Although there is no magic trick to boost your website sales overnight, there are certain strategies you can implement. These can help boost your website visitors who can be converted into customers, and ultimately increase sales. Once you have a visitor on your site, there are key points to focus on to maximise the potential of turning the visitor into a customer including enticing visitors to stay on your site, encouraging them to make a purchase and persuading them to return at a future date.
In one word, what it is about is personalisation, and once you have that nailed down, converting site visitors to buyers falls into place.
>See also: How can I promote my small business website?
Below, I’ve explored 7 tricks that can help to boost your website sales.
#1 – Ensure your site is user-friendly
First and foremost, you need to make sure that your ecommerce site is completely user friendly. Even if a potential customer has come to your site specifically to make a purchase, if the page they land on is a mess then there is every chance they will take their custom elsewhere.
Loading speeds need to be fast – as this is a common pitfall – and pages need to be easy to navigate to and from. The customer should know where they are on the site at all times; having as few clicks as possible from the landing page to checkout will encourage them to stay and eventually make a purchase.
#2 – Interact with your visitors
Don’t be scared to talk to your visitors. Overlays such as pop-up messages are a non-intrusive technology that can be triggered based on visitor’s actions; in this context, they would present site visitors with an offer or message to encourage them to make a purchase or help them navigate to key pages you want them to see. These can be an extremely powerful tool when it comes to encouraging potential customers to buy, and offer a sense of personalisation, making the customer feel like their shopping journey has been tailored just for them.
Timed right, offers such as “Buy Now” or “Save 50%” encourage visitors to stay on your site and turn into valuable customers.
#3 – Notifications and calls to action
In a similar vein, calls to action (CTAs) and notifications, used at the right time in the customer journey, can prevent visitors from leaving the site and encourage them to become customers. Rather than providing visitors with an exclusive offer, CTAs lead them in the right direction – for example by telling them that they have items in a basket and therefore should head to checkout. Notifications when customers are running out of time to make a purchase (e.g. ‘Your items will only be saved for two more minutes, do you want to head to checkout?’) can take them to a checkout and encourage them to fulfil the purchase.
>See also: Building a business website: what key steps are involved?
#4 – Incentivise
This is a simple trope that, at low cost to you, can increase your website sales and turn would-be customers into repeat ones. These can be as simple as free delivery or discounts when spending a certain amount – anything to help your customer secure a discount, while encouraging them to spend more, will benefit both parties.
#5 – Utilise gift codes and vouchers
If you haven’t already, teaming up with a publisher to offer consumers gift codes and money-off vouchers can be an incredibly effective way to not only encourage people to visit your site, but also make a purchase.
Ensure that any publicly accessible voucher codes for your site are actually valid. There can be a huge drop in customer conversion and loyalty when they’re void. Explore the different discounts you have on offer. For example, larger discounts may lead to higher conversion rates, whereas smaller ones may result in higher average order values, so have a play around to find the sweet spot.
#6 – Prevent abandoned baskets
Barclaycard has said that abandoned baskets could be losing retailers more than £18bn per year in potential sales, so this is an an obvious issue which needs to be tackled.
In theory, it may seem difficult to recover abandoned baskets, when the customer will likely have already left the site, but this is where email engagement comes into play. A highly personalised, friendly reminder can remind customers that they have abandoned their basket, and a follow up email with an offer (such as 10 per cent off your basket) can really help to reduce those abandonment rates.
#7 – Keep customers coming back
So, you’ve turned a visitor into a customer, but how do you keep them coming back? A large part of this will be in the experience of their journey which, if personalised to the right extent, will likely encourage them to return.
There are other ways to incentivise customers to come back however, such as offering them a discount or free shipping on their second purchase, making a return trip more appealing. Email engagement can also come into play here as well. First, shoppers like to feel special, so any personalised message from a retailer they have previously engaged with is likely to go down well. Second, if you know a customer’s buying pattern from their purchase history (for example, if they usually buy things at the end of the month), you can send them a gentle email reminder around this time, to help to draw them back in.
Boosting website sales is all about retaining a customer on your site long enough for them to make a purchase, and ensuring that you convert them from a visitor to a buyer. The overarching piece of advice in this article – and something that we strongly abide by at Smarter Click – is that personalisation is key. Know your audience, tailor their purchasing journey, and you’re already halfway to boosting your sales.
Ennis Al-Saiegh is CEO of conversion rate specialists Smarter Click
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