Giving you proven tactics and strategies that will help you increase your online sales is the goal of this article.
Today, anyone can create and start an e-commerce site and offer products or services for sale. There, where it gets complicated, is when once the euphoria of the launch has dissipated, the reality jumps out at you: sales are rare.
To stimulate the sales of an e-commerce site , it is necessary to work on the following two points: the traffic on the website and the presentation of the products or services. Optimizing these two elements requires taking into account many parameters, techniques and marketing, which will have an important role in the success of your e-commerce site. See our article for those who wish to start well in E-commerce.
What is selling well on the internet?
When can we say that an e-commerce site works? Already, a store or a landing page that works is a site that generates more money than it costs. Simple will you tell me? Not that much. To make sure a site is profitable, it's best to factor in the costs necessary to run it…all costs, including those for which you don't receive an invoice.
How much does an e-commerce site cost?
Among the factors that influence the cost price of a sales site are:
Technique: site development, maintenance, updates, graphics (logo), hosting, payment solutions, etc.
The product: the purchase price, the transport costs.
Labor: the publication of articles, the creation of product sheets by an editor, inventory management, customer service, the cost to a platform of verified opinions, etc.
Marketing: advertising, publications on social networks, the creation of white papers, the organization of webinars…
A profitable e-commerce website is therefore a site whose sales cover the costs mentioned above, including the hours worked by the site owner.
Once this break-even point is reached, it is advisable to maximize the profitability of the site. The idea? Create a maximum of turnover with a minimum of actions to accomplish. For this, we will work on increasing the average basket , the notoriety of the site, the margin of the products...
Selling online, is it easy?
Easy to sell online? Not that much. The competition there is fierce. In France alone, there are 182,000 e-commerce sites and nearly 90% of the turnover generated by French commerce is achieved by a handful of sites. It is therefore difficult to find a place on the web as a seller, unless you apply the advice below.
The main problems and advice in E-commerce?
Growing the turnover of an e-commerce site requires a good deal of thought, but above all testing. The first version of your site or the first marketing strategy put in place may not be the most effective.
By testing different ways to present and promote your products , you will discover which ones are most successful with your customers or prospects and therefore which ones generate the most revenue.
E-merchants often encounter the same problems when starting out. See our articles on tips for getting started in E-commerce .
What technical parameters to optimize on your e-commerce site?
Perform A/B tests and boost the conversion rate
How can you be sure that your sales page is effective if you don't confront it with another version of itself? Even if you are happy with the revenue it generates, chances are another version would bring better results.
Creating a series of A/B tests will allow you to define which will be the most effective version of a web page . To do this, put different versions of your sales page online under the same conditions and analyze your results: turnover, bounce rate, time spent on the page, contact requests, etc.
There are many ways to increase the conversion rate of an e-commerce site .
Multiply payment methods
If payment by credit card is very common, some people are still reluctant to buy a product by credit card on a site they do not know. Hence the importance of offering different payment solutions in addition to the possibility of paying for purchases by credit card: PayPal, Stripe, HiPay, etc.
Optimize the content of your site
Without visits, no sales. Optimizing the content of your site is therefore important to attract traffic to your store and hope to sell your products on the Internet. Do a keyword analysis (Google Keyword Planner, Yooda, SEMRush…), choose the most relevant for your e-commerce site and optimize all your pages, including your product sheets. It is also necessary to follow the right SEO performance indicators (KPIs) in order to measure the results of your SEO actions and the quality of online traffic.
Automate customer responses
Confirming the purchase immediately by sending an automatic email reassures the buyer. Make sure that your e-commerce solution offers this service, otherwise your site may arouse some mistrust.
What marketing actions should be put in place to boost the sales of your store?
The most beautiful and well thought out e-commerce site is not likely to make many sales if it is not known. For this, adopting a relevant marketing strategy is essential. Are you afraid of doing too much? It's a shame, because there are no secrets, customers, you have to go find them.
How to differentiate yourself from the competition?
Do you tend to take inspiration from the competition? Think what works for your competitors will also work for you? It is possible, but not certain. On the contrary, it is strongly advised to differentiate yourself as much as possible from your competitors.
For this, you can play on the presentation of your brand or your product, in particular by:
- Creating a presentation video
- Offering additional content (whitepaper, training, consulting session)
- Offering efficient customer support
- Sending physical media in addition to an online version of a service or training Using the blog in E-commerce is trendy and can be a good opportunity to demonstrate expertise to your consumers and to distribute content that is more easily optimized for search engines.
How to properly structure your E-commerce offer?
Giving too many choices to your customers is the best way to prevent them from deciding. An offer that is too rich or poorly defined is often what encourages consumers to leave a site, especially in the area of service.
Make do with a basic offer and a premium offer . Add to your premium offer something that really gives value to the product: a meeting, training, a coaching session, personalized follow-up...
Make sure your sales page is understandable and use different marketing levers:
- Highlighting call to action buttons
- Mailing list subscription form
- Encouragement to make contact
- Valuation of customer benefits
How to send effective newsletters?
Sending newsletters allows you to stay in touch with your customersthrough appropriate content. Depending on the type of e-commerce site, the content of the newsletter may vary to adapt to the interests of readers, but also to the commercial objectives of the company.
Among the most popular content in a newsletter from a store are:
- Discount coupons, promotional offers
- Instructive content: guide, tutorial, etc.
- Infographics
- Videos
- Content that humanizes the company: history, original customer case, life of the company
Can social media management increase sales?
Another essential marketing lever to boost the sales of a site: an active presence on social networks .
It is essential to choose the ones on which your potential customers are located:
B2B target
Linkedin, Twitter … these are the two that generate the most interest among professional profiles. Publishing pots or articles on Linkedin, congratulating decision-makers for their new functions, liking certain posts, quoting people or companies, will help you gain visibility with professionals likely to use your services or buy your products.
B2C target
Facebook, Instagram … these two are mainly used for private purposes. Be active, publish offers, contests...
Youtube video advertising through the Google Ads network can also perform well if the right audience is targeted with advertising campaigns.
Important: If the bulk of your business should be concentrated where your ideal customers are, make sure you are active on all social platforms or at least book accounts with your brand
How to increase the average basket of your e-commerce site?
Finally, once the site is operational and the marketing strategy is in place, it remains to optimize its sales techniques to increase turnover . For this, a solution: increase the amount of the average basket of the e-commerce site .
What is the average basket of a site?
This is the average amount of an order . For example, that of the Drive of a hypermarket is around 60 €. For an e-merchant, it is easier to encourage a customer to continue shopping than to find new customers and retain them. Hence the importance for an online sales site to analyze it closely and find solutions to make it evolve.
How to increase it?
The idea is to enhance the shopping experience by providing solutions or ideas to the customer who has just added an item to his basket.
Inspire confidence through elements of reassurance
A customer who feels confident ordering on your site is a customer, if the experience has been conclusive, will certainly come back for another purchase. You can use many reassurance elements on an e-commerce site .
But still it is necessary that during his first visit, the site made him want to place an order. One of the essential elements of a sales site are customer reviews.
Invest in a verified purchases solution or feature customer reviews on your site. The more comments there are, the more the new customer feels confident and dares to spend more or less on the site.
Encourage to buy
" Would you like an aperitif ? », « I show you what this jacket gives with this scarf »… innocuous little phrases that we have all heard in restaurants or stores and which have only one goal, to encourage us to spend more.
The biggest e-commerce brands apply this sales technique. Amazon, for example, offers you directly in the product sheet of the article you are viewing articles related to this product: volumes 2 and 3 of a series of novels, the cover adapted to the smartphone you are looking at, the compatible mouse with the computer keyboard you want…
The Leclerc brand, meanwhile, offers you ham if you have bought bread, or chocolates if you have added items to your basket that suggest you have children.
The idea is clearly to tempt you by offering you items related to those that you have added to your basket or whose description you are consulting.
This technique is extremely effective in increasing a customer's order total and therefore, applied to all site visitors, it has a strong impact on the average basket amount. In short, it is an ideal solution to increase the turnover of an e-commerce site.
Offer benefits
Another solution to encourage consumers to add another item to their basket : offer them a benefit if their order exceeds a certain amount. Often, it is the shipping costs that are offered or sometimes a discount.
Some shops take care to calculate the amount to be exceeded. This is particularly the case of the Naïa brand, a lingerie site that sells its bras at €55 and its panties at €32. If you want free delivery, you will have to spend 90 € on the site while the lingerie set costs 87 €. Enough to encourage consumers to add one more item, often panties. Without being aware of it, the customer has just increased the amount of his basket by about 30%.
Relaunch abandoned carts
Reducing the cart abandonment rate is an often overlooked lever in e-commerce.
It is not uncommon for a customer to leave the site before having validated his basket . Some sites do not hesitate to remind him that the basket is still active. “ You forgot to validate your basket ”, “Your Stan Smiths are waiting for you”, “ Only two copies left in stock ”… e-commerce sites compete in ingenuity to encourage you to return to their site and validate your basket. The result ? An increase in sales and a possible increase in the average basket if they offer new products or have not deleted old articles that were just lying around in this basket to which a new article has recently been added.
Finally, to help you boost the sales of your e-commerce site , ask your web agency to implement all the technical and marketing solutions discussed in our article. Good sales !
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