How Can I Increase Website Sales?

All e-commerce brands want to increase website sales. But, there is no formula to improve sales overnight. Trying to get conversions and sales on your website requires an investment in time, persistence and hard work. It also requires an understanding of how consumers are viewing your site.

By following the steps and the path I am outlining, you will see growth in ROI.

Measurable Goals

Always define clear and concrete business goals for your site. Having measurable goals is essential because it keeps everyone focused on the same results.

You cannot make improvements in your processes if your goals are not measurable. Invest in web analytics software to track and measure the goals. Google Analytics is still the best tool available, and it is free. I also recommend a heat mapping solution to view user behavior on your site.

Make Your Sales Copy Intriguing

One mistake we see often is e-commerce sites don’t pay enough attention to item descriptions or key selling points. Customers purchase solutions. They buy your brand; they don’t purchase products. Make your short description a concise focus on the benefits of the product. Sell with your key bullet points and use your long description to enhance your SEO.

Today’s consumers are smart enough to distinguish between erroneous claims and real marketing. So sell your product benefits, but don’t oversell it or you lose your credibility.

Use Ad Extensions for Improved Ad Clicks

Good e-commerce retailers know the benefits of having an active PPC campaign tied to high-quality landing pages.

And one enhancement you can make to your campaigns is to use as many ad extensions as possible. Ad extensions are an excellent source for gaining the attention of your target audience. This feature enables businesses to make an ad look bigger, taking up more ad real estate and giving your competitors less. Moreover, it also improves the click through rate of advertisements without any additional cost.

Use of Testimonials, Feedback, and Ratings

Consumers pay attention to the feedback that other buyers post. Use this to your advantage. Get a platform to gather customer reviews and which allows those reviews to appear on search and your site.

Use the negative reviews to your advantage. Customers will always read the negative reviews. They want to see what problems there are with your products. But they also want to see how you handle those issues. Make sure you respond to all reviews and solve the customer’s problem. Arguing with customers is bad form.

Foster a Sense of Urgency

When it comes to special offers or limited time sales, there is nothing wrong with using urgency to close the sale. If a sale expires in a few days, use a clock showing how long until the sale ends.

If you are emailing your customers, put the sale ending date in the subject line. Buyers tend to respond positively to promotions and incentives that create a sense of urgency. Limited time offers and exclusive giveaways are a useful technique to boost sales.

Businesses that make use of PPC advertising can use of “ad customizers” in Google AdWords suite to display a countdown to the buyers.

Use SEO

SEO focuses on building site credibility on search engines by improving website ranking organically.
Therefore, SEO improves your search engine ranking, ultimately facilitating lead generation and conversion. And SEO will increase website sales.  However, this requires a commitment of time, effort and knowledge. Here is a good article on the subject.

Make your Website Checkout Process Friction Free

Amazon has spoiled everyone with one click checkout. Most e-commerce sites don’t have the technology muscle of an Amazon. But we can focus on streamlining the checkout process. How about a 1-page checkout rather than multiple pages?

User experience is crucial for any attempt to increase website sales. A hassle-free checkout process adds to the user experience. Businesses that have made their checkout process simple by eliminating unnecessary, steps have higher conversion rates.

Use tools like heat mapping to seek out the friction points on your site. Then find ways to reduce them.

Get Rid Of Unwanted Landing Pages

Having a few landing pages that are optimized is better than having many pages that do not have any traffic. This does not mean that websites should eliminate landing pages. It simply means that sites should optimize their landing pages with online ads that correspond to consumer search. This will make a substantial difference in lead generation and conversion.

Make Your Campaigns Consistent Across All Platforms

Consumers tend to get disconnected when your ad campaigns are not consistent across all platforms. If you have different ads on different platforms, you will confuse your target audience. This also creates a sense of frustration in consumers who require a synchronous experience on all mediums.

On social media ad, your ads should be consistent with the user you are targeting. Facebook and other platforms, can target the specific audience with pinpoint accuracy. This targeting helps to reach the audience that is most likely to buy your product or service.

Mobile Optimization to Increase Website Sales

Today, mobile sites have a higher search volume than desktop sites, which clearly symbolizes mobiles importance. But we still see a plethora of sites not optimized for mobile. Businesses who do not want to give up potential sales should optimize their sites for the mobile experience.

Here is the issue with mobile. Mobile converts lower than desktop. This is primarily due to the checkout process. As payment systems evolve, this conversion will increase. In the meantime, consumers use mobile to search and decide. Not having a mobile-friendly site takes your brand out of the decision set.

Highlight Your Unique Selling Proposition

Buyers are not interested in you unless you solve their problems or offer them something different than your competitors. Solution selling should be the focus of all your digital marketing and advertising campaigns. Make sure you state clearly what makes you different from competitors. If your competitors can say the same thing as you about your business, then you don’t have a unique selling proposition.

Make Your Digital Marketing Appealing To Consumers

To amplify your reach and appeal to new audiences PPC, social media advertising and SEO should be an integral part of your advertising strategies. However, an important factor that advertisers need to take into consideration is the tone and language used in the advertising campaigns. This has a direct impact on your conversion rate.

The voice of the consumer is an essential marketing technique that helps in aligning the sales copy with the needs of the users being targeted by the ad campaign. This technique is a powerful way to engage the target audience.

In cases where your conversion rate is low, the first areas you need to examine are your conversion pathways and attribution models in analytics. You may be surprised to see that some of your digital marketing efforts are not working and causing a conversion shortfall.

Engage Prospects on Social Media

Social media has become an effective platform to generate brand awareness, increase website sales and generate leads. Many businesses do not focus on social media correctly and fail in their efforts to drive sales. However, active engagement on these platforms has proven to increase sales.

Make Use of Remarketing to Close Deals

It is important to keep in mind that any digital marketing initiative will take time, effort and money. It is not possible to take shortcuts if you want to accomplish goals of running a successful ad campaign.

And don’t expect quick conversion of your leads. This will take a period of time to develop and refine. Therefore, part of your marketing stack should include a good remarketing platform.

Remarketing is an effective technique to improve online sales. Whether it is remarketing of time bound sales offer or content, all have a substantial impact on your sales funnel. Not only does remarketing help businesses keep their products and services as the frontrunner, but also gives numerous opportunities for lead generation and conversion.

Generating leads and site visits with your marketing efforts is hard work and costly. Continually monitor all campaigns and make sure you are getting the returns necessary. Look at your sales funnel all the way to conversion and work on refining it to maximize conversions. The best way to increase website sales is to maximize the return you get on your marketing spend.

With the analytical systems you can put together in your marketing stack, you can see where all of your leads and conversions are coming. You can also see where the stop gaps are for users. Monitor, refine, redeploy, rinse and repeat.