With the pandemic, more businesses than ever before have e-Commerce stores. Unfortunately, this means more competition within every industry. Now, every e-Commerce store wants to increase their traffic and conversions to make more sales. Below are 7 e-Commerce marketing strategies your business should use to boost sales.
Withalmost 4 billion people worldwide using social media in 2021, your business could be missing out on potential sales if you aren’t using it. Integrating your social media accounts like Facebook and Instagram with your e-Commerce store allows customers on these platforms to shop with ease. Plus, by using social media to showcase your products, potential customers can share the posts with friends, or tag them. This virtual word-of-mouth system can make a huge difference to your website traffic and conversions.
Consider using social media to create social proof. This is where your business account shares reviews, stories, and posts from current happy customers. As more users see these posts, more users will tag you and your following and sales will grow.
Every abandoned cart is a sale lost and a potential customer gone from your e-Commerce store. Unfortunately, this is a common phenomenon with 69% of shopping carts abandoned. Now there are a multitude of reasons why customers may fill their cart and then leave. From shipping costs being too high to needing an account to checkout or even finding the checkout process confusing. To figure why customers are leaving, check your website data, like page loading time and customer behavior flow. Once you know why and when customers are abandoning their carts, you can take measures to fix it.
For example, to stop customers from leaving when finding out shipping costs, consider clearly stating your shipping on the website. Whether this means a flat-rate fee, or even offering free shipping over a certain amount. The earlier a customer knows the shipping rates, the less likely it is to turn them off their purchase. Also, consider sending an email campaign to encourage customers to return to their cart after 24 hours.
Customers want to browse a website that is not only easy to use but visually pleasing as well. Ensure your website navigation is simple, and that your CTA buttons are clear. Additionally, your web pages should all take less than 4 seconds to load, so customers don’t leave. It’s got to be fast. This is so important you should consider hiring a professional web designer to create and test your e-Commerce website before you launch.
Engaging with customers in real-time is key to increasing customer satisfaction. In the current digital age, however, customers prefer to use live chat features over calling or emailing. So, consider adding a live chat feature to your website as part of your eCommerce marketing plan. Set your live chat feature to pop up once a user has been browsing for a certain length of time or when they are on a certain page. Live chat will not only help you better connect with customers but it will also improve customer service.
In today's world, your e-Commerce site must be mobile optimized. Otherwise, you are just throwing away potential sales. Now optimizing your website requires more than just a responsive design. You should design your website from the homepage to checkout with mobile visitors in mind. Think of how menu’s open, how users will scroll the product pages and how users will view additional details about the product. Mobile users want a streamlined shopping experience, without having to zoom in or click in and out of menus.
One of the best ways to generate more sales is by rewarding current customers when they make a purchase. After all, returning customers account for 22% of revenue for most e-Commerce businesses. An easy way to focus on customer retention is by giving rewards points per purchase. These points can then be redeemed for free shipping, upgraded shipping, or a discount code. Another technique is to charge a membership fee for users to get access to exclusive content, member-only sales, and free gifts with orders. Both of these techniques incentivize customers to be loyal and continue shopping on your website.
Many businesses find that offering upgrades helps to increase sales. Plus, by offering an upgrade or upselling to a premium version of a product, your profit margin is often much higher. However, customers are only likely to upgrade if they see significant value. Therefore, you should ensure that your upgrades are suitable for the initial product. Customers will use the original item as their baseline, so the upgraded product must be a discernibly better fit for the additional cost for them to consider it. Consider using personalization options as an upgrade, for example, engraving or embroidering for jewelry and clothing.
All the above e-Commerce marketing tactics can be used together. Choose which, if not all, your business should implement to increase sales and generate more revenue.
