Small businesses account for 54% of all sales in the USA. However, trying to generate sales as a new Shopify store owner is no easy task.
In a busy online world, there’s so much competition for your customer’s attention.
We’ve got you covered with these tried-and-tested methods in terms of how to boost eCommerce sales on Shopify in 2021.
Refine Your Product Strategy
First, one of the most common mistakes new business owners make is trying to be all things to all people.
In essence, they offer too many products to cater to different demographics, hoping that they’ll make a sale.
How to increase sales volume 101? Understand your target customer.
You need to be clear on who your customers are, what makes them tick, and the problems they have.
Get as specific as possible in terms of:
- Age
- Gender
- Location
- Occupation
And the most important is to offer them a product or service that solves their problems.
Granted, the first year that you sell online will probably consist of trial and error until you refine your product strategy according to the ones that are a good fit for your customer.
Once you figure out your best-sellers, you can focus on these and build your product range around them. You’re then likely to see increasing online sales.
A Note on Cross-Selling: A Shopify Sales Booster
One of the best Shopify apps to boost sales is called Personalized Recommendations.
Cross-selling suggests additional products that your customer might be interested in based on patterns in their past behavior. Suggestions may relate to products they’ve ordered in the past, viewed, or added to their shopping cart.
And it’s a great way to get your customer to make another purchase, also known as cross-selling.
Utilize Content Marketing
One of the best ways to increase sales in the digital age is by harnessing the power of content marketing.
As an example, you give away tips to your target audience for free. The more value you give away without it costing anything, the more this creates trust and reciprocity.
Trust equals the start of a beautiful relationship between you and a prospective customer. It eventually leads to extra clicks, email sign-ups, and product sales.
Not sure how to build trust through content marketing? Try the following methods:
- Social media — there are 3.196 billion active users worldwide, therefore, tapping into this audience on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, and/or YouTube maximizes your sales potential
- Podcasting — this is where you create episodic audio files for your audience to listen to on specific topics related to your industry
- Webinars or virtual events — this is like podcasting but in video form, where you’re specifically trying to teach your audience something with each event
- Blogging — creating a number of blog posts each month that are optimized for search engines is a proven way of driving website traffic
Sure, these methods sound like a lot of work. But you don’t have to use all of them.
Pick one or two that sound like they’d be the most effective for your business, start with your choices, and go from there.
A Note on Content Optimization: More Sales Growth Tips
Speaking of Search Engine Optimization (SEO), optimizing your blog posts for Google and other search engines is a great idea. You should also optimize your website pages.
Struggling? These Shopify apps can help you in terms of how to get more sales with the help of SEO:
Plug-In SEO, which serves as your SEO personal assistant and notifies you when there are any issues across your website
SEO Image Optimizer, which helps you to add alt tags to your images so that they rank better in Google Images
And note that the latter is just as important as the former, given that Google Images is the second most used search engine in the world!
Grow Your Email List
Another of the most powerful strategies to improve sales is email marketing.
According to Forrester Research, 17% of the digital marketing budget may be allocated to email. It contributes to 24% of overall revenue.
It’s worth growing your email list because you then have an engaged audience that already trusts your brand at your disposal.
Market to them in the right way and a subscriber could quickly become a customer later on down the line (if they haven’t already).
To get a website visitor to sign up to your email list through a pop-up or embedded form, you could provide one of the following incentives:
- A limited special offer to use across your product range, creating a sense of urgency
- A newsletter with exclusive tips for your subscribers
- A freebie, such as a PDF guide, workbook, or access to a resource library
Oh, and you should actively be trying to grow your email list at all times. The more people sign up, the more potential sales you can make in the future.
A Note on Email Marketing: Tips to Increase Sales
If you’re wondering how to get sales from your email subscribers, here are a few best practices:
- Follow-up emails post-purchase, where you thank the customer for their order and suggest other products they might like
- Abandoned cart recovery emails, which sends your customer push notifications reminding them of the products they added to their cart in the hope that they’ll complete the purchase
- Email newsletters, either weekly, fortnightly, or monthly, which features product or service highlights to encourage potential customers to click on them and find out more
Two of the top Shopify apps to boost sales through email marketing are Conversio and Klaviyo. Both of these allow you to send a variety of campaigns to your customers with minimal effort required.
Build Relationships With Your Customers
Now, we’ve already covered how to build relationships with potential customers. But what about how to boost sales through building relationships with current customers?
Fundamentally, it’s often easier and faster to work with customers you already have as opposed to finding and nurturing new customers.
Plus, according to HubSpot, customers that have bought from you previously tend to spend 67% more than new customers.
Deepening the relationship you have with your customers can also result in positive testimonials and Word of Mouth (WOM) online and offline. This can help you to attract new customers. The words of others are incredibly influential.
Switch it around for a second and imagine you’re trying out a new brand for the first time.
You want to know that people who have already tried out the brand had a good experience, right? Otherwise, it might put you off.
That’s why it’s a good idea to include positive testimonials on your product pages, landing pages, and perhaps your homepage. This social proof is a trust signal that creates a more favorable perception of your brand and ultimately encourages the likelihood of a sale.
A Note on Deepening Your Customer Relationships: Unique Ways to Increase Sales
What is a sure way to boost sales? Well, there are several successful methods to deepen your customer relationships.
Deliver excellent customer service. Make sure you have a top-notch response rate, deal with customers politely, and solve issues in a way that leaves the customer feeling satisfied.
Create affiliate programs. This is a way of rewarding your customers for bringing in new customers in their network. You can offer them a commission for every product they sell through your affiliate program.
Build a loyalty program. This is another way to reward your customers for repeat business. You can offer discounts, special offers, and other exclusive perks.
Speaking of loyalty programs, there are some Shopify apps that can help to give you a sales boost.
ReferralCandy allows you to reward your customers for sharing your online store with their loved ones through incentives.
On the other hand, Smile.io allows you to set up and run VIP programs quickly and effectively.
Perform a Business Evaluation
Lastly, there’s a way you can quickly learn how to boost sales for a small business or even a large company.
At least once every quarter (or more often), perform an evaluation on which products or services are selling — and which aren’t.
Similarly, analyze your sales and marketing techniques to discover which ones are bringing in business. You might find that you can eliminate one so you can free up some time and focus on the others.
Alternatively, you might want to try a different technique to see if it works better.
Either way, it’s essential to utilize your Shopify and social media analytics to figure out ways to improve sales. And amend your strategy accordingly.
A Note on Improving Your Business: How to Boost Online Sales
Let’s face it: the best way to increase sales is to ask your customers what they think you’re doing right or wrong.
After all, they’re the ones that are buying your products or services.
Emojics is one of the free Shopify apps to boost sales through customer feedback. You can collect this through:
- Product page widgets asking the customer to rate a particular product
- Live chat feature where you can instant-message your customer
- Exit-intent pop-ups that ask the customer questions when they’re trying to leave your eCommerce store in exchange for an incentive
- Emails asking customers to provide feedback once they’ve made a purchase
However, there’s no point in using a free app to collect customer feedback if you’re not going to listen or act. Listening to your customers can be one of the best ways to boost sales on Shopify.
How to Boost Internet Sales on Shopify: The Takeaway
It can be challenging to figure out how to improve sales when you’re getting started on Shopify.
That said, your sales strategy is likely to change every year, if not every month, based on market and customer trends.
- The trick is to keep learning.
- Persevere with the techniques that work.
- Adapt the ones that don’t.
- Keep going and improving.
