How to Increase Sales in your Small Online Business

Know the Market

No matter what you do, what techniques you use, and what path you follow, none of that will matter if the products you are selling are not up to the mark and if you are not selling enough products.

To sell a good amount of products, you need to know the demand on the market. Therefore, you will need to study and analyse the market to see what the trends are and what products are doing well.

Analysing the market is very important as the trend keeps on changing, and you have to keep up with it if you want to make your business successful. It is one of the best ways to increases sales, and it will help grow your business.

Things will get even better when people realise your website always keeps up with the trend, as this will likely result in you having many more regular customers who like to keep up with the latest trend.

In addition, the products you sell should be of high quality, and the price should be reasonable. You can’t compromise on quality, you just can’t as you will lose the brand image.

Gaining the lost brand image is the hardest and sometimes impossible, so be careful with what you are selling.

Know your Customers

You have to know who your potential customers are for not only e-commerce, but any kind of business. One of the best ways you can do that is by analysing your buyer persona.

Your buyer persona should have all the important information about your customer like their profile, job, age, gender, interests, background information, whether they are the decision-maker or not, and how they prefer to be contacted.

Next, what market messages and what platforms are the best to contact them? What made them interested in buying your product in the first place, and how can you or your company help them?

One of the tools that can help you with some of that is Google Analytics. This tool shows your user’s gender, age, and many more useful information.

Optimise your Online Store   

To increase the satisfaction of your current customers as well as your potential customers, you will need to optimise your website. All the top e-commerce sites have their website optimised. This goes to show the importance of optimisation.

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Most of the owners hire someone to take care of SEO. Of course, you can do it by yourself. But it is better to hire an expert because SEO is vast and has a huge impact on a website.

Optimising a website makes it very easy for your audience to find you. If the optimisation is done right, and you have good products, you will have better conversion rates from your users.

You will also have more traffic in general as your website ranks higher on Google.

Devices

You should make your website mobile-friendly, as the usage of mobile phones has increased drastically over the years.

So much so that there were around 58% of mobile users among the 900 billion web visits in 2018. Only 42% were desktop users. In 2020, around 68% of all website visits were from mobile devices.

The surprising part is that the stats keep getting better as each year passes by. Imagine the figures in 2030 or 2050!

So making your website mobile-friendly is one of the best ways to increase sales.

We all appreciate fast web pages, and we lose patience very quickly with the ones that aren’t fast enough. Unfortunately, the stats for page speed is even crazier. Around 85% of mobile users expect web pages to load faster, and 1 in 4 visitors leave a website if it takes more than 4 seconds to load.

Everything on your website should be clear on a mobile device, including images and designs. All in all, the user experience should be better.

User Experience    

Speaking of UX, the user experience is directly involved in deciding whether a user will come back to your website or not. It also affects your brand image and conversion rates, meaning this will determine how to increase sales.

SEO and SEM of your website will determine the ranking of your website. The higher you are placed, the higher click you will have.

Statistically speaking, pages first on Google get around 32% of all traffic, and the top three get around 75% of total traffic. So that is why you need to be top three, if not the first, because those are the ones who consume all the traffic.

Put Effort into Landing Pages

The definition of landing pages is simple. They are the pages your visitors land in when they visit your website. Getting hold of the perfect landing page takes both time and effort, but the outcome is worth it!

It can be your answer to how to increase sales; as a matter of fact, it can increase sales dramatically and drastically. One mistake many people make with their landing pages is that they put too much effort into them, so much so that the page becomes dense in every way.

Our suggestion will be to keep the landing page as simple as possible and make sure it goes with your product. Another thing you can do is use multiple landing pages to analyse why one is doing better, and which one isn’t.

Pricing and Purchasing Options

I am sure you have heard your friends say that they like to shop on the XYZ website because it has excellent options, and they can buy it at a lower price. And they are now their regular customers.

So firstly, make sure your users have to make as few clicks as possible to make their purchase, and always provide them with the information they need to know at each step.

There are various methods of payment a user can use to pay, and many users may have a preferred payment method. So, it is your job to make sure you have as many payment methods as possible.

When it comes to products, the best practice is to deliver them quickly, and if there is any delay, it is best to mention the reason clearly. Besides, having a returning policy will increase way more value to your company as everyone prefers to buy from a place with a return policy.

Lastly, when it comes to charges, avoid additional charges. Additional charges are one of the main reasons people turn to competitors, and if you really have to charge extra, it is best to mention the reason specifically.

Another cost that you can reduce is the shipping cost. Make your shipping cost-free whenever possible, or keep it as low as possible.

Pictures Should be As Clear As Crystals

One of the disadvantages of online shopping is that we can’t judge the product clearly, touch it, or try it. We can only judge by what we are shown. And what we see mainly depends on the quality of the picture.

That is why it is crucial to have crystal clear, high definition images from different angles on your landing page. If you want to upgrade yourself, then you can go for videos and product demonstrations.

Remember, if you can provide quality products in an appealing way, then you will get yourself loyal buyers, who will keep coming back.

Provide Added Value

The best way to stand out from your competitors is by adding value to your products and services. Content is one of the best ways to add value.

For example, you can write educational, informative or entertaining blogs for your target customers. You can publish them through different channels and link them back to your website. This will help with your SEO and allow your customer to know who exactly they are buying from, and it’ll increase your credibility. Besides, most of the booming e-commerce sites have blogs.

But before you dive right into blogs, you will have to conduct some research and come up with a content plan and strategy. Of course, the more effective your research will be, the higher are the chances of doing better.

Apart from writing, you can also have videos, images and infographics. Again, there are many options available, so go through them all and choose the one that works for you the most.

Comment and Share

After seeing good reviews about a product, people feel more positively about that product, and they are more inclined to buy it.

You can do the same thing and increase the trustworthiness of your products and services. For example, add a comment section and a share button on your website where people can share their thoughts on your products and share them on social media platforms. This widens your exposure, and you will have more customers from a broader range of places.

Comment sections on your website allow your users to share their thoughts and stories, which increases your authenticity. In addition, those suggestions and comments can also help you figure out how to increase sales. Win-win situation!

A Sense of Urgency and Exclusivity

It is a very useful and quite old trick, but it still pays off now and will do so in the future. To create a sense of urgency, you can have limited-time products that will run out soon or have limited stocks.

This will result in users thinking that the offer will end soon and who knows when it will be available again, so they must buy the product before the time runs out.

Display these offers lucratively on your website and in such a place that it draws people’s attention. You can add them to your home page and on each landing page. It is one of the best ways to increase sales.

Use Ads

Ads are very useful to introduce and promote your products and services to your customers. You can ask your customers to buy your products, subscribe, or even check your website out.

The best thing about ads is that you can target a specific audience with your ads. But, again, before diving into this pool, you need to know which audience you need to target and conduct research on what kind of advertising to use and how much competition there is.