How to Increase Ecommerce Sales

Introduction

Ecommerce presents a massive opportunity for growth and revenue. According to Statista, global ecommerce sales reached $4.2 trillion in 2020, up nearly 30% from the previous year. With more and more consumers doing their shopping online, businesses have an opportunity to tap into this expanding market by optimizing their online sales strategy. In this guide, we’ll explore proven strategies for boosting ecommerce revenue, from leveraging free shipping to optimizing your website for mobile users. Implementing just a few of these tips can lead to noticeable gains in conversion rates and average order value. Keep reading to learn actionable steps for increasing your online sales.

Offer Free Shipping

One of the best ways to boost ecommerce sales is by offering free shipping. This removes the extra cost of shipping from the checkout process which is one of the main reasons shoppers abandon their carts.

According to Baymard Institute, extra costs like shipping fees are the top reason shoppers abandon their carts. Removing this friction can help you recover many lost sales.

When shoppers don’t have to pay for shipping, they are more likely to increase their order size. This leads to higher average order values and revenue.

Free shipping also helps incentivize customers to order again in the future. They know they won’t have to pay extra shipping costs, making repeat purchases more appealing.

To balance offering free shipping with your profit margins, set a minimum order size to qualify. Aim for $35-50 minimum basket size for free standard shipping. This ensures customers are spending enough to offset the costs.

Prominently advertise your free shipping offer and minimums across your site and in marketing. Call it out in product descriptions, cart messaging, email promotions, and more to maximize its impact.

Send Abandoned Cart Emails

Sending emails to shoppers who have abandoned their carts can help recover lost sales. Research shows that the average cart abandonment rate is nearly 70%. That means 7 out of 10 shopping carts are abandoned before completing a purchase. The reasons for this vary – some shoppers are just comparison shopping, while others abandon their carts due to extra costs like shipping.

Whatever the reason, reaching out to shoppers through abandoned cart emails allows you to win back those lost sales. These customized emails remind customers about the items left in their carts, and may offer incentives like discounts or free shipping to complete their purchase. This simple email follow up strategy enables ecommerce businesses to recapture over 20% of abandoned carts. The key is contacting shoppers soon after they’ve abandoned their carts, within 1-3 days, when they are most likely to still complete the purchase. Send a series of 2-3 emails spaced a few days apart to increase your chances of recovery.

Leveraging abandoned cart emails can result in a noticeable boost in your sales. Just make sure your emails are personalized and offer an appealing incentive to encourage recipients to re-engage. It’s a small effort that pays big dividends.

Reward Loyal Customers

Loyalty programs are a great way to increase sales by rewarding your repeat customers. Consider implementing a points or rewards program that provides discounts, free products, or other incentives when customers reach certain spending thresholds. This encourages customers to spend more to earn rewards, and come back to your store over competitors so they can maximize their loyalty points and benefits.

Some options for loyalty programs include:

• Points earned for every dollar spent, which can be redeemed for future discounts or free products. Make sure to set an attainable points amount to earn rewards.
• Tiered programs with increasing rewards, like special discounts, free expedited shipping, or VIP access for your highest spenders.
• Give a coupon for 10% off their next purchase after a customer’s first order.
• Birthday rewards like a coupon code or gift for purchases around a loyal customer’s special day.
• Free products, shipping upgrades, or discounts for reaching monthly or annual spending milestones.

The key is creating compelling rewards that incentivize customers to spend more and come back frequently. Track your program’s success at driving repeat purchases and increased order values from loyal customers. Tweak the rewards if needed to maximize results. Investing in customer loyalty leads to major dividends for long-term sales growth.

Optimize Site for Mobile

Mobile commerce continues to grow exponentially year after year. According to Statista, mobile accounted for 60% of all ecommerce traffic in 2020. With over half of your potential customers visiting your site on a mobile device, having a fast, user-friendly mobile experience is absolutely critical.

A few milliseconds delay in page load time can have a huge impact on conversion rates. Data shows that even a 1 second delay could result in a 7% loss in conversions. Shoppers expect pages to load quickly – if yours doesn’t, they will simply click away to a competitor site. There are a few key things you can do to optimize for mobile:

• Use responsive web design, so the site automatically adapts for different device sizes. This eliminates annoying pinching/zooming.
• Enable accelerated mobile pages (AMP) to boost page speeds.
• Streamline design with easy navigation and large buttons for tapping/scrolling.
• Compress images and videos to minimize file sizes.
• Minify CSS, HTML and JavaScript files.
• Optimize code to reduce server response times.

With some development work on the backend, you can create a much smoother mobile commerce experience. Given the steady rise of mobile users, this should be a top priority for all ecommerce merchants looking to increase their online sales and conversions.