17 Ecommerce Tips That Actually Increase Sales (2024)
In ecommerce, it’s easy to get carried away with 100 different fires that need your attention, the reality is that only a few of them will actually increase your sales.
Here are real ecommerce tips that actually move the needle and increase your profits.
Ecommerce Tips
1. Sell Benefits, Not Features
To increase sales, focus on benefits, not features. For example, protection from UV rays is a feature of sunglasses, but the benefits are looking more attractive and improving eye health.
Benefits should solve a problem that customers have. A washing machine might have the feature of keeping clothes keep on a low-temperature wash, but the benefit is cheaper household bills. Sneakers might have a cushioned sole as a feature, but the benefit is faster running.
How to Do It
- Conduct extensive research into your target audience to discover the types of benefits they’re looking for before marketing an ecommerce store.
- Make sure that every feature you list has a corresponding benefit.
- Include customer success stories that talk about the benefits they’ve experienced since buying the product. Video content works well with this type of marketing.
2. Upsell and Cross-Sell Products
The aim of upselling and cross-selling products is to raise the average order value (AOV), which is the amount a customer spends per order.
To increase average order value (AOV), upsell extra features or subscriptions on top of the product your customer has already ordered. To cross-sell, suggest other products that might be relevant to the customer or complement what they’ve already bought.
How to Do It
- One of the easiest ways to implement this marketing method is to send a post-purchase email featuring other related products.
- Suggest other products at the checkout stage to complement the purchased one. This can be quickly done with conversion-focused themes.
- Keep it simple and offer only a few extra products at a time to avoid overwhelming or confusing the customer.
3. Use Discounts for Specific Problems
Don’t use discounts as the main way to get sales. Instead, use this ecommerce store tip to overcome specific problems or barriers to a sale, like an abandoned cart or poor user feedback.
Other examples of when to offer discounts include in a re-engagement email or after an order has been delayed. Using discounts can overcome a bad experience and increase sales.
How to Do It
- Include discounts or offers in particular emails, like re-engagement emails.
- Offer discounts to particular customers, such as email subscribers or social media followers, to create a feeling of exclusivity.
- Make sure all discounts are limited-time only to create a sense of urgency and make customers think they’ll miss out if they don’t purchase the product quickly.
4. Ask Minimum Information Needed
An excellent tip for ecommerce store owners is to make the buying process as friction-free as possible. The fewer stages that a customer has to go through, the more likely they are to buy something.
For example, if you don’t need a middle name or phone number, don’t ask for it. The main reason people abandon checkout is that it’s too long, so implementing this tip will reduce checkout abandonment.
How to Do It
- If you already have all the data you need on a particular customer, offer them one-click ordering.
- Audit your checkout process and remove every single question that isn’t needed.
- Make it so your system can remember customer details, so a customer that’s already bought something doesn’t need to fill in their details again.
5. Build an Email List
Email marketing is one of the easiest ways to grow ecommerce sales. The sooner you start growing to implement this ecommerce marketing tip, the better because it will be the most valuable asset you can build. By having an extra way to contact existing customers and potential customers, you can send emails that convert.
These emails include re-engagement emails, cart abandonment emails, and product update emails.
How to Do It
- Invest in pop-ups for your website that capture users’ details.
- Offer free shipping or a 10% discount on their next purchase for everybody who signs up for your mailing list.
- Add an opt-in to marketing emails box on all your purchases but tick it already, so users have to untick it to remove themselves.
6. Add Product Videos
One of the best ways to grow an ecommerce store is by using video. Thanks to platforms like TikTok, video marketing has become more popular.
Showing users the product via video gives them a better idea of what they’re buying, which minimizes returns. This means less admin and fewer returns for you to deal with, leaving you more time to get on with growing your store.
How to Do It
- If you have the budget for it, work with an influencer or content creator to create the product video, making fans of the creator more likely to buy it.
- Film the videos using a high-quality camera to increase your perceived legitimacy.
- Post the videos on social media to increase their reach.
7. Convert Abandoned Carts
Abandoned carts mean a user had purchase intent and then abandoned it at the last minute.
It could be that the user simply got distracted and forgot to check out, so a great tactic to recover abandoned carts is to send a cart abandonment email with a reminder and a discount.
Free shipping is a popular discount to offer. End the email with a ‘continue shopping’ button.
How to Do It
- Research the most common reasons to abandon a cart, so you can try and resolve these with your email.
- Suggest similar products to the customer in case they no longer want that specific product.
- Let the customer know that the product is going to sell out to create a sense of urgency.
8. Add User Reviews
Social proof is a tactic to build trust that involves showing reviews, testimonials, and social media posts from users. Social proof makes potential customers more likely to trust your product because other customers have had a positive experience with it.
Social proof will increase your conversion rate by removing doubt about your legitimacy, the quality of your products, or your customer service.
How to Do It
- Offer some sort of reward, such as a discount, to encourage users to leave reviews.
- Keep your customers happy with excellent customer service to increase the number of positive reviews you get on your website and profiles.
- Include your best testimonials and reviews on your homepage so customers can see straight away that they can trust you.
9. Offer Free Shipping and Returns
An excellent tip to increase ecommerce conversion rate is to offer free shipping and returns. Expensive shipping is one of the most common reasons for abandoning a cart, so offering free shipping can reduce this problem.
Free returns increase trust and remove customers’ worry about what will happen if they’re unhappy with their products, making them more likely to buy your products.
How to Do It
- Advertise free shipping and returns across your website, including on the homepage.
- If you’re struggling financially to offer free shipping and returns, slightly increase the price of the individual products to cover them.
- To minimize the returns money you have to spend, invest in product videos to show customers exactly what they’ll get.
10. Add Live Chat Support
Running an ecommerce business involves providing excellent customer service, which includes replying to users quickly when they have a query. Adding a live chat feature to your online store allows you to improve your response time and to drive more sales by keeping customers happy.
Live chat support also keeps your email inbox quiet, reducing the amount of admin work you need to do.
How to Do It
- If you’re using an eCommerce platform such as Shopify, look for live chat or help desk integrations and apps.
- Implement an automated response system for commonly asked questions.
- To reduce customer queries, create a self-service section of your website with FAQs, a knowledge base, and written and video product tutorials.
11. Implement Retargeting Ads
Once you’ve made some sales and are running a steady profit, invest in retargeting ads. These ads are one of the cheapest and most profitable ads you can run. These ads target people who are already familiar with your brand and may have a prior purchase intent.
If customers have bought from you before, retargeting ads can increase repeat sales from return customers.
How to Do It
- Retarget either users who have visited your site or users who have previously bought from you but have not visited in a while.
- If this level of personalization is possible with your budget, choose the products you use to re-target customers based on their previous purchases or browsing history.
- Point to an upcoming promotion to entice them.
12. Create a Loyalty Program
To succeed in ecommerce business, you need loyal, repeat customers as well as new customers. Loyal customers will provide you with a constant customer base and a reliable income.
One of the easiest ways is to create a loyalty program that rewards customers for buying a certain number of products from you, and other metrics. These types of rewards are typically discounts or even free products of under $10.
How to Do It
- Launch your loyalty program on social media and email to get as many customers as possible to sign up.
- Research the loyalty programs of your competitors and offer something slightly better, e.g., a more significant discount or voucher.
- Encourage users to buy one extra thing at checkout to reach their loyalty reward more quickly.
13. Offer All Popular Payment Methods
Some of the best ecommerce advice involves reducing the number of carts that are abandoned on your site. One popular reason for cart abandonment is your preferred payment method not being available.
With that in mind, make sure you offer as many payment methods as possible. These include methods such as Apple Pay, Google Pay, PayPal, and even buy-now-pay-later schemes.
How to Do It
- Research the most popular payment methods (especially in your country) and make sure you have all these available.
- Promote your range of payment methods on the homepage so customers know they can checkout easily.
- Use badges from these payment method providers on your website to increase your perceived legitimacy and gain trust.
14. Embrace Negative Reviews
Negative reviews happen every now and then, don’t be too upset by them. One of the best tips for ecommerce is not to argue with the customer. Instead, take accountability and say sorry.
When potential customers see your apologetic response, they’ll know that you take customer feedback seriously. This makes them more likely to trust your store and your customer service.
How to Do It
- Reply to every single negative review with an apology and an offering to make the issue better.
- Genuinely listen to customer feedback and use it as a tip for ecommerce to do better in the future.
- Encourage happy customers to leave reviews so all your reviews aren’t negative, which can put new customers off.
15. Offer Back-in-Stock Notifications
A great ecommerce beginner tip that’s easy to implement is to offer back-in-stock notifications. That way, you don’t lose a potential customer simply because you’ve run out of a particular product or size.
The easiest way to offer these notifications is by email. You can ask customers to sign up for a notification when their favorite product is back in stock.
How to Do It
- To implement this ecommerce business tip, invest in automation technology that will send the email without you having to do it manually.
- Give customers an estimate of when the product will be back to increase trust and stop them going elsewhere.
- Keep an eye on bestsellers and your inventory to avoid products going out of stock in the first place.
16. Minimize User Typing Effort
One of the best ecommerce tip is to make your store mobile-friendly because more because than ever, now use their phones to shop online.
One way to implement this ecommerce business tip is to minimize the need for users to type. Add buttons so users don’t need to type as much to find items or to search for a query, for example.
How to Do It
- Create a self-service help desk with FAQs and a knowledge base, so users don’t have to type queries.
- Create a ‘keep me logged in’ option for return users, so they don’t have to re-type their details.
- Keep a log of the details of previous customers so when they come to order again, they don’t need to re-type their address, etc.
17. Always Overdeliver
Exceeding customer expectations is significantly more effective than underdelivering.
This excellent ecommerce website tip is to always go above and beyond for your customers by shipping sooner than expected, offering discounts for repeat customers, including a handwritten note, and adding value in any way possible.
The more you overdeliver, the better your reviews will be, and the more likely customers are to return.
How to Do It
- Deliver products quicker than you said you would in the estimated delivery time.
- Send exclusive offers to regular and repeat customers to show how much you value their custom.
- Add a personal touch to interactions. Include handwritten notes in orders and send a follow-up purchase email to check in with customers.