Whatever type or size of eCommerce business you are running, its primary goal is growing online sales. Thankfully, modern business owners can take advantage of multiple online channels to promote their products and services without even leaving their workplace. All you need to make this happen is strategic thinking and some creativity. And, of course, the knowledge of several clever tactics intended to help you boost sales.
Generate Traffic to Your Website
You want more potential buyers to visit your store, don’t you? Then, drive them to your website through all possible channels. Here is the list of the most recommended tools.
- Create email lists and use email marketing. Provide relevant and exciting emails and make enticing offers with the link to your online store.
- Use SEO. Optimize your website for search engines, fill it with valuable content, and make it user-friendly.
- Consider content marketing. Develop original, sensational content that will become viral and will be shared by users without any additional cost from your side.
- Do not neglect paid media. You are free to use paid promotional strategies that would further reinforce your marketing efforts.
Test Continually
One of the biggest mistakes you can make is basing your marketing strategy merely on your assumptions regarding any specific part of the buying process. Develop a habit of regularly testing different aspects of your website and promotional strategies and then using analytics to see what’s wrong or which tools perform better than others.
Experts say, “If you haven’t tried 50+ changes to your approach to see how it impacts your metrics, you haven’t experimented enough.”
After having tested and improved your tactics or tools, do not forget to track the vital metrics and analyze whether everything is working smoothly.
Understand Your Customer
You have probably heard about the favored tactics of developing buyer personas. Even if you haven’t, it’s worth familiarizing yourself with, as this approach will help you gain satisfied, grateful, and loyal customers. How can this goal be accomplished? First of all, you should communicate more with your clients. Follow up with them on every stage of their purchase journey and provide friendly, personalized communication.
Which steps will give you valuable insights into your target audience?
- Set up polls on your website;
- Conduct user testing on new products;
- Follow your clientele on social media;
- Ask for their reviews and feedback.
Then, draw a complete portrait of your target customer. This does not finish with the demographic data as it used to be at the dawn of the marketing era. The list of your ‘buyer persona’ main characteristics includes but is not limited to the following.
- Social and demographic data (age, gender, occupation, marital status, location, education, income);
- Goals and values;
- Sources of information (blogs, websites, articles, books, periodicals, events);
- Pains and fears;
- Potential objections (which factors may prevent them from making a purchase).
Creating buyer personas will help you know your customer as your good friend, find and fix the gaps in your user experience, make your business customer-centric, and eventually increase eCommerce sales.
Minimize Cart Abandonment
Uncompleted purchases are a big problem for many eCommerce businesses today. Can you imagine that incomplete shopping carts in 2020 made as much as 4 trillion? More to the point, about 63% of those abandoned carts were potentially recoverable. These impressive statistics demonstrate how crucial it is to reduce friction in your checkout process.
- Start with checking eCommerce checkout best practices;
- Remove unnecessary steps in the checkout process;
- Create trustworthy transactional forms (i.e. include recognizable security logos);
- Include a progress indicator so that the customers know which stage of the process they are passing through right now;
- Incorporate thumbnail images of the purchased products – this trick can encourage customers to proceed as they would want to get what they see;
- Create easy navigation between the cart and the store – let your customers quickly return and choose some more items any time they may want;
- Diversify payment options;
- Eliminate distracting pop-ups at the checkout stage;
- Enable the opportunity to complete a purchase without logging in – do not force your customers to register if they don’t want to.
These steps will help you improve your visitor conversion pathways and refine your eCommerce experience.
Summary
There are multiple ways to drive eCommerce sales. However, you shouldn’t blindly rush into implementing everything you’ve read or learned. Check the strengths and weaknesses of your website, thoroughly examine your customer journey, determine the weak points, and direct the main efforts to fix the flaws. Then, refine your marketing strategy while remembering such vital points as traffic generation, continual testing, understanding your customers, and encouraging them to complete their purchases.
In the end, you will be perfectly equipped to grow your eCommerce business!
