Creative ways to boost your sales online

By Winnie Makena |

Existing customers are important because they are already familiar with your brand. [Courtesy]

Competition is stiff in online stores especially now as we face the pandemic. With many people losing their jobs and opting to sell goods online, your small business may want to increase sales as much as

possible. Increasing your sales requires a trial and error strategy, a process called conversion optimisation. The goal of conversion optimisation is to increase the number of visitors to your website that become paying customers. For new online businesses, conversion optimisation is crucial, as it will help you maximise each visit to your website. The more of those visits you turn into leads or customers, the better your cash flow.

Here are strategies you can easily implement for your online business and make a mouthwatering wave of sales in your online store.

Be aware of the metrics to use

1.       Leads

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Your leads are simply the people who have expressed an active interest in your products or services. They are not your typical website visitor, they have given you their name or contact information, as well as permission to send them additional information. You can count them through email subscribers, registered users, contact form submissions, quote requests or all of the above. As your customers grow, you may need the help of a web analytics software to count your leads.

2.       Conversion rate

Let’s say you sell phone accessories on your site. In a week, you receive 200 unique visitors, but only 10 actually place an order, then your conversion rate is 5 per cent. Conversion rate is ideally the number of visitors who perform the action you want divided by the number of visitors who don’t.

3.       Bounce rate and exit rate

This is how to get an idea on how many people leave your website or a specific page. It is done by looking at your users’ behaviour throughout your website and seeing how they navigate through it. Do your visitors browse through your product catalogue? Do they make a purchase? If you use Google Analytics, all this information is under your “Users Flow” report.

You may find all these to be too technical. Perhaps you really just want simple steps for your small business. Don’t worry, there are some actionable steps you can take right now to boost your online sales, fast.

Show off customer testimonials and trust signals

The downside to internet sales is clients cannot physically see you or your product and maybe sceptical whether you are real or a fraud. Since they have not actually used your products, use past clients to market to prospective ones. If you sell on social media sites like Instagram, you may have seen story highlights on ‘testimonials’ or ‘customer feedback’ where evangelists of the brand give gushing reviews. They may otherwise appear on your product pages, landing pages, pricing page, even your home page.

Create urgency

Have you ever bought something you might otherwise not have looked at because it was a ‘limited offer’ or ‘prices while stocks last’? Urgency is a form of persuasion that works very well when combined with promotional offers. It creates an anxiety within the buyer which makes them feel that they might lose a benefit if they don’t act immediately. Common words used to express urgency include ‘only’, ‘hurry’, ‘act now’, ‘last chance’, ‘one day only’, ‘clearance’, ‘offer expires’, ‘once in a lifetime’ and ‘prices going up’ among others. In AdWords, you can use ad customisers to display a countdown on a seasonal offer or limited-time sale.

 Incorporate product videos

Get a professional to take great product photos or take them yourself if you can. However, product videos can encourage customers to put even more merchandise in their virtual baskets.

 According to one case study, incorporating product videos increased the likelihood of a purchase by 144 percent. The company, Stacksandstacks.com, reveals that it’s close to a 10-to-1 ROI. Focus on one or two bestseller products. Additionally, you could create explainer, demo, how-to, or testimonial videos, depending on whether you’re a product- or service-oriented business. Incorporating video in emails can drive click-through rates up by as much as 300 per cent, and 70 per cent of marketers who responded to one survey cited video as the number-one factor attributed to increased conversions.

 Eliminate noise and distraction.

There’s an adage for outdoor billboard design, “It’s ready when there’s nothing left to remove.”

This also in a way applies to websites. People find it harder to pick the more choices they have and may opt for nothing at all. Provide great filters if you have a tonne of products, to help them narrow down their options.

Noise and distraction are more than just how many products you have. It’s about how busy your layout is, how many competing design elements there are, how many things in total ask for user attention. Look at the Amazon checkout screen for example. No sidebar, no menu, no related products. They just really want you to click the “Place your order” button.

Streamline your page in a similar fashion by having fewer things on the page as you get closer to the closing page. Identify a single-most wanted action for each screen, then make sure the important stuff stands out. Don’t have anything in the layout that isn’t absolutely necessary. Simple works.

 Target your existing customers

When businesses have trouble growing, they immediately think it’s because they don’t have enough customers. But the gold is in return customers. Treat them well, acknowledge their complaints and focus all your effort into improving your customer retention strategy rather than client acquisition.

Existing customers are important because they are already familiar with your brand. They know how to use your products, and there’s no learning curve. Retain them by offering loyalty programmes that give them an incentive to buy more to get reward points. Those points can further be redeemed to buy other products or for discounts.

Studies show that compared to new customers, loyal customers add more items to their shopping carts, have a higher conversion rate and generate more revenue each time they visit your site.