Needless to say, if you’ve come this far, you’re interested in increasing your online sales. We also know you came from a search engine to satisfy your curiosity. Let’s start with the basics! For online sales we intend to speak exclusively of advice on e-commerce, leaving aside the sites or landing pages that we use for the generation of contacts of potential customers. Here are 13 tips born from 15 years of experience in the field.
1) Graphics In Line With The Target
If your site sells products for women, then the graphics, shapes, and colors must unknowingly evoke the characteristics preferred by the female target on an emotional level. Rounded backgrounds and colors in line with what you sell.
Grocery, Clothing, Shoes? Each segment has its colors and shapes. If you want to increase your sales, ask yourself if your site is in line with the target. Not with you, with the target. If you don’t like the color orange, it’s irrelevant: do you want to sell or discuss the reasons why you don’t like orange?
2) Interesting Contents In The Product Sheets
If your product data sheets do not explain what you are selling in detail, it is useless to bring traffic to the site. People come, look, and if they leave. Content is fundamental. Imagine having the customer in your shop. What would you ask before buying? Write those things down in your product sheet. Does it take time?
Of course, it takes time! Do you need people who do it? Of course, it takes people who do it and who knows what they do! If you sell clothing, rings, bracelets, it must indicate the lengths or sizes so that the end customer can be sure of the purchase. Use the “Satisfied or refunded” formula to break down barriers to purchase and any doubts. Never take anything for granted.
3) Beautiful Images With The Same Mood
We know very well that it is a mess for images. If you are a producer you have to take photos. If you sell drills, show me the drill from various perspectives. If you are a distributor, insert images in the same style. If you don’t have them, take photos. Build a small set and take these blessed photos!
If the images are missing or ugly, you don’t sell. If the images on your site are horrible, well your online sales will be too. PS: the photos with the cut heads and the homemade photos are horrible. Images are fundamental in online sales.
4) List Price And Sale Price
Our brain works with the concept of anchors or comparisons. Since he has to make decisions quickly, then he relies on the comparison. How do you know whether it is convenient or not to buy a house in a certain neighborhood or a company share?
Simple: Do a price comparison.
Well, people compare competitor prices and list prices against a discount. Therefore in your product data sheet, you always put two prices, one of which crossed out. It works! Pay attention to the prices you put. If you want to increase online sales you must have prices in line with the competition, not higher. Unless you’re Apple, no one cares to buy products from their online store that they find everywhere. Therefore if you live in a monopoly you can do what you want, if you live in a supply/demand situation where the supply is higher than the demand, then you have to adapt to the prices of the online competitors.
I repeat: check the prices of competitors online and position themselves very close to them at the bottom or top depending on your strategy.
5) Purchase Button
There is e-commerce where the purchase button is hidden, you can’t see it, you have to scroll down the page to find this button! Why hide it? Highlight it! It must be simple, easy, playful to buy. If it becomes an obstacle course, customers leave. People don’t want to search. Minimum resistance, maximum yield. Do you want to sell it? Design an easy foolproof route.
6) The Product In The Cart
If you want to sell, when the user puts the product in the cart, this cart must be visible. It seems idiotic to say it but I still find sites where the cart is not seen or understood that there is! If you have a too creative graphic, fire him. The beauty of selling is selling and increasing sales constantly. There are no other beauties. Is Amazon’s site beautiful?
Do you think they don’t have the money to redo the graphics or do you think we have a psychological study behind it that has determined shapes and colors? There are still some unwary people around who instead of increasing sales do everything to decrease them. You do not want to make the same mistakes as those people.
7) The Cashier And The Cursed Bonds
Do you still want to force your potential customer to register before knowing the shipping costs? Bravo, it’s a great way to decrease online sales. It works very well and if you hear your ears whistling you know why! Do you think there are people who buy a lot online but don’t want to register or want to know the shipping cost before registering? If you put this damned constraint then you will have wasted all the work explained in the previous points.
8) Payment Methods
Each person prefers a different payment method. I don’t care if you prefer Postepay or the bank transfer! You have to give people all the possible payment methods. I still hear voices saying “yes but Paypal costs me too much and then I don’t put it on”. Bravo, do not put it on so you will favor your competitors.
Is it possible that it doesn’t get into your head that it is the user who decides where to buy? Is it possible not to think that to increase online sales we have to adapt to the market? Today the market tells us that each user prefers a different payment method. Put them all in and let’s get it done.
9) Delivery Time
Basic rule: the sooner you deliver the better. If you have a product that you deliver in 30 days, declare it openly. Maybe he claims to take 31 days and then deliver it the day before. Your client will appreciate it. What will happen?
Customers who can wait will wait, others will look for another site.
Delivery times are important: sooner is better than later. After that, it’s worse than before. If the express courier costs you, then enter multiple shipping methods at different prices. Each customer will decide based on his portfolio. Again Amazon teaches to sell!
10) How To Make The Package
Buy from your competitors and easily discover how parcels do them. Is it useful? If they have been selling online for longer than yours, they certainly have more experience. Buy, look, compare, think, and then act.
The parcel is important and transfers the image of your company. What do you want to convey? Think about it, it’s important.
PS: If you have never bought online, before thinking about an e-commerce shop. After some experience, you can decide whether or not to go online with your store.
11) What To Put In The Package
When a person receives a package, he becomes a child again. Remember that! So he’s happy, happy to have finally received what he bought, then? So surprise him! A small gadget, a discount voucher for a new purchase, a personalized letter, the conditions for making returns in a simple and easy way, a package that avoids breakages. Simple things that will make your customer happy.
After a few days of receiving the package, ask the customers how they got on with the carrier. This simple feedback will let you know the level of professionalism of your supplier. This also affects the increase in sales.
12) Customer Happiness
Do you have a system that allows you to receive customer feedback? No? Then set up your own system (send an email a few days after delivery) or use a system. They call it social commerce but it’s actually a simple system. You send an email (automatically) to the customer after the purchase asking what he thinks of the purchase.
We regularly do sites like Amazon, eBay, etc. It serves to show other customers to be reliable (eBay was the first to invent the seller’s reliability through public comments) and it is for you to constantly improve your sales. How happy are your customers? Find out with the feedback.
13) The Sale Is Over When The Customer Buys Again
The sale ends only when a customer who has bought once buys back. So to increase online sales keep an eye on your buyback index. If people don’t buy a reason, there is! Find it out!
Have you made a great effort to convince them to buy and after their first purchase they don’t want you anymore? Why are you a disappointment to them? Remember that a customer who buys lowers his cost. Yes, because every customer has a cost for the company. In your case what are the costs you have incurred?
Well, time and money to set up your e-commerce, for example, and time and money to promote it.
Therefore? To lower costs, increase margins, increase online turnover, you need to remember ongoing sales. It is also called “loyalty”. There are systems, such as petrol station points cards, which also allow you to invent your own system in e-commerce to build customer loyalty.
