13 Online Selling Tips to Boost Sales

Are you struggling to increase online sales? Shopboxo is here to help. We understand that you may have put in a lot of effort into your ecommerce strategy, but there are always new tactics and tricks to attract more potential buyers to maximise your profits.

In this article, we’ll guide you through 14 online selling tips that are specifically designed to boost your online sales. By following our advice, you’ll be igniting your online sales possibilities and fuelling explosive growth to your online business. It’s time to supercharge your sales and dominate your market!

1. Create buyer personas of your target market

The first step in increasing online sales is to recognise who your audience is and that’s where buyer personas come in.This is because online sales are typically impacted when you can’t connect with your target market.

What are buyer personas

Buyer personas are fictional, generalised representations of your ideal customers. They help you to understand your target audience better, such as their needs, challenges, and pain points. With buyer personas, you can tailor your marketing efforts to resonate with your audience, resulting in more conversions and better business results.

How to Create Buyer Personas

Conduct Research: Gather data about your audience such as their demographics, interests and behaviours. Use surveys, interviews, and website analytics to collect these information.

Identify Common Characteristics: Look for patterns in the data and identify common characteristics of your target audience. For example, you may find that your ideal customer is a working parent who values convenience and affordability.

Create Your Personas: Use the data you’ve collected to create fictional characters that represent your target audience. Give them names, personalities, and backstories to make them feel more real.

Refine Your Personas: Continuously refine your personas as you gather more information about your audience. This will help you to create more targeted marketing campaigns and drive more online sales.

2. Focus on customer experience

Now that you understand the pain points of your potential customers, use these insights to improve the usability of your online store to drive better customer engagement. This is vital because customers are used to a certain level of convenience and service when they shop online. And if your online store is unable to provide a good shopping experience, they are likely to make their purchase elsewhere

How to improve customer experience

There are a few key steps that you can take to make sure your customer experience is top-notch.

Website Design: Present your brand on your online store in a polished and professional manner. There is a very high chance that customers will exit your ecommerce shop if the design and layout is messy or amateur looking. Your brand is an opportunity to shape the way your customers perceive your online business. Don’t leave it to chance, be intentional with your branding.

Navigation: Make sure your online store is user friendly and easy to navigate. Your customers should be able to find your products without any trouble and the checking out process must be incredibly easy, without any hassle.

Customer Service: Provide good customer service. If a customer has a question or problem, they should be able to reach out to someone who can help them quickly and easily, especially if they are facing issues during checkout.

Chatbot: Ecommerce chatbots are a powerful tool. They provide instant gratification and personalised recommendations that can help turn site visitors into customers. However, not all chatbots are created equal. To ensure you’re getting the most out of your chatbot, there are a few key features to look for.

• Always available, 24/7
• Give personalised answers
• Provide human-like conversation

Always remember, the digital landscape is competitive. If you aren’t offering an easy customer experience, your competitor is. So don’t lose out to competition.

3. Use high quality product images

When it comes to increasing your online sales, high-quality product photos are essential. With the advancements in smartphone camera technology, it’s easier than ever to take professional-looking photos. So there’s no excuse for having blurry or poorly edited images from an old mobile device on your site.

Clear and crisp product photos give potential customers a realistic view of your products and help them make informed purchasing decisions. On the other hand, low-quality photos can make your product appear cheap and unappealing, turning off potential customers. Don’t underestimate the power of good photography in boosting your sales.

And in this digital age, you can find plenty of photography tips and hacks online, on platforms such as YouTube and TikTok. If you are planning to start a food business online, we have a guide on food photography as well.

4. Make returns and refunds easy

Returns and refunds can be categorised under customer experience, but this topic is important to have a dedicated sub-section on its own. By providing a hassle-free returns process, you actually create a sense of trust and confidence that will encourage customers to buy from you again in the future.

Here are some tips on returns that can help to increase online sales.

Free Returns: Offering free shipping on all returns can remove one of the biggest barriers in the purchasing decision. It can drive users to try your products if they are having a dilemma deciding. And who knows, they might like the product eventually and keep the product.

Clear and Concise Return Policy: Ensure your return policy is easy to understand so that your customers know what to do when they decide to return their purchased product and if they are eligible for returns.

Efficiency: Process returns efficiently to minimise any inconvenience for your customers. You do not want them to have a bad customer experience after putting in all the effort from the start to drive conversions.

5. Recapture Abandoned Carts

According to Statista, abandoned carts make up a staggering 70% of all online shopping carts, and this number will continue to rise. To recapture these lost opportunities, it’s essential to optimise your checkout process and make it as streamlined as possible and here are some tips on how to do so.

Create an Email Flow: Send a reminder email with a call to action like “You left something in your cart” coupled with a call to action. If necessary, include a discount code in the email that can help to drive conversions.

Checkout Process Test: Complete a sample checkout to analyse if the process is complicated or time-consuming as that could be a major reason why your potential customers are abandoning their carts.

Give Offers: Consider offering discount codes such as free shipping to encourage customers to complete their purchase.

Don’t underestimate potential sales and treat abandoned carts like a cart full of money abandoned in your store’s parking lot.

6. Offer Promotions and Discounts

Apart from offering discounts to cart abandonments, consider running promotions and discounts on your online store occasionally. It is without a doubt that promotions and discounts are one of the best ways to boost your online sales. This is because it is a great way to incentivize customers who are on the fence about making a purchase.

Here are some tactics to consider when offering discounts and promotions to boost online sales. 

Use Timer: A countdown timer creates a sense of urgency. By providing limited time offers can drive potential customers to make their purchases if they do not want to miss out on the promotion campaigns.

Bundle Deals: Package deals are also an effective way to encourage customers to buy more from your online store. For example, offer a package price that still allows for profit if they choose to add-on to their existing cart.

Free Shipping: Shipping fees are often the case when users abandon their cart when the fees are expensive. By offering free shipping, it kind of removes that stigma of having to pay extra for shipping, which can help to drive conversions.

7. Introduce Subscription Model

For many online shoppers, the hassle of reordering a product or realising they’ve run out of it can be a frustrating experience. And that is where subscription models come in. This pricing strategy can be particularly advantageous for online businesses that offer products or services used regularly.

Not only do subscription models provide a steady stream of revenue, but they also foster customer loyalty. It’s harder for customers to cancel a subscription than to skip reordering a product, which makes them more likely to stay with your company, even if competitors offer lower prices.

So to maximise the appeal of your subscription-based models, consider incentivizing them by offering subscribers a lower rate than one-off purchasers. These small incentives can help you attract and retain customers in the long term.

One common example is online tools. They usually offer a discount when you subscribe to their tools on an annual plan while you pay the full price if you select a one month or six month plan.

8. Capitalise on Holiday Seasons

When you run an online store, you should not overlook holiday periods because it can help to boost your online sales.

Back in the days, Black Friday and Cyber Monday were two of the busiest shopping days of the year where online shoppers are more inclined to shop online during these periods because of the attractive discounts being offered.

In recent years, Double 11 was China’s largest online shopping campaign in November where in 2021, Alibaba’s Tmall achieved a new record of US$84.54 billion in gross merchandise volume (GMV). As a result, many other online retailers and marketplaces such as Shopee and Lazada started to run similar promotional campaigns.

Hence, do not underestimate the potential of running promotional campaigns on holiday seasons as it can motivate customers to shop in your online store. Make sure to leverage on these holiday periods and key dates to attract potential customers to your ecommerce store.

9. Connect Your Social Media Accounts

By integrating your online store with your social media accounts, you provide customers with additional touchpoints to discover your brand, resulting in more conversion opportunities. Social media platforms such as Instagram allows users to purchase your products while they are browsing your feed.

The good news is that most online store builders provide social media integration, so setting it up should be straightforward and is not hard to do.

10. Leverage Social Media to Promote Offers

Once you have integrated your social media accounts with your online store, you need to consider maximising its potential.

As social media is a powerful digital marketing tool, with billions of users worldwide, promoting special offers to increase online sales can be particularly effective through this platform. By sharing special deals and discounts with your followers, you can encourage them to make purchases from your online store.

11. Run Email Marketing Campaign

Email marketing is a highly effective strategy to boost online sales. To maximise your results, send targeted emails to your existing customer base, incentivizing them with discount codes to make repeat purchases.

Like social media integration, setting up an email marketing campaign is both effortless and cost-effective. With numerous tools available, you can easily create and launch your first campaign by following step-by-step guides provided by the platform.

By leveraging on email marketing, you can amplify your online sales and expand your customer base without breaking the bank.

12. Display Customers’ Testimonials

Testimonials from previous customers build trust and confidence. When potential customers see positive feedback from others, they are more likely to take the plunge and make a purchase. To boost your online sales, increase customer trust with customer testimonials. This social proof reinforces that your product is worth buying.

To start, gather customer testimonials and highlight them prominently on your website. Increasing customer trust is the key to increasing online sales. So make sure to leverage customer testimonials and use them to boost the credibility of your products or services.

13. SEO Your Website

To increase your online sales, it’s essential to improve your website’s SEO. SEO or “search engine optimization” involves optimising your online store to make it more visible on search engine results pages (SERPs).

This means that when people search for relevant terms on Google, your website is more likely to appear higher up on the list of results. The higher up you are on the list, the more likely people are to click on your website, which can lead to more traffic and ultimately, more sales.

Improving your SEO can also help to build trust and credibility with potential customers. When your website appears high up on the SERPs, it signifies that you’re an authority in your niche. Therefore, it’s a great way to boost your online sales.

To improve your website’s SEO, here are some steps to undertake:

• Use relevant keywords in your titles, meta tags and content
• Structure your website according to SEO best practices
• Ensure your online store and its product pages are mobile-friendly and easy to navigate
• Make sure your website is indexable and all key pages do not contain a noindex tag
• Create XML sitemap
• If possible, build content via blogs to expand your keywords targeting list to increase awareness
• Use first-gen format for your product images
• Images should be properly sized
• Improve overall site speed

Conclusion

Focusing on customer experience internally through improving your online store usability and outside by offering promotions and leveraging on social media platforms are essential in boosting your online sales. By following these 14 online selling tips, you are ready to take your online business to the next level.

And if you are planning to create an online store, be sure to check out our website builder where it has all the necessary tools to launch your ecommerce store within minutes – The good news is that you do not need any hard coding knowledge to set it up!