8 Innovative Ways to Increase Online Sales

If you’re having trouble with your existing marketing strategy due to a lack of sales, let us assure you that you landed on the right page. As you can probably tell by now, marketing strategy is not a set-and-forget thing; it should be continually monitored and improved. Typically, these strategies can become useless if you don’t know enough about your target audience, you don’t invest in your SEO, and you don’t keep track of the traffic you receive. Even if you’ve just established an eCommerce store, there are some great ways to increase your online sales without even having to invest too much. We’re going to list and explain eight innovative ways that will boost your sales. Some of them are genuinely budget-friendly, some of them require investments, but they are all completely worth it.

1. Create a buyer persona

If you don’t know you target audience, your marketing campaign will likely end up shooting in the dark. Creating a buyer persona should be the first step of your journey to increased sales. Ask yourself at least these few questions:

• Who’s my target audience? It’s essential to know your visitors’ age, gender, occupation, location, etc.
• How can I help them? Think about every possible way your product or service can benefit your customers.
• Why should they choose me? The E-commerce world is filled with competition, so you better be aware of the special and unique values that will contribute to people choosing you instead of your competitors.
• How can I reach them? Depending on the answers to the questions listed above, you should think of different strategies to approach your target audience.

2. Optimize your website

Even though some online sellers choose to adapt to different distributor stores and channels, it’s always advisable to establish your website representing only your brand. By doing so, you’ll have a better opportunity to get to know your customers and the freedom to march to your drum. You’ll collect valuable information about your customers and use them to improve your marketing strategy and increase eCommerce revenue.

If you still haven’t established your website, you first need to find a suitable platform. Although Shopify has its pros, it’s not necessarily the right fit for everyone. However, you can choose a Shopify alternative that might suit you better. For instance, Safex Market offers a platform that uses blockchain eCommerce technology and provides online shopping with cryptocurrency. It’s a decentralized contemporary platform, and it provides high levels of privacy and security to its users.

• Your website should authentically represent your brand; it should be neat and understandable but still provide enough information. Keep in mind that people don’t like clicking too much or for too long. If they find themselves doing it, the chance of them bouncing off your website rises significantly.
• It should be responsive, meaning it should be accessible from mobile phones. As time passes, more and more people switch from their laptops to their phones when they want to look up a product. This is especially true for millennials. If your website is not accessible via the phone, your visitors will get frustrated from all the pinching and zooming and eventually leave the site.
• SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is almost a must-have. As we said, people will not spend hours clicking on Google page numbers to find you. Most of them won’t even go past the first page. Therefore, you should aim to put your website at the top of search results. Although this is not an overnight miracle, investing in SEO and having it done by professionals always pays off. Remember, SEO is expensive only when it’s not successful. Experts in this area will go through your keywords, content, landing pages, backlinks and internal, etc., and optimize your website so that Google eventually ranks it higher.

3. Build trust by enabling reviews and including trust badges

If you don’t include testimonials and reviews of your products, the audience will look for them somewhere else and eventually find them. However, if those reviews are visible on your website, visitors will find you more honest and trustworthy. Even if a bad or a lower grade review comes up, it will still benefit you since people will appreciate you for not deleting those. They’ll feel that you genuinely care and value each one of them.

Additionally, including eCommerce trust badges has been shown to increase online sales. When people see those familiar logos, they’ll feel safe and sound while purchasing from your eCommerce store.

4. Simplify the checkout process

You may not have considered this, but too complicated checkout pages are likely to turn down your customers. Too many steps during the checkout process can get them bored and frustrated, and most importantly - not willing to buy from you. You can prevent this by keeping your checkout page simple, removing any distractions, and still providing the essential information. Consider numbering each step and letting people know how many steps they have completed.

5. Offer free shipping

It would be best if you offered free shipping whenever you can. Before deciding to do so, you have to estimate your costs and investments. However, if you declare free shipping for some time, you’re much more likely to witness an increase in your online sales rates. A significantly large number of people consider that free shipping should be a default, and more than half of them will abandon the shopping cart if that’s where they find out shipping is not included. You may also consider discreetly increasing the prices of your product in exchange for free shipping. Many of your visitors won’t care about a minimum raise in price as long as their shipping is free.

6. Don’t neglect email marketing (and chase down those abandoned carts)

Although email marketing is an old-school tool, you can’t afford to ignore it. For instance, you can set up a pop-up window for your visitors, offering a 10% discount for their first purchase. Include a CTA button asking them for their email address (and gender, for example). Don’t ask for too much information, though, since their email should be just enough for you to send them occasional promos and cart abandonment emails. They are handy for those visitors who leave their carts without finalizing the purchase. You can use it to your advantage and send an email offering them to continue their purchase. Lastly, you can let them know that the items they picked are still waiting for them, but they should rush before they get sold out.

7. Cross-sell and Upsell

Another way to increase your online sales is to implement Cross-selling and Upselling strategies. Cross-selling means you offer your visitors a package of complementary items that match the existing option. For example, if you’re selling phones, you can offer a phone case and screen protection to match their order in the cart. Upselling is done by providing a higher-grade alternative to the existing product. However, make sure your alternative is not too expensive in comparison to the product your customer chose.

8. A/B test

Remember to A/B test everything since it’s the most effective way to determine your weak spots and successes. You can use A/B test to test and compare web pages and see which page will give better results. In some cases, it looks like this: You make two websites and show them to the users at the same time. They will use one more than the other because it has better features and that will help you to see what features are better and what to improve. This is an example that you can use to test features and get the best conversion.

Final thoughts

Even if your sales are not decreasing, this list is very useful for checking out where you are, are you missing something, and if yes - how to improve and start growing. Make sure you show care for your customers and question what else you can do to increase the number of sales. Happy customers are the ones that are coming back. Be creative. And don’t forget to include crypto payments into your online store.