The COVID-19 pandemic impacted businesses in countless ways, forcing pivots and adaptations from many owners. You may have already had an online presence, but now it is front and center with so many businesses solely connecting with their customers online. With this new avenue of opportunity comes great circumstances for growth.
It doesn’t matter whether you’re a small online retailer or a large eCommerce entity — growing your business online is something that you have to plan and focus on. Thankfully, there are multiple ways you can progress your business online. Here, you’ll learn about eCommerce sales and how you can boost your sales online. Take a look at our expert tips below.
How to Boost Online Sales
Whether you sell products or services, here are some strategies to help you increase your online sales.
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Reduce the friction in your checkout process
According to Forrester, eCommerce businesses lose around $18 billion annually due to cart abandonment. That’s a jaw-dropping stat. Knowing this, however, illustrates how vital it is to reduce friction in the checkout process. Currently, eCommerce business in Canada sees three out of four shoppers abandon their carts when shopping online.
Creating a frictionless checkout process can highly influence conversion rates. You try to make it as simple as possible for consumers to find you online, right? You should apply the same thinking to your checkout process.
If you have any steps in the process not vital to checkout, this can cause cart abandonment. If there are fields in your forms that aren’t really necessary to make a sale, get rid of them. Using Square, you can optimize your customers’ mobile checkout experience. Just remember:
- Online shopping carts should function but be simple
- Eliminate unnecessary steps
- Keep testing various methods until you find what works for your customers.
Offer multiple payment options
You, of course, accept credit and cheque cards. But do you accept Google Wallet? ApplePay? Consumers can pay in several ways — more so than ever before. And not every potential or current customer has a credit or cheque card. It’s a shame to lose a sale because you don’t accept a certain form of payment. Offering multiple ways to pay opens up your sales to a greater audience — essentially, you make it easier for consumers to give you money.
It might be difficult initially — optimizing your website and checkout platform — but this is another way you can boost online sales, especially if you see many mobile visitors.
Create useful, shareable content
Okay — you’re a business owner, not a writer or videographer. But people are consuming videos, blogs, newsfeeds, and social posts more than ever before. How can you jump in and inform, educate, entertain, or inspire?
Most brands only highlight their product or service offerings. To really attract and engage your target audience, tell them how you can improve their lives, meet their needs, and how your product or service solves a problem they may have.
Forget for a moment what you sell and focus instead on your reason for selling. How can you shape that into a useful and shareable strategy that will hit your audience on another level?
Build an email list
You might not have the large database of emails that Netflix or Amazon has — that’s okay. They provide worldwide services and can reach an audience on a much grander scale, perhaps. But data is an enormously valuable asset. Building an email list by either capturing leads on a landing page or exchanging a potential customer’s email for a use case or white paper can boost consumer engagement across all online channels.
Begin with the offer of something valuable for free — maybe a discount on their next purchase — in exchange for their email address. If you provide a service, you can offer a free trial.
The overall goal is the exchange, so you’re able to begin nurturing a real and profitable relationship.
Growing Online
More businesses are now online than ever before and, if you’re going to stand out amongst your competition, you need a growth-focused plan to meet your potential and current customers where they are. With this in mind, you can create an online experience for your customer that builds trust, provides value, and meets their needs.