Boost your online sales: checklist to succeed

Selling on the Internet is an exciting adventure. SiteW enables you to add a Store block to your website easily. However, getting known online and convincing your customers is not always easy.

Here are 20 tips to increase online sales quickly.

Showing a user-friendly store

First, your online store must be clear and functional, and easy to browse: the product pages must be detailed and the information about purchase must be easy to find:

• shipping costs,

• delivery time,

• product availability,

• digital products.

Note that 52% of online purchases are done through mobile devices. Therefore, ensure you have an online store with responsive design: your store aspect must easily adapt to a computer or mobile screen.

Browsing must be as fluid on users’ smartphones as on their computer.

Don’t hesitate to read our comprehensive guide to create an online store!

Paying attention to your visual elements

Pay attention to your website aspect by writing a graphic charter to define all your website visual principles:

• your logo,

• the main colours of your website,

• the used fonts,

• the forms of call-to-action buttons…

The creation of a graphic charter for your e-shop enables you to keep visual coherence that makes your website professional-looking immediately.

Moreover, add clear and attractive images to boost your online store aspect.

Remember that users don’t know your products and can’t see them in reality. Therefore, take photos that show your products in several situations and help your future customers imagine with them.

💡 Adding images is favourable, but check to see if they aren’t too large. They can slow down pages load time and damage user experience.

Making pages analysis

To adapt your sales pages effectively and perfectly well, you must start by analysing these pages.

For example, you can use the Optimizely software to create different pages and know the settings that work best:

• Is the page more attractive with a specific colour?

• Are visual elements more friendly with this specific shape?

• Is it judicious to put the contact form on the right or left?

A colour or position may sometimes make a huge difference on your online sales.

Splitting your articles into categories clearly

The products must be highlighted, and browsing must lead  visitors to these products.

Sort and divide your products into categories easily and logically. Remember that one click is just needed to exit: thus, your website must be perfect.

💡 Try not to create large full-page menus on your web store. You must split the items into categories clearly and perfectly well, without being too exhaustive, to not increase the number of categories uselessly.

Offering several payment methods

Offer the appropriate payment methods.

Have a wide selection of payment methods for your customers:

• some of them will prefer the rapidity of Paypal,

• others will be reluctant to pay online and will opt for payment by cheque.

You can also give users the possibility to pay in instalments.

When you create an online store with SiteW, your customers can easily pay by credit card, cheque, bank transfer, with Paypal or order forms.

Create an online store

Improving your natural SEO

You must work on your natural SEO to improve your ranking on search engine results, especially thanks to keywords.

Remember that all the actions that make browsing easier for your users and Google are positive for your SEO.

However, the wise position of your keywords improves even more your ranking on search engine results.

To that end, you can read our two guides:

• 10 tips for SEO

• How to write with keywords?

“But, how to add keywords to an e-store?”

You can use keywords in your product pages and descriptions, as well as on your blog.

Now let’s move on to the next point…

Creating a blog

You can also drive traffic to your website by creating a blog about your business sector to position yourself as an expert in your field. It enables you to drive more traffic and get more potential customers as Internet users increasingly value quality content.

If you show users you know your products perfectly well, you create a relationship of trust with them, and they will be more inclined to test your products.

Moreover, as we have seen above, a blog creation enables you to enhance your natural SEO with keywords.

SiteW enables you to add a Blog block to your website easily.

Using social media

Using social media is essential today.

Most users attach a high importance to the brands social media communication strategy. They also are a powerful audience targeting tool thanks to their algorithms.

With a SiteW online store, you can add a Social block, so your customers can share the product page they are reading. You can also read our guides about Community management to adopt the best social media communication strategy.

You can also use social media to collaborate with influencers of your field. Send one or two products of your range to them, and get feedback from them. If you have high-quality and useful products, they will inform their community rapidly!

You can also offer them a partnership with a special promo code for their community to attract new customers and increase your online sales.

Using online marketplaces

In addition to your website, you can also use online marketplaces such as Ebay or Etsy for example.

It enables you to create a stand on a huge marketplace: you just need to stand out to boost your online sales.

Your presence on these kinds of platforms enables you to enjoy their communication and emailing.

Watching what the competition is doing

Analyse your competitors:

• How do they highlight their products?

• How do they build their reputation and branding?

• What are their communication strategies?

• Which aspects of their stores may hinder you as a customer?

Your conclusions will enable you to list your advantages and assess them. Highlight your singularities. For example, your advantages can be:

• the price,

• scarce products,

• the speed of delivery,

• the shipping costs,

• many payment options and their security…

This is what will make a difference and encourage your visitors to choose your products!

Signing up on shopbots

If you sell specific products or if you have competitive prices, signing up on shopbots such as Shopping.com can be advantageous for you.

By showing your products and attractive prices on shopbots, you logically increase your online sales.

Create an online store

Adapting to your customers

For better sales, you must know your target audience and buyers.

Don’t rely on your opinion as you don’t necessarily represent your customers.

Question your buyers to better know them:

• Survey your community on your website or social media,

• Offer them the possibility to review in comments

• Chase them up by email after their purchase to know their opinion.

In this way, you will increase your conversion rate; that is to say the relation between the total number of your visitors and customers.

Defining your target audience is essential in any communication and sales strategy. Building marketing personas from your regular customers can help you.

By anticipating their behaviours and habits, you can adapt all the purchasing process as well as the user-friendly side of your online store to improve your sales.

To sum up, use the adapted media and the right message to get their valuable review.

Retaining your customers right from the start

Creating customer loyalty also is a good way to increase your sales. To that end, it will be possible to use emails, even a newsletter to inform them of your current promotions or company news.

SiteW will enable you to add a Newsletter block to your website easily.

Moreover, remember to enable the creation of a customer loyalty program to get many email addresses to establish your emailing strategies. Your customers will easily come back to enjoy a discount or free product. 

You can retain your customers right from their first purchase, offering them samples of their choice or a welcome gift. They will remember this small attention and buy on your store again.

Having an effective customer service

An effective customer service is essential to boost your online sales in the long term.

Note that 52% of buyers went back to a website to buy again because of a positive experience with customer service.

By paying attention to your customer service, you build a relationship of trust with your customers as well as professional and expert branding.

💡 Make your contact forms easy to use and see, so your customers can ask you about your products easily, and they also make customer service more effective.

Your customers must feel listened to and that customer service deals with their problems.

Displaying customer reviews

You have well shown your products, you have a user-friendly store and your customer service works perfectly.

But, how to convince new buyers who have never heard about you?

Make your customers share in your promotion.

Thanks to reviews and ratings they give you during the purchasing process, after buying and contacting customer service, you can build a brand image. Show positive reviews on your website to encourage future customers to test your products.

You can also display a star rating on Google search results. To that end, configure your Google My Business form, so that your rating is shown in search results.

That will immediately grab consumers’ attention as they want to know more about this well-ranked store.

Visiting your statistics to understand barriers to purchase

Analyse the path of your visitors on your website to understand how to optimize the purchase mechanism:

• When do most of them abandon the purchasing process?

• For which reasons?

You will be able to draw conclusions to have a better user-friendly website. To have a valued idea of the path followed by your website visitors, you can visit Google Analytics.

Your statistics are essential to understand the behaviours of potential customers who abandon their carts.

By analysing their reactions and by reading the potential barriers they may have met, you can create follow-up emails.

Chasing up indecisive customers

Emotion always leads the purchasing process while reason justifies it.

Try to remove doubt factors that slow the purchasing process of your customers:

• the security,

• the price,

• the lack of guarantee or information about the product…

Identify your visitors’ fears and doubts to better counter them.

After you have defined these barriers, write follow-up emails for abandoned cart.

If you aren’t convinced, note that three follow-up emails enable you to increase your online sales of 69%!

Using video

Video can be a convincing way to communicate.

The video content is the most appealing and appreciated type of content for community.

The video format enables you to catch consumers’ eyes and present the product in a dynamic and fun way.

Thanks to the SiteW Video block, you will be able to add a Youtube video to your website easily.

Organizing contests

Organizing a contest is the best way to make your customers interact with you and boost your online sales.

Many contests are organized during the festive season, the holiday season or the start of school.

According to your type of products, you can organize contests under your conditions:

• Ask users to make videos with some products of your online store,

• Add time-limited gift vouchers to some orders,

• Offer them the possibility to take part in drawing lots.

Contest is the perfect way to get known and increase traffic. By arousing interest in your brand, you increase the number of visitors and potential customers.

Offering shipping costs… under conditions

Another easy way to increase the cart price consists in offering shipping costs beyond a certain amount to encourage customers to increase their cart price to get free delivery.

Now you have everything to develop your business and increase your sales!

With a good understanding of your customers and an effective presentation of your products, you boost your online sales while your store gets higher reputation.