Ecommerce market has been experiencing a significant growth over the past few years. In fact, online shopping is becoming the preferred method for consumers these days. According to a comScore report, online retail spending had a 14% growth in 2013. It is not just the U.S., eCommerce is experiencing a global surge. According to an eMarketer report, eCommerce purchases in Asia-Pacific surpassed those in North America.
In addition, eMarketer predicts that this trend will continue even in the coming years. Findings from its report indicate that:
- Global retail will continue to grow to 5.5 percent through 2018, reaching $28.300 trillion. However, it will reach its peak in 2015 with a growth rate of 6.4 percent
- Global eCommerce will increase between 13-25 percent
- Ecommerce in the U.S. will increase at a rate between 11-16.5 percent
Considering the stats and the market prediction, it is a no-brainer that ecommerce is a blissfully profitable industry to be in right now. But there are a few things you need to understand regarding ecommerce. Sales cycles are instant here, especially in B2C ecommerce. This means you don’t have the luxury of time to nurture leads down your sales funnel. You need to be fast to impress them otherwise shoppers will simply turn to another brand that they find more convenient.
Long story short, you need to focus on various aspects of your ecommerce store, which can make or break your ecommerce transaction. Here are 5 tips to boost your product sales.
1. Keep Things Simple
Online shoppers have zero tolerance for nuisance. Flashy websites that take longer to load or features and navigation that are too confusing to understand won’t help you conserve customers. These features are usually difficult to integrate and fail to foster sales. So what’s the point?
Instead, keeping it simple will help you boost the product sales significantly. The menus must be easy to navigate. Use large and clean product images on the homepage as well as on individual product pages. Also, avoid providing too much information in one section on the individual product page. A better approach is to break up the specification and the product description into tab so that visitors can easily find out what they are looking for. Remember that simpler the website is, the better experience it provides to your users.
2. Provide Detailed Information
This is especially applicable when it comes to money. You need to ensure the shoppers that they are not throwing away their money while shopping at your online store. Having a FAQ page is highly recommended for ecommerce websites. Include detailed information about features like how ecommerce website works, background story about the company, refund policy, shipping info etc.
Follow a Q&A format and include as many FAQ’s as possible. In fact, write about anything you think is valuable and helpful for your customers. Keep paragraphs concise and use relevant visual elements. Also enable search on this page, if possible.
3. Focus on Upselling
According to Forrester, product recommendations can help generate around 10-30 percent of ecommerce site revenues. Amazon too reported back in 2006 that 35% of its revenue was generated directly from its gross sales and upselling efforts. Upselling is, in fact, a great way to encourage your customers to spend more than they initially intended.
You can also call it impulsive purchase. Just the way you give in to your impulses when shopping at a grocery store checkout line, your visitors are likely to do the same when buying in an ecommerce store. One perfect example is Amazon’s recommendation feature – “People who bought this also bought” is how this ecommerce giant is upselling its products.
Several other ecommerce websites are also leveraging this feature. In fact, fashion, gift and flower delivery sites largely integrate this tactic. Once you select a product, they offer other relevant products to accompany with the original item you have selected to make it much better. It could be a pair of jeans to go with that t-shirt you just bought or a box of chocolates with a flower arrangement and so on. To leverage on this upselling tactic you need to integrate a recommendation algorithm to your ecommerce site and get creative to mix and match items from your catalog to arouse the impulsive desire of your customers.
4. Leverage Mobile Apps
Ecommerce is moving past the browser. In fact, mobile is the new way to online retailing. Mobile ecommerce is likely to grow to $32 billion in 2016 and will 7% of all ecommerce sales. In 2012, the total revenue generated by mobile commerce was $10 billion. While responsive web design is the major factor behind the growth of m-commerce, mobile apps are helping online store owners to gain more revenue apart from driving customer loyalty.
Effective mobile apps allow retailers to communicate and engage customers on a more personal level with instant push notifications about new products, sales, discounts, special offers and other relevant news. But remember the aim should be to maintain and improve customer engagement and not just to push your products.
5. Free and/or Overnight Shipping
Free shipping is the great motivation factor for shoppers to purchase from you. Statistics indicate that “shoppers spend 30% more per order when free shipping is included.” Besides, most shoppers (around 61%) are likely to abandon the cart if the ecommerce sites fail to provide free shipping. This is, therefore, one complementary service you can’t take a risk to overlook. And you can do this without affecting your profitability. Simply provide free shipping on popular products or for customers making purchases over a certain dollar amount.
Similarly, same-day delivery or overnight shipping is another way to motivate your buyers to shop more especially during the holiday season. In fact, it is the great way to cater to last-minute shoppers; and there is nothing better than combining free shipping with overnight shipping during the big holidays.
Conclusion
Implementing these strategies can dramatically improve your ecommerce transactions, but remember that customers today are very smart and informative. If they have the slightest doubt about your intentions, you have lost them. So instead of just trying to squeeze more money out of their wallet, focus on providing a better shopping experience. Everything comes down to value in the world of online shopping and you can win them over in the long run only by providing what they want without manipulating them to compromise, financially or otherwise.
Image via: Huffingtonpost.com
