Chapter 6: Tips to Increase Your e-Commerce Revenue

Statistics prove that profit will continue to rise for eCommerce businesses through the years and it is up to the owners to take advantage of this growth.

If you’re looking for ways to boost your e-commerce sales, here are some surefire ways that you can start with:

1. Focus on Your Market

If you’re selling to the wrong people, you’ll only be wasting money.

It is important to know how to reach out to your target market, recognize what they want in a product or service, identify how they search for what they want, and understand how they compare their options.

If you don’t have data to begin with, talk to your prospective customers and start doing your own research.

You can do this by meeting them in person or by sending out surveys to customers who purchased in the past month.

2. Reach Out to Repeat Customers

Spend time and resources on acquiring new customers but keep your loyal customers happy.

Your repeat customers bring in the profit.

Build relationships.

Keep in touch.

Send them emails or messages whenever you have a new campaign.

Be personal in your approach and send them greetings on their birthdays.

Show them gratitude for being regular customers through personalized notes and if they have special requests for their orders, go out of your way to find out ways to meet their needs.

3. Use Brilliant Product Descriptions

So how do you make product descriptions that make the sale?

First, think of it as writing to one person who completely embodies the buyer’s persona.

What are this person’s hobbies? What are their interests?

These are some of the questions that you should answer to know the tone of writing that you should use.

Should you be funny and conversational or should you be business-like and direct?

This will depend on what your buyer finds engaging.

Next, focus on the format. Research suggests that users only scan words on websites and rarely read the entire page content.

This means that you should make your product descriptions easy to read.

Use subheadings, bullet points, large, readable fonts, and lots of white, uncluttered space that will make reading a breeze.

4. Stop Forcing Users to Register Before Buying

Most of the users don’t proceed with the purchase if you ask them to register before checkout.

It does not Ducer whether your users don’t have the time to do it or they don’t just like the process of creating an account.

The point is they will leave your site and get their stuff elsewhere.

You should be after making sales, not increasing the membership list.

To address this, provide an option for Guest checkout.

Users will save a few minutes of their time in making the purchase.

If they become a returning customer with their good experience on your site, they might see the value of signing up.

5. Use Great Product Photos

You may have the best product in the industry but if the photos suck, there’s a huge chance you won’t make it in e-commerce.

Online shoppers rely on the website photos for a sample of what they will be buying.

Make these photos as enticing as you can but remember to always keep it real.

6. Use Product Reviews to Your Advantage

Product reviews are social proof that the item or the service works.

A hesitant buyer can read product reviews and immediately be converted.

So how do you get customers to review your products?

How we could gather reviews:

  • Put a thank you note in the delivery package plus the link to your review page.
  • Offer a significant amount of cash or store credit as a reward for lucky customer reviews
  • Send an email to your customers 1-24 hours after purchase to ask them to review their items. To prevent a 1-star or 2-star review from making it online, include a phone number that they can contact for complaints and concerns.
  • If a bad review makes it on your page, address the review properly and promptly. If anything else, you will be displaying excellent customer service.

7. Manage Shipping Costs Wisely

It’s good to be upfront.

Let your customers know about shipping costs early on in the purchasing process.

Aside from costs, provide details on the estimated delivery duration as well.

Next, consider if you can offer free shipping once customers reach a specific purchase threshold. In a study by RJMetrics, 40% of buyers will add more products to their cart if they are offered free shipping.

Make sure that this offer can be seen by the customers on most parts of your website – from the home page, product page, up to the checkout page.

8. Sell More with Personalization

Statistics show that 10-30% of revenues come from product recommendations.

To do this effectively, decide on the features that you would like to focus on in upselling.

Is it additional functionality or a better material for a slightly higher price?

Use data from customer’s previous purchases and searches to strengthen your up-selling, add-on sales, and cross-selling strategies.

Business.com provides an insightful tip on cross-selling: follow the rule of 25.

Make recommendations within 25% of the customer’s total purchase.

Any upsell or cross-sell beyond 25% of the price will come across to the user as ridiculous.

Keep your recommendations to a minimum too.

9. Offer Discounted Bundles

Bundling benefits both shoppers and businesses.

Shoppers get discounts on products and businesses to increase their AOV – average order value – without additional overhead costs. You can encourage cross-selling too if you will include products from other categories.

Several techniques that you can use for bundling:

  • Mixed bundling: Products that can be bought individually or as part of a bundle
  • Introductory bundling: This is a good strategy for bundling popular or bestselling products with new products that you want to introduce to the market.
  • Choose Your Own Bundle: This is a strategy where users can choose what they want to include in a bundle. Shopify allows sellers to offer bundles by product (eg. bag comes in a bundle with a specific wallet) or by collection (eg. bag comes in a bundle with any wallet of choice)

11. Use Video to Increase Sales

It’s not every day that you’ll see a phone inside a blender set to the smoothie option. Blendtec’s video of blending an iPhone 6 Plus and Samsung Galaxy Note 3 went viral and instantly increased the company’s sales.… this only means that video sells. This is backed up by statistics with figures such as 800% conversion on landing pages with video and that video sells 6 times more than print and online ads.

 Here are some different video strategies that work:

  • Videos with a mix of superb storytelling and product showcase
  • Videos that highlight a product and provides entertainment
  • Educational videos that add value to your product
  • Product review videos

12. Study the ‘Why’ and ‘When’ of Abandoned Carts

Understanding the reasons and the occurrences will help you address cart abandonment.

Use the following ways to help resolve the problem:

  • Make the checkout an easy process. Keep it to 3-5 steps.
  • Simplify and streamline the checkout process. If your system can keep the subscriber shipping and payment information details, it will make the checkout process a lot more convenient.
  • Think of offering an in-site comparison service to keep your customers from going to your competitor’s site.
  • After a cart is abandoned, immediately send a customized email to the shopper to reach out, know why he left, and remind him of his interest to purchase.

Knowing the reason why it will help give you ideas on how you can win the sale back.

13.  Add Live Chat to Your Website

If shoppers have a question for a specific product that they’re eyeing, would they wait for someone to pick up the phone or to answer their email?

Chances are they would do neither. They will just switch to other stores offering the same thing.

Incorporating a Live Chat to your page makes the difference. 

Live Chat conversations can help identify customer’s needs that might be a potential new source of income.

14. Give Referral Discounts

This is the digital equivalent of word-of-mouth marketing. 84% of shoppers value referrals from people they know.

Offer irresistible referral rewards and turn your loyal customers into your site’s marketing helping hands. 

Double-sided referral, the kind that rewards both the sender and the new member, draws more conversions.

Rewards can either be monetary or non-monetary in the form of early access to new stocks.

15. Set Your Eyes on Your Best Product

This follows the Pareto 80-20 principle. 80% of your profits come from 20% of your products.

Therefore, 80% of your efforts should be focused on maintaining the top profitable 20%. 

Cutting down on portfolios allow businesses to develop, maintain, and promote their performing products.