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April 11, 2024

10+ eCommerce Strategies to Boost Sales

Team Madcraft

10+ eCommerce Strategies to Boost Sales
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Overview

Customers expect a seamless and personalised experience when they shop online with 93% expecting a digital experience equal to or better than the in-store experience. With the holiday shopping around the corner, a strong eCommerce strategy offers a big opportunity to convert visitors into customers for a strong new year and increase revenue.

10+ strategies to get your eCommerce sales figures up

1. Build an email list.

No email marketing list? The best time to start yours is right now. A good email list is essential for nurturing potential customers and building long-term loyalty.

Email marketing has become a valuable tool for marketers with an average R.O.I of 4,500%. You are one step closer to long-term successful eCommerce growth by simply building your email list.

You can start building your email list by embedding signup forms, integrating an opt-in checkbox at checkout, and deploying pop-ups on your website. Ensure these are optional to visitors and that you get their permission to add them to your list.

2. Utilise email marketing strategies.

Whether you want to grow your email list, drive growth, or increase sales on your eCommerce store, having an email marketing strategy in place is a must-have.

Your email marketing strategy should include the following:

  • Automations: Email automation workflows have been proven to save time, improve relationships, and improve open and conversion rates. Automation series, like welcome flows and abandonment automations, can drastically increase sales for eCommerce stores. Welcome email series are incredibly effective: on average, 320% more revenue is attributed to them on a per-email basis than other promotional emails.
  • Campaigns: Email campaigns drive visitors to your website to make a purchase once they’ve shown interest in your brand or business by signing up. It gives you the opportunity to offer discounts and promote sales, incentivising customers to return to your website. Standard and drip campaigns work well at driving revenue for eCommerce stores. To make your email marketing campaigns a success, it’s important to make sure you put in that extra effort that sets you apart from the competition with sharp copywriting, eye-catching design, and constant A/B testing so you understand what your customers respond to.

Email marketing opens a direct line of communication to your customers, growing brand loyalty and ultimately encouraging repeat purchases. Talk to us about implementing an email strategy for your eCommerce store if you’re not sure where to get started!

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3. Use Pop-ups.

Pop-ups on your website appear at key points in your sales funnel, improving your conversion rate in addition to helping with the email growth strategy. Pop-ups shouldn’t be intrusive and should appear when visitors are ready to make a purchase. To reduce annoying visitors on your store with pop-ups, create an automatic trigger on your site so that when a customer scrolls down far enough or leaves the page, your pop-up appears.

Here are the top three pop-ups you need on your site:

  • Conversational pop-ups: These are great for collecting information about customer needs and preferences which can then be linked to more personalised product recommendations. Conversational pop-ups work better when an incentive like a discount or free shipping is offered in exchange for customer data. Offering incentives in pop-ups has the additional benefit of nudging customers to move forward and take action on your store, like, buying a product to avail of the free shipping, which drives eCommerce sales.
  • Social proof pop-ups: Social proof is the best way to build trust with your visitors. 88% of consumers say reviews influence their online purchasing decisions and 72% of consumers say testimonials increase their trust in a business. Gather testimonials and reviews from your current customers, and place them in your pop-ups as social proof that helps visitors resonate on a more personal level with your company.
  • Cart abandonment pop-ups: The average website sees 80% cart abandonment. To combat this, trigger a pop-up before visitors abandon their cart with a time-sensitive incentive to purchase. This way, you can recoup potential losses as customers have the option to reconsider if they should abandon their cart or push through the checkout.

4. Optimise your store for mobile.

Smartphone users using eCommerce are expected to increase 42.9% by 2024. People love shopping on their phones because it’s simple, practical, and widely accessible. If your eCommerce website isn’t mobile friendly, it will frustrate your visitors who will leave your site as quickly as they have come in favour of a competitor that offers a mobile-optimised site.

Being mobile-friendly is now a top priority for eCommerce retailers. If you need support, we’re here to help. 

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5. Use Call to Action (CTA’s) buttons.

Achieve big results from a small button when you include CTA in your on-page eCommerce strategy. The CTA buttons may be small, but they have a very powerful effect on your conversion rate. Get creative with CTA’s using action-oriented and effective wording to drive visitors to take the next action.

Here are some CTA’s you can try on your store;

  • Keep me informed
  • Follow these steps
  • Give us a call
  • Talk to us
  • Add to bag
  • Act now
  • Save X%

6. Up-sell and cross-sell to your customers.

Upselling has the dual purpose of adding value for your eCommerce and existing customers. Plus, ​​an average 70-95% of revenue comes from upsells and renewals. Upselling and cross-selling can be done on the product page to recommend products that pair well together, on the cart page, and post-purchase.

7. Simplify the shopping process.

Customers want online shopping to be easy and quick. If you want the best chance at winning them over, don’t make your customers have to work to buy from you. Reduce barriers to checkout by ensuring the cart is clickable all on pages, that guest checkout options are available, and that the number of clicks from finding the right product to completing a purchase is as low as possible.

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8. Create urgency & scarcity.

Running strategic promotions on your eCommerce store is a foolproof eCommerce strategy to increase conversions and sales. Let prospective and current customers know you are running these promotions by supercharging distribution efforts on organic and paid socials, email campaigns, and your website banners.   

Here’s how to run these promotions:

  • Run flash sales: Set a page with sale items for 24 to 48 hours, offering a great price or discount. Remember, it’s now the norm to provide discounts, so in order to stay competitive, you must add deals that have a real impact, e.g., more than 20% off.
  • Add a countdown timer: The thrill of racing against time on your site during sales encourages your customers to make a quick purchase to take advantage of the offers within this timeframe.
  • Low in stock: Display ‘only x remaining’ on your items. This urgency reduces the number of cart abandonments that customers who want the item will buy rather than miss when it is out of stock.
  • Offer free shipping for a limited time. Who doesn’t love free shipping? 80% of consumers expect free shipping when ordering certain products, so offering free shipping is a must-have strategy.

9. Integrate social media.

Integrating social media with your strategy means you can meet your customers where they are on social media. Social media is a straightforward way to generate brand awareness and drive eCommerce sales. Social media has become more functional with eCommerce stores, with shoppable posts on the Meta platforms where you can tag products in the posts and integrate them into your website.

Paid socials can help an eCommerce website gain more traffic and leads. Paid ads, such as Facebook and Instagram ads, are more likely to provide more engagement than organic posts on social media. For example, the average return on investment from Facebook Ads in eCommerce is 152%, and it’s the most prominent social media referrer for eCommerce orders.

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10. Display your reviews & testimonials.

More often than not, customers read reviews and testimonials before deciding to purchase online. Approximately 77% of people who have viewed a brand’s testimonials say it has played a part in convincing them to buy their product or service. To increase your eCommerce sales, you need to start displaying reviews and testimonials throughout your website – on product pages, pop-ups, brand emails, and socials.

Here’s how to collect testimonials:

  • One easy way to leverage reviews is to add ratings to your products. Be sure to prompt buyers to leave a review, or they might not think of doing it themselves.
  • Use your email list to reach out for testimonials since this is where you’ll find your most loyal customers.

Once you have these testimonials and reviews, showcase them on your site.

11. Implement a Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) strategy.

Optimising your store for search engines is an effective eCommerce strategy to drive sales. Optimising for SEO will increase your organic traffic and help you rank on SERPs, ultimately helping you reach potential customers!

It would be best if you had all of your pages optimised with great content, quality images and strong technical SEO. Start by incorporating the appropriate keywords, a detailed meta description, and a strong title.

Search Engine Optimisation is a cost-effective digital marketing & web strategy, but it’s also challenging to get right. If you’re looking for a hassle-free SEO strategy and implementation, we can help.

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12. Use Personalisation.

More than 2/3 say personalised shopping is still lacking. Personalisation offers a huge opportunity to get ahead of competitors and reach your customers with a personalised experience. Without personalisation, you are treating all your customers the same, which results in them feeling not seen & heard by your brand. 

Personalisation works as an eCommerce strategy, as customers feel valued, which leaves a long-lasting impression that will ensure your store stays on the top of your customer’s minds long after they leave.

Where to insert personalisation?

  • Pop-ups
  • Email automation and campaigns
  • Product recommendations
  • Landing pages
  • CTA’s

For more advanced personalisation, incorporating dynamic blocks with conditions enables your store to target people more precisely and will inspire customer satisfaction.

13. Apply Segmentation.

Did you know you can boost sales and conversions by targeting the right people, and communicating the right message to them at the right time? That’s the power of audience segmentation in an eCommerce marketing strategy. Without segmentation in your eCommerce strategy, you could target the wrong people and lose out on potential sales.

Here’s how to segment your audience:

  • Demographic like age, income, family size, marriage status, and education levels
  • Geographic like location, city, region and country.
  • Psychographics like consumers’ personalities, values, attitudes, interests, and lifestyles
  • Behavioural like purchase occasion, benefits sought, user status, readiness state and usage rate.

Once you have segmented your audience across multiple channels, use this data for targeted campaigns and tailor your eCommerce strategy towards their preferences.

14. Retarget your existing customers.

Refocusing the people that have already visited your site and expressed interest in your products is the best way to increase eCommerce sales. Using retargeting advertising in your eCommerce strategy, scaled across channels, increases exposure, which can help customers keep your brand in mind and be more likely to buy something from you.

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15. Use A/B testing.

There is always room for improvement, and you can never go wrong with testing. A/B testing is a powerful part of an eCommerce strategy that allows you to try out different options for improving the customer experience. Using analytics linked to your site can guide you to making a better customer experience which in turn helps increase sales and customer loyalty.

Take the 10+ eCommerce strategies mentioned above to boost sales and incorporate them into your eCommerce store to help keep your business growing.

Are you interested in better learning how to serve your customers with eCommerce strategies? Get in touch with our eCommerce development team today!