Sep 7, 2011 by Bryan Saunders

Do you want to sell more on your website? Of course you do!

And I want you to sell more on your website too, so here are my top 8 tips for increasing your online sales on your eCommerce website.

1. Increase Quality Traffic to Your Website

Steepster - a tea community that featured one of our companies, East Pacific Tea Co.

The most surefire way of increasing the number of sales on your website is by increasing the number of high quality prospects who visit your website.

Use search engine optimization (SEO) and search engine marketing (SEM) to send targeted traffic to your website. Set up a Twitter and Facebook account so that customers have another place to discover your business. Take out online ad campaigns on Google AdWords and on industry-related sites.

Finally, get involved in the community. If you sell tea, start chatting on forums for tea lovers. Send some free tea samples to some food journalists and bloggers to review. If you sell shoes, talk to some fashion writers and get your name out there.

2. Fix Your Landing Page

The landing page of Ferrari.com immediately captures a visitor's attention using clean graphics and bold photography.

Once customers get to your website, you need them to stay there.

If your landing page (the first page customers see when they visit your website) loads too slowly, customers will hit the back button and leave your website. Make sure that your landing page loads quickly, so that your "bounce rate" stays low.

Your landing page should also be visually appealing so that it grabs people’s attention and makes them want to stay. A good landing page should immediately tell customers what you have to offer them. Hire a good designer, photographer, and copywriter for your website.

3. Use a Sales Funnel to Decrease Choice Paralysis and to Increase Sales

Which wine should a customer choose? With so many choices, it's an impossible decision, but if you knew what kind of meal they were having it with their wine, maybe you could make 1 or 2 recommendations.

A marketing study conducted in 2000, found that the more choices customers are offered, the less likely they are to buy anything.

Offering your customers a lot of choices might seem like a good thing, but it actually leads to indecision and lost sales. This is known as choice paralysis.

Instead, use a sales funnel to assess your customers’ needs. Then, only show them 2 or 3 relevant products that were selected especially for them instead of 20 or 30 random and irrelevant products.

This way, your customers will be more likely to find exactly what they’re looking for, they’ll experience less choice paralysis, and they’ll be more likely to buy.

4. Improve Your Sales Copy

Your sales copy shouldn’t just tell people about the size and colours your product is available in. It should do more than that.

Good copywriting explains how your product will eliminate a pain point in your customers’ lives and make their lives better.

Good copywriting also communicates a sense of urgency so that these customers buy now rather than later.

Let customers know what a good deal they are getting and tell them that the deal is limited to the next 2 customers. This way, they won’t spend time comparing prices at your competitor’s online store and buying a product there instead of with you.

Consider hiring a professional sales copywriter for your website.

5. Test Your Prices

Prices should be one of the areas in which you experiment the most. If you can make more money just by changing the price of a product, why wouldn't you?

Prices are one of the areas over which you—as the business owner—have the most control. But how much should you charge for your product?

Some people think that when it comes to prices cheaper is better, but this isn’t always the case. If your prices are too low, potential customers may start doubting the quality of your product and leave your website without buying anything. The lesson here: don’t undervalue yourself.

And remember to experiment a lot. A product priced at $12.27 might sell 98 units, while that same product priced at $11.98 might sell 100 units. Even though $12.27 sells fewer units than $11.98, it still makes you the most money. Read up on pricing psychology.

6. Ask For the Sale: Fix Your “Buy” Buttons

The "Buy" buttons on eBay and Amazon, two of the biggest online retailers in the world.

Any salesperson will tell you that you won’t close 90 percent of sales unless you actually ask for the sale.

This means that even if your customer has been convinced that you’re offering a great product and even if all of their objections have been overcome, you still need to ask if the customer wants to make a purchase.

Online, the most common way to ask for the sale is via the “Buy” button. Make sure that your “Buy” button:

• Is prominent in size,
• That the colour of it is designed to stand out from the rest of the site
• And the position your “Buy” button is in a place where your customers will easily see it.

Also, experiment with the shape of your “Buy” button. Amazon.com for instance, uses an "Add to Cart" button that’s round on one side and squared off on the other. This unique shape catches the eye more than a plain old rectangular button, but still looks like a button, so customers know to click on it.

Finally, the words inside of your “Buy” buttons are also very important. For example, “Buy Now” encourages customers to buy right away. The downside is that it doesn’t encourage them to add lots of items to their cart.

Meanwhile, the words “Add to Cart” may result in a smaller number of customers making it to the checkout, but the ones that do will have lots of items in their cart. Split-test to see which words work best for your business.

7. Make Your Cart and Checkout As Simple As Possible

Cart abandonment is huge. For every 100 people that add an item to their cart, 60 to 99 percent of them will leave without completing the purchase.

Why?

Well, most checkouts are too long, they take too much time to fill out, and they ask for too much unnecessary information. Never, ever force a customer to login or create a new account if they don’t want to.

Customers also value their security, so if your checkout doesn’t feel modern or look secure, they won’t feel comfortable giving you their credit card information. Visual design matters.

Also, some checkouts give customers too many chances to escape. Links to external sites should be kept to a minimum in the checkout, so that customers can’t just leave the checkout willy nilly.

By reducing your cart abandonment rate from 99 percent to 96 percent, you can quadruple your sales. A web designer with a knowledge of conversion rate optimization (CRO) can show you how.

8. Referrals and Return customers

There’s a saying in business that 80 per cent of your sales come from 20 percent of your customers. Obviously then, maintaining a good relationship with your most loyal customers is extremely important.

Reward your most loyal customers with VIP service, invites to exclusive presales and in-person parties, and special perks and discounts.

You should also find ways to remind past customer of your company that they don’t forget about you and so they come back and buy again. Send them newsletters about new products or new deals, drop them an email to see if they were 100 per cent satisfied with their order, or even write them a handwritten thank you note. Let them know that the best way they can thank you is to recommend you to one of their friends who might also need your product.

If you haven’t seen one of your longtime customers in a while, give them a phone call to see how they’re doing. Let them know they’ve been missed.

Finally, if somebody got to your checkout, filled out all of their personal information, and then didn’t buy, find out why. Drop them an email or give them a phone call and ask why you lost that sale. They might be able to give you reasons that I haven't offered here.

What do you think? Do you agree? Disagree? Which points would you add?

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