5 Tips for Improving Your Online Store’s Sales

12 Dec, 2020 Technology

An online store is an awesome tool to add to your sales arsenal.

It’s especially helpful for your long-term customers who are familiar with your product as well as those who might live far away from your business.

If you just opened your online store, or are considering adding one, here are 5 tips to ensure it’s a worthwhile investment.

01

Use Great Photos or Videos!

Nothing will kill a potential customer’s confidence in your product than their first impression of it – and that’s going to be the photos you include.

Spending some money on professionally shot product photos is always a worthwhile investment.

This is especially important for new customers who may not have used your products before. You are going to need to clear the extra hurdle of not being able to see, touch and test out whatever you are selling.

The best way to ensure confidence in a product online is to provide high-quality, well-lit images.

If you are selling clothes or garments, zoom in on stitching so your potential customer can confidently see your product is worth the purchase. Multiple angles of the same product, or an evidence of it being used with instill trust that your product is worth it.

Same black bike, much different impressions.

02

Simplify Check-Out

Finding your way to the check-out page shouldn’t remind you of navigating your way out of a Las Vegas casino.

There should be signs, buttons and icons everywhere telling you ‘Buy Here’ or ‘Check-out’ or ‘View Cart’!

In fact, your customer should be able to find the ‘Check-out’ button from any section of your store.

Half of the battle as an online business is getting a customer to add your product to their cart. The second half is getting them across the finish line to confirming their order.

The less impediments there are to completing the order the better.

Remember, people online are very unlikely to search for what they are looking for beyond a few seconds. That doesn’t give you a lot of time!

Don’t make finding the check-out page a problem to be solved – it should be so easy they can’t help but find their way there.

03

Keep Track Of Everything

The beauty of an online store goes beyond opening an additional income stream – it provides you with an endless amount of data to discover trends, customer funnels and much more.

You can visualize your customers decision-making process using online tools like Google Analytics or the ones built into e-commerce programs like Shopify or WooCommerce. In fact, it’s best to use them together.

Setting up conversion goals, purchasing funnels, tracking entry and exit points, and values to your purchases may seem tedious from the outset, but you can gain invaluable information on your customers by doing so.

Learning where your customers are coming from (online searches, social media campaigns, newsletters, etc.) will help you determine where your best customers are coming from.

This is all information that you are unlikely to get access to in a traditional storefront – it’s not likely you ask each customer how they found your business, or how long they browsed for.

Online stores give you this type of information and much more!

04

Use Product Descriptions!

Just like your high-quality product photos, your product descriptions need to tell your customer everything they could ever need to know about your product.

Technical products require a lot of detail on what exactly they are. Measurements like weight, size and materials used are especially helpful.

Clothing will need exact measurements for sizing.

Don’t scrimp out on the descriptions too. Creative storytelling for fun products can be the extra push that converts a potential customer to a purchaser.

Imagine how you’d describe your product to a friend over dinner – that’s how you will want to write your description for the product on your site.

Don’t be afraid to try different descriptions and test out the results using the tools we talked about above either. You never know what might resonate with your buyers!

05

Encourage Complimentary Products

When a customer adds a item to their cart, or is viewing a particular item, there’s often a good chance that there are complementary products that work together. This is your opportunity to present your customer with a helpful suggestion for what else they might be looking for.

Imagine you are buying new pair of running shoes – similar items to present may be some performance running socks. Or a new French Press Coffee Maker purchaser may be interested in some new coffee mugs to go along with their maker.

Don’t go overboard – no one likes to be upsold on items that don’t seem helpful, but a well-placed promotion can improve your sales!

What Should You Do Now?

Choose What To Start Selling Online Not everything you offer may be a great online purchase – consider shipping requirements especially. Some of the best products to test out are ones which your customers already have trust in – that eliminates the need to ‘sell’ them on their purchase.

Highlight Your Store Make sure your online store is simple to find. Just like the Checkout button, you don’t want to make your customers hunt all over the place to find their way in – may it as obvious as possible.

Don’t Overwhelm Your Customers Consider how you layout and organize your online store. If you have 20 items for sale, it’s probably best to not show all of them all at once – that’s going to make differentiating them not only difficult but a chore.

Show similar products together and make use of filters and buttons. It’s often better to show 1 or 2 items very clearly, than all at once.

We would be happy to help you out with that! Let us know if you need a hand below: