How to increase eCommerce sales?

Setting up an online store has never been easier, thanks to the wide range of eCommerce platforms that enable us to create standard eCommerce websites with speed.

The real challenge is to increase eCommerce sales and consider it as a true business.

Increasing eCommerce sales can be a challenge for an established business too considering eCommerce is highly dynamic and you need to be on top of the game all the time to ensure you achieve the desired sales.

No matter where you are in your eCommerce journey, you need to innovate to be consistent with your sales.

In this guide, you will learn practical tips that you can take to improve eCommerce conversions.

Table of contents:

1. Build an optimised eCommerce website structure
2. Focus on UX(user experience)
3. Mobile-first design is key
4. A seamless checkout experience is critical
5. Speed matters
6. Use Google Ads to target warm audience
7. Use Facebook Ads to target cold audiences
8. Email automation & workflows
9. Build re-targeting campaigns
   1. Facebook Re-targeting is a must
   2. Google Ads re-marketing
10. Invest in SEO
11. Utilise secondary marketing channels
12. Implement personalised product recommendations
13. Upsell and cross-sell to increase average order value
14. Create a sense of urgency
15. Social Validation and Online Reputation
16. Invest in brand
17. Competitive Pricing
18. Quality products or services
19. Shipping cost impacts purchase decision
20. Understand your competition
21. Leverage customer data and analytics
22. Build loyalty program

Build an optimised eCommerce website structure

A good website structure helps users, as well as SEO and paid marketing campaign performance.

It makes it easier for users to navigate through different categories and pages of the website – an enriching experience can lead to a longer time on the page and help users easily finish their purchase. Note that, a longer time on the page is an SEO ranking signal.

A good website can be integral for paid traffic as you don’t want to spend money on each click to bring highly relevant traffic, which results in a high bounce rate due to poor website structure.

Here are some ways optimised website structure can boost eCommerce conversions:

• Reduces Bounce Rate: A clear structure ensures visitors stay longer and explore more pages, leading to higher chances of conversion.
• Improves Paid Ad Conversions: As discussed above, spend your ad budget to get the best return by ensuring you have a well-optimised eCommerce website structure.
• SEO Ranking: By creating a proper you can improve website indexing and ranking which in return can boost online sales.
• Mobile Conversion: A good structure can help mobile users immensely with easy navigation, categories, products and checkout. Visit the section about mobile-first design and the dedicated blog on how to increase mobile conversion rate.

Things to consider while creating a good eCommerce website structure are:

1. Categories navigation should be planned & implemented well.
2. Design or update with mobile-first consideration.
3. Make product listing and detail page listed well with key info with prominence.
4. Design pages with no more than 1-2 clicks deep for easy access.
5. Design with easy crawling and indexing in mind along with a strong focus on SEO schema (Structured markup).

Focus on UX(user experience)

Your online store needs to be optimised for the user to boost eCommerce sales. Think about it this way: if core elements of your website such as the navigation, categories, product detail page, and checkout designed carefully with attention to detail then it can impact the conversion significantly.

While it is important to bring highly targeted traffic to your website to boost online sales, if you fail to address key usability issues then you will lose on many possible conversion opportunities.

UX or user experience is very important since it separates a good eCommerce website from an ordinary one and ensures you have a good conversion and retention rate, which are important to increase sales.

Mobile-first design is key

Did you know that over 60% of eCommerce sales happen through mobile? This means a significant portion of your sales comes from mobile users, making it worth capitalising on.

Since the majority are mobile users, mobile optimisation is not an option – it’s essential. The goal is to create a website that’s easy for mobile users to access and take the desired action of making the purchase. For mobiles, look into the following elements:

• Layout & Design: Make sure to have a hierarchical layout in easy-to-read fonts. Your website should also have a responsive design so that it adapts to different screen sizes.
• Mobile Speed: Page speed is important, so compress images, videos, and other elements in your website to minimise load times.
• Navigation: Use clear menus, concise filters, and a visible search bar for easy navigation.
• Mobile-First Content: Keep your content short and prioritise visuals over lengthy descriptions. Focus on engaging product images and short descriptions to make browsing easier on smaller screens.
• Easy Checkout: Since mobile shopping often happens on the go, keep checkout streamlined. You can offer a guest checkout option to encourage conversions without needing customers to register.

A seamless checkout experience is critical

You have done all the hard work to bring targeted traffic to your eCommerce website and they are interested in buying your products or services – you can’t afford to lose out due to poor checkout experience.

Almost 22% of shoppers online abandon their carts due to a poor checkout experience. Cart abandonment due to poor checkout experience is a serious problem.

You need to ensure they have a flawless checkout experience to boost conversions.

Here are some key steps you can take to increase e-commerce sales by making your checkout smooth:

1. Checkout Steps: Reduce the number of steps it takes to complete a purchase. The customer might feel frustrated if there are too many fields or forms to fill out to complete their purchase.
2. Guest Checkout: Don’t force them to register, offer guest checkout.
3. One Page Checkout: Implement a one-page checkout or similar to ensure users can verify what they are buying (including items, size, colour, image thumbnail), discounts, delivery address etc so that they don’t need to go back to cross-check and give up while doing back and forth.
4. Auto Fill: Add autofill options to your checkout so that customers do not need to enter the same information over and over again. This also reduces manual errors that can happen if the customer types by themself.
5. Multiple Payment Options: Offer multiple payment options. Different customers have different payment preferences like credit cards, PayPal, EFT etc. When you have flexibility in payment methods, it can reduce dropoffs.

Speed matters

1… 2… 3… & gone!

53% of mobile site visitors abandon a site if it takes more than 3 seconds to load. This means even a millisecond of reduced loading times can improve conversions and increase your eCommerce sales.

Website speed matters more than you think.

As it matters to users, it is an SEO ranking signal, learn how page speed impacts SEO ranking.

Use Google page speed test to assess your website performance.

Website speed causes and improvement techniques:

1. Page Design: How the page is designed that gets painted while rendering is critical for the speed test.
2. Images & Media: Images take time to load, we need images & other media like videos, infographics etc but they must be optimised well to load fast.
3. Code Quality & Compression: How the website code is created has an impact on the speed & performance, the website must be designed with optimised codes. Also, necessary code compression can help with execution and load time.
4. Reduce Unused Code: Most of the websites have some degree or un-used code due to using third-party libraries or poor coding structure. Reducing unused code can improve performance.
5. Minimise HTTP requests: Each file or element in your website requires separate requests that slow down your website. It’s best to combine CSS files and scripts to reduce the number of HTTP requests.
6. Use CDN: Content Delivery Network (CDN) is highly recommended if you are a global audience as it helps to improve the website load.

Use Google Ads to target warm audience

The rule is simple, if you want to increase sales, be there where your customers are. If they are actively searching on Google then they are mostly a warm audience and you must capitalise to get them to come to your website and buy what you offer.

Google Ads is one of the best platforms to reach warm audiences. It is one of the most profitable and effective ways to increase your traffic and e-commerce sales.

Here are some key points to consider while building Google Ads campaigns for an eCommerce store to boost sales:

• Campaign Structure & Budget: Utilise Google Ads to your advantage, and allocate the budget strategically to boost revenue. You must know what sells best to build the best Google Ads campaign structure, a strategic approach to Google Ads can do a much better job compared to an ordinary one.
• Campaign Type: Google Shopping Ads are highly recommended for eCommerce along with PMax and Video campaigns, learn more about the best Google Ads campaign types for eCommerce.
• Conversion Tracking & ROI: You must have conversion tracking in place and working, if you can’t track your ad spend, you can’t increase or scale your e-commerce sales.

Use Facebook Ads to target cold audiences

On the other side, Facebook ads are a great option to target a cold audience – those who might not be actively searching for what you offer.

Meta is a great platform to build a highly targeted audience who might be interested in your offers without actively searching. You can use Facebook’s advanced targeting options to reach users based on demographics, interests, behaviours, and even life events.

The foundational design of Meta Ads makes them the preferred choice for targeting cold audiences.

Facebook Ads funnel is a must

To increase sales with Facebook Ads, you can use a three-stage Ad funnel to guide visitors through the purchase process:

• Top of the Funnel – Focus on awareness. Introduce your products or brand with ads that add value to the users. You need to focus on using engaging visuals and concise messaging to spark an interest among users to click your Ads.
• Middle of the Funnel – These are users who have visited your store before and have some interest in your products or services. To increase further engagement, you need to create ads that focus on product benefits, customer testimonials, or educational videos to nurture these visitors to complete the purchase.
• Bottom of the Funnel – These are users who have great interest in your product or have visited your site multiple times, many have gone to the checkout but did not complete the purchase. They may need a nudge with discounts or promotions to complete the purchase.

For more information, visit our blog on how to get more sales with Facebook Ads.

Email automation & workflows

For any eCommerce business, email automation can help you get more sales by building email workflows. You can automate emails at different key points of your customer’s journey instead of manually sending them. This automation can make it possible to engage customers with timely, relevant emails that boost conversions, increase retention, and nurture relationships.

Here’s an example of an email workflow for an online store:

• Welcome Emails: If your product or service is irresistible to your audience then you must have a welcome email signup sequence so that your keen audience can sign up. Similarly, if you have a standard eCommerce business then you may create a signup to get a discount or free trial or similar. The process will help you to build an email list.
• Abandoned Cart Emails: Visitors abandon carts due to various reasons. Automated workflows can send a series of reminders, typically with an initial nudge followed by a stronger incentive, such as free shipping or a discount, to encourage checkout completion.
• Post-Purchase Follow-Up: A post-purchase follow-up email thanks customers for their order, provides order confirmation, and might even include personalised product recommendations or guides for getting the most out of their purchase.
• Product Recommendations: Personalised product recommendation emails are tailored to customers based on their previous purchases or browsing history. For example, if a customer has purchased a yoga mat, the email could recommend yoga accessories like blocks, straps, or resistance bands.

Build re-targeting campaigns

You need to use good retargeting campaigns to boost engagement and increase e-commerce sales. Sometimes, customers might visit your website or click your Ads but not make a purchase. People are busy and reminder campaigns can help bring users back to the website.

For this, a good retargeting campaign can remind customers and even provide incentives like discounts or free shipping to bring them back to the website.

There are multiple channels you can use for retargeting, but the popular choices are:

• Facebook retargeting
• Google Ads remarketing

Facebook Re-targeting is a must

Meta is one of the best platforms for re-targeting.

Facebook retargeting can work really well to show them exactly what they were interested in to increase your e-commerce sales.

Facebook’s retargeting ads can help with highlighting specific products viewed, offering reminders, or featuring limited-time discounts, keeping your brand top-of-mind and driving conversions.

Google Ads re-marketing

Google Ads remarketing is also effective in increasing your eCommerce sales since you can use retargeting Ads across Google’s Display network, which includes millions of websites, YouTube, and Gmail. This type of retargeting is highly effective for capturing the attention of users as they browse online.

Google Ads remarketing works well with providing dynamic ads for your users, which means it keeps changing based on what the user searched for. You can show specific products that your user viewed earlier to increase their engagement even further.

Invest in SEO

SEO is a great method if you are looking to increase eCommerce sales. It takes time and resources but may produce exceptional results.

If you have a long-term vision for your online store then SEO marketing should be on your priority list.

The increasing cost of Google Ads and Facebook has made it difficult for many small businesses and SEO has become the preferred choice.

Here are some key points you should consider with your SEO strategy to boost the ranking of your online store to get more sales:

1. Rich Content: Avoid building thin or duplicate content, build content with intent.
2. Topical Map/SEO Silo: Building content with topical coverage can help boost ranking and it will help you to become an authority in the industry.
3. Category Optimisation Is Integral: Category optimisation is an integral part of eCommerce SEO. A holistic SEO strategy is to be created with pillar content to rank categories to boost sales.
4. SEO Schema: Add schema markup to your website to help search engines better understand your content. This can enhance your search result listings with rich snippets like star ratings, product prices, and availability, increasing click-through rates (CTR) and driving more traffic.

Visit our detailed guide on the eCommerce SEO checklist to boost your ranking and conversions.

Utilise secondary marketing channels

Apart from the primary marketing channels like Google Ads, Facebook Ads, SEO, etc., you need to also look into secondary marketing channels like Bing, TikTok, Pinterest, etc.

These channels have less competition thereby the possibility to get sales at a lower cost.

• Bing: Even though less popular than Google, Bing Ads is still a recommended channel to get relevant traffic. Bing is good for increasing eCommerce sales with less budget since it has a lower CPC.
• TikTok: TikTok is also another platform that is powerful for reaching younger audiences because of its engaging, short-form content. You can try TikTok ads for your online store.
• Pinterest: Pinterest is a visual search engine that’s excellent for eCommerce, especially for lifestyle, fashion, and home decor brands.
• Reddit: Reddit is another platform that you can explore.

Implement personalised product recommendations

Everyone loves a product that is customised or has a personal touch – it shows that you care about your customers. According to a report by Accenture, 91% of customers are likely to shop with brands that provide recommendations and offers relevant to them.

When you give personalised offerings to your customers, it increases engagement rates and gives you more chances to convert the customer, thereby increasing eCommerce sales.

Upsell and cross-sell to increase average order value

Upselling and cross-selling are excellent strategies to increase the average order value (AOV) and increase eCommerce sales.

Upselling refers to helping customers buy higher-value items designed persuasively. On the other hand, cross-selling refers to selling different products that relate to the chosen product.

When you upsell or cross-sell at the right moment, let’s say after the customer has added a product to their cart or on the checkout page, the customer feels like they are getting more value or making an informed decision and may add the additional item to their cart in the last moment.

You need to have a strategic plan in place to upsell or cross-sell.

For example, if a customer is browsing to buy a laptop, just by showing shuttle price variation and showing the value like spending an additional $100 to get a higher capacity storage or memory. This can be a perfect example of upselling. Similarly showing someone accessories like a laptop bag or external storage drive can be an example of cross-selling.

Create a sense of urgency

A sense of urgency using correctly can boost the conversion rate. This is because customers feel more compelled to make last-minute decisions when there’s a countdown or limited stock.

A sense of urgency can be used in many ways:

• Low Stock Count Display: You can display stock signals (e.g., “Only 3 left in stock!”) to show customers that the product is in high demand and may run out. This is effective for targeting customers who may hesitate because of the fear of missing out and encourages them to make quick purchasing decisions to avoid missing out on these “limited” items.
• Reminder Offer End-Time: You can remind customers about the offer end time as many leave it to the last minute and some miss the offer altogether.
• Flash Sales & Limited-Time Discounts: You can also run short-term promotions with countdowns to create immediate interest. You can use phrases like “One-Day Only” or “24-Hour Flash Sale” so that customers immediately buy your product to get the discount.

Social Validation and Online Reputation

Social validation and online reputation have the power to increase conversion rates. The more reviews and positive images you have online, the more credibility you have.

Here are some actions you can take to build an online reputation and acquire social validation for your eCommerce store.

1. Exceptional Customer Service: A happy customer will become a loyal customer, so provide the best customer service you can via phone, chat or email. Be available for them when they need you. Happy customers are more likely to leave positive reviews and recommend your brand.
2. Respect Customer’s Opinion Online: A strong brand always acts professionally, so maintain your cool even with bad reviews. Always respect the customer’s opinion and approach criticism with a good mind to increase customer satisfaction.
3. Publish Case Studies: Case studies are real proofs of how your products or services solved a customer’s problem. So publish case studies on your website to show visitors how you can help them to build more trust and credibility.

Invest in brand

A brand has immense power.

The brand is not just important for customers as happy customers become loyal to brands, it is now significantly important from an SEO point of view. A good brand has the power to bring direct traffic.

A brand is the reflection of trust.

Here are some easy-to-boost brand signals to take your eCommerce return to the next level:

1. Unique Selling Proposition (USP): Your USP is what sets your brand apart. A well-written USP lets customers know what your brand is all about and understand the unique value you offer, check out some of the best unique selling proposition examples to get an idea.
2. Brand Consistency: From the website to order confirmation and finally getting the product delivered, pay attention to detail.
3. Make Your Brand Synonym: It is very difficult and can take many years to make a brand synonym, but in the end, it’s worth it. Let customers associate your brand with quality or a product when it first comes to their mind. For example, people relate Colgate as synonyms for toothpaste.
4. Consistent Visual Identity: Use the same font, patterns, design, images, fonts, etc., for all channels and touchpoints, especially on packaging and social media. This creates a consistent brand image that users can recognise anywhere.

Competitive Pricing

Pricing is very important in eCommerce to drive conversions. While quality is important pricing is one of the key influencers that trigger sales.

Be competitive with your pricing if your competition has a similar quality of products or services to offer.

Here are the steps to ensure your pricing is right:

1. Research the competition in your niche. Find out what prices, discounts, and other offers they have.
2. Check whether the price your competitors offer matches the value. You can check this by looking at their reviews, ratings, and overall satisfaction.
3. Look into your margins and costs. Check whether you are charging a premium for the same that is being offered by others too. If your product has more value, charging a higher price is justifiable.

Quality products or services

No one likes to buy an ordinary product that is cheap and offers a poor experience. Some customers are willing to pay more if the product has more quality or features.

So if you are not able to sacrifice price, then focus on product quality. This offers more benefits – you can get more profits and also position yourself as a premium product.

You need to invest in quality so that you can get more reviews, recommendations, and positive feedback for your product that can increase conversions.

Here are some ways you can show quality in your product:

• Explain As Is: Explain the product or service as it is. If designed for a quality experience, say it out loud.
• Reviews & Testimonials: Display real customer experience.
• Guarantee: You can offer warranties or guarantees to reassure customers of your product quality and make them more confident in going forward with the purchase.

Shipping cost impacts purchase decision

Shipping price plays an integral part in decision-making to purchase from your store vs others. If you display shipping costs at the end, your customers might feel discouraged to continue with the purchase and abandon the cart.

Instead, look at different shipping options you can offer your customers and display them in the beginning.

It’s best to offer free or low-fee shipping as if others may offer the same product at the same price then shipping cost may be the decision maker.

Note that for faster shipping or same-day delivery, you can offer shipping charges since the customers are more focused on getting their product earlier rather than the price. In all cases, you need to show the shipping options right at the beginning and not surprise them at the end.

Understand your competition

You need to understand your competition if you want to boost your e-commerce sales.

eCommerce business is very dynamic, along with your own products, pricing, shopping cost, and offers you need to regularly monitor your competitors and stay ahead in the game.

You also need to look at their marketing strategies and budget, how they attract customers, the incentives they provide etc.

Knowing about these aspects gives you a clear idea of what your competitors are doing and identifies any gap that you can capitalise on to increase your e-commerce sales.

Here are key elements you should consider while analysing your competition:

• Pricing & Shipping: They are the most obvious ones.
• Discount & Offers: Check and compare your competition’s discounts and offers regularly and compare with your offers and see if any adjustments may be required to be competitive in the market.
• Competitor’s Marketing Budget Estimate: One of the most crucial things is to find an estimate of your customer’s marketing budget. This gives you a clear idea of how much you should fix your marketing budget and any improvements you can make. Learn more about competitors’ budgets on Google Ads and Facebook Ads to know more about their paid Ads spending.

If you want to increase your eCommerce sales then you must monitor your competition and take the necessary steps.

Leverage customer data and analytics

With the world evolving with more data, you can increase your eCommerce sales by using customer data and analytics. Data is available everywhere and you can set up data tracking points and metrics to analyse where your customer is looking and how to target them better.

You can track metrics like purchase behaviour, demographics, intent, engagement, CTR, ad copies, and more to personalise your offerings and streamline your operations. This way you cut down on costs and make smart moves to boost eCommerce sales.

Make data-driven decisions

You need to make smart business decisions that are driven by data instead of emotions. This can help with product development, inventory management, and pricing strategies.

Whether it’s business decisions or marketing decisions, they should be done based on data. You may want to increase or decrease your product pricing or marketing budget, and set data as the foundation for decision-making driven by sales and return on investment.

Build loyalty program

Another way to increase eCommerce sales is through loyalty programs.

Either you can have your own point system that can be redeemed to buy more products or partner with third-party frequent flyers or another point system where customers will feel rewarded.

For this, you can use a wide range of methods such as offering loyalty programs, points, memberships, and more. When you offer perks along with a quality product, the customer feels engaged with your brand and becomes a loyal customer, thereby creating repeat orders and increasing your overall sales.

A points-based rewards system is a popular loyalty strategy that encourages repeat purchases by allowing customers to accumulate points for every purchase.