6 Guidelines for Boosting Online Sales Revenues Instantly
Sometimes it is funny to imagine that we can take care of complex things easily with simplicity, but being simple is what seems harder than complex. Rabindranath Tagore the famous noble laureate quoted “It is simple to be happy, but difficult to be simple”.
The same happens when an eCommerce stores fails to keep its cash registers ringing with low sales volumes and humble cash revenues. Many eCommerce businesses even venture out into the murky waters of shady tactics for achieving sales volumes in a bid of desperation. But in reality, if you ask me, it is only simple things which can lead to a reversal of fortunes for your eCommerce store. (Business Catalyst eCommerce Templates)
But as quoted above, being simple is what poses the toughest challenge. Many eCommerce clients approach me and tell me about their problems of not getting the required amount of online sales from their sites. All I tell them is to take these steps which I will be discussing in this article, and guess what? They always work. Never ever has been the case that a client has come back to me saying that what I suggested, did not work.
So Here are My 6 Most Simple Points:
1. Up-sells are Very Important
Online sales thrive on up-sells. For a user, more in the same price is always better. A costlier version of what he is buying at the same price is what he always looks for. If your site does not have relevant up-sells displayed, then you are most likely to lose out on a lot of business. (Sales Activity Report Template)
Just imagine yourself in the same situation, wherein you are buying a branded mobile phone with an internal memory of 8GB. The 8GB phone is priced at 500 US$ and its 16GB version is priced at US$ 750. Suddenly you see that below on the same product page, the same brand’s phone with an internal memory of 16GB is available for just 10 US$ extra.
Now, would you be silly enough to ignore such an offer? This is what up-sells do for your online sales. Now even specific plug-in like Product Up-sell by Shopify are available for creating up-sell pages.
2. Don’t Forget About Cross-Sells
While up-sells help users to upgrade and acquire expensive product versions at affordable prices, cross-sells represent add-ons for the products you are buying. Amazon, which is a popular and established eCommerce brand, declared that cross-sells account for almost 35% percent of their revenues.
Your product page should also display relevant cross-sells for the product a user is buying along with up-sells. To give you a fine example of cross-sells, (Sales Strategies) just imagine that a user is buying a pair of shoes on your site and scrolling down the page he finds cross-sells like socks, laces and a pair of jeans displayed. The cross-sells are often displayed like “Users who bought this product also bought these” or “You may be interested in these products also”.
But choosing relevant cross-sells is what is the most challenging, as cross-sells of a product span across various categories. An eCommerce site should take into account the product and choose cross-sells relevantly to ensure maximum sales. Displaying irrelevant cross-sell products which do not match with the product will have a negative effect on users. Cross-sell by Shopify is a plug-in for displaying and creating cross-sell pages.
3. Know Your Best Selling Product
It is important to know what sells more on your site. It never has been a great idea to display and offer too many products on an eCommerce site. Trust me, it never helps. The only help it provides is to distract the user and drive him away from your site. Never give your users more to bite, than what they can chew.
Use analytics and find out which your best selling product is and then try to up-sell or cross-sell it. It will also help you to plan your future sales strategies and also tell you about user preferences and likings. (Monthly Sales Report Templates)
There is no point in having a huge product list of 1,000 products when all your sales are coming from just 20 products. You should spend your resources on promoting those 20 products, rather than wasting them on the other 980 which do not sell in high volumes. Too many choices always confuse users, so be limited to a few products only.
4. Emphasis on High Quality Product Images
A marketing guru once told me and I quote him “A product which is not visible, will never sell”. It is as simple as you can get. The only way a user sees a product is through its image on your site. The relevance of a product image is greatly enhanced in Online Shopping, as a user cannot touch and feel your product.
A product image should always aim at making the product look good. The image should be high resolution, crisp and clear. The product labels should be perfectly readable with complete information displayed.
The image photos should be displayed from different angles and should also have a 360 degree and a zoom view. It would not be a bad idea to display a real-time video related to your product. It is anyway hard for you to match the shopping experience of a conventional offline super store, and without high quality images the job becomes even more difficult.
5. Test Your Site and Its Features
Testing your site is never a bad idea. You should inspect elements of your site like its structure, product pages, the checkout system and CTA’s. Testing is the most important tool you will discover for generating more revenues from your site.
Testing lets you discover more ways than one ways of improving your site and increasing conversion rates. Trial and error will tell you to know that which changes are having a positive effect on users. Call to action buttons which users click for specific actions need special attention.
Create two versions of your site and make amends to the CTA in both like adjusting the positioning, size and colour of the CTA. See which version of the site is doing better with users.
6. User Feedback Form and Newsletters
User feedback and reviews of your products are read by all users before they buy a product. It gives them an insight on how others users are reacting to the product after buying it. User reviews also help you to understand user needs and further improve your product and service quality.
Newsletter subscriptions are another way of connecting with users and keeping in touch with them. Newsletters are a way of reaching out to them with special festive offers and seasonal discounts on selected products and services.