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Below is our guide "Increasing your e-commerce sales". Scroll down or click the header titles to go straight to the part that is most relevant for you!

Online guide - Increasing your e-commerce sales

Are you thinking about which strategy is most effective for increasing conversion in your e-commerce? In a jungle of choices, it may be tricky to know whether investing in influencers, personalization or perhaps just buying more traffic to get a wider range is the right choice. This guide will give some valuable tips on which tools and strategies you can use to boost your e-commerce sales!

 

Review your product range and offering

One of the main success factors for any e-commerce is to offer customers a wide range of products and/or services. Today's customers are discerning (especially when it comes to online shopping!) and many expect to find solutions for all of their specific needs in the same place. For example, a customer who is looking for new winter boots would often prefer to be able to buy an impregnation spray with the same order. How well-assorted is your store, can you deliver on the high expectations of today's modern customers? Could it be improved? E-retailers who have too narrow a range and do not renew their product range will most likely lose business over time. Being able to offer the customer a variety of goods has become a hygiene factor, more than "just" a tool for creating long-term customer relationships.

Naturally, your goal is not that the customer should just buy your product or service on a single occasion - you want each and every person to have your store "top of mind" also for future needs. In order for the customer to become a returning customer, we need to offer enough width and depth in our product range to cater to most (if not all) of that customers needs. Imagine, for example, that you are going to buy groceries for the coming week. You expect that everything you need to prepare your recipes should be available and in stock at the same store, if that store should deserve to be your #1 choice! If your e-commerce cannot offer the gluten-free pasta your customers are looking for, or a good price on organic beef, you will probably find them shopping somewhere else soon.

 

Create value through relevant content

By offering customers various forms of relevant information and serving it at the right time, you can help guide their way towards purchase decision. The e-merchants who are good at providing their customers with content that creates value are often the most successful ones. Through clear product descriptions, great pictures, videos and reviews, you can build trust with your customer base and inspire them to make choices that they will be genuinely satisfied with. You can choose to have reviews on your own page where customers who ordered the product can rate, comment and submit their own images. But it is also beneficial if your products are reviewed on other pages that can create a stream of visitors to your own site.

The more information, the better! As long as it is relevant and genuine, that is. Something that is highly appreciated by consumers is being able to access independent tests. For example, a customer who wants to buy a pair of new running shoes will definitely appreciate content that shows which ones are most appreciated by past buyers. At the same time, customers will ALWAYS notice whether the information is genuine and sincere. For example, the goal of a product description should be to primarily help the customer to make the right purchase decision - not to get the highest possible ranking on Google. If you have a passion for your products and truly believe in the things you sell, this will shine through in the content you create. If you really like the products, chances are great that your customers will as well!

 Personalizing the customer experience

 

Personalizing the customer experience

What is your strategy to engage customers and getting them to feel that they get a nice, personal experience? For e-commerce merchants it is especially important that the customer feels "seen", because the personal contact that a physical store can offer is missing. In other words, the importance of being as personal as possible with the customer cannot be stressed enough. Imagine, for example, that a customer usually buys vegetarian and vegan products from your store. How would it create your relationship with that customer if they got a campaign offer on soy sausage, Quorn and other vegetarian products? On the other hand, what would the customer think of your store if you gave him or her an offer to buy two pork chops for the price of one? The latter will hardly be relevant for that customer, maybe even offensive! But the first example is highly relevant to that customers personal preferences. The bottom line is that it is far more likely that your customers will be loyal and recurring if they feel that you understand their needs and that they have some sort of personal relationship with your store. This doesn't mean that you have to choose to offer either meat products or vegetarian (for example), it just goes to show how important it is to communicate the right products and offers to each customer!

As an e-commerce merchant you generally have more opportunities to give a customer a personalized experience that exceeds their expectations than is true for most physical retailers. A customer who enters a physical store and needs help with something often has more difficulty getting hold of staff (as they can only help one person at a time) and the bigger you get the harder it gets to assure the quality of each customer meeting. In e-commerce you have considerably better conditions. With the right digital solutions you can make the customer feel even more seen than in a physical store, and well-trained staff with the right tools can help multiple customers at the same time. Why not respond to repeat customers through a chatbot, with a "Hello Anna, we're so glad to have you back. You have to check out these new jeans, you'll love them! ”. Anna, who bought a pair of similar jeans a few weeks ago, will most likely appreciate the personal tip. If she decides to reply to the chat bots message, a "real person" takes over communication and gives her a nice, personal experience. This is just one example of an efficient way of creating a highly personalized experience for your customers

For a customer who visits your e-commerce website for the first time, it could (depending on your business) be appropriate to welcome them with a few relevant questions. For example, “What type of products are you interested in?”. Be careful to avoid asking too many questions that may cause unnecessary friction in the buying process and/or feel inappropriate from the customers point of view. It is important to put the personalization at a reasonable level and not exaggerate. Avoid being to up front with messages like, "I know you've googled for these shoes, here they are!". It may be much more appropriate to start with something like, “Hi, I see that you have been looking for shoes in our range. Please don't hesitate to ask if I can help you find something specific!” A good piece of advice is to keep customer satisfaction in focus at all times - this way it won't seem like you are fishing for purchases or an email address that you can bomb with newsletters and promotional offers.

e-commerce 

Let your satisfied customers help you recruit new ones

An effective method for increasing sales is Referral Marketing, where you use your existing customer base to recruit new customers through friend referrals. An e-commerce usually has a group of regulars or "brand busters" who really like the products and return regularly. These people have chosen your e-commerce for a reason - maybe it's the products, the prices, the quick deliveries, the return policy or the customer experience in itself. It doesn't really matter WHY they like you, what Referral Marketing does is take advantage of the fact that they do by giving them an easy way to share their experience with others. Referral Marketing is based on a CTA (call to action) that effectively increases the spread of positive experiences around your brand and makes your e-commerce available to new customers.

When a customer has made a purchase in your e-commerce he or she is offered a discount code in exchange for making a personal recommendation of your brand. The customer is offered a simple solution for making the recommendation and sharing with their friends. When completed this leads to you getting an increase of repeat customers (via the discount codes as well as new customers (via the recommendations). It's a clear win-win situation!

The best part is, your customer base is already there and ready to be leveraged to create new business! We're essentially talking about free goodwill that doesn't require a lot of extra work. This way, working with Referral Marketing is essentially recruiting new customers while you're at the same time building a stronger brand among your existing customers. Different independent studies have shown that both customers who make referrals and the customers who come to you through referrals are better than your average customers! They are more loyal, spend more, make more orders, etc. - in other words, your referral customers are your most profitable clients!

Increase your reach

 

Increase your reach by working with influencers

One of the most hyped trends to increase e-commerce sales the last couple of years has been using influencers through social media to get vast reach at a low cost. But how do you know what influencers to work with and what gives the best effect? If you use large-scale influencers, the effect per reach decreases (person reached by the message). Therefore, it may be a good idea to look beyond the biggest names and find someone who fits your particular brand.

As the influencer trend expands, customers also become wiser. Today most customers are good at blocking or filtering out messages that do not feel genuine.

For example, if we're looking for inspiration on healthy foods or sport supplements, we will most likely feel that an influencer that clearly prioritizes their own health and fitness is a credible source of information. A celebrity known for this type of focus will be more credible than someone without health focus, but it will still be easy to suspect that any positive message about a product or service was paid for. This would, however, not be the case if the recommendation came from a close personal friend to you, that you also know has a big health focus, eats healthy and works out regularily. This brings us back to the topic of Referral Marketing, as it enables this type of more personal communication than traditional influencer marketing can deliver. The customer feels more "selected" after receiving a text message with a tip or recommendation from a close friend than they would reading about the same product or service on a blog that reaches 100,000 readers a day.  

 

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