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Starting an online business without adequate strategic plans can lead to frustrations if expected sales are not forthcoming. There are several ways to increase sales but the truth is that when it comes to selling any goods or services, challenges will spring up which you must overcome. Apart from marketing your business, you must optimize your site to attract traffic organically. Potential customers must get a very clear insight about the products you offer and available shipping possibilities. Reduce the risk of customers leaving before completing a purchase, by optimizing your checkout page. No doubt, selling online is complicated. Even with knowledge of strategies to use, implementation on your own website may be hard.

In this article, I hope to eliminate some of the anxieties of selling online, so you can increase your online sales! I have done very good research on each way and am happy to share with you. On each point, I’ll give actionable tips to use to increase your sales. The following are my suggestions:

1. ENSURE THAT YOUR STORE IS MOBILE-FRIENDLY

Make your websites to fit all different screen sizes by having a mobile-friendly design. Let it look beautiful and easy-to-navigate on mobile or cell phones, laptops, iPad, tablets, and desktop. By having mobile-friendly design; your site can handle large number of traffic that comes from mobile devices. Using a mobile-friendly design is optimal for your website’s SEO rankings! Today, most cloud base e-commerce software such as Big Commerce, Shopify, or 3dcart offer and support mobile-friendly designed website templates. If you use open source software like Magento or Woo Commerce, get developers and designers to make mobile mobile-friendly website templates for you.

2. PROVIDE ATTRACTIVE SHIPPING OPTIONS

Most online shoppers consider shipping costs as one of the biggest factors when buying. For example, according to a survey by Baymard Institute on consumers who had abandoned an online shopping cart in the last three months, preceding the study, 50% said they did not buy due to extra costs of shipping, taxes, and fees which they considered too high. Another 18% of the shoppers said they didn’t proceed with their purchases because they couldn’t see or calculate in advance the total order cost. Your online store should be transparent to offer and display affordable, predictable shipping options to your customers. If possible offer free shipping options because on the long run it can increase your online sales. There are ways to make attractive shipping rates without reducing much of your earnings. If you want me to write an article on this please leave me a comment after reading.

3. HAVE QUALITY PRODUCT DESCRIPTIONS & PICTURES

Potential online customers don’t have the chance to see or touch your products, so influencing them to buy with a beautiful and quality well-made product descriptions and images is paramount. Customers are hesitant to make purchases of certain products if they can’t feel or touch it. This is especially true for products like clothing and decoration pieces. When you create your own original descriptions and feature your own images you will appear unique. There are a few tips you should keep in mind when you prepare your own descriptions and product imagery:

Be Concise: Use simple specific language easy to understand by shoppers in your product descriptions. Accurate information about materials and the exact dimensions of the product must be stated.

Narrate A Story: Allow the customer to imagine what the product can do. Use product descriptions to help customers imagine the impact of your products in their lives. Use statements that can help potential customers understand the benefits they can derive by purchasing and using your product; like these examples:

“A unique scent of the night”; or Wash Away Sweat, Leave Manly Scent”

Add Multiple Images: Extremely important for your product imagery to accurately portray your items. Display product photos from multiple angles on your pages and provide zoom features on the photos.

4. USE EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is still a great force in product marketing and promotion. It is a great way to contact existing customers and encourage loyalty. Use and activate email marketing campaigns, but keep in mind the following four key strategies of best practices.

Make Your Messages Personalized: Let customers feel recognized as Emails that use customers’ names perform little better. Use a customer’s name in the subject line and in the body of the email for effective results.

Add Images: By including images in your emails, you improve engagement by displaying the promoted products. Statistics show that emails accompanied by images have higher open rates and click-through rates. Always review your email marketing performance and make adjustments when the need arises.

Create A Visible Call To Action: Give customers a clear guidance by creating a Call To Action (CTA). Make your CTA a colourful button that directs customers to a specific page and have it at the top section of your email.

Organize Customer Into Groups: Collect customers’ email addresses sorted into groups like demographics, the number of orders placed in the past and amount spent in a single order. Send out targeted email marketing campaigns to each group. Targeted marketing increases the chances of encouraging customers to deal with your brand or products.

SELECT AN EMAIL MARKETING SOFTWARE

Email marketing software helps to simplify the process of designing emails. In today’s world most are quite affordable. Below is a listing of some email marketing software programs easy to find and suit your specific marketing strategy:

Mail Chimp: is one of the most widely used email marketing software services. It has been integrated into almost every popular shopping cart out there. It is easy to implement and boasts many rich features.

ActiveCampaign: If looking for email marketing software that offers lots of features and excellent automation tools, then consider ActiveCampaign. It will give you integrated tools for customer relationship management.

Campaign Monitor: This is easy-to-use software offering a good customer service and advanced features. The price for Campaign Monitor is within reach, and a free plan is available.

Benchmark Email: This email marketing software is designed for small to medium-sized businesses. It offers an easy-to-use admin and is focused on adaptability. The price is affordable.

You can visit the website of the email software services we mentioned above to research further and see what will fit your marketing strategy.

5. CURTAIL ABANDONED CARTS

A common challenge in e-commerce is shopping carts that are abandoned. A report by the Baymard Institute, suggests that 69.57% of all e-commerce shopping carts gets abandoned before checkout! Use the right techniques to recover a reasonable percentage of abandoned carts. Let me show you a few tools to use:

Use of Built-In Abandoned Cart Saver Tools: Employ shopping cart software systems that include an abandoned cart saver. Automatically send re-targeting emails to customers that have left items in their carts and direct them back to your website. Offer discounts as incentive for customers to buy. Send images of the products they’ve left behind, with a clear call to action. See further suggestions on how to craft effective and quality re-targeting emails at Shopify’s guide on their website.

Abandoned Cart Monitor Integrations: If the shopping cart on your online store does not have a built-in abandoned cart saver, use an extension to add those features on. Always read customer reviews. Try to find and use an extension that works very well with your e-commerce solution, one with full backing of reliable and trusted developers. If you are enjoying this article and want me to write an article on how to Reduce Abandoned Shopping Carts, please leave me a comment below.

BE VERY STRATEGIC IN THE USE POP-UPS

Although I dislike pop-ups, they do work. Here is how to effectively use pop-ups on your own online store:

Offer opportunities for Discounts: An annoying pop-up can become a friendly one if you offer discounts. By offering a discount or a promo code, you will be incentivizing customers to engage with your brand as they sign up for your newsletter and encourage them to make that purchase.

Employ the Use of Exit Intent Pop-Ups: The use Exit intent pop-up tools will redirect customers that would have abandoned your site. It is intelligent software that monitors customers’ mouse movements and then triggers a pop-up when it detects that the customer is moving their cursor to close the page on your site.

6. MAKE MULTIPLE PAYMENT OPTIONS POSSIBLE

Use a system that allows the acceptance of payment through multiple methods to reduce cart abandonment at checkout. In a quantitative study by Baymard Institute of reasons for abandonment, they found that 9% of US online shoppers have abandoned a cart in the last 3 months before the study because there weren't enough payment methods as desired by the shoppers. Potential customers prefer to see a payment method or option they are comfortable with because they may have trust issues about the security of a new site. Provide multiple and familiar payment options, to allay their fears and increase your online sales. Consider to have globally recognizable payment systems like Apple Pay, PayPal, Skrill, Stripe, Square and so on. Such brands will give potential customers confidence in your online store. For example, a study by the survey panel, IPSOS conducted in US, UK, Australia, Brazil, Germany and some other European countries, shows 54% increase on the willingness of potential customers to make a purchase with the availability of PayPal as a checkout payment option.

Although there are several other ways you can increase your stores’ online sales, the strategic ways I have shared in this article could be a good way to start. Use what appears reasonable to you, then track and review your traffic and revenue to see if there are signs of improvement. If you want more info on online business improvements, make sure to subscribe to be the first to know when I publish a new article. If you prefer to discover more online business opportunities by watching videos, feel free to visit this YouTube channel =>

Thanks for reading and good luck with your online store business.