Whether you run a large online business or have just started your digital entrepreneurial journey, your ultimate goal should be to increase your online sales. Now the thing is the emergence of the pandemic has compelled countless brick-and-mortar stores to embrace digital transformation.
It simply means that the digital marketplace has become much more competitive than ever. To give you an idea, by 2025, the Indian e-commerce market is anticipated to reach a whopping US$ 111.40 billion.
As a result, “how to increase online sales?” has become a million-dollar question for numerous entrepreneurs. Fortunately, increasing your online sales isn’t that much difficult as it looks like, provided you implement the right online sales tips.
But you don’t need to search Google using something like “how to increase online sales” and test hundreds of tips to see which one works the best for you. Because we’ve spent hours doing so and finally handpicked twenty online sales tips along with ten tips to increase sales using digital marketing and social media. Regardless of what kinds of products you sell, these strategies will help you see a significant boost in your online sales.
You’ll only be able to make the most of the following online sales tips when you implement a fully safe and secure checkout process. Xpresslane not only helps you accomplish this but also lets your customers complete the entire process in only 3-4 steps, giving them the quickest and most convenient online shopping experience.
Let’s start with the basics!
Table of Contents
What Is Online Sales?
Fundamentally, online sales refer to the process of selling products and/or services using the Internet. These days, you can use a number of channels, including websites, social media, and search engines, to facilitate online sales.
It starts with your potential customers searching for your products/services online and arriving at your online store or other digital channels you use to operate your business and ends with them purchasing your products/services.
Now that you know what is online sales it’s time to learn about the two most sought-after marketing strategies to increase online sales: digital marketing and social media marketing.
How to Increase Sales through Digital Marketing?
Gone are those days when you could increase your sales simply by having a website and investing in some pop-up ads. Today, if you want to outperform your competitors and boost sales, you must have robust digital marketing strategies in place.
But again, the key question here is “how to increase sales through digital marketing?” Or, to be precise, which marketing strategies should you use?
To help you out, we’ve rounded up five proven digital marketing strategies. Let’s take a look.
-
Make Your Business Website Perfect
When it comes to increasing sales through digital marketing, it’s simply a must to have a perfect business website. After all, it’s where your potential customers will end up, and hence, it has to be fully optimized and up-to-date.
First, your site has to be easy to navigate, meaning your site visitors should be able to find what they’re looking for easily. Second, your home page and all product pages should have a clear call-to-action so that your visitors can quickly perform the action you want them to take.
Third, digital marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) go hand-in-hand. Without optimizing the site for the search engines, you won’t be able to improve brand awareness, reach target customers, and ultimately increase sales.
SEO itself is a massive domain and involves a huge number of critical aspects within three sub-domains: on-page SEO, off-page SEO, and technical SEO. If you don’t have the expertise or sufficient time to improve the SEO performance of your site, it’s best to hire a professional.
-
Leverage the Power of Email Campaigns
Email marketing is one of the cost-efficient yet highly effective digital marketing strategies that you can implement to increase sales. However, you cannot expect to make the most of this method simply by sending out random emails.
Customer segmentation is extremely important in email marketing. Not only this helps you attract new customers but to retain existing customers as well.
Email automation is another crucial aspect that lets you connect with your customers at the right time. It also helps you reduce cart abandonment rates, present special offers and deals, and track metrics.
-
Use Google Ads
Google Ads lets you highlight your website in different Google search results by paying a certain amount. Your ad may appear on Google properties and its vast network of third-party sites based on different factors, including the quality score, the keywords you placed bid for, and other factors.
Image: https://ads.google.com/intl/en_in/home/
If your target audience mainly comprises Internet users and you want to place your business at the top in relevant search results, you should use Google Ads. From targeting abilities, leveraging the audience’s intent, and creating brand awareness to campaign controls, better ROI, and much more – you can significantly improve your business’s overall performance.
-
Start a Blog
If you don’t have a proper blog yet, you should start it immediately. Blog posts can easily drive traffic to your site, generate customer interest, and direct their attention to your products/services.
To leverage this method, you must ensure two things. First, it’s important to maintain a posting schedule so that your readers know when to expect a new piece from you.
And second, your posts need to be actually valuable to the readers, meaning they should be able to gain some real knowledge from them. Posting useless, rehashed posts just to maintain the schedule won’t be of any help. So, your focus needs to be on posting something that can educate the readers and address their pain points.
-
Measure All Your Actions
Now you may think why we are talking about measuring the effectiveness of your strategies in a section titled “how to increase sales through digital marketing?” Just think, if you don’t know which of digital marketing are working and which aren’t, how’d you switch from one to another?
When we’re talking about how to increase online sales, adequate measurement of the effectiveness of your strategies is of utmost importance. This is because the increase in sales depends on this effectiveness.
While several tools are available for this, we suggest you start with Google Analytics. While it has both paid and free versions, most small and medium-sized businesses do well with the free version.
Image: https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/analytics/
How to Boost Online Sales through Social Media?
With 448 million active users across the country, social media has turned out to be one of the best methods for business owners looking for the answer to the question “how to increase online sales.” Regardless of your business’s industry and size, you can leverage the power of social media.
Here’re five effective tips on how to increase online sales through social media.
-
Identify Your Target Social Media Platform
Unless you’re a large brand or have got a significant social media marketing budget, it doesn’t make sense to focus your efforts on all the platforms out there. Instead, you should concentrate on the platform(s) that your target audience uses.
For example, the main users of Facebook are mainly an older audience. On the contrary, millennials and a younger audience are the main users of Instagram. LinkedIn is used by business professionals while Pinterest is ideal for sharing detailed information about products and services. You can use Twitter to update your audience through short messages.
-
Use Facebook Ads
You can always depend on Facebook’s organic post reach to place your business in front of a wider audience. But if you want to use the platform as an effective marketing tool, you should go for Facebook ads.
Image: https://en-gb.facebook.com/business/ads
While it’s not free, the features are worth paying for. From different types of ads and remarketing to audience targeting based on different features and more, you’ll get lots of opportunities to boost your online sales.
-
Join Social Media Influencers
Regardless of the social media platform(s) you focus on, joining social media influencers can help you get a quick boost in your followers. Believe it or not, 49% of customers rely on influencer recommendations to make their decisions.
Once you’ve shortlisted some influencers in your industry, see which of them has a large number of followers. Then, contact and ask the person to promote your products/services on social media in exchange for something like free samples or special discounts.
-
Use Shoppable Posts
Did you know that there’re new features on several social media platforms that let customers purchase directly from the posts? These are called shoppable posts through which people can make secure purchases. You can start with Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest.
For customers, it makes the entire process much effortless and quick. And for you, it brings the opportunity to increase sales as customers get lesser time to reconsider their buying decision. You can also identify which of your products are most popular by evaluating click-through rates.
-
Use Pinned Tweets
All Twitter users can “pin” one tweet that’ll be shown at the top of their profile even after making more recent posts. It gives you the opportunity to divert your audience’s attention toward something special, like an announcement.
Image: https://madalynsklar.com/2020/09/everything-you-need-to-know-about-pinned-tweets/
Therefore, by pinning a tweet, you can easily decide what your visitors will see first on your profile. This not only aids to boost sales but to improve your brand awareness as well.
20 Powerful Tips to Increase Your Online Sales
Now that you’ve got an idea of how to increase online sales through digital marketing and social media, let’s see twenty simple but highly useful tips that you can use alongside most marketing strategies.
-
Utilize Pop-Up Offers
The word pop-up may sound annoying at first, but it’s an effective strategy when it comes to introducing special deals and offers and increasing sales. According to Sumo, on average, pop-up conversion rate stands at 3.09%.
Image: https://www.dynamicyield.com/template/special-offer-confetti/
If you have attractive offers or a best-selling product that you want to present to your site visitors, deploying a pop-up would be an effective idea. Just be sure to include only the relevant information so that it doesn’t look like a unwanted distraction.
-
Use Quality Product Images
The quality of product images plays a crucial role in increasing your online store. It’s human nature to get attracted by stunning images than shabby presentations. The way your products appear on your site, your visitors perceive them the same way.
So, instead of using casually taken pictures, invest in high-quality product images. This’ll ultimately increase purchases, repeat purchases, and unplanned purchases. It’s also wise to include several images of one product from different angles as it’ll give the buyers a clearer understanding of the product’s appearance.
-
Generate a Sense of Urgency
We all have seen this multiple times on many online stores: “offer ends on..” or “deal closes in..” Lots of consumers respond positively to incentives that generate a sense of urgency, whether it’s a limited-edition product or a time-sensitive deal.
Image: https://www.instasent.com/blog/en/average-order-value-explained-what-it-is-and-how-to-calculate-it
The way you can implement this strategy depends on your products/services. For instance, if you don’t have a limited-edition product, you may offer a financial incentive to consumers who purchase right away. You can also use ad customizers to show a countdown on a limited-time sale.
-
Develop Buyer Personas
The more you can make people feel that a product is perfect for them, the more they’ll be interested in buying it from you. And that’s exactly where the importance of developing buyer personas comes into the picture. Buyer personas refer to a certain group of potential consumers whom you want your products/services to reach.
By creating buyer personas, you can reach the right group of customers who can benefit from your products/services, which greatly helps to increase your sales. One of the simplest ways to develop different personas is to use customer interviews.
-
Get Rid Of Distractions
The more choices we receive, the harder it becomes for us to choose the right thing. And if we get lots of options, we may end up choosing nothing at all.
Image: shorturl.at/mrzAN
If you’ve got too many products, it’s a must to provide product filters so that visitors can narrow down their options to find what exactly they’re looking for. You also need to make your site free of unnecessary distractions, meaning it shouldn’t have lots of compelling elements that may distract your customers.
-
Optimize the Checkout Process
Sure, you need all the payment and shipment information (or scheduling information for services) required to serve a customer. But if you have a checkout process that’s unnecessarily complicated and takes lots of time to complete, it can be a major deterrent for many customers.
Revisit your checkout process and see if there’re things like these: customers need to create an account before buying or they have to go through many steps before they can actually make the purchase. If yes, consider putting them all on one or two pages. You can also keep their total order amount visible all the time so they can complete the purchase quickly.
-
Use Customer Reviews and Testimonials
It’s one of the most common online sales tips, but it’ll always remain important. Since you cannot physically see a product in action, you cannot actually evaluate its quality. And this is the reason most potential consumers heavily depend on reviews and testimonials from other customers before making a final decision.
Place your best reviews on the home page and relevant product pages. If the reviewers and people in testimonials approve of it, it’ll be highly effective to have their photos along with the pieces. If you’ve got a surprisingly low number of reviews, you should focus on improving the number as well.
-
Add Trust Signals To Your Site
Despite the presence of reviews and testimonials, customers may still avoid purchasing from you if they feel unsafe about sharing their payment information with you. Regardless of how much they want to purchase from you, the fear of card information stolen can easily keep them away.
Image: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:VeriSign.svg
So, add trust seals such as VeriSign or Norton Secured to eliminate their fears. It’s also prudent to add brief descriptions of how these measures help to safeguard your customers’ information. Assuaging the fears will help you increase your sales significantly.
-
Offer Freebies
Giving freebies like free products is an effective idea to tempt consumers to buy more from you. If you’re introducing a new item, you can also share free samples to help customers judge its quality and buy the actual product.
Offering free shipping is another effective way to increase online sales. You can always set a price threshold reaching which customers will get free shipping. This’ll essentially entice them to buy more to reach the threshold.
-
Offer Top-Notch Customer Service
Answering your customers’ questions and ensuring that their problems are solved go a long way in improving your brand’s credibility and increasing your sales. The better you can provide customer support, the more your brand will be trusted by new customers.
Including a live chat function on the site and having a real human to handle the queries can help take your reputation to the next level. When you assure the customers that their questions will be answered within minutes, it helps to establish trust, which in turn leads to increased sales.
-
Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
As mobile search volume has already surpassed desktop search volume, it has become crucial to optimize your site for mobile. You need to make it as convenient as possible for your mobile visitors to browse your site and purchase from it.
This may require a complete redesigning or launching a separate mobile version of your site. When making your site mobile-friendly, pay special attention to user experience and navigation, as these are among the most important elements of a highly optimized mobile experience. Your pages should load almost instantly and offer logical navigation.
-
Use Ad Extensions
Ad extensions let you make your online advertisement larger with additional information and more sections to click. The key objective of using them is to increase the ad’s click-through rate.
Image: https://www.searchenginejournal.com/ppc-guide/ad-extensions/#close
As you can see above, “Women’s Best Sellers” and “What’s New – Women” provide additional places to click for customers who’re looking for different pages. This saves prospective customers a step, making it faster and easier for them to find exactly what they’re looking to buy.
-
Offer a Solid Money-Back Guarantee
Many times, risk aversion significantly influences a customer’s decision not to purchase something. What will a customer do if the product doesn’t work as promised? Even low-cost products may trigger buyer’s remorse, so it’s important to completely eliminate the probability by offering a robust money-back guarantee.
The more you can assure that your prospects’ money won’t get wasted, the more likely they’ll buy from you. Just be sure to analyze your competitors’ policies before deciding on your money-back guarantee. If they offer a much better policy than yours, you may have a difficult time growing your online sales.
-
Provide Several Payment Options
If your business takes payments only in traditional modes like credit cards, debit cards, and internet banking, increasing payment options will be an effective idea to increase online sales. As the number of mobile users is steadily increasing, you may want to include mobile payment systems such as Google Pay, Apple Pay, or WePay.
Image: https://pay.google.com/intl/en_in/about/
You’ll make it easier for customers to make payments by including these services. You may have to optimize the checkout process to include, these but they’ll give your online sales a boost, especially if your site experiences good mobile traffic.
-
Use Remarketing
Remarketing is one of the highly effective online sales tips to increase your bottom line. Whether you’re running a Facebook advertising campaign or a PPC campaign, you can always leverage remarketing.
Another advantage of using this strategy is that you can place your brand at the top of your prospects’ minds, which essentially helps to convert them. However, remarketing is a complex topic with several considerations depending on the platform you’re using. Therefore, be prepared to invest a good amount of time and effort to master the skills.
-
Deliver Clear Brand Messaging
Brand messaging refers to the unique value proposition communicated to your prospects that motivates them to purchase your products/services. With consistent brand messaging, not only you can increase online sales but develop trust among customers and build brand awareness as well.
There’re two essential things you need to focus on. First, your sales copy must clearly communicate how your products/services can benefit your customers. And second, there shouldn’t be any jargon that your visitors won’t understand.
-
Offer Free Trial
Many customers avoid buying online because of the risks associated with making commitments. To eliminate their fear, you can offer a free trial without any commitment for a specific period of time.
This’ll motivate even reluctant customers to try your products/services, which gives you a wonderful opportunity to let them understand how your offerings can benefit them. And after the trial period, interested customers can upgrade to your paid versions. You should keep the duration as competitive as possible if your competitors are also doing this.
-
Deploy Chatbots
Deploying well-designed chatbots can bring you a great opportunity to generate leads and increase online sales because they provide 24/7 quick and accurate support. Depending on your products/services, these AI-powered chatbots can efficiently handle many different things.
From handling online orders and automating sales support to prequalifying sales prospects to scheduling appointments, they can act like a 24/7 salesperson to boost your sales.
-
Use Product Videos
Investing in high-quality product videos is a highly effective method to help your prospects understand how a product works before they buy it. If buyers need to do some setup before using a product, including an instructional video will be very helpful.
Even if your business mainly provides services, you can still use videos to drive online sales. From uploading user testimonials to including infographic videos, you can use different types of them to motivate viewers to convert.
-
Leverage the Power of Community Forums
Joining community forums is our last but one of the best online sales tips to boost conversion rates. You can easily find many topics of interest and lots of queries from potential customers in forums relevant to your industry.
If you offer products/services that can benefit these people, you can engage with them and motivate them to try your offerings. To leverage this strategy, it’s very important to understand your customers’ issues clearly and provide authoritative answers.
Parting Thoughts
Now that you’ve got a robust collection of thirty powerful strategies on how to increase online sales, it’s time to start implementing them. All of these can help increase your online sales, provided you apply them in appropriate circumstances. It’s also vital to consider both short- and long-term goals before implementing them. If you wish to increase online sales quickly, you should focus on attracting more traffic. And if you want to continue doing it in the long run as well, your focus should be on building loyalty and driving traffic.
Increase your online sales through the eCommerce website. Check out our Website.
FAQs:
How can I grow my online business?
You need to have a perfect combination of SEO and online sales strategies to grow your online business. SEO will help you attract more online traffic, and sales strategies will help convert that traffic into customers.
How can I boost online sales in 2021?
You should implement a mix of digital marketing strategies, social media marketing strategies, and the online sales tips that we discussed above. Depending on your products and/or services, you may need to prioritize some strategies over others.
How can I increase my ecommerce sales?
First, you need to optimize your ecommerce site for the search engines to attract organic traffic. Then you can implement our online sales tips to boost your bottom line.
What are the only two ways to increase sales?
Increasing the number of customers and increasing the number of repeat purchases are the only two ways to increase sales. Our online sales tips will help you accomplish both of these goals.
How do you attract customers with words?
Your sales copies have to clearly define how your products and/or services will benefit the customers. It’s also strongly suggested to avoid any jargons that may become a barrier for your prospects to understand the copies.
Increase your online sales using Xpresslane.
Pretty section of content. I just stumbled upon your website and in accession capital to
assert that I get actually enjoyed account your blog posts.
Anyway I will be subscribing to your feeds and even I achieve you access consistently rapidly.
Excellent post however, I was wanting to know if you could write a litte more on this subject?
I’d be very grateful if you could elaborate a little bit more. Cheers!