These days setting up an eCommerce business is one of the best ways to earn money online. With platforms like Shopify and Magento, it has become easy to open your own online store. But that doesn’t guarantee revenue.
In order to boost your eCommerce sales, you need to have a strong digital marketing plan with a heavy focus on digital analytics and a data-driven decision-making process.
Before we begin to talk about the strategy, you must have a powerful e-commerce store designed with mobile-first consideration. We are an eCommerce website design Melbourne expert and we can guide you in the right direction.
This question is also very common in a dropshipping business model where it’s very easy to get started but a lot harder to start getting sales.
We have assembled together all the powerful and actionable eCommerce marketing strategies that’ll help increase your online sales quickly and effectively.
Table of contents
- Take full advantage of eCommerce SEO
- Google Ads and Remarketing
- Enhance eCommerce Email marketing strategy
- Leverage Facebook advertising to meet new customers
- Images and Videos Sales
- Consistently improvise and test your website
- Strategically promote your products from time to time
- Use data analysis to improve your performance
- Reduce cart abandonment
- Deliver excellent customer services
- Upsell and cross-sell products to maximise sales
- Use client testimonials to build trust and authority
- Bonus tips to increase holiday sales
Take full advantage of eCommerce SEO
eCommerce SEO is by far the most effective and long-term strategy to boost sales and make the business sustainable and profitable. If you choose to invest in SEO for eCommerce website optimisation, you must consider the safe and longer-term aspects in mind. It is not going to return overnight, it may take months or years to see its full potential.
Creating high-quality and SEO-optimised content regularly proves to be a boon for elevating your brand’s online ranking. You need to have a solid content production strategy and learn more about how to write SEO-friendly content.
eCommerce category optimisation is an integral part of eCommerce SEO to boost ranking and get more traffic and sales.
E-commerce SEO strategy is broadly a combination of SEO best practices like keyword research, content marketing, competition analysis, link building, on-page and off-page SEO, optimisation of product images and more.
If you plan to do Shopify SEO then you need to work on getting the right theme for your online store which will help you make your SEO effort easy.
Proper implementation of such practices helps to rank your content higher in Google’s organic search results. Which in turn generates a flood of relevant and organic leads who are ready to buy from your store. Learn about quality SEO costs in Australia to set your expectation.
Moreover, once you rank in Google, it opens the doors for executing other eCommerce marketing strategies to retain visitors and convert them into recurring customers.
It is one of the best ways to increase sales but, eCommerce SEO can be quite challenging and may often get confusing and overwhelming. Our eCommerce SEO checklist is a great place to get started.
Google Ads and Remarketing
Google Ads are the driving force for bringing in new visitors and transforming them into loyal customers in a short time. Unlike SEO, the results can be achieved in a much shorter time.
It is highly recommended that you have Google Ads, shopping and re-marketing strategy considered for your digital marketing campaign.
Depending on the level of competition in your niche, you may be able to set up an ROI-driven AdWords campaign. It is highly recommended to use Google remarketing mainly because it’s cheap and very good from a branding point of view with some level of return.
It is also important to note that when you try to boost your conversions online using Google Ads, you must have a safe and reliable website designed so that you may not get the issue of Google Ads disapproved destination not working or any malicious software-related issues.
Bidding Strategy: The target CPA – Auto-bid is the preferred method after getting a decent conversion.
There is no minimum budget to run Ads, use Google Ads cost estimator tool to get a rough idea of the budget and expected return.
Work with a reputed AdWords consultant if you need to build a well-optimised campaign with ROI consideration. Working is an expert is very important if you may plan to run a higher-budget campaign.
Enhance your eCommerce Email marketing strategy
Strategic execution of eCommerce email marketing tactics can not only generate and increase your ROI but also boost repeat purchases to a great extent.
First off, build and grow an email list to target and retarget customers visiting your store from time to time.
To reap maximum benefits, use various email marketing tools to personalise the emails by the process of segmentation.
Under this method, customers and visitors are segmented into different groups based on their age, gender and other activities they performed while visiting certain pages of your website.
You can cause pop-ups regarding email subscriptions to appear after a visitor spends a certain amount of time on your website.
Include a checkbox option with it that helps you know what your customers liked and disliked or where they had heard from you, etc., for smoother segmentation.
Your emails must be able to add the utmost value to specified customers by directly speaking to their pain points.
Send strategic emails to the right people at the right time with information regarding the latest offers and discounts, wishlist reminders, cart abandonment emails, upsell emails and any other updates that interest your customers.
Moreover, make sure to leverage storytelling in your emails and make your customers feel like a part of the family. That would help you build trust in your customers, retain them and increase brand awareness.
Ultimately, you’ll see an enormous rise in your eCommerce sales.
Leverage Facebook advertising to meet new customers
Facebook can be great in some niches but it may not be so effective in some industries.
According to a study, by the second quarter of 2020, the number of global monthly Facebook users rose to about 2.7 billion.
So if you are not using Facebook for advertising your online store, then you are missing out on a massive opportunity of escalating your sales. And that can be a great loss for your eCommerce business.
Therefore you must set your prime and utmost focus on leveraging your Facebook advertising campaign.
- To begin with, create your Facebook ads account.
- Set up and install Facebook pixel on your website
- Categorise audiences into different groups by segmentation
- Retarget ads to the people who already came in contact with your previous ads through the website, videos, and more.
- Target lookalike audiences (audiences similar to the newly targeted audience) and showcase your ads to them.
Images and Videos Sales
It is important to know unlike purchasing products in a physical store where customers can see, touch and feel the product before purchasing, online stores are purely about the key info presented to potential buyers easily and effectively.
High-quality images are a great way to show your product from different angles along with the zoom feature to see the fine details.
Similarly, videos are a great way to communicate and feature the positives of the product. How-to videos are another missed opportunity that you can think about.
If your potential customers can’t see the product and its features properly then your conversion rate will get impacted.
Learn how to optimise images for the website and make your products stand out in the crowd.
Consistently improvise and test your website to be highly optimised
You may have planned the best website but you must make data-driven decisions and apply changes to meet user’s requirements and focus on bringing more revenues.
A poorly optimised website can decrease your user engagement and deem your website as untrustworthy.
So it is of immense importance that you optimise your website regularly by conducting A/B testing of the various sections of your store like CTA buttons, product images, catalogue pages, smooth checkout process and more.
And since a majority of people browse their phones for online shopping these days, optimising your website to be mobile-friendly is of utter importance to enhance user experience and engagement.
The primary goal is to make the journey from product pages to checkout extremely feasible, along with a smooth transaction process. The easier it is to navigate your website and make a purchase, the greater the chances that a customer will buy from you.
In addition to that, refining and strengthening your website usability immensely helps to scale up your CRO (Conversion Rate Optimisation) to a significant extent. Learn more about premium website design cost in Australia.
So make sure you continually test your website usability and make the desired changes along with experimentation from time to time.
Strategically promote your products from time to time
Regular promotions are the key to keeping customer engagement alive.
The strategic and frequent implementation of lucrative promotional programs not only helps to encourage existing and inactive customers into making purchases but also brings in a good deal of potential customers.
Also, running timely and value-added promotions throughout the year from small to large scales on different occasions can entice your customers to visit your store again and again.
Here are some of the noteworthy ways you can run promotions on your website to drive in massive sales.
- Provide bundle offers by combining two or more items and giving a discount altogether.
- Offer freebies on purchases such as buy one get one free and other similar stuff.
- Run flash sales by offering luring discounts on your products weekly.
- Reward your customers with coupon codes, scratch card, virtual coins and cashback offers on a certain amount of purchase.
- Conduct contests and giveaway programs.
- Create a sense of missing out by conducting sales for a certain interval of time and displaying a countdown for the end of the sale.
You can also carry out other promotions like displaying your best-selling products with discounts, offers on easy returns and shipping, try-and-buy offers and many more.
Apart from that, you can go one step ahead by opting for Influencer marketing and Instagram marketing as a part of your promotional campaign to bring in a flood of new customers to your store and soar your sales.
Note: Your promotional campaigns must solely be focused on providing high value to your customers so that they remember you compared to your competitors.
Use data analysis to improve your performance
Data analysis helps you to measure the potency and fix any errors in your marketing strategy. It also helps you prevent repetitive mistakes hurting your business.
Use Google Analytics and Google Search Console to uncover the product pages and catalogues that give you the highest and no sales.
Take required action for those products which are not returning.
Use heat maps or scroll maps to determine where and how the visitors dropped off your products, the number of pages visited, etc.
Reduce cart abandonment
Often customers add a product to the cart for purchase but instead end up abandoning it. That can lead to a great loss in your revenue.
So to reduce cart abandonment rate, you can set up an email recovery campaign as a part of your email marketing strategy.
Send customised emails with the help of email automation tools to customers reminding them of the cart items from time to item.
You can also do the same with the help of push notifications like SMS text messages and other mobile alert systems.
For the notifications to be more actionable and effectual, you can set up profitable offers as a part of your promotional campaign such as creating a sense of urgency using tactics like out-of-stock, sales countdowns, etc.
Deliver excellent customer services
Often overlooked and underrated, exceptional customer service is actually one of the best cost-efficient ways to leverage your eCommerce marketing strategy.
It helps you establish a strong customer loyalty base. Which ultimately increases your conversion rate (especially through effective referrals to friends, family members, etc.) and increases your online sales.
To give visitors the best customer experience, replying to their queries is very crucial. To begin with, divide the queries into slots of common and uncommon questions.
Use chatbots to reply to the most commonly asked questions.
Integrate live chat options to manually reply to their unusual queries live, through a staff member. Customers are more likely to buy from the store after they have a live chat with a real staff member.
Moreover, ensure 24/7 availability and phone support and make sure to provide a quick response to any questions.
Upsell and cross-sell products to maximise sales
Upselling and cross-selling your products are one of the most profitable ways to elevate your eCommerce sales.
Often bringing in new customers to your eCommerce store can be really challenging. However, it’s easy to target existing customers with upselling and cross-selling tactics and increase your sales up to twenty times.
Upselling refers to suggesting an upgraded and expensive version of the products bought or viewed by the customers while cross-selling is offering products that are complementary to the products that the customers have already purchased or are attempting to purchase.
But make sure the products are closely related to those the customers have purchased or added to the cart.
Also, make sure that the products for upselling prove to be a better fit than the original product and justify the additional cost.
Use client testimonials to build trust and authority
About 72% of the customers read online reviews of the products before making any purchase. So displaying client reviews on your website can be a great way to appear as a trustworthy brand and skyrocket your sales.
Always prompt the customers to leave a rating and review for your products and rank them accordingly for the other visitors to see.
On top of that, you can reach out to your most loyal customers and ask them for a testimonial regarding your services and brand. And showcase them on your landing page.
Bonus tips to increase holiday sales
Holidays are the best opportunities to multiply your eCommerce sales than regular days.
And knowing how to take full advantage of the holiday season would help you reap even bigger benefits from your eCommerce marketing campaign.
Here are some legit tips, which, when combined together with the above strategies can boost up your holiday sales.
- Customise your landing pages and change the overall visual of your website, to perfectly fit the occasion or season.
- Create different pages for festive and seasonal products and segment them as per age, gender and more.
- Provide gift cards, gift certificates, discount coupons and conduct other seasonal giveaways.
- Reward your loyal customers with extra holiday discounts.
- Gain an audience before the sales start through emails, SMS texts, etc. by creating a sense of anticipation and excitement for upcoming offers and discounts.
