The economic crisis produced by COVID-19 has significantly fastened the shift to the digital world and has shaken up the business landscape; nowadays there are around 120 million online customers and this figure is expected to increase to more than 200 million online customers by 2025. Post-Covid, Many B2B (Business to Business) and B2C (Business to Consumer) businesses have realized the importance of having a digital-first strategy, so a lot of companies have decided to focus on increasing online sales.
Anyone who owns an online webstore wants to increase sales as much as he can imagine but the question is; how do you do it? Increasing sales is one of the most important things of any successful business or company but the quick spike in revenue is not the only benefit you can get.
And conversion does not just happen out of the blue, you need to optimize it. This applies whether you are running the whole show by yourself or if you are just starting up, or even if you are a marketing director or an ecommerce manager who expects to hit massive goals and KPIs (Key Performance Indicator) for the entire year.
There are many ways to quickly improve your sales conversion rate; from creating automated campaigns to leveraging the potential of video. You don’t have to spend tons of money making a good-looking website or leading marketing campaigns that barely show any good results; we are here to help you in this adventure, so we outlined some key strategies and tips that surely will help you in driving online sales and delivering a great user experience.
Create or refine your “pre selling” system:
When you map out how to pre-sell your sales prospects you can increase your closing rate. A shop can easily increase by over 20 percent their sales conversion rate just by creating a pre selling system or just refining their system if they already have one.
Use high quality images or videos on your product page:
Think about when you are shopping online; obviously you can’t touch the product you want or put in on, so the best thing you can do is show the product in a detailed image or video, this way the customer will know exactly what they are buying.
Offer free shipping:
If your online store does not offer free shipping, the customer will look elsewhere, it’s that simple. Free shipping nowadays is extremely important if you want to boost your sales. The trick is to increase the product’s price to cover the shipping costs. Easy.
Let the customers know that your shop is safe:
A little bit subtle, but a big deal. Building a certain level of trust in a short period of time will increase your store’s popularity and sales. Customers need to know that they are dealing with a legitimate online store where they can easily buy with their credit card information protected. By installing SSL at checkout, showing small images of credit cards, PayPal, or other payment options and by displaying GeoTrust, McAfee badges and having an active account with them will help build a safe online shop.
Let customers checkout as guests:
Allow them to see your products for free without signing up. Forcing them to create an account just to see the products is giving them a reason to leave your store. You will have their names and email address when they buy, so relax about that.
Grab’s visitor attention quickly:
Images will be the first thing that the customers will see when they enter your page. So, make sure to use interesting images to catch the customer’s attention because if you can’t do it in the first three seconds, you are probably going to lose that customer.
Provide limited time coupon codes:
Everybody likes to buy things at a discount and with coupons you can increase your sales very quickly. It is safe to say that with limited time coupons the customers will buy.
Implement live chat:
Live chat is one of the most preferred channels for customers. 79% of consumers prefer live chat because they don’t have to wait for customer support to respond. It can lead to a 40% increase in conversion rate and a 48% increase in revenue per hour. Also, using live chat helps customers to get in touch with the sales representatives and get fast solutions.
Deploy chatbots for sales conversions:
A.I (Artificial Intelligence) has become a really strong ally for sales organizations because it provides accurate and fast support when performing different stages of sales. Believe or not, but bots could increase online sales conversion up to 30% when engaging leads. Chatbots can book orders, auto qualify sales leads, support automated sales and schedule appointments.
Run paid ads:
Running paid ads is an effective way to expose your brand to a large audience and also helps to increase website traffic; it is indeed a good way to reach out to your customers. You can run paid ads across your social media accounts or simply run Google Ads. Social media is a good advertising tool for any business.
Offer a money-back guarantee:
Have you ever experienced the classic “buyer’s remorse”? Or have you ever bought something that at the end didn’t work? Having a money-back guarantee can overcome those risks. It is wise to remove anything that could persuade prospects from purchasing from you, so reducing the risks from the customers’ decision will make them buy more from you. Some companies that used the perfect guarantees for their customers are Domino’s Pizza, FedEx and Zappos, and we all know that they built billion-dollar businesses.
Focus on your website’s user experience:
A well-built website design both looks nice and works well in delivering the best customer experience. Companies like Apple, Adidas, Mercedes-Benz don’t throw tons of millions at web design just for fun because they know this sells better. In fact, how your website looks and how it works is a key reason for customers buying from you. Designing a website requires deep understanding and patience. It is very crucial to focus on designing your website considering the key component, what are those key components? Right placement of call of action, the use of appealing headings and improving website navigation.
Sales are a fundamental aspect of pretty much every type of business and in this digital era, you need to understand how things work on the internet in order to get the best possible results.
It all starts with you and you have the capacity to make the difference.