E-commerce is not just about making that one sale and thinking your store is a success. It is about bringing in constant sales from new and loyal customers. A holistic e-commerce marketing strategy, focusing on marketing tactics both on and off your website, is key to building brand awareness, drive customer loyalty and ultimately increase your online sales.
Tactics for increasing your online e-commerce sales
1.
Up sell your e-commerce products
Think about a brick and mortar example of visiting your favourite takeaway outlet, and being asked ‘Do you want to add a drink with your meal?’ This is up-selling. Now think about each of your products and compare them to one another, does one offer more quality than another, but has the same function. Although someone may be browsing through your website and has their eye on the more affordable version, there’s no harm in marketing the more expensive option to them. Always remember to up-sell the right product. Match the price range and product category, don’t put something completely different in front of them.
See below an example of an up sell, that we’ve setup for one of our e-commerce clients, this appears underneath each individual product on their website.
2.
Integrate Instagram Shop
Although you can’t directly make a purchase off Instagram Shop (in South Africa yet), including your product name with the pricing will automatically send the interested individual to that product on your website, making it easy to make a purchase. The use of hashtags is also important to strategically build a large instagram following and build brand awareness.
3.
Reduce abandoned cart
We’ve identified that some of our clients are losing up to about 60% of their sales online, because there is no follow up once they have added a product to their cart, but not completed the checkout. We recommend to all our e-commerce clients, to implement abandoned cart email flows. These automated email flows help push customers back to the website to make the purchase. And the best part? It’s set up once and then sends the emails automatically – it’s like adding a free member to your sales team!
4.
Capture more email subscribers
Statistics have shown that integrating email marketing into your e-commerce marketing strategy, can increase your revenue by 24%. We recommend using either Klaviyo or Mailchimp to our clients and we’ve seen some great results! There are so many reasons to send email campaigns :
- Welcome nurture series;
- Advertise a promo (this works wonders to boost sales);
- Share tips and company news appropriate to your audience;
- Thank your highest value customers by sending them special offers; and
- Solicit feedback (if someone visits your website, but makes no purchase, take this opportunity to ask about their experience).
5.
Send wishlist reminders
It’s really important to show your audiences that you care about them too. Notify them when their favourite wish listed item is on sale. This will in turn create a customer-brand relationship, positive word-of-mouth and increase your sales if they make the purchase. Personal marketing is key for online sales!
6.
Make it easy for your customer
There’s nothing worse, they navigating your way through an un-user friendly website. Design your website in a way that it promotes positive customer experience. We’ve actually written a blog, about how customer e-commerce experience can make or break your e-commerce site.
7.
Introducing the chatbot
Utilising online chat is a great tactic to engaging with your online shopper. Industry expert, Neil Patel diverges into the top 4 reasons why you need an online chat on your website.
8.
Use blogs to keep them coming back
Every e-commerce store should consider blogging regularly to connect with customers and to rank better in search engines. If you’re already creating content, consider actively featuring your blog on your online store. It doesn’t just stop at blogging though, the opportunities are endless! Create a video blog/ post, work on your SEO, create engaging & interesting content and always keep communicating (never go quiet on your audience).
9.
Make use of user generated content
Motivate your buyers to write a review on your site about a product or their general experience. Statistics have shown that, 54% of online customers are more likely to make a sale if they see a trusted recommendation. Another great form of user generated content, is re-sharing content that your audiences post about your brand, this is also a great way of building that relationship with them too.
10.
Optimise for mobile
According to statistics, by 2021, more than half of all online shopping is expected to happen on mobile devices. Optimising your site for mobile is vital to your sites success. Build mobile first, then web! We’ve build some beautiful e-commerce sites for our customers, why not get your very own?
11.
Reward loyal customers
Statistics have shown that focusing on customer retention is a cost-effective way to increase online sales. Return customers account for 22% of revenue, while spending 15% more over the course of a year, than a one time visitor. Building a loyalty programme, offering discounts or free shipping and rewarding your loyal customers is a great way to:
- Increase your sales; and
- Build those long-term relationships
Are you interested in moving online, or do you currently have an online store, but no direction? We’ve built some beautiful sites for our e-commerce clients and have seen their sales increase with the more tactics we implement. Get in touch, we’d love to help.
