With the abundance of websites that sell products and services competing for people’s attention, it’s getting harder for small business owners to not only cut through the noise, but also turn a profit.
The good news is that there are some ways you can try to help bolster your sales income, and you likely already have all the tools and expertise you need to implement them. You might need to tweak your home page’s effectiveness, but making some updates to your e-commerce store can help to grow your business.
Let’s take a more comprehensive look at five ways to help maximise your e-commerce growth:
Optimise your website homepage for increased conversions
Your business website homepage is your storefront. It needs to be thoughtfully laid out to maximise conversions of visitors to purchases. Visualising an offer that will draw your customers in to complete a purchase can help to supercharge your e-commerce sales figures.
This isn’t simply about tweaking your call-to-action (CTA), although that’s a good start. In addition, here are a few other ways to improve your homepage:
- Offer a Unique Value Proposition (UVP). You shouldn’t assume visitors will understand why they should buy from you. It’s important to add content to your home page outlining why potential customers should do business with you rather than your competitors and make the benefits of your products or services clear from the outset.
- Introduce ‘risk reducers’. The goal here is to make purchasing less risky and shopping on your site a positive experience for the customer. Including prominent offers and guarantees, such as free shipping and returns or adding a lowest price promise where relevant, can make a difference to take action.
- Split test your changes regularly. This allows you to compare two different versions of a web page or email — a control (the original) and variation — to determine which performs better. This will require an A/B testing tool, such as Nelio in WordPress, to create tests and run reports. There are a few variables you can test individually, such as wording, design elements and the positioning of text and click-through links. Testing and refining tweaks to your website, online store and emails can pay off in the long run.
Set up a payment system
Another crucial part of selling products online is taking payments. That means you’ll need to ensure you pick a suitable payment system for your website.
Your payment system will likely depend on the method you’ve used to get your website online, however it’s worth considering payment options which provide customers with more flexibility, such as Klarna or PayPal. These can be beneficial if you want to give your customers the choice to make monthly/annual payments for a frequent purchase or subscription.
It’s vital you offer customers a payment option they trust and which is easy to use.
Create categories for your products and services
Firstly, you’ll want to make your products and services easy to find. Start by grouping these into easy-to-find categories. Then, organise your online store’s inventory for an optimal customer experience – especially if you have a large catalogue of items for sale. Having a clear product taxonomy will also help improve your SEO. If your site is clearly laid out and easy to navigate, you will not only create a positive end user experience but will also rank higher in search engines.
Secondly, it’s important to craft compelling product descriptions. This provides your customers with all the information they would normally get from a sales assistant in-store. To convert a browsing customer into a buyer, you must also have quality photos to showcase your products. Not only do you want to provide customers with beautiful shots of your products, but you also want to help them envision what the product might look like and how they might use it.
Finally, you’ll need to showcase those items on your homepage or on product category pages. This can help you draw attention to new items for returning customers. You can achieve this by signposting “Bestsellers” and “New Arrivals”, for instance. We recommend changing your featured products and services on a regular basis to keep your site fresh for repeat shoppers.
Sell to your existing customers
Growing your sales doesn’t always have to mean acquiring new customers. It’s often cheaper to sell to your current customers than to acquire new ones. By building trust and brand loyalty with existing customers, they are more likely to try new products and services from your business, and therefore more willing to spend. On the other hand, customer acquisition costs – cost of sales and marketing efforts needed to convince a customer to buy a product or service – can be much higher.
Fortunately, this strategy is well within the reach of most businesses and can start with two simple changes to your email list. First, target the subscribers to your newsletters and marketing emails consistently and often, as they’re ready-made to be potential recurring customers. Second, make sure you’re automating your emails to follow up with new customers that have signed up to receive newsletters and marketing emails, as this is a great opportunity to turn them into regulars.
Promote your website on social media
Once you’ve created and adapted your website, move on to your social channels. Building a social media presence will help drive traffic to your website and can help boost your online sales. The content you post on your social channels acts as a free way to personally connect with customers and build buzz about your latest products and services. The one-on-one interaction can also give incredible insight into what you’re doing right, and what needs improvement.
E-commerce is more competitive than ever before, which means you’ll have to get creative and innovative in ways you are selling to new and existing customers, learn to understand your customers’ wants and needs, and pay continual attention on your online store as you would a physical store to make sure your business is successful in its e-commerce strategy. The ways we’ve looked at here can help you on the path to increasing your online growth and build a long-lasting brand.
- Invesp, Great Customer Experience, April 11 2022 https://www.invespcro.com/blog/great-customer-experience/
