12 Proven Ways to Increase Sales Today (and Not Break the Bank)

Sometimes all you want, is to increase your ecommerce sales. Is that too much to ask for? Honestly, it isn’t. You work night and day, and you want to see results from your hard work.

Being a small business on the internet is not easy. You have to go out every day and give it your all, and if you don’t, some other ecommerce merchant will gladly take your customers.

When you look for strategies to boost your sales, many times you get tips that do work, however they require either that you have lots of time on your hands, a big budget, or the ability to code. We’d like to give you a leg up on your competition. Heck, that’s what our apps are for.

In addition, here is a list of some great tactics that you can use to increase ecommerce sales, starting today. No coding and no big money needed. Just the right attitude and a good work ethic.

Email

1. Replenishment Emails

This is an email that you send out simply to remind the customer that their stock is running out, and it’s time for a new order. The greatest part of this strategy is that all you have to do is set it up an email trigger once, and then emails will automatically be sent based on the criteria you added.

This is one of the most efficient ways to increase ecommerce sales. A relationship already exists. Trust already exists. Now all you’re doing is helping the customer and yourself. Odds are, that no matter what you sell, at one point or another – either after one month or one year – the customer will need to get more of it or a new one.

2. Urgency Emails

Studies have shown, time after time, that urgency makes people buy. The second we know that we might lose out on a good opportunity, we think twice about not making the purchase. At the end, the results driven from these types of emails are in your favor.

The use of urgency can lead to a  22% increase in email open-rate. That’s huge! Imagine going from 15%, for example, to 37%! That kind of result is just a few minutes away.

 Urgency causes one very important thing to happen: people act quickly. They act on impulse. When people act on impulse or in a “now” attitude, the thoughts that kept the person from making the purchase are thrown out the window (such as thinking too hard about whether they need it or if there is an alternative). Raising the urgency level cuts through a lot of this delay to create a significant improvement to conversion rates.

 A perfect example! The subject line sucked me in >> Time Is Running Out – 45% Off Till Midnight!

For more on email marketing: 9 Proven Tips for the Best Email Subject Lines

3. Use Email to Reward Customers for Reviews on Purchases

According to a study by Argos, and another one by Figleaves, products with reviews have a 10% and 12.5% increase in conversion rate respectively when compared to products that don’t have a review. I am guessing that you understand that product reviews are more than helpful.

How do you gather reviews? It’s easier said than done, but even accomplishing this in not a big challenge. A proven tactic to increase product reviews is to offer either a competition-based incentive, or a discount on their next purchase via email. This study from Kissmetrics shows just how important reviews are for your business.

What can you offer in exchange for a review?

• Discount on next purchase
• Free shipping
• Exclusive product
• Free product from a partner site
• Package deal on the next purchase (pay only for the highest priced product)

4. Abandoned Cart Emails

Abandoned carts are one of the biggest challenges that ecommerce merchants face. Someone has visited your site and taken the time to select a product or two, but for some reason, they end up leaving without making the purchase. You feel as if you are so close to making a sale, yet so far. Want a proven tactic to turn those abandoned carts into sales? Check out this table (also via Kissmetrics).

 

One of the more successful fixes for this wide-spread problem is sending a reminder email. The following email is a hit. Why? It uses a mix of humor and honest interest (as to why you did not make the purchase) to remind you to go back and buy what you want.

Social Media

5. Giveaways

What you need to know is this: over 70% of consumers that receive a free product remember the name of that company and also have a favorable memory of the company. If increasing ecommerce sales is the name of your game, then this is a tactic you must pursue. 

How do you got about running a giveaway? You can either manually run one by asking fans to take some sort of action on your social media page/profile. Alternatively, you can use one of the many (really tons!) of apps available on the web that enable you to create simple giveaways in no time.

P.S. Check out StoreYa’s Group Deal and Scratch & Win to create giveaways that increase sales.

6. Use a Facebook Store

One of the most basic tips that you can get when it comes to succeeding on ecommerce is to make the checkout process super simple. By adding a Facebook store, you don’t necessarily start adding products to status updates on a daily basis. Instead you can add a call to action to your statuses that directs your fans and their friends to your store, where they can make a purchase without having to leave Facebook. If someone has taken the time to check out your page or status, complete the process by adding a CTA that directs them to the internal Facebook store.

 

7. Join Social Media Groups

No matter what you sell, there is an active market for it, and more than likely there is a group of people talking about the products in a social media group. These people might be on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google Plus, or maybe on a Pinterest group board. How does this increase your sales? If you are in the right group, then by adding value with your comments, sales should be an automatic occurrence. Think of this as a simpler version of content marketing, or “micro content marketing”.

Join these groups, take part in the conversation, and when you can offer your products. Here are four tips to increase your effectiveness in groups:

• Use amazing images
• Offer advice
• Use a minimal text explanation
• Follow the group rules

On Your Site

8. Pricing Strategy

Why does everyone price their products at $xx.99? It’s a good question about something that seems so arbitrary.

The reason businesses do that is because humans naturally attribute the most weight to the left most value in a number, presumably because it is the first one that they read, and it is the largest aspect of the number as a whole. People therefore will categorize an entire number based on the first number that they read.

How can you utilize this effect to boost sales for your ecommerce store? If you are not currently using this strategy, then you could technically raise prices from $12.00 to $12.99 and people would still associate the price as being $12.00. Notice below that the strategy doesn’t have to be used just to round up to the next dollar, but also when moving up to the next hundred.

9. Coupon Pop Ups and Exit-Intent Pop Ups

Both of these tactics work extremely well. If we take a look at what Raw Generation, a StoreYa user, did, you’ll notice that they kept their pop ups fairly simple, yet attention grabbing. What did they do to create amazing results? Raw Generation created a fantastic limited-time offer on both pop ups so no visitor would forget the offer.

The bottom line is that Raw Generation boosted its sales by +$28,000 in just three weeks, with over $20,000 from the Coupon Pop and $8,000 from the Exit Pop! Did I mention that they also collected over 1,900 new email addresses?!

10. Referral Programs

Here are a few statistics you must know, if you want to increase your ecommerce sales. If you are not using a referral program, then now is the time to join the fun.

• 65% of new business comes from referrals. – New York Times
• 92% of respondents trusted referrals from people they knew. – Nielsen
• People are 4 times more likely to buy when referred by a friend. – Nielsen
• Offering a reward increases referral likelihood, but the size of the reward does not matter. – American Marketing Association
• The LifeTime Value of a new referral customer is 16% higher. – Wharton School of Business
• 83% of consumers are willing to refer after a positive experience—yet only 29% actually do. – Texas Tech

Fortunately, you don’t need to do any heavy lifting to kick off a referral program, and you can always improve it as you grow. The most important thing is get it off the ground.

With StoreYa’s Refer a Friend app, you can offer a coupon to any of your customers that make a purchase. They can redeem the offer once they have referred your products to one of their friends by email, or sharing their purchase on Facebook or Twitter. This coupon offers you a twofold advantage. First you encourage your customers to become repeat customers by providing them a coupon, AND second you bring in new customers with the references.

11. Free Shipping

Stamps.com found that free shipping was the most effective promotion an ecommerce merchant could offer during the holiday season (as seen below).

The takeaway though, should not just be in regards to holiday time shopping. From these results it is quite clear that customers like free shipping.

Why is free shipping so attractive? Psychologically we are affected by the word “free” and it creates the sense of urgency that you need from visitors in order to convert the visit into a sale. Whereas when the word “free” is used on high-value products/services sometimes educated buyers will back away fearing “you get what you pay for” and “if it sounds too good to be true, then it is”, when it comes to shipping it only creates a positive effect.

Zappos has become wildly successful for a handful of reasons. When you have the option to learn from someone that’s had a bit more success than you, odds are you’ll take the insights that are being offered. Look no further to see what you can learn from Zappos.

Here’s a creative way to offer free shipping: make it a win/win for both sides by offering the free shipping as an incentive to spending a minimum amount: get free shipping after you spend $50 or more.

P.S. In a study conducted by AlixPartners, 36% of consumers felt that the cost of delivery was too high!

12. Packaged Deals

When you go shopping, your eyes are instantly on the lookout for a good two-for-one deal. A package deal (combo offer/deal) is an efficient way to get two things done at once. Not only do you increase the value of each purchase, but it is also a great way to sell inventory that is not selling on its own.

In the below example, J. Crew set up a great offer on their Facebook page, which then led to me to the simple product page. You’ll notice that not only are you offered packaged deal, but also one that comes with a small variation so that you get what you need (and they used a GIF …awesome!).

Any ecommerce merchant that implements any or all of these tactics will lead to an increase in your ecommerce sales. Nothing great happens without a little work, so my suggestion is this: pick one of these tips and put it into action for one month. At the end of that month, I can honestly say, that you are more than likely going to see a welcomed increase in profits. Which tip are you going to start off with? Why that one? Let us all know in the comments section below.

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