Do you want to know how a fresh juice selling company grew their sales from $8000 to $96,000 per month? Today we will provide e-commerce business owners with some tips that can boost their sales and get more conversions. However, you must remember this: there is no shortcut to becoming an e-commerce success overnight. Some entrepreneurs start a website and then look for ways to get more sales, while some set aside heavy marketing budgets to seal more deals. Trying to build any business is not easy. With the right research and groundwork, you can put your work on the right path to unlock more sales.

Choosing a product and opening an online store is not the only task. You must look for more sales and a consistent customer base. Take a look at these tips to grow more sales on your e-commerce store:

Marketing online:

The founder of Raw Generation also had this thought in mind when she started selling fresh fruit juice from her kitchen. Jessica Geier focused on marketing while her dad managed the product end. Starting initial marketing through social media, Jessica moved on to explore other channels and used platforms like Groupon to get more sales. Currently, she focuses on promoting to her existing customer base to get repeat customers.

Start growing an audience for your brand as soon as you buy a domain name for your website. You can do wonders with organic traffic. Social media is the best marketing channel because it is relevant to people’s needs and it always free to post an update. You can collect many potential leads through your social media pages. Make sure you are using the right social medium to promote your account. Don’t start too many accounts; choose the medium which is most relevant to your business. For example, clothing brands must be on Instagram while B2B stores can thrive on Twitter and Facebook.

Trust badges:

The online world is wonderful, but it is also a dark and scary place. A person with a credit card in hand would think 100 times before disclosing their most sensitive information to you. How do you assure these people that your store is safe to make an online transaction? Through trust badges. Trust badges show a customer that you feel accountable for your presence and business. They also show credibility on the brand’s side.

Most customers will abandon the cart if they feel insecure about the mode of payment. If customers love your products, why should they feel insecure in online payment? ConversionXL did an online survey where people felt encouraged to go ahead with online payment by seeing the ‘PayPal’ seal. The same study found out that other trust badges from Norton Security, Google and BBB were amongst the most trusted seals in the e-commerce world. Trust badges will help you grow more sales on the site.

Fashion startup LeatherSkinShop has prominent trust badges on their website. These badges show that your privacy and data security are a primary concern of the online store. Another guarantee that will make people buy more from your shop is the money back guarantee.

Most people will know that you are serious about their experience in your store and they can always come back for another purchase.

CRM:

With the sharp shift of customers towards the online store and mobile shopping, CRM technology has evolved manifolds. The importance of customer reputation management is directly linked to more sales. Most of the major CRM solutions providers have established the fact that the e-commerce industry is a huge market for investment. For e-commerce entrepreneurs, it is high time to invest in a CRM solution.

Online CRM solutions like Salesmate are a good choice because they are a one-stop solution for all your online sales needs. If your website uses Wordpress, you can simply install the Wordpress crm plugin on the website dashboard to get an immediate overview of your leads through the day/week/month.

An efficient tool helps you streamline the sales process and limit manual intervention as much as possible. The busy e-commerce entrepreneur has too many hats to wear in a single day. Let CRM tools do their magic and organize regular reports which you can analyze at the end of the day. You will gather more leads, follow up with warm leads and reach inactive customers when the sales process is automated.

Mobile optimization:

Most of your customers are shopping through their mobiles. It is essential to optimize your site for mobile and gather more mobile customers. Mobile shopping will soon overtake desktop or laptop shopping. Your site must be prepared to welcome these customers. Keep a check on visitor devices on your website by installing the Google Analytics plugin. The plugin is the best in business to know about traffic on your site. Check mobile traffic and then work on improving your site navigation for mobile visitors.

Think about how your site should look on a tiny phone screen. Design mobile first by placing buttons and menu bars in the best places. It will help you decide what looks best for the customers. If you want to give it a soft launch, try A/B testing your site by subjecting two different looks to selected users.

Live chat:

In a physical store, one can always walk up to the salesperson to ask for advice. In an online store, there is no salesperson to ask. Luckily, technology helped close this gap by introducing live chat tools. These live chat tools are an extension of your customer support program. A customer service representative can always be on hold when a customer is buying on your site. Simply tap the live chat window, and help is few clicks away!

This will ensure that more people proceed to buy the items they have questions about. Comm100 reports that the average satisfaction rate for live chat is 85.39%. Find an efficient tool online to take care of your live chat needs. If you can’t invest in a customer service team, find a good live chatbot.

Last word:

The tips mentioned in this article will be effective in your mission to secure more sales on the e-commerce platform. However, every business works differently. Marketing, technology and customer trends will continue to evolve, and a savvy online business owner must keep up. Search for new trends and adopt the latest ways to keep your site active and buzzing with traffic.

 AUTHOR BIO

ABOUT Erica Silva

Erica Silva is a blogger who loves to discover and explore the world around her. She writes on everything from marketing to technology, science and brain health. She enjoys sharing her discoveries and experiences with readers and believes her blogs can make the world a better place.

Find her on Twitter: @ericadsilva1

As an ecommerce business owner, I get it: the internet is a loud place. There’s information on how to maintain customer loyalty, conflicting SEO practices, and a need to stay abreast of change in your industry. As technology advances and brings us new ecommerce features, such as advanced inventory management and custom APIs, we’re still overwhelmed with a wealth of information, sifting through it all and trying to figure out how to get ahead.

The ecommerce landscape isn’t slowing down. So, here are five tips to help you grow your online business in the new year.

Activate social media.

Social media is tricky for ecommerce business owners because of the amount of time it requires. These days, we’re told that being a social media success can help bolster brand awareness and sales, but in order to reap the benefits we must be active 24/7. However, there are only so many hours in the day. While having a strong social media presence has proven to be beneficial, not every owner has the time.

You don’t have to work every social media platform, but you should at least do one very well. Maybe you’ve chosen to beef up your Facebook presence because you want to take advantage of its strong advertising mechanics and large customer base. In that case, use the time you’ve allotted to social media to create a space where customers can exchange and share, and you can post announcements about your brand. Having a solid social media presence on at least one platform will go a long way to developing a brand following.

Offer free shipping.

Offering free shipping can be a small way to begin to build relationships with your target audience. We offer free domestic shipping for our German cuckoo clocks. Some ecommerce companies offer free shipping over a certain purchase amount or on special items. Regardless of your company policy, the value of free shipping is clear to the customer. It entices shoppers to make a purchase.

In addition, offering free shipping can reduce the amount of abandoned shopping carts in your store. Many customers get to the checkout phase and are dissuaded by the additional shipping prices or popup costs. In the long run, free shipping can turn a casual shopper into a lifelong customer.

Share customer photos.

When you’re working with an ecommerce platform, customers can’t touch and feel your products. Instead, they have to rely on reviews or photos to ensure they’re making the right choice. For this reason, it’s important to share customer photos and experiences on social media and on your site. Prospective customers want to see real people using your products.

Sharing photos also allows past customers to feel more like they’re in the fabric of your brand. If a customer sees his or herself pictured on your website, they will feel more inclined to share information about your store to their friends and family.

Outsource, outsource, outsource.

As ecommerce business owners, we sometimes feel we have to be everything at once.

Outsourcing work is imperative to long-term success. You don’t have to be good at everything -- you’ve already proven yourself to be a quality project manager, simply by setting up and running your online store. However, if there’s something you’re not good at, ask for help. Whether it’s advertising, web design, or payroll, know when to outsource so you don’t burn out and can focus on what you do best.

I was able to scale my ecommerce company from initial launch to more than seven figures in revenue in three years by outsourcing our SEO marketing. Outsourcing can help a company stay nimble. If the work being done isn’t up to par or the scope of the project changes, it’s much easier to cut ties with a freelancer or consultant than a full-time employee.

Incorporate feedback.

The one thing that will never be outdated is collecting customer feedback. Your customer is a reflection of the state of your business. You need to find out what they want and like.

Many ecommerce platforms have a plugin or feature that allows you to collect and display customer reviews. If not, apps such as Yotpo can help integrate customer testimonials on your product pages. SurveyAnyplace and Typeform are also useful questionnaire tools to assess customer needs and perspective.

Customer feedback is a gold mine for how you should shape your brand and marketing. Do your current customers like your ads? Do potential customers approach you with more questions after visiting your website? Where are you losing people in your sales funnel? With the right feedback, you’ll be better equipped to adjust and implement changes in a way your customers will appreciate.

Using these tips will put you in a better position to grow your business and with developing a niche brand on an ecommerce platform.

Your competitors - Amazon, Best Buy, Target, Walmart - are bigger, with multi-million dollar budgets and marketing teams which could fill a stadium.

The advantage, of course, is the things they can't deliver: your personal touch, the quality of your products, your niche market, your brand personality.

But you need a strategy to get that first buy-in. It's impossible to deliver the personal touch, brand personality, or show the quality of your products if someone's never engaged with you.

And that's where a limited-time sale comes in.

This article will give you a step by step guide for how you can run a successful ecommerce sale from start to finish.

Running an Ecommerce Sale: Brainstorming

There's no limit to the number or type of seasonal sales your business can run - it's all down to your creativity and business type.

For retailers, my recommendation is to pay close attention to the gift-giving holidays: Christmas, Mother's, Day, Father's Day and Valentine's. It's often easier to motivate prospective customers to buy for someone else than to buy for themselves.

For ecommerce businesses in the fashion industry, seasonal sales are always good: "Shop our Fall Fashion Line" or "Summer is Coming! Get 25% Off until May 1st!"

Here are 20 sale ideas based around U.S. Holidays:

• Groundhog Day Sale
• Mardi Gras Festival
• Valentine's Day Sale
• St Patrick's Day Sale
• Easter Sale
• Earth Day Sale
• Cinco De Mayo Sale
• Mother's Day Sale
• Memorial Day Sale
• Father's Day Sale
• Labor Day Sale
• Back to School Sale
• Halloween Sale
• Veteran's Day Sale
• Thanksgiving Day Sale
• Black Friday Sale
• Cyber Monday Sale
• Christmas Day Sale
• Post-Christmas Sale
• New Year's Eve Sale

Depending on your target market and product, you can also tap into current events to drive sales. For example, here's an email I just received from custom-suit retailer Indochino, sent a couple days before the Super Bowl:

TO SUCCESSFULLY DELIVER YOUR SALE PROMISE, YOU MAY NEED A COUPON CODE…

To create a coupon or free shipping code in Shopify, click here.

To create a coupon in BigCommerce, click here.

To create a coupon in Magento, click here.

Running an Ecommerce Sale On Your Website

Whenever you run a sale on your website, you need a specific place to send people.

There's no point in sending specific traffic - people who have clicked on an ad, popup, social media post or blog article which has a specific selling point ("Get 25% off this Valentine's Day!") - to your homepage.

Don't get me wrong, homepages are great. They offer your visitors a single place from which to find whatever it is they want.

But they also give options to not convert.

First Step: A Sale-Specific Landing Page

A dedicated sale landing page focuses your visitor's attention on your sale. They don't have the option to click to your product directory, go to your homepage or anything else.

This landing page gives people early-access to a Valentine's day sale and builds your list. The post, ad or blog link might read "Get Early Access to HC&Co's Valentine's Day Deals!"

So this is the first step - giving early access on a dedicated, conversion-focused landing page. To build one just like this signup for Wishpond, free.

Second Step: A Sale-Specific Product Directory

Once you've created your coupon codes and driven a few early-access people to your mailing list, it's time to launch your sale.

As with any good online promotion, you need a page dedicated to this sale.

In this case, a sale-specific product directory. Something like this:

Check out the page I created with Wishpond's website-building tool

Okay, so we have our sale. Now we just need to make people aware of it…

Promoting your Ecommerce Sale on your Website

For most ecommerce businesses, traffic is driven from online advertising. And that's important.

But many businesses miss a huge opportunity for driving awareness and prospective customers toward their campaigns: existing web traffic.

Your website's visitors, wherever they come from, are clearly interested in your products.

But, in general, 95-98% of them are going to leave without doing anything.

Making them immediately aware of your ecommerce sale, however, improves the chance of them buying something there and then.

But there are a few elements you'll need to add to your website:

First, a temporary homepage header:

Next, a welcome mat:

And finally, a sidebar scroll CTA:

All of these promotion tools were made with Wishpond's website optimization tools. Check out our popups, welcome mats, sidebar CTAs.

Promoting your Seasonal Sale: With Facebook Ads

Objectives

For your first Facebook Ad, just choose "Traffic" as your campaign objective. You can add a Facebook pixel (in order to track conversions) to your website down the line:

Notice I've only targeted men with this ad set. This is because I'll get better conversion rates targeting boyfriends and husbands with messaging and images specific to them than I would with generic targeting and generic messaging.

Targeting

Next, choose the demographic details of your target audience for this ad campaign. If you only ship within the continental US, be sure you've only targeted the continental US with your ad.

Once you have the demographic details down, move on to advanced targeting: a Facebook user's interests, workplace, income etc. For this ad (for Valentine's Day) I only want to target people in a relationship:

This gives me a large ad audience, so I might focus in even more by targeting people who have bought from a Facebook ad before, or people who are interested in fashion.

My recommendation for a Facebook ad audience size is between 50,000 and 500,000: small enough that the people who click will be genuinely interested in what you're selling, and large enough that a small percentage of viewers will still be a significant number.

Creative

Next, create your ad image and write the copy that will tantalize and entice people to your ecommerce sale.

Here's the ad which I'll try first:

I would also test this image, to see if people respond better to it than the original:

Budgeting

For this first campaign, set an ad budget of $20 or $30 per day, but know that you'll only pay when people click on your ad.

Tracking your Facebook Ad ROI

Want help tracking your Facebook Ad ROI? The easiest way is to book a time to talk to a Wishpond ad professional who can walk you through it, as it often changes based on what ecommerce website platform you use and what your conversion goals are.

Final Thoughts

Hopefully this article has given you a better understanding of how to run a successful ecommerce sale.

Remember that it's not just about creating the discount code or setting up the ad. It's about the whole funnel.

As an e-commerce writer, I often find myself pondering over the larger issues and trends in e-commerce. Often this thought process leads me to wonder about competitive advantage in the e-commerce industry. What could lead some players to develop a long-term competitive advantage? How can the better-managed e-commerce businesses stand apart? What are some of the key differentiators of winners? These questions are not easy to answer.
No one can hand you the Holy Grail to e-commerce success, but of late I have been convinced that selling unique products could provide you with substantial differentiation — maybe enough to sustain long-term competitive advantage.

Why Sell Unique Products?

What could be a better differentiator than selling products that no one else is selling? Of course, your unique product should be the kind that people want to buy, i.e., your products should be good-unique, not bad-unique. The product could be unique because of several reasons:

1. You may personally handcraft products. When the time comes to scale up the business, you would have to find a way to get the same product handcrafted by others.
2. You may manufacture the product though it may not necessarily be hand crafted.
3. You may source products that are difficult to source. These would not be unique, but could be difficult to source.

Examples of Difficult to Source Products

Some examples of e-commerce businesses sourcing difficult to find products are:

A Specialty Ecommerce Website That Sources Handcrafted Products From Remote Villages in a Third-World Country

This might not be everyone’s cup of tea, but there are immigrants in all countries. What if some of them start sourcing, and effectively marketing, native products in western nations. That could be an example of selling unique products.

​​Niche Ecommerce Store That Only Sells Goods Purchased From Select Places of Historical Interest

An outrageous example that I can think of is the time when the Berlin Wall was demolished. Some entrepreneurs started selling portions of rubble from the wall. The proposition was that you could literally “own a piece of history!”
That is not an exact example of selling goods from places of historical interest. But I have come across e-commerce entrepreneurs who are trying to source products from remote corners of the world. Some of these could be antiques, others could be collectibles. The idea is simple: find seemingly ordinary goods that have historical significance.

An Ecommerce Business That Has an Exclusive Licensing Arrangement to Sell Branded Goods From a Popular Religious Destination

Without meaning any disrespect, I must point out that few things have been marketed as effectively as religion. People’s religious beliefs can lead them to become price inelastic to the point of irrationality. And that can be a marketer’s delight. If you can get into an exclusive licensing arrangement with a popular religious destination, you can create a whole lot of merchandise around it. This could be the usual apparel, cap, memento… Or you could be braver, and try to sell embossed gold coins and other expensive branded goods.

What Prevents Ecommerce Businesses From Selling Unique Products?

So far I have tried to make a case for selling unique products online. But there are several deterrents to selling unique products:

• The largest retail markets are for mass-produced branded and generic goods. If one starts focusing on unique products, one can at best be a strong niche player.
• Many ecommerce businesses view themselves as retail businesses. They do not want to get into the rigmarole of manufacturing or sourcing unique goods.
• Maybe you can manage to unearth a strong business opportunity by selling unique goods, but could you sustain the uniqueness of your offering? How tough would it be for competitors to catch up and sell identical or similar products? And I am not even talking about counterfeit rip-offs here.

Final Words

Despite the deterrents, I think that there is a real business opportunity here.
It is up to you to come up with a strategy around unique products that works.