Tips to increase Online sales

Tips to increase Online sales

You have opened your e-commerce store and have a lot of expectations. But your expectations turn to anxiety as you see your online sales have not gained taken off as you would like them to. Indeed it can often prove to be a frustrating experience especially for first time ecommerce entrepreneurs when the products are taking too long to go off the shelves. So, what is the key to improving your sales and start making profits? Hippo shares you a few tips and tricks to increase your online sales.

Network

This is thumb rule for any business to flourish. Spread the word to your associates, family and friends about your online store. You can share interesting posts about your store and ask your associates to share your link in their network. This is truly valuable in today’s digital age as you need to create a brand visibility for making a mark and improving sales.

Use Google Adwords
 
Whether you’re looking to attract new visitors, grow online sales, or get repeat customers, Google AdWords will enable you to effectively reach out to new customers. It is a popular method of paid advertising which catches the eyes of the people. You can target customers locally or globally and reach the right people at the right time. It is extremely effective to get you desired results in terms of faster sales.

Social Media

When you go digital, social media is your window to the world. Create a Facebook store and regularly update it with interesting content and posts. Engage your audience with contests on Facebook and offer some prizes. Facebook marketing has to be an intrinsic plan of your digital marketing which will help you to drive more traffic to your store and give immediate results. LinkedIn is another site you can use to your advantage. Join groups and associations related to your sector and connect with industry peers. It will be an icing on the cake if you can load videos about your product on You Tube. Videos can be a very powerful mean to promote a new business and will lead to higher visibility and brand recall. There are many other social media sites like Twitter and Instagram which can add the necessary spark to your sales.

Blogs

Blogs have become the gateways for brand visibility. And it sure works!  Write interesting blogs about your product, which catch the attention of the end user. Post the blogs on popular networking sites and start conversations with your industry peers. Keep your content appealing, crisp and relevant. Post guest blogs as well and see how you drive traffic to your store! Follow blogs of industry leaders and influencers and you are sure to get a decent following as well.

Send E-mailers

Create and send interesting e-mailers to your existing and potential customers. E-mailers can help you to give more details about your products and your brand. Remember, less is more. So, do not to clutter an e-mailer. Highlight a few key features along with an interesting image and give links to your site. E-mailers are powerful marketing weapons as they reach right into the mail box and people simply can’t ignore them. Learn e-mail marketing techniques, build a database for sending e-mailers and you are sure to earn higher returns. You can even choose to send e-mails via professional email marketing platforms like MailChimp and SendGrid.

Follow Influencers

Influencers are people who are very active on social media and blogs, and have a huge fan following. They frequently comment about other products and give opinions and reviews. Try to follow such people and get your site/products reviewed by industry influencers as consumers are likely to trust recommendations from a third party person. Find out about the bloggers, reporters and online portals/magazines that are related to your industry. You can send them a brief about your online store and ask them to review it. Another unique way to is to interview an industry influencer, create a nice blog about it, post it on Facebook, Twitter and other sites and share it with others.

Website Content & Design

Your website design speaks volumes about your brand and ethos. Follow the KISS rule- Keep it simple, stupid! If there is clutter on your website, especially the home page, who will bother to look through your site. Keep your site design simple, classy yet easy to navigate. Show your best products only and make effective use of search buttons to show other products. Highlight if you have any special offer, sale or discount running. Use call-to-action buttons like Shop Now and Deal-of-the-day. Content is the king in digital marketing. Website content has be fresh, trendy, clear, consistent and attractive to read. Use keywords so that your website ranks higher in search engines.

Discounts and offers

Give discounts and offers on your sites, especially on special occasions and festivals. Club related items and offer them to your customers at a special price. Recently a new strategy had gained ground - tie up with mobile wallet companies and offer cash backs. Another tactic is to give a discount coupon for the next transaction. This will ensure that the customer comes back to your site after the initial purchase.
 
Give Product Feeds

A product feed or product data feed is an organized list of products and their features written in a manner that each product can be displayed, advertised or compared in a unique way. You can submit product feeds on many sites like search engines, price comparison websites & affiliate networks. The goal of product feeds is to deliver high-quality (relevant & accurate) information so that shoppers can make a buying decision. This is an effective means of driving traffic to your store.

Sell on marketplaces

Sell some of your best products on highly reputed marketplaces like Amazon and eBay. Marketplaces have a large number of customers already and selling on these sites will help you to gain traction. People will start recognizing your brand and start visiting your own website as well.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO is a way to optimize your website in a way so that search engines give you higher rankings. The position on the result list is of much importance to businesses since prospective users give priority to top results. Surveys indicate that majority of search engine users are more likely to choose one of the top five suggestions in the result page. Hence, position in the lists is proportional to the user's attention. Gaining visibility in search results is the way to gain more traffic. SEO introduces quality in websites, turning them user friendly and enabling easier navigation while improving individual usability of a website. Sales conversions have direct relations with these aspects of websites, and optimizing sites means better ROI.

Mobile site and Mobile Apps

M-commerce is a new phenomenon which is fast catching up in India and all over the world. Most of the online shopping is done through Smartphones and other mobile devices. Make your site responsive which means the site should give a seamless performance across mobile devices, laptops and desktops. Given the large and ever-growing number of mobile Internet users, none can ignore its pervading influence.  In fact, mobile unfriendly sites drive the customers away and damage customers’ perception of the brand.  It is important for businesses to leverage the benefits of mobile sites and apps in order to succeed.

So, what are you waiting for?

Now you a list of tips and tricks to increase your online sales, so what are you waiting for? Using our guide you can select a handful of strategies which will help kick start your sales. If you have more tips and tricks up your sleeve, please let us know in the comments below!