Quick Guide to Boosting Your eCommerce Sales

Looking to boost your site’s eCommerce sales? These tips will help you increase your brand awareness and reach new and current customers to encourage them to make a purchase. From building your social media presence to addressing cart abandonment, these items are common obstacles to eCommerce sites. When addressed properly, these issues will become assets and help you increase your sales volume. Keep reading to learn more about boosting your eCommerce sales! 

Social Media Presence 

If you’re running an eCommerce store, a presence on social media platforms like Facebook and Instagram is a must. Since you won’t be able to interact with your customers face to face, you’ll need another way to have conversations and address any issues they may have. Social media platforms provide the perfect way to interact with customers and advertise your products; often for free! 

Most social media sites are free to sign up for, so you’re already saving money. With billions of users each month, sites like Facebook have unprecedented reach. You’ll be able to create targeted ads based on geographic location, age, etc; and can raise awareness about your brand’s reputation and products. 

You can also pay a social media influencer like an Instagram model or popular Youtuber to help spread the word about your brand. Paying for a sponsored ad or simply a product review can provide a massive boost to your social media attention, driving thousands of new customers to your site and thus increasing your sales exponentially.   

Offer Free Shipping 

Everyone loves free shipping! That pesky $4.95 shipping fee at the end of a transaction can actually have a greater impact on the buyer’s decision than you may think. Some buyers will actually abandon a sale altogether if the shipping costs exceed their overall budget for the purchase as a whole. How many sales do you think you’re losing to high shipping costs? 

Luckily, major shipping outlets like UPS and FedEx offer deals for eCommerce businesses that you can utilize to offer a free shipping perk to customers. A common practice is to set a dollar amount (like all orders over $50) that customers must surpass to get the free shipping. This will not only encourage your customers to spend more and purchase more of your products but also help further your popularity. Free shipping is a great asset to any online retailer! 

Discounts and Promotions 

In addition to free shipping, be sure to offer promotions and discounts to loyal customers and first-time buyers. Many sites offer something like a $5 or 5-10% credit on a buyer’s first purchase, but you can also offer free shipping on first orders (regardless of the dollar amount) or something of the sort. 

People love saving money, and a simple promotional code can help push a customer past the point of debate and into the realm of action. Be honest; you’ve probably waited for a promotional code to purchase an item before, haven’t you? We all have! Promotional codes are the simplest and most alluring tools you can use to boost sales and drive site traffic. 

Don’t forget to offer seasonal promotional codes, especially during the holiday season. You’ll likely see much of your yearly traffic from September to January, so offering seasonal promotions will help engage those visitors and make paying customers out of them. 

Email Marketing 

Don’t forget that you should be building your email list with every transaction. Even if you have a “checkout as guest” option, you should still ask for an email address from every customer. You can send a confirmation email once they’ve made a purchase, and from there, future promotional emails. A POS system is the perfect tool to collect customer information, including email addresses, quickly and efficiently. 

This is one of the best ways for eCommerce businesses to establish a permanent link between the business and its customers. Without this link, customers won’t know about specific promotions; and if they don’t know about it, how can they take advantage of it? Keep customers informed and give them a reason to make another purchase by collecting email addresses. 

Address Cart Abandonment 

What’s one of the biggest issues that eCommerce stores face? Cart abandonment, of course! In fact, some studies have put cart abandonment rates somewhere near 80%. Can you imagine 80% of your potential customers abandoning their carts? That’s a huge loss in potential sales! 

Addressing cart abandonment starts with ensuring you have a responsive website and an easy checkout process. Slow-loading pages, website crashes, and a cumbersome checkout process are some of the main causes for cart abandonment, and each of them is completely avoidable. 

Be sure to follow up with an email when a customer abandons their cart to remind them that they’ve got items still waiting in their online account. This will help remind the customer of what they were purchasing, and also give them an easy way to navigate directly back to the cart itself.