Optimize Your E-Commerce Store for More Sales

There are various paid and un-paid methods to increase sales on your store. You can do some of the basic stuff like simply adding a “buy now” button and get more conversion or you can run advanced Google ads. Let us explore some of the tried and tested ways to increase your sales:

Does your online store look professional and trustworthy?

Does your store’s design and layout look professional and modern? Is it mobile responsive and load fast?

Have you provided all contact details, your address, and phone numbers, about the team details? This will make it trustworthy for the users to buy from your store.

Have a clear call to action

As per Maria Bonello, Director of Strategy at SMAKK Studios “Let’s start with the basics: the Add to Cart button is the most important component on the page, and should stand out from the surrounding contents. The area around the button should be uncluttered so that there are no distractions or obstacles that block the user. It should also be immediately visible when you first land on the page – i.e. if your product description pushes the add to cart button below the bottom of the browser, it’s time for a redesign.”

“Don’t try to be clever with CTAs. Direct “Add to Cart” or “Submit Order” will do.” There’s a time and place for clever branding and copywriting (which we’ll get to in a second) but you want to make sure you’re not confusing someone who just wants to buy your stuff.

Have great product photography

Your product photos will be the primary way for customers to feel and judge the products, so product images should be real, taken in proper light and give great quality feel.

Have proper pricing detail

If you are selling luxury items and charging high prices then you need to describe about “why customers should pay so much price”.

Customer needs to be convinced that this is a high value product and prices are justified.

Customers may not be aware about the rationales behind high prices. Do not assume that they automatically know about it.

Have as much details as possible on product pages

You should have as much information as possible on product pages.

• Have good and clear images of products
• Have videos if possible
• Provide all the details about the features, variants , warranty, terms and conditions etc. Use proper paragraphs and headings and sub-headings to properly distinguish between features.
• Provide a list of frequently asked questions
• Integrate user review plugins and apps so you can collect and show real user reviews for each product.
• Have proper pricing information along with discount details
• Have different image for different variants
• Have clear call to action like “Add to cart” or “Buy now”
• If products are not available and you still want people to buy it then you should clearly mention that product is out of stock , however people can still place the order and they will get the products in time (or delay of few days).

Create great content for the store

Your products should do one or more of the following things for your customers:

• Solve a problem
• Make their life better
• Help them do something
• Give them the feeling of pride or joy or fun

Your store content should give them the confidence that they can achieve these things through buying your products.

Best strategy is to directly speak to the users rather than giving boring bullet points and help material.

Have social proof

Social proof works wonder for your sales. It creates credibility, trust and tell people that it is safe to buy from this website.

Product Reviews, real photos from social media, testimonials, all are a great way to add social proof.

Have a good understanding of your customer.

The best starting point is to know your customer well. It is better to call few of your ideal customers and talk to them about their preferences, likes and dislikes and get your customer persona correct before even upgrading your site.

You can discover tons of useful information just by talking to actual customers.

Provide clearly written content for Return, refund and cancellation policies

Be clear about your cancellation and refund policies. If you don’t want to refund then state it even before the customer place an order.

Do not hide any “after the sales” clause because it will create great issue for you and for customers as well.

Provide Offers, discounts and coupons

You can provide seasonal discounts to invoke a sense of urgency in your buyers.

Use following types of offer:

• Percentage-based discount
• Dollar value discount
• Free shipping
• Free gift

Use charm pricing

Prices ending in an odd number like 5, 7, or 9 are considered charm pricing and proved to be an effective psychological tool to attract customers.

For example, a retailer would price a product at $8.99 instead of $9.

Competitive pricing

Some store owners check competitors’ prices on a daily basis and keep their prices just a cent or dollar less for the same products.

While everything else is same, the customers always go for the lowest price. This works really great in marketplaces like Amazon, E-bay etc.

Offer wholesale prices for select buyers

You can offer a wholesale or bulk pricing for few frequent buyers. This also works well if you are a manufacturer and want to support retailers through same online store.

There are many apps and plugins which will help you doing a different wholesale pricing on the same store.

Subscription for frequent buyers

You can offer a reduced price subscription offer to your frequent buyers. This can have a huge impact on your sales. Generally these people buy once in 2-3 months; if you can convert these people to monthly (or weekly) subscriber then your sales will be 2-3 times just by doing this one trick.

Sell Personalized products

You can let buyers personalize a product by adding their name, logo, pictures etc.

There are plugins and apps which when integrated to your store converts products to customizable products for personalization.

Buyers are more than happy to pay extra for a personalized product.

Provide as many payment options as possible

First of all you should provide as many payment options as possible like credit cards, direct bank transfer, pay pal, bit coin etc. and in some cases even Cash on delivery option as well.
This gives more flexibility and confidence to buyers.

Make sure that your site is optimized for Mobile experience

If you don't want to leave sales on the table, it's essential that your site is optimized for mobile use.
Make it as simple as possible for mobile visitors to purchase whatever you sell.
This may require a comprehensive revision of your checkout method or the design and launch of a completely distinct mobile site. Amazon's mobile site is an excellent example of how mobile ecommerce can be done.
Navigation and user experience are among the most important elements of a well-designed, extremely optimized portable experience. The harder it is for visitors to discover–and purchase –what they want, the more probable they are to leave your site completely.
Pages should be loaded almost instantly, and navigation should be logical.

Cart consistency

Allow visitors to return to their carts later, even on another device. It is better to convince them to login and store their cart items so when they login again they can see their cart and the items they still want to buy.

Market your store

• Run Retargeting ads on social media and search engines to bring your buyers back.
• Run social media campaigns
• Do search engine optimization to gain users through search engines
• Do email campaigns to your subscribers and existing buyers to offer them great deals and values.
• Provide some value to users (e.g. an eBook) in exchange of their email ids to build your list for email campaign.
• Use content marketing.
• Activate live chat- People want to talk to you immediately and decide on purchase. They do not have to wait for your reply.