“Don’t assume it all works! Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and do everything they will do.” -Gary Gebenlian.
Thanks to the digital platforms, commencing your eCommerce business is now hands-down. All you need to do is find an appropriate platform, such as Shopify, Wix, or Bigcommerce, register your brand, add products, and start selling.
However, because of this ease, the competition level in the industry is also surging.
While you have to juggle between product pricing, advertising, shipping, and customer service, your target audience can switch to other websites catering to their needs. Indeed, to avoid consumer shifts, you need to make consistent efforts. But, in addition, you need to implement a few innovative steps.
What are these steps that’ll increase your eCommerce sales and retain customers? Continue reading to know.
- Define Your Brand’s Identity
A popular belief regarding branding is that it revolves around creating a logo, tagline, typography, and color palette and defining mission, vision, and core values, which is indeed correct. However, branding is not limited to these facets. Instead, it’s the definition of how a customer defines your company and what they perceive of it.
Therefore, to elevate your sales game, you need to accurately define your brand. It’ll assist you in distinguishing your brand- product, or service from the rest and encourage potential site visitors to become buyers.
Know that you need not think too much or too hard to determine the brand’s identity. Instead, follow your instinct and share the message you want to convey on different platforms.
For instance, if you are a size-inclusive eCommerce clothing brand, your brand’s message could be around promoting body positivity. Your message will attract an audience that believes in the exact cause, thereby increasing your brand’s sales.
- Create An Email List For Marketing
Generally, to increase product sales, eCommerce sites redirect their focus from existing customers to new ones. Evidently, this trick does its charm, but in the short-term. If you continue to prioritize new customers over old and loyal ones, you may lose them.
It is because customers nowadays prefer to connect with the brands that provide them with excellent customer service. This often puts entrepreneurs and marketers in a dilemma, i.e., How to simultaneously serve existing and new customers?
The answer is by using email lists that include details about all the customers and use them for marketing the company.
For instance, you can analyze the shopping data to learn about the customers’ buying patterns. Using this information, you can create a list of customers who make the most purchases and more often. Once done, you can send promotional emails such as a money-back guarantee, or low shipping cost offers to incentivize your eShoppers.
Similarly, you can create an email list of bloggers. It is to promote your eCommerce services at multiple websites and redirect their audience to shop on your site.
However, it could be time-consuming, considering marketers already have too much on their plates. That’s why many businesses look for blogger outreach services to connect their brand with niche-relevant influencers and websites to enhance brand visibility. This helps promote your product pages and the website to a broad audience and increases sales.
Simply put, how you want to use an email list technique is entirely up to you. Though, it is apparent that this technique will aid the site’s promotion and improve the customer experience.
- Elevate Your eCommerce Site
Physical shops or retail stores have the advantage of the aesthetic and curb appeal to attract visitors and increase sales. However, eCommerce sites can’t do that; therefore, they need to make the website dazzling.
It means you have to improve the user experience on your site. It could be done in numerous ways depending on your brand and its services. For instance, you can choose a specific theme for the website to engage the visitor as soon as he lands.
Similarly, improve the site’s navigation, provide high-quality product images, and include social proofs, product reviews, and testimonials to enhance the site’s credibility. You can also leverage technology such as live chats to improve customer interactions and resolve their queries instantly.
Believe it or not, making these changes to your eCommerce site will enhance the user experience and brand impression. As a matter of fact, these changes are SEO-friendly; thus, improving your site’s UX/UI will boost the organic traffic and SERP ranking- ultimately, brand visibility.
- Prioritize Mobile Optimization
Did you know that the majority of shoppers (91% of Americans) use their smartphones for shopping? That’s the reason why the demand for eCommerce mobile websites and applications is accelerating. Considering the same, it’s essential that your website is mobile-friendly.
The biggest hurdle in this is providing high-quality pictures that take just seconds to load. Otherwise, the customers will shift to another brand. So, you have to resize or compress the images without affecting their quality.
You also need to ensure that CTA is clearly visible, buttons are clickable, and navigation and product search is seamless. The payment options and policy will also play a significant role here. So, provide multiple checkout options- ranging from COD to Pay Later. Your return and refund policy should also be clear to avoid unnecessary complications later.
Note: When your site’s UX improves and customers are satisfied with your service, they are most likely to recommend it to their family, friends, and acquaintances. This way, you enjoy the perks of word-of-mouth advertising.
- Draft Your Campaign Using A/B Testing And Analysis
Know that there is no one-size-fits-all campaign that’ll help increase eCommerce sales. You need to experiment with a few different methods to find the one that works best for your company. This is known as A/B testing.
For instance, guest blogging is among the underrated yet effective ways that you can try to improve brand visibility and increase your site’s organic traffic. In this technique, marketers connect with the niche relevant websites and request them to publish an article that includes information about your brand.
When the content is published, the third-party sites link it with your eCommerce site. Its benefit is that Google counts this link back as a vote which will enhance the credibility and authority of your brand. Moreover, it will attract audiences from different sites or blogs to yours.
Suppose your eCommerce site sells kids’ toys. In that case, you can opt for guest post services by outreaching a third-party and niche-relevant website. There, you can request to publish an article with a title such as “Best Gifts To Celebrate Your Kid’s Birthday.” In this, your brand’s product link will be infused in a natural or non-promotional way. Thus, parents looking for a toy as a gift will be influenced by the post to click your infused link and visit your website.
However, guest posting is not as easy as it may sound. You need to analyze the customer demands and patterns, competitors’ strategies, and third-party site traffic before approaching them. It is time-consuming and may divert you from other tasks. That’s why many eCommerce sites outsource these services to boost their brand’s awareness and increase sales.
To Sum It All Up
The global eCommerce market sales are expected to reach 20.8% by 2023. This implies the industry’s growth scope is high, and you can reap incredible benefits from it. For this, you should use the intelligent and effective ways stated above.
