Guide to Increasing Sales for Your Online Store

October 18, 2022

Guide to Increasing Sales for Your Online Store

When you sell online, the opportunity is limitless. You have 24/7 access to consumers across the globe. Make the most of your digital presence to increase your sales and profits.

Read our guide to increasing sales for your online store and implement the included strategies to reach more consumers, sell more products, and boost your revenue starting now.

1. Understand Consumer Shopping Habits in Omnichannel Retail

Increasing sales for your online store starts with understanding the consumer and their shopping habits. As e-commerce shopping continues to dominate the retail industry, brands and retailers must know how to cater, market and sell to an online audience.

Your audience shops in the omnichannel, meaning that shoppers aren’t looking at brands or products in a vacuum and their journey to your store may take many different routes. Potential customers may have seen your content in five or fifty different places before they wound up at your store.

From SEO to social media advertising, getting new customers to the point of sale can often begin long before they actually make their way to your store. This is why a consistent, streamlined product content experience is the hallmark of an effective omnichannel commerce strategy that increases sales for your e-commerce store.

2. Get Consumers to Your Site with SEO

Search engine optimization is the primary driver of organic traffic to your site. By creating content focused on SEO, you’re targeting consumers looking for the products and solutions you provide.

Below are a few ways to go beyond SEO basics to create content and experiences users want to engage with:

Perform Keyword Research

The first step in SEO optimization is knowing your target audience, including the terms they’re searching for when they go online. Performing keyword research shows you the words and phrases users search and which keywords your competition ranks for.

Knowing the right keywords to target helps shape your content so you can bring more shoppers to your store.

Optimize Product Content

Once you’ve solidified your keyword lists, you can begin creating content. Your content should address and answer pain points and even reveal unrealized needs and wants to your consumers. Optimized content earns traffic while showcasing your products and encouraging shoppers to buy.

Conduct an SEO Maturity Assessment

Your SEO strategy doesn’t stop once you’ve hit “publish.” Conduct a regular SEO maturity assessment to evaluate your SEO strategy. Your SEO should serve your brand. A maturity assessment proves if it does.

Effective SEO enhances lead-generation efforts to target the right consumers at the right time. 

The more clicks you earn, the more consumer engagement you have, which results in more sales for your online store.

3. Provide Alternative Payment Options

Reducing friction at checkout is essential to close the sale. Providing alternative payment options eliminates obstacles to purchase and empowers your customers to buy your products immediately.

Forbes reports that nearly half of all consumers ­­–– across all age groups –– will spend more money if they have the option of installment payment plans. The convenience of purpose-driven financing applies to all shoppers, regardless of age. A remarkable 42% of Gen Z shoppers and 69% of millennial shoppers are more likely to purchase when installment loans are a payment option.

“Buy Now, Pay Later” (BNPL) services, once a convenience, have now become expected for online retailers. Consumers want the instant gratification that financing options provide. By offering BNPL solutions at checkout, you maintain the forward momentum of the sale, removing reasons for cart abandonment.

BNPL options are everywhere and for products at every price point. With more shoppers wanting something other than credit cards to pay for their purchases, providing a financing option at checkout is essential to increase sales for your online store.

4. Create Rich Product Content Spreads

Rich media contributes to a successful digital shelf strategy that earns traffic to your site and leads users toward purchase.

In an online retail space, your content represents your products. Quality content communicates that you produce and sell quality goods. The presence of rich product media is a clear differentiator between brands that win their market share and those left behind.

Rich content not only provides product information, but it creates a compelling, emotional experience for consumers. Rich media enhances the consumer buying experience, engaging shoppers at every turn.

The following rich content types are common in online stores:

  • Product videos 
  • 360-degree spin imagery 
  • Detailed product specs and dimensions with comparisons to competing products
  • 3D and augmented reality (AR) product views 
  • Hot spot images 

By going beyond traditional, purely informational copy, you show consumers why they need your product and why they need it now.

Your content choices determine your position on the digital shelf. Poor content leads to poor product page experiences and lost sales. But when you create and deliver captivating, informative, and compelling rich content spreads, you give consumers every reason to proceed with their purchase.

5. Ensure Product Data Accuracy and Clarity

When shoppers come to your online store –– whether organically or through direct search –– they want and need product data that inform their purchase decision. When shoppers choose the convenience of online retail, they rely on brands and stores to deliver the necessary content to make a confident purchase.

Educating and engaging potential customers requires you to provide accurate, up-to-date, quality product content and data. Clear, informative content helps you increase sales starting from day one.

That’s because accurate data and content build customer trust. Thanks to an ever-expanding digital shelf, shoppers can access limitless online retailers who provide solutions to their needs or issues. Comparing and contrasting brands is simple, especially online, where online stores are a tab’s click away.

Ensuring product data accuracy and clarity delivers an online brand experience that inspires trust and confidence. Shoppers know they’re getting what they expect when their order is delivered, increasing brand loyalty and reducing return rates.

Accurate, precise, easily discoverable content helps you sell more now while cultivating long-term relationships with returning customers.

6. Analyze Content Performance and Make Changes Where Needed

Content plays a significant role in your sales numbers. But content management doesn’t stop when it’s published on your website. Analyzing content performance allows you to see which pieces lead to conversions and where you need to make changes.

Understanding content performance is key to optimizing your online store to attract and guide shoppers through the sale. Content audits break down your content to ensure your resources are seeing the most ROI possible and you’re increasing your sales.

Regularly analyzing your content helps you see what is effective and what is not. Consumers rely on content to find products and make purchase decisions. You rely on content to drive traffic and make sales. Performing scheduled content audits ensures your product content is working for you and helping you reach your goals.

7. Leverage a Product Bundling Solution

A great way to increase sales is to focus on achieving a higher average order volume (AOV) per customer. Product bundling allows you to increase the AOV of a customer already purchasing from your store, which will drive more dollars to your bottom line from each transaction. 

By leveraging a product bundling solution, you can offer complementary products to new and existing customers that are shopping at your store. For example, if a shopper is purchasing a laptop from your site, your product bundling solution can suggest a compatible charger, case and mouse. These suggestions can lead to an increase in sales from that customer and increased brand loyalty as they purchase more from your store. 

Product bundling is a huge opportunity for increased sales to your online store. Take advantage of a product bundling solution and increase your customer AOV consistently.

Deliver Compelling Product Page Experiences that Drive Sales

Effective strategy and innovative tools upheld by professional support will increase sales for your online store. 1WorldSync knows how to help you win in today’s competitive online retail market. Contact our team today to discuss how our solutions can help you sell more.