According to BigCommerce, 96 percent of Americans with internet access have made at least one online purchase in their lifetime, and 80 percent have made an online purchase within the past month. E-commerce business owners can capitalize on this trend by optimizing their websites for more sales. So, if you want to generate more online sales and leads for your B2B and B2C websites, consider the following 15 tips.
1. Transparent Pricing
Be honest and upfront about the product prices on your website. According to a Baymard Institute study, the leading reason why online shoppers abandon their carts is high extra costs. Researchers found that 60 percent of respondents had abandoned a cart because of high extra costs.
You don’t have to offer free shipping, but you should display the actual cost of your site’s prices and any associated fees.
2. Allow Guest Purchases
Don’t force visitors to create an account when buying your B2B products or submitting a lead on your site. In the same Baymard Institute study previously cited, forced account registration was the second most common reason for abandoned shopping carts, with 37 percent of respondents leaving their carts behind for this reason.
Not every visitor wants to create an account, and many will leave if this is a purchasing requirement. To boost website sales, allow visitors to purchase your site’s products without registering an account.
3. Target Existing Customers
Rather than marketing your site’s products to new customers, consider marketing them to existing customers. According to the Harvard Business Review (HBR), selling to existing customers is five to 25 times cheaper. Assuming you have customers’ email addresses, you can send them promotional messages advertising your site’s products.
4. PPC Marketing
You can drive highly targeted traffic to your site and grow your business using pay-per-click (PPC) marketing. PPC platforms like Google AdWords and Bing Ads only charge advertisers when someone clicks their ad. Best of all, you can specify the keyword searches to trigger your ad impressions, ensuring high-quality traffic for your e-commerce site. If your site sells custom iPhone cases, for instance, you can target keywords like “custom iPhone case” and “buy iPhone case.” Depending on your match type, your ads will be seen by users who search for these keywords or close variations of them.
According to Power Traffick, businesses earn roughly $3 for every $1.60 spent on AdWords. While there’s no guarantee that you’ll experience the same results, PPC marketing for B2B is undoubtedly one of the best ways to increase sales.
5. Use a Personalized Call to Action
As most seasoned webmasters know, a call to action is an element of a website that tells the visitor what steps to take next. Examples include “Click here to get started” or “Contact us today for more information.” While there’s nothing wrong with generic calls to action such as these, personalizing them can boost sales.
According to a study conducted by HubSpot, personalized calls to action from B2B websites generate 42 percent more conversions than their generic counterparts. So, how do you create a personalized call to action? Basically, this involves using wording relevant to the audience you are targeting. You can use a call to action for an email signup form like “Enter your email below.” An effective customized call to action for product sales may include “Click the shop button to begin browsing.”
6. Create Videos About Your Site’s Products
E-commerce business owners shouldn’t ignore the growing demand for video content. According to DreamGrow, adding a product video to a landing page can increase its conversion rate by up to 80 percent. Furthermore, the video software provider.
To boost website sales, you should consider using retargeting. As the name suggests, retargeting seeks to recapture users who left your site without making a purchase. With retargeting, your ads will only show to users who’ve visited your site.
A case study cited by the retargeting services provider AdRoll found that a cosmetic company generates an 850% return on investment (ROI) when using this marketing strategy. In addition to AdRoll, Google AdWords and Facebook Ads also offer retargeting services.
7. Loyalty Rewards
Offering a loyalty rewards program can grow your business. According to AccessDevelopment.com, 53 percent of U.S. consumers participate in loyalty programs, attesting to their popularity.
The general idea is to offer customers an incentive to buy your products. For instance, the online footwear and apparel company Zappos rewards customers with 10 points for every $1 they spend. After accumulating enough points, customers can redeem them for store credit.
8. Accept Multiple Methods of Payment
If your site only accepts Visa and MasterCard, you’ll lose substantial sales. As revealed by GetControl.co, 50 percent of online shoppers will cancel their purchase if the site didn’t doesn’t offer their preferred payment method. Therefore, you should offer various payment options, including credit cards, debit cards, PayPal, Apple Pay, and Google Wallet.
9. Set Alerts for Website Downtime
Conventional wisdom should tell you you won’t generate sales when your website is offline. Instead of seeing your site, visitors will encounter an error page. Therefore, you should consider using a free monitoring service like Uptime Robot to notify you when your site is offline. The sooner your website returns online, the more sales you’ll make.
10. Optimize for Search Rankings
There are hundreds of ways to drive traffic to an e-commerce site. The most cost-effective, however, is arguably search engine optimization (SEO). This involves combining on-site and off-site processes to achieve a top search ranking for one or more keywords. While AdWords involves paid listings, SEO involves organic, non-paid listings. According to Search Engine Journal, up to 80 percent of users ignore paid listings and instead click organic listings.
11. Ditch the Stock Photos
Don’t make the mistake of using generic stock photos on your e-commerce site. To increase sales, it’s recommended that you use real, genuine photos. Sure, buying a $1 stock photo is probably easier, but this will come back to haunt you in the long run. Creating your own photos will make your site more trustworthy while encouraging customers to act.
If you want to go the extra mile and boost sales, encourage customers to create and post product photos. Research conducted by the e-commerce provider Bllush found that user-generated product photos increase conversions by more than 200 percent compared to stock photos. Amazon is an excellent example of how to leverage the power of user-generated photos. While not required, Amazon customers can post photos and leave reviews about purchased products.