome this objection from the outset by offering a bulletproof money-back guarantee.
Increase sales online offer a bulletproof money-back guarantee
The more risk you remove from the prospect’s decision, the more likely they’re to shop for from you, so deduct anything that would dissuade prospects from buying from you.
6. Offer Fewer Choices
To many businesses, this idea is just unthinkable. Surely offering more products may be a good way to extend sales! Well, not necessarily. In fact, in many instances, a greater sort of choice can cause indecision on the part of the prospect, which successively leads to lost sales.
If you’ve got a good range of products, consider structuring your site or product pages in a way that gives visitors as few choices as possible. This reduces the likelihood that the visitor is going to be overwhelmed by dozens of various products. this will be accomplished by arranging your products into increasingly narrow categories (an added bonus of which is offering visitors greater ease to seek out exactly what they’re looking for), otherwise, you could place greater emphasis on fewer individual products. Whichever way, you just need to remember that the more choices you provide to your customers, the more likely a customer is to bounce and go elsewhere.
7. Target Lookalike Audiences on Facebook
One of the simplest ways to extend online sales is to use the info you’ve got about your existing customers to seek out people a bit like them. Facebook allows you to try to to this through the targeting of lookalike audiences.
Increase sales online target lookalike audiences on Facebook
Lookalike audiences on Facebook are essentially users on Facebook who share characteristics and behaviors to customers in your database. You upload your data to Facebook, which then cross-references its own data (and information from third-party data brokers) to make matches supported the standards you specify. you’ll also use tracking pixels and data from app installations to assist you to create lookalike audiences. this is often a superb thanks to making the info on your existing customers work for you because it effectively allows you to greatly expand your reach with minimal effort and use highly targeted ads to entice Facebook users who are very almost like your existing customers.
8. Reduce Friction within the Checkout Process
According to Business Insider, approximately $4 TRILLION worth of online merchandise was abandoned in incomplete shopping carts last year alone, of which 63% was potentially recoverable. this is often a very jaw-dropping statistic and one that reveals how crucial it’s to nail your checkout process.
Increase online sales combat handcart abandonment
Similar to the purpose above about user experience, reducing friction in your checkout process can have a fantastic impact on your conversion rates. even as you ought to make it as easy as possible for visitors to use and navigate your site, you ought to make it even easier for them to truly buy what you’re selling.
Eliminate any unnecessary steps in your checkout process that would dissuade an opportunity from converting. Skip unnecessary fields in forms. Don’t time them out and make them start over from the start. Here are some more recommendations on battling handcart abandonment.
9. Provide as Many Payment Options as Possible
Okay, so your business takes credit cards. What about Google Wallet payments? Or ApplePay? What about Stripe? WePay?
Increase sales online accept multiple payment types
Consumers have more choice than ever before in terms of how they really buy goods and services, and not everyone prefers to use American Express. By offering more payment options, including newer services that are getting increasingly popular on mobile, you’re making it easier for prospects to offer you their money. Sure, it is often a hassle to optimize your site (and checkout process, as we discussed above) to incorporate these options, but doing so may be a good way to extend online sales, particularly if your site has strong mobile traffic.
10. Invest in Quality Product Images
There’s compelling evidence that well-presented food actually tastes better than sloppily plated dishes. Given how important appearance is in reference to how we perceive things (including other people), it stands to reason that investing in quality product photography will have an identical effect on visitors to your site.
Increase sales online invest in quality product photography
Be careful of what you sell, which includes high-quality images of your Goods or products – no tiny thumbnails or poorly lit shots taken in your stock room. even be bound to include a good range of images. it’d seem overkill to incorporate shots of your products from every conceivable angle, but try it out. People like to kick a product’s proverbial tires before buying, especially online.
11. Get obviate Your Landing Pages
We’ve mentioned this strategy before, and it always raises quite a couple of eyebrows to mention the smallest amount. However, we’re not pleading for terminating your landing pages unnecessarily, but rather optimizing your online ads to fit along with what percentage consumers actually browse the online and shop online.
Increase sales online use Facebook click-to-call ads
Call-Only campaigns in Facebook and AdWords are a superb example of a situation during which removing the normal landing page entirely makes tons of sense. most of the people don’t want to spend several minutes browsing pages on their mobile device – they simply want to urge in-tuned together with your business.
Increase sales online Call-Only campaigns AdWords
By utilizing Call-Only ads, you’re making it easier for prospects to succeed in bent your business, eliminating one among the leakiest stages of the classic online sales funnel completely, and potentially increasing the number of calls to your business – one among the foremost valuable lead sources to several businesses. people that call you’re practically begging you to sell them something.
12. Give Gmail Ads a Try
After so many years of in and out of beta, Google mail Advertisement is finally available to everyone. this is often an exciting thanks to reaching prospects and increase sales.
Increase sales online use Gmail ads
If you’re already reaching customers once they search and once they browse on social, why not go the additional mile and hit them while they’re in their inboxes, too? one of the foremost effective ways to use Gmail Ads is by targeting competitor keywords. people that are within the marketplace for your competitors’ products are becoming emails from your competitors that mention their brand terms immediately. By targeting those self-same terms you’ll show up in their inboxes and hopefully change their minds.
13. Keep On Messaging Time To Time Across Campaigns And Also Your Site
Ever clicked a PPC ad that grabbed your attention, only to be taken to an irrelevant landing page (bad) or the site’s homepage (worse)? Did you finish up buying whatever you were trying to find from that site? Probably not.
Increase online sales message matching
A display ad for Air Canada, and it’s accompanying
landing page
Increase sales online message match landing page
If a user clicks a billboard for a selected product or service, the page they’re taken to should be that specific product or service – not a related category, not a special offer for an additional product, but that specific product. confirm your messaging has relevancy across your PPC and paid social campaigns and therefore the pages related to them, in order that ad clicks actually become sales.
14. Answer Every Question and Address Every Objection in Your Copy
One of the foremost dangerous pitfalls you’ll fall under when trying to sell online is making assumptions about your prospective customers’ knowledge of your product, service, or maybe market. Many companies mistakenly believe their customers know more about what they’re selling than they really do, which ends up in unanswered questions or objections that are did not be addressed – both of which may harm sales.
Consider every question you’ll possibly consider about your product, and answer it in your copy on your product pages. Similarly, believe every potential objection an opportunity may need about your offering, and preemptively overcome it in your copy. This might sound impractical, but remember, you’re not bombarding prospects with unnecessary information – you’re giving them exactly what they have to form an informed decision. This approach is additionally a superb exercise in writing tight, clear, concise copy. If you’re worried there’s an excessive amount of copy, you’ll always trim it down. Just keep the main target on the customer and the way it benefits them, not why your company is so awesome.
15. divulge the maximum amount As You Possible Can for free of charge
People love free stuff, and therefore the more you divulge for free of charge, the more favorably prospective customers are likely to perceive you and your brand, which may end in more online sales.
Increase sales online divulge free stuff
Awesome!
Look at your current offerings. are you able to give anything away for free? If you’re within the software business as we are, it’s easy to supply free, no-obligation trials of your software. albeit you’re not, you’ll even as easily divulge samplers, trial memberships, two-for-one offers, and other reward-based incentives. Giving stuff away for free of charge isn’t just an excellent thanks to improving people’s perception of your business, it’s also an excellent thanks to introducing them to your must-have products and tempt them to shop for more.
16. Create and Target Detailed Buyer Personas
I’m getting to plow ahead and assume that you’re already creating buyer personas (because if you aren’t, you’re in real trouble), but I’m getting to challenge you to make even more detailed buyer personas than you’ve got within the past.
Increase sales online create detailed buyer personas
If you’ve ever checked out the targeting options available to Facebook advertisers, you’ll have seen the amazing granularity with which you’ll target users on Facebook – advertisers can target users supported the square footage of their home, the university from which they earned their degree, and even where they plan on going for his or her next vacation (as Margot revealed in her fascinating post about amazingly granular Facebook audiences).
Obviously, this degree of specificity could also be a touch overkill for your buyer personas, but the higher you “know” your ideal customers, the more likely they’re to reply to carefully crafted messaging tailored specifically to their lives. Push yourself to make more detailed buyer personas than you ever have before. to find out more about this process, inspect my detailed guide to making buyer personas.
17. Implement Tiered Pricing
When you attend a restaurant, the probabilities are pretty good that you’ll invariably choose one among the mid-priced dishes. this is often because many restaurants manipulate psychology to push people toward the mid-range meals. We’ll often avoid the foremost cost-effective dishes – and therefore the costliest – making the middle-tier options the most appealing. this is often a way referred to as “decoy pricing.” an equivalent principle is often leveraged to extend sales online with tiered pricing structures.
Increase sales online use decoy pricing
By including a 3rd “decoy” option in your pricing structure, you’ll push people toward the center option – the one you actually want them to shop for. Sure, some people will choose the foremost expensive option anyway (which may be a bonus, revenue-wise), but most will subconsciously avoid the decoy and choose the middle-tier option, which is precisely what you would like them to try to to.
Many companies leverage this psychological principle (also referred to as the “asymmetric dominance effect”) to form us buy what they need. to find out more about decoy pricing, inspect this post by Neil Patel at MarketingLand.
18. Add an Opt-In Pop-Up Offer to Push Them Over the sting
If you are looking to extend sales in retail, don’t ignore the potential of opt-in offers – prompts that encourage people to check-in for your newsletter, list, or loyalty programs. Using opt-in offers can’t only significantly increase the number of contacts in your database (a major asset for future email marketing campaigns), but also increase online sales within the short term.
Increase sales online launch an opt-in offer
Prospective customers who are on the fence about buying from you’ll rather be swayed by a well-placed opt-in offer for, say, free shipping, or 10% of their first order. albeit they decide against the acquisition at that point but do the check-in for your opt-in offer, you’ve still added them to your database and that they may prefer to return later to finish the sale.
When launching an opt-in offer, make certain to check every element for max optimization. Test the phrasing of the copy, the position at which it appears on your site, and therefore the flow that visitors are directed through the method. A/B test different offers and see which of them yield a greater volume of sign-ups. Consider having the pop-up be triggered by a site exit so visitors see it just before they’re about the leave the page. The more folks that check-in for your newsletter or loyalty program, the more potential sales you’ll make within the future.
19. Grow Online Sales with Mobile Optimization
The number of online businesses with poorly designed, badly optimized “mobile” sites is amazing.
Increase sales online optimize your mobile site
Mobile search has already eclipsed desktop search in volume. If you don’t want to go away sales on the table, it’s vital that your site is optimized for mobile – and not purely from a technical perspective.
Make it as easy as possible for mobile visitors to shop for whatever you’re selling. this might involve an in-depth overhaul of your checkout process (see tip #18), or the planning and launch of a completely separate mobile site. Amazon’s mobile site is a superb example of how mobile eCommerce can (and arguably should) be done, but you don’t need Amazon’s resources to make a compelling, user-friendly experience for visitors on mobile.
Increase sales online responsive design e-commerce example
Navigation and user experience are among the foremost crucial elements of a well-designed, highly optimized mobile experience. The harder it’s for visitors to seek out – and buy – what they need, the more likely they’re to abandon your site altogether and take their business elsewhere. Pages should load near-instantaneously, and navigation should be logical. Don’t invite an excessive amount of information, only the bare minimum you would like to either make the sale or market to prospects later. Allow visitors to return back to their carts later, even on another device. Don’t expect mobile visitors to convert during a single session, because they probably (almost definitely) won’t – but they could convert later if you create it easy for them to try to so.
Think of your mobile visitors and do everything you most likely can to form it effortless for them to shop for from you while they’re on the go.
20. Impress New Customers with a tremendous Follow-Up Email
Sadly, the customer experience typically ends for several businesses when they’ve finally got their hands on a customer’s money. this is often a terrible mistake for customer retention. to extend sales volume online, confirm you’ve got a thoughtful, considerate, genuinely useful follow-up procedure in situ for brand spanking new customers.
Increase sales online send a tremendous follow-up email
As a hardcore computer geek, I’m always getting stuff from Harvey norman – replacement parts, new components, and other deliciously geeky stuff. the rationale I’ve been a loyal Harvey normal customer for several years isn’t just the worth of the products (which is very competitive), but rather the main target on customer service and therefore the follow-up process Harvey norman has in place.
Whenever I place an order, I receive detailed summaries of my purchase (including vital tracking information so I can hit “Refresh” on the order page to ascertain where my stuff is), also as customer service information, links to relevant products I’d have an interest in, and everyone kind of other resources. I’m prompted to go away reviews and feedback about my experience, encouraged to contact a true person if I even have questions on my order, and may even discuss or answer questions on my purchase for other users who are considering buying whatever I just splurged on. Generally speaking, it’s just an excellent shopping experience – which is why I’ve been buying my hardware from Newegg for years.
Don’t ditch your customers as soon as they’ve given you their MasterCard details. The more attention you pay to them after they’ve bought something, the more likely they’re to become fiercely loyal brand evangelists who won’t only become satisfied repeat customers, but also will go and tell and their friends (and blog readers) about how great you’re. When a customer buys something, offer them something for free of charge (see tip #11). ask them on social media (more on this shortly). Send them a thoughtful, useful follow-up email with incentives to shop for from you again. However you are doing it, make your customers desire the valuable little snowflakes they’re – think relationships, not transactions.
21. Hit Your Value Proposition – And Make It Obvious Immediately to your customers
Far too many companies lose sales and waste time by that specialize in themselves. Remember how we discussed that folks don’t want to shop for things, only solve their problems? Well, another painful truth is that unless your customers are the brand evangelists we’ve been talking about, the overwhelming majority of them don’t care about you or your company – only how your products or services will make their lives better. this is often why your value proposition should take center stage altogether your marketing communications and site content.
Essentially, your value proposition is that the primary reason customers can purchase from you, not your competitors, and therefore the promise of the worth prospects will receive by investing in whatever you’re selling. Value propositions are often weakened into three main areas:
-Relevance: How your product/service will solve customers’ problems
-Quantifiable value: the precise benefits your product/service offers
-Differentiator: Why customers can purchase from you and not a competing company
When you break down a worth proposition into these three components, it becomes easy to ascertain why these elements should inform virtually everything about your marketing messaging and site content, from the copy on your homepage to the content of your email marketing campaigns. Why wouldn’t you focus exclusively on these aspects of your products?
Take a glance at your landing page copy, sales collateral, and other marketing materials. is that the value proposition immediately obvious? If not, it’s time to travel back to the drafting board. Everything your prospects see should tie back to your value proposition in a method or another. The greater the perceived value you’ll create surrounding your products or services, the more sales you’ll make.
22. Use the Voice of the Customer for More Resonant Ad Campaigns
Hopefully, you are already using a paid social and PPC to expand your reach and find new audiences. However, the language you employ in your campaigns can have an incredible impact on your conversion rates (and, therefore, your sales), so my fourth tip is to use “the voice of the customer” in your campaigns – but what does this mean?
The voice of the customer may be a marketing research technique that aligns copy with the requirements, wants, pain points, expectations, and aversions of the buyer being targeted by that specific messaging. This process often includes language and phrasing employed by customers themselves during marketing research and focus group testing.
The example, from accounting software company FreshBooks, uses the voice of the customer to great effect. During its marketing research, FreshBooks discovered that its target market (small-business owners) found bookkeeping to be painful and challenging, then it incorporated language employed by its target market in its messaging.
This technique is often extraordinarily powerful, as you’re using the precise phrasing employed by your ideal customers to succeed in your ideal customers. to find out more about the way to incorporate this into your own campaigns, inspect this post on the voice of the customer.
23. Pinpoint Your Best Attribution and Conversion Paths
Sometimes, it feels as if you’re doing everything right, only to ascertain your conversion rates hovering somewhere between “miserable” and “pathetic.” Oftentimes, this isn’t anything to try to to with the messaging or positioning of your ads (though it pays to seem at this closely), but rather a misunderstanding of when and where conversions are happening.
One of the primary belongings you should do if your conversion rates look low is to look at your attribution models and conversion pathways in Analytics. you’ll be surprised to seek out that parts of your marketing strategy that appear like conversion duds even have an enormous influence on your online sales. for instance, maybe an organic search isn’t an excellent channel for converting into sales, but people that find you initially through organic search, then see a Facebook ad highly wishes to become a paying customer. If that’s the case, you ought to double-down on content marketing and pour some money into Facebook remarketing too (see tip #1, below).
24. Actually, ask Your Prospects on Social Media
Active engagement with prospects via social media is overlooked as a possible sales tool far and away too many businesses because it’s perceived as having a negligible impact on actual sales – when actually this is often one among the simplest ways you’ll increase brand awareness, customer satisfaction, and sales.
Think of time once you tweeted at a corporation, or commented on a brand’s Facebook page – and therefore the company actually skilled you personally. What effect did this wear on your perception of that brand? I’ll wager it became significantly more favorable. Providing fast, honest answers to questions that potential customers have about your offerings is a superb thanks to increasing sales, because the more attention you’re perceived as paying to potential customers, the more likely people are to require to shop for from you. This also leads to unsolicited social feedback among users themselves – the type of brand name exposure and “advertising” you only can’t buy (well, not during a way that sounds legitimate, anyway).
25. Use Remarketing to shut far more Deals
No matter whether you’re running a PPC campaign or a Facebook ad campaign, any digital marketing initiative takes time, money, and energy to accomplish. If you’re not using remarketing, you’re essentially banking on prospective customers converting immediately, which just about never happens (and is strictly as crazy because it sounds).
Whether you’re remarketing your content or a selected time-sensitive sale offer, remarketing is arguably the only best thanks to increasing sales online. Not only does remarketing keep your brand at the forefront of prospects’ minds, but it also provides would-be customers with numerous additional opportunities to convert. Given the often-fractured customer journey, which now usually takes place across a minimum of each day or two and a number of other devices, remarketing also closely aligns with how today’s consumers like better to shop – which is wherever and whenever they choose.
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