Increasing your ecommerce sales doesn’t need to be hard. There are some proven strategies that you can use to instantly increase your website revenue. If you are on stripe then a stripe affiliate software is something you would want to look into, if not then don’t worry. Here are 5 proven strategies that you can use to get more customers to your online store.
1 - Have a Referral Program
One of the fastest ways to increase your sales is by having a referral program. Here’s what it is and what it can do to your business.
What is a Referral Program?
A referral program is a system where you allow your customers to refer their family and friends to your website. Through this system, you have an online form where your existing customers can input the names and contact information of their family and friends. In return, you can give them a reward. This can be a free item or a discount code.
Why You Need a Referral Program
Promoting your website by yourself is not only daunting. It is also quite expensive. One of the secrets behind the massive growth of big brands is referral marketing. This is where they leverage their existing customers to drive more customers to their website. Referral marketing is more effective than you think. Instead of wracking your head for ways to promote your site, you can just ask your customers to refer more customers to you. Companies such as Hunting Bow Lab and LessChurn.io have reported a 30% increase in sales after starting a referral program.
How to Launch a Referral Program
Launching a referral program is not that hard. You just need to follow a three simple steps.
STEP 1: Choose a Reward
A referral program starts with a reward or the referral incentive. As mentioned, this can be a discount code, some cash or a free item. The reward that you should choose will depend on the type of customer that you are targeting. You should choose a reward that will be appealing to them.
STEP 2: Choose Who To Reward
Next, you should determine who to reward. In a referral program, there are always two parties. These is the the referrer and the referral. The referral is also called as the friend. In every program, you should choose who you should reward. Will you reward the referrer or the friend? That’s up to you. If you have the budget, you may choose to reward both for this is better.
STEP 3: Launch Your Referral Program
Once you sort out the specifics, you can now start launching your referral program. For this, you may need to use some software. Through this, you’ll be able to launch your referral program in just a few clicks.
2 - Launch an Influencer Campaign
Another way to get more sales into your ecommerce website is to launch an influencer campaign. Here’s how influencers can help you.
What is Influencer Marketing
There has been a massive growth of influencers in various industries. This is due to the power of the Internet. These influencers act like online celebrities. People follow them and look up to them. In effect, they can influence the purchase decisions of their followers.
Why You Need Influencers
In today’s highly competitive online marketplace, you’ll want to stand out. However, standing out is not easy if you are a new brand in the industry. Since no one has bought from you before, you’ll need some positive reviews and referrals. While this can be achieved through having a referral program, influencer reviews are more powerful. And this is because they are able to influence the purchase decisions of a certain number of followers. You’ll want to market to influencers because they can instantly bring your products in front of their follower’s eyes. Since they have the power to influence their purchase decisions, their followers have a higher likelihood to buy from you if the product is promoted by the influencer.
How to Launch an Influencer Campaign
Promoting to an influencer is not that hard. It all depends on influencer research and the value you provide.
STEP 1: Look for Influencers in Your Niche
You cannot find the influencers to promote to unless you find them. Every niche has its own set of influencers. These are the people that have a good number of followers who listen to what the influencer has to say. It helps to do your research by noting the name of the influencer, his website and his contact information and social channels. This way, it will be easier to reach out to him later on.
STEP 2: Build Value and Reach Out
It is not enough to research for your target influencers. You need to have something to offer as well. For this, you need to build value. You can do this either through your products or services or through your content. Your marketing message must be clear and it must resonate with the influencer’s wants and ideals. This is the fastest way you can get influencers to promote your ecommerce website.
3 - Implement Live Chat
Almost 50% of businesses in the United States found a 80% increase in sales by just implementing live chat. This is because their customers feel more supported. So you should also do the same.
What is Live Chat
See the chat bar at the bottom right side of online stores? That’s a live chat bar. It allows the customers to ask questions about the product before and after buying.
Why Do You Need Live Chat
Sometimes, a customer may need some extra guidance before they buy from you. It can be a simple as wanting to see the actual product or they have some questions about pricing and delivery. In any case, you’ll want to be there for them every step of the way. However, you can only do that with live chat. Unlike email and phone calls, chat is instant. The questions are sent instantly and the answers are delivered in the same way.
How to Implement Live Chat
Fortunately, implementing live chat in your site is easy. Here’s a 2-step approach.
STEP 1: Integrate Live Chat Into Your Site
The first place where you can implement live chat is in your website. Many online stores do it and you should do it too. Customer service and after-sales support is not only important, it is now required by customers. They feel better if they can easily reach out to you and this often results to more sales.
STEP 2: Activate Chatbot in Your Facebook Page
Today, facebook pages are powered with chat bots. You simply have to activate it in the settings section and that’s it. And if you want to have a more automated solution, there are softwares that can help you with that. There is ManyChat and Chatfuel. These websites can help you create your own chatbot from scratch. Chatbots can help you capture all of your customer inquiries and answer them right away if it’s easy. With it, you no longer need to hire customer service representatives for all questions will be answered by simply accessing a database of answers.
4 - Have a Cart Abandonment Plan
Cart abandonment - It is every online store owner’s worst nightmare. It lowers your store’s conversion rate and ultimately lowers your overall revenue.
What is Cart Abandonment
What’s the worst thing that can happen to an ecommerce website? It’s when a customer adds an item to their cart only to abandon it. This is cart abandonment. It is the percentage of customers who leave items in their cart and don’t proceed with buying them. Ideally, ecommerce website owners like to keep this down. But you will not be able to do that unless you have a plan.
Why Do You Need to Avoid Cart Abandonment
As mentioned, cart abandonment can hurt your website metrics. Plus, it can fool you into thinking that your total sales is bigger than the actual. Here’s the thing. Every item added to the cart is automatically deducted from your inventory. It also counts as a sale even if the customer did not proceed with the order. What you’ll have are messed up metrics that can hurt your data analytics and your business.
How to Have a Cart Abandonment Plan
Battling cart abandonment starts with a plan. You need to know what you’ll offer the customer to convince them to proceed with the order.
STEP 1: Start with a Cart Abandonment Offer
First, you should start with your offer. This can be a discount code or a free offer in return for buying. This should give the customer a final push towards buying. Another way to tailor your cart abandonment offer is to encourage them to ask questions, Your customer may have some apprehensions with buying. Opening yourself to their questions just might be what they need.
STEP 2: Construct a Cart Abandonment Email Series
Next, you should familiarize yourself with cart abandonment email. You can do this by joining a list in your favorite online store or just add some items and leave it at the cart. Then, wait for the email series and study it. This will show you their cart abandonment strategy.
It also helps to make use of premade templates. Mailchimp has a cart abandonment email series template that you can use. In here, you can recommend related products as well as present your offer. While I don’t encourage using the templates as is, I can say that templates can help you in creating a cart abandonment email series quickly.
5 - Use the Power of Social Proof
We now live in a world where customers just don’t buy an item out of whim. While that can still happen, customers are now wiser than before. They now gather information and reviews before they buy an item and this is where social proof plays a big role.
What is Social Proof
Social proof can come in different forms. It can come as a review, feedback, testimonial or a social media post. In any case, it relays the customer’s experience of your product or service and it can definitely increase your sales by encouraging more people to buy from you.
Why is Social Proof Important to You
Social proof acts like an unbiased description of your product or service. Unlike your own description that is probably loaded with your own intention, customer reviews are often done with intention in mind except for the fact that they like to share their experience of the product or service. Because of this, customer reviews seem to be more appealing to prospects who are on the verge of buying from your website. When they see that you have worked with other customers before, they are then encouraged to buy from you even if they don’t know you. Such is the power of social proof.
How to Have More Social Proof in Your Ecommerce Website
Fortunately, getting social proof in your site is easy.
STEP 1: Encourage Reviews
In many ecommerce platforms, you can easily activate reviews in your product pages. This can be as simple as adding a plugin or add-on into your platform. When this is activated, you can now encourage your customers to leave reviews. This will then act as social proof for your products and services.
STEP 2: Post User-Generated Content
Another way is to encourage user-generated content. Instead of limiting reviews in your website, you can also encourage social media posts. This can be done on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram. In some instances, you can also link to video reviews of your products. We live in a generation of content and you can use to that to increase the reviews of your products and services.
STEP 3: Send Review Reminders
Lastly, it is very important to remind your customers to leave a review. It is easy to assume that they will leave a review if they like a product. But most customers are busy. Unless you are more proactive in asking them about what they think of your products, they are far less likely to leave reviews. Don’t be afraid to reach out and ask them if they received the item.
All these are proven strategies on how you can increase sales in your ecommerce marketing. What will you try first? Tell me all about it below. Also, if you are looking for a wordpress affiliate platform, you can check what we have. If you’re using Shopify make sure you look for the best shopify affiliate app for your business. Also, if you have stripe and you’re planning to do recurring commissions, you should also look into a stripe affiliate software.
