Are you selling enough?
Every business owner wants to increase online sales. Whether you have just launched your e-commerce store, or seek to grow your existing site, there are many ways to improve.
From ads to organic marketing, and from content to, well, more content, there are tons of ways to boost your sales, so where do you start?
Read on to find out how to increase online sales in 7 simple steps.
If you own an online store, chances are you have already dabbled in online advertising. Google Ads give business owners a quick way to turn their marketing budget into more sales, but is this the most efficient way to advertise your business?
Depending on the nature of your offerings, you might find that other means of online advertising work a lot better than Google Ads.
For example, social media advertising targets younger audiences with remarkable efficiency. More than half of all Instagram users browse their feed to shop for products they like. If you can place your own products on Instagram, or better yet, have an influencer wear them, your sales will skyrocket.
In a similar fashion, Facebook ads can help your offerings become viral and reach millions of users at near-zero cost. No other platform comes close to Facebook in terms of targeting. You can identify your target audience and blast them with your ads more efficiently than ever.
Whether you own an ecommerce store or sell services online, you will want your website to be responsive and presentable. Loading speed is key, so optimise your content for faster loading times. You can use Google’s Page Speed service to boost your loading times.
With more than half of all users browsing the internet from their smartphones, another major factor today is mobile friendliness. The latest upgrades to Google’s algorithms penalise websites that don’t offer a mobile view.
Avoid sliders and other heavy media. It is best to rely on static images to improve loading speeds and ensure your site is accessible from any device.
How do you know what works and what doesn’t? Here is where A/B testing comes in. Test any upgrade with Google’s Optimize Service to ensure you are actually improving your website.
If you are looking how to increase your online sales, you probably need better sales copy. It might sound obvious, but there are many ecommerce stores that boast fancy design and zero sales copy.
Strong, honest sales copy will build trust and encourage visitors to become customers. Sales copy builds your brand identity and helps you stand out from the crowd.
Today, there is zero tolerance for marketing gimmicks. Your sales copy must be honest, direct, and helpful. Google will penalise you for making unsubstantiated claims, which might even land you a lawsuit in some industries.
Your sales copy starts with your headlines. Be concise and friendly. For the actual body of your sales copy, prefer bullet points and brief sentences over long-form sales pages.
While you shouldn’t promise things you can’t deliver, you can offer a bulletproof money-back guarantee. This will make your sales copy more trustworthy.
Another effective method is to create a sense of urgency by creating time-sensitive offers. This will encourage your visitors to buy now rather than later.
As usual, every good sales copy should include at least one strong call-to-action message with accompanying buttons. This is true even for ecommerce websites. For example, consider Amazon’s “Buy now with 1-click” button. It creates urgency and leads to immediate sales.
Reducing media will speed up your loading times only up to a certain point. To become really competitive you need business class hosting for your online store.
If you plan on growing your business, you might soon find yourself strapped for bandwidth as your online offerings grow. To avoid hitting that ceiling, you need to invest in business class VPS.
By having your site load from SSD drives, you boost loading times. If you partner with a dependable hosting provider, you will also get uptime guarantees, which will help your site stay up throughout the year.
Remember, for every hour your ecommerce website is down, you will be losing sales. That is why you can’t afford to skimp on IT infrastructure. You need something fast and scalable to allow your business to grow.
Online ads may be efficient, but they cost money. Even if your marketing budget is sizable, you will still want to invest in content marketing.
Content marketing generates organic traffic. By engaging your visitors with content they find helpful, interesting, and relevant, you are building trust. Users will also share good content, which means practically free advertisement.
In order to have an effective online marketing strategy, you need quality content. Good content can be anything from blog posts, videos, flash images, gifs, podcasts, or any other type of media.
Instead of leveraging that content to sell your products directly, you can use it to engage with your customers and educate them about your offerings.
Email marketing is one of the most cost-efficient ways to increase sales. Email is the premier online communication channel, with more than 90% of all users checking their emails daily.
You can use the emails of your customers to send them new offers, generating repeat sales. Email marketing has an incredible ROI as it is remarkably cheap and completely scalable.
Finally, your online reputation will ensure long-term growth. This includes getting genuine reviews, showcasing testimonials, and engaging with your most faithful customers to find out what they think about your offerings.
Online reputation management also involves responding to negative reviews and removing fake reviews.
Now that you know how to increase online sales, it is time to get serious about your infrastructure. Here at Host.ie we are Ireland’s top web hosting and domain registration provider.
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