Whether your business is strictly an online store or you have a storefront in addition to a website, there are tactics many entrepreneurs overlook when it comes to their online sales.
The fundamentals of a successful business are customer acquisitions, sales, repeat purchases, and brand. As the Digital Age evolves, we have to redefine ourselves and how we market to and interact with our customers. If you’re developing your sales platform and user-interface, or if you’re looking to update your website to be more mobile accessible, consider the following:
1. Streamline the Buying Process
The first thing you will want to look at is your buying process. When you do this, think like a shopper. Go through the steps of choosing several items, adding them to the cart, changing the sizes or quantity, then checking out. Was this process easy? Did you get hung up on the payment page, or did you have to delete items and re-add them to change the sizes?
The easier your customer can get from cart to payment to confirmation, the more likely they are to purchase your product. Basically, the less time you give them to come up with reasons to pass on your product, the less they will come up with them.
If you completed this process on a PC, try it on your phone. Online shoppers tend to use mobile sites more often to make their purchases. Experts estimate that mobile-commerce sales account for 58.9% of all digital sales.
Here are some ways to streamline your checkout:
● Make your shopping cart easy to edit.
● Give your customer an indicator of their progress: are they one step 1 of 3 or 1 of 5?
● Limit the number of input fields your customer needs to fill-out.
● Allow auto-fill to fill in input fields for them.
● Let them save their preferred payment method.
● Align your checkout vertically for easy mobile use.
2. Develop and Refine Your Brand’s Buyer Persona
If you’ve been in business for a number of months, or years, you hopefully have established a buyer persona. If you haven’t, you need to.
What is a buyer persona? A buyer persona is an imagined, ideal customer that would have brand loyalty to your business. You will have to define an age, income, gender, lifestyle, family, career, hobby, even a car for your imagined customer. This will help you navigate marketing and product development.
If you’re unsure of who your buyer persona is, you can try advertisements that target different age ranges, incomes, and lifestyles. And place them on different social media platforms and other locations. Then base your buyer persona on the results. You can also find a marketing agency that can help you determine your customer if you don’t know where to begin.
3. Customers Want Content: Try Content Market
If you haven’t started using content marketing, you have to start sooner rather than later. Many of the biggest and most successful business like Microsoft and P&G are turning to content marketing because of its ability to help increase traffic, sell products, and establish brands.
People want to read and share the best content, which then draws traffic to your site and potential customers to your products. Content marketing will do wonders for your business sales, traffic, and brand.
The best content is readable and interesting to your buyer persona. This includes blogs that are compelling, helpful, and easy to read and web content that is engaging and clearly tells the story of your brand values and mission.
4. Remarketing is a Great Investment
Have you ever been browsing an online store, then gotten distracted by pictures of cute cats and a small ad pops up in the corner to remind you of the items you just looked at? This is remarketing or “retargeting,” and it can do wonders for your sales.
Remarketing helps remind your shopper of why they viewed your product in the first place. And most customers don’t mind retargeted ads because they’re personalized to their interests and taste.
Not only does remarketing work, but it’s also a great investment. Studies show retargeting has lower costs per impress, higher conversion rates, and higher ROI than other forms of online marketing.
5. Don’t Miss the Opportunity for Local Sales
You’re probably wondering why increasing local sales is a good strategy for an e-commerce site. Well, nowadays businesses are tied to the cities they’re in. With “Think Local” mindsets on the rise, people want to feel connected to their local industries. And people more frequently want to work for companies that have local reputations.
Local sales help establish your company’s brand and help you reduce costs and save money. Local delivery can save you on shipping costs and devoting some small to a small storefront can increase sales.
If you want to test your business’s ability to sell to your surrounding area, try out a few local events where you could sell your products or offer local delivery. You don’t have to invest in a delivery van or truck while testing the waters–you can rent a fleet vehicle for a couple of months.
When it comes to e-commerce don’t ignore your company’s potential to sell across the country and across the sea. As more and more people become wired to digital stores, you will want to compete and excel.