12 Tips to Increase Online Sales for Your e-Commerce Store

Are you looking for a fast and easy way to increase your online sales?

Let us be the first to tell you that there is no ‘secret formula’ that is guaranteed to increase your online sales.

But you shouldn’t be discouraged! Just because the process will take some effort on your part doesn’t mean it’s impossible. As a matter of fact, we do have an answer for how to increase online sales – and it comes in the shape of 12 quick tips and tricks.

Now, the points we cover below are by no means the only ways to increase online sales – far from it.

The main thing for you to remember is that increasing your online sales is a delicate process and many factors will come into play. To achieve your goal, you’ll need to pay special attention to each aspect of your business operations and keep all of those working pieces synced.

Yes, that can be easier said than done. But as the old saying goes, nothing worthwhile comes easily!

Top 12 ways to increase online sales

1. Grow your brand awareness
2. Use social media marketing
3. Diversify your content
4. Make your store mobile-friendly
5. Track your store’s performance
6. Prioritize customer satisfaction
7. Target the right audience
8. Retain existing customers
9. Try different pricing strategies
10. Display reviews and trust logos
11. Streamline the checkout
12. Provide multiple payment options

1. Grow your brand awareness

Brand awareness is absolutely essential if you want to see your business bloom into a truly successful enterprise. Don’t believe us? Just look at the stats – research shows that people form their opinion of your website in a fraction of a second. That leaves virtually no room for error, but thankfully it doesn’t need to be a huge headache to build a brand for your small business.

Besides creating an attractive logo, one top tip you can use right now is to find colors that work well for your brand. One other study found that you can actually boost your brand recognition by up to 80% by using the ‘right’ colors.

2. Use social media marketing

If you’re selling online and you’re not using social media advertising as a tool to increase online sales, right now is the time to change that. Even if you ignore the fact that roughly 70% of American adults use Facebook, don’t make the mistake of missing the point that the vast majority of marketers use Facebook Ads (more than 86% to be exact!) – and that’s just one social media platform.

When nearly all of your competitors are using social media marketing as part of their broader marketing strategy, it should be clear that there’s real value there which you should be claiming a part of. One of the biggest advantages that social media advertising offers is the ability to target your ads at specific audiences. Instead of spraying and praying, you can keep your efforts laser-focused with social media marketing and increase online sales in the process.

3. Diversify your content

Be creative! That’s the general rule you should keep in mind while working to increase online sales for your business, and it applies to your content creation as well.

By producing different types of content, you’ll help bring a broader array of people to your store and grow your business with little investment.

Writing great blogs full of valuable stats and keywords will help improve your ranking in search engine results and increase online sales through organic search.

Handy tool: Learn how to start an e-commerce blog if you’re still fairly new to the idea

Videos are more dynamic. You can create informative pieces or product reviews to keep your audience engaged, boost video ads to push ‘the hard sell’, include product detail videos alongside listings on your site, and so on.

Consider this: a recent study found that 84% of people say watching a brand’s video has influenced them to purchase that brand’s products or services.

The same study also found that roughly 80% of marketers attribute an increase in sales directly to their video marketing efforts.

Podcasts are another option that focus more on producing longer pieces of content which cover topics of interest in a conversation format. This is a more attractive type of content for people who commute or who may be looking for opinions as opposed to hard statistics.

If you’re not looking to produce your own podcast, you can get involved with purchasing ad placements in podcasts that are already established. In any case, it’s a format worth considering and just one more way you can increase your online sales.

4. Make your store mobile-friendly

How many people do you know who don’t have a smartphone? We’ll give you a minute to think… It might be difficult to do, and we don’t blame you!

In all seriousness, the spread of mobile technology isn’t going to slow any time soon. And at the same time, the e-commerce sector is also growing without anything stopping it soon.

Put the two trends together and it should come as no surprise that mobile commerce sales (or m-commerce for short) are projected to comprise more than 50% of all online retail sales in 2021.

To capitalize on the expansion of m-commerce, you’ll need to make your website as mobile-friendly as possible. All of your product lists, landing pages, and checkout processes should be easy to navigate on handheld devices – whether they be phones, tablets, or any other mobile device.

Pages that load slowly, images that are cut off, or buttons that don’t respond correctly can all stand in the way of your goal to increase online sales.

5. Track your store’s performance

All of the points above and all of the points below may be pointless to implement if you’re not taking the time to track your store’s activity. After all, how can you increase online sales if you aren’t measuring how many online sales your store has?

The answer is: you can’t.

Beyond the simple measurement of how many online sales your store is seeing, you’ll want to also keep track of other key performance indicators (or KPIs) that are tied to your online sales.

For example, you’ll want to keep records of:

• How many visits your website has had
• Which pages get the most clicks
• Where visitors tend to drop out of your funnel
• When there were spikes or dips in your sales
• And so on

Tracking made easy: If you sell on Shopify, the BeProfit – Profit Tracker app is the top tool for tracking expenses and calculating accurate profit margins.

The app turns vast amounts of complex data into a dashboard that makes everything easy to understand with charts & graphs. Eliminate the need for clunky spreadsheets with BeProfit and start making sense of your store’s data.

6. Prioritize customer satisfaction

When you take into account the fact that one-in-three customers say they’d switch companies after just one bad experience, it becomes clear that your chances of business success rely quite heavily on having happy customers. In your search for how to increase online sales, never forget the importance of customer satisfaction.

Are we suggesting that you throw the profit motive by the wayside? Of course not.

Just keep in mind that your customers want to feel like individuals, not like numbers – at least that’s what 84% of them say! Personalize the customer experience as much as possible. If you’re not sure how, take some time to study up on what you can do to improve your customer experience.

To take the customer experience of your store a step further, also consider equipping it with an ecommerce customer service software, especially one that is deeply integrated with Shopify, making it easier for your team to deliver a stellar customer service experience.

7. Target the right audience

Want a straightforward way to boost the traffic to your website and increase online sales? Be sure to define your target audience. Marketing experts have been identifying specific audiences since way before the internet came into existence.

Think about TV commercials. It wouldn’t make much sense to see an auto-insurance agency pay for ad placement on a children’s cartoon channel. Likewise, a toy store would be equally misguided to advertise their business on a financial news channel. Businesses have always wanted to offer their products or services to the people who are most likely to be interested.

With the power of big tech, that goal has never been easier to reach. Platforms like Facebook give marketers the ability to focus their efforts based on a number of factors like age, gender, geographic location, personal interests, and much more. Of course, it also helps you avoid wasting money on ads that ultimately don’t convert into sales.

8. Retain existing customers

You work hard and spend plenty of money to attract visitors to your website and turn them into customers. Don’t let all of that effort and money go to waste! Make the most of it, and boost e-commerce sales, by keeping those customers coming back for more.

There’s no limit to the number of ways you can re-engage existing customers, for example:

• Email marketing
• Loyalty rewards
• Make returns/exchanges easy
• Incentivize account creation
• Cross-sell (offer related items)
• Create a subscription service
• And so on

Exact figures vary from study to study, but the consensus is clear: it costs less money to retain customers than it does to obtain new ones. Should you continue to work on acquiring new customers? For sure. But why should you be content with them being one-time buyers? Keep them hooked on your awesome store!

9. Try different pricing strategies

As is true with the other tips on this list, finding the right pricing strategy for your business may take some trial and error. What works for you might not be the best strategy for another business. And what works for you today might not work for you a few months or a few years from now.

With all of that said, the pricing strategy you put in place can make or break your efforts to increase online sales. You’ll need to do some research to find out:

• How your competitors price their products
• What your target audience’s average budget is
• How high the demand for your products are
• What the perceived value of your products are
• How much your products cost to produce

Handy tool: Learn about different pricing strategies and find out how they compare

10. Display reviews and trust logos

People are rightfully wary of spending their own hard-earned money online. After all, there’s no shortage of scams on the internet – and they come in all shapes and sizes. So, if you really do want to increase online sales for your business, you should be doing everything you can to display your trustworthiness to potential customers.

First of all, if you’re certified to use trust logos then do so. One study found that trust badges are the number one reason (48%) why customers decide to trust retailers that they’re not familiar with.

The same study also found that the second leading reason (46.4%) for customers to trust an unfamiliar retailer is if their website has clear contact information on display.

With trust badges and contact info, you’ll be able to not only look reliable, but actually be reliable. Only use trust badges if you meet the claim that they make. And make sure that you respond to customers when they reach out – otherwise the contact info is only there for show.

For example, if you have a Shopify store, there are apps like VerifiedReviews by EmbedSocial that can land you a hand with receiving customer reviews automatically. This is how it works:

Every time a customer buys a new product from your Shopify store, they receive a review request. There is a possibility to activate an AMP email format. It means that customers with Gmail accounts will get instant-open reviews and feedback requests within the email. Thus, they can directly submit their product reviews in their inbox, instead of having to go through the hassle of logging into the site each time they want to share feedback on what they love about your brand. This AMP email form will encourage shoppers to provide their feedback because it takes only 10 seconds to fill in.

11. Streamline the checkout

Imagine you were able to attract a visitor to your site, take them through your funnel, and lead them to the final transaction… only for them to decide against the purchase at the last moment. It’s an online seller’s nightmare!

To reduce online shopping cart abandonment and increase online sales, keep your checkout process as short and simple as possible. We mean it! The more information your customers need to enter the longer the process takes, and the more opportunities they have to throw their hands up and find somewhere else to shop. Don’t let that happen to you.

It’s not only the amount of time it takes which could drive a customer away from finalizing their purchase. The type of information you request can also put them off. Stick to the essentials and do your best not to put any extra demands on your customers when they’ve reached this final stage.

For example, don’t obligate customers to create an account with you in order to complete the purchase – provide them with the option to checkout as a guest. In the end, drawing the distinction between checking out as a guest or as a member may actually incentivize customers to be more interested in the perks of signing up!

12. Provide multiple payment options

Another way that you can streamline your checkout process and increase your online sales is to give your customers several ways to make a purchase on your website.

The payment options you offer may vary depending on your target audience – for example, while Visa is the most popular type of credit card, if your target customer is older and has a higher income, they may prefer to use American Express.

Another example – if you sell internationally, you’ll want to offer the popular payment options available to your customers in their respective countries. If you primarily sell to European customers, American Express would not be a payment option worth offering.

Ultimately, the more types of payment options you offer, the lower the chance will be that customers will bail on their purchases, and the better odds you’ll have of increasing online sales for your store.

Payment options you can offer:

• Credit or debit card
• PayPal
• Apple Pay
• Google Pay
• Amazon Pay
• Bitcoin
• Electronic checks
• Bank transfers

Bonus Tips:

Offer deals, coupons, and promotions

Focus on providing value

Upsell, upsell, upsell!

Just the ‘tip’ of the iceberg

With the 12 tips to increase online sales covered above, you should be off to a great start. But, as we said at the outset, there are many more ways that you can work toward improving your volume of online sales.

And no matter how much your sales improve, your journey to answer the question of how to increase online sales should never reach an end since, of course, you can never have too many sales. Do what you can do, and then do a bit more.

Begin by putting these tips and strategies into action and see what the results are – you may be surprised!