The Ultimate Guide to Boosting Online Sales

Boosting online sales is an integral part of most contemporary businesses. Whether you’re part of a consulting firm or boosting sales online marketplace, the skills needed to boosting sales online are essential and important. From using technologies such as Fast Simon to increase shopping optimization and conversion rate to placing ads on social media, there are various different tips and tricks for boosting online sales. These tips are only the beginning; there is a lot more you can explore and research.

1. Learn to Use Reviews the Right Way

Reviews are a powerful tool for you to use. Great reviews help build trust. The customers are likely to have more faith in you because of the positive experiences of past customers. This builds rapport between the customer and you, which means they will be more likely to attract new customers. Customers’ reviews often express a degree of enthusiasm from your clients that your words cannot. These reviews communicate something personal, relevant, and helpful for new customers. This can decrease anxiety and hesitance for them. This is especially important for boosting sales online businesses because many potential customers are hesitant to trust these types of businesses without some sort of proof. Good reviews are the proof you need.

You can choose and pick reviews that suit your brand and display it on your home page, about section, contact info, payment options, or any place where it’s noticeable for newcomers. Make sure the review captures the positive aspects of your business effectively. A bland review is boring, so use reviews with energy, persuasion, and a friendly tone. The more relevant it is, the better. You should also take great care to ensure that your customers are given top-of-the-line customer service. This would ensure you do not get a bad online reputation.

 2. Give Convenient Choices

Several studies show that people prefer lesser, not more, choices. This might be shocking for some people, but there is a good reason behind this. Giving plenty of choices can overwhelm people. They don’t want to think and consider each and every option. This can lead to indecisiveness and frustration and, ultimately, loss of customers. Instead of sprawling out all options and giving your customer a burdensome task, you should divide options systematically. Categorize products or information according to the situation. For example, if you’re creating an educational website, you can divide courses by subject, and within each course, you can then have more specific and unique options. This ensures that the customer has fewer choices to make but still plenty of options. If you have a page where you sell computers, for instance, divide your page into categories that make it easier for clients to find the product types they have in mind. For instance, you can divide them according to their best features, such as “Gaming,” “High Performance,” “Great Value,” “Towers,” and “All-in-One.”

3. Honesty is the Best Policy

This popular saying is hardly ever taken seriously when it comes to business and boosting sales online sales. Clarity in policies, payment details, shipment, and check-in details, listening to complaints and criticism, and customer support is extremely important. While experimenting with several e-commerce trends to help boost your online business, honesty must always remain the key strategy. This builds your reputation and increases credibility. It also ensures the trust of customers, increases loyalty, and gives you an advantage over other people. Transparency is equally important. Your customers should know about you, your qualifications, company information, and background. Don’t present your business as something it’s not. Some customers can quickly recognize when something seems off with an boosting sales online business, and those who can’t would quickly leave negative feedback after dealing with your business. If you’re part of a small company, then don’t pretend to be a conglomerate. Acknowledge your true company size and make it your cannon of progress. Use it to your advantage by mentioning what sets you apart. This creates a brand identity, which customers use to differentiate you from others.

4. Look-alike Targeting

Knowing your target audience is the key to marketing your products appropriately. Make a profile of your target customer based on experience and predictions. You can then use tools for look-alike targeting that searches for customers that are similar to your target audience efficiently. Look-alike targeting helps you find people whose behavioral patterns are similar to your target audience. They use the same website for shopping, have similar preferences, are part of the same age group, and act the same.

This uses machine-learning algorithms to select the closest customer. It increases your audience reach, multiplies CTR by five times, increases the conversion rate, minimizes the costs for non-target visits, and is constantly being updated.

The characteristics of the source audience are age, interests, online behavior, location, etc. These are used to find more customers with the same characteristics on a larger scale. The ideal seed audience size varies depending on your platform. Facebook recommends 1,000 users as a database, whereas My Target says 2,000. According to NT technology, the recommended size is between 1000-10,000. Below 1,000 would be too small for an accurate characteristic similarity result, and over 10,000 would be broad and general. Therefore it’s difficult to target a specific group. Find the top 1% of users who share similarities with the source audience. This will give you a high chance of getting a potential customer. You can also use other percentages, but make sure they’re effective.

Update your database to continuously to get precise results. With each update, you will get more fine-tuned results. Try to use different databases for various tasks. The required characteristics are different for each step in the purchasing funnel, which means you need to create specialized, unique, and different databases. This will ensure that you’re not chasing behind the same cow.

5. Have Different Payment Options

More than 70% of the shoppers abandon their carts. This crisis is partially due to a limited number of payment options. Previously, people only used credit and debit cards, but as our world becomes more digital, new contenders have emerged. Digital wallets that are independent of credit cards, such as PayPal, are increasingly common. Young people overwhelmingly use digital wallets and in-app purchases, while older generations prefer cards. You should, therefore, use both digital wallets and credit cards.

This will appeal to a wider audience. As mentioned before, demographics play a huge role. Taking this into consideration is extremely important. However, we should remember that people are not confined to their demographics. Some young people still prefer cards, while some older folks are comfortable with digital wallets.

It also provides an easy check-out for customers. Multiple payment options mean that users will have a personalized ending. They will remember the easiness of purchase in comparison to other products, and the users might choose you again for this. Remember, this prevents cart abandonment effectively.

Various payment options also increase your brand perception. It shows planning, thought, handwork, effort, commitment, authenticity, and maturity. Customers can notice the difference between a well-organized, managed, active and considerate webpage versus one that does not. Your goal should be to increase perception and separate yourself from the rest.

6. Implement Tiered Pricing

Tiered pricing model is a model which uses different tiers. Each with unique price and characteristics. Restaurants use this model to sell us the option they want by placing the desired tier in the middle, along with two other options; cheaper and expensive. We subconsciously choose the middle option because we wish to avoid the cheaper and more expensive options. This is called decoy pricing.

This model can be implemented in an boosting sales online business too. For example, you can have three products tiered up. Choose the desired product and place it in the center. You can use this as a pop-up or a specific location that draws attention.

You can also use the framing effect, which states that people respond to a product in different ways, depending on how it is framed, either as a win or loss. If you put a mediocre painting in a bad frame, the painting will be seen negatively, but the same painting would be considered beautiful because of a nice frame. In other words, how a product is perceived depends on how we frame its value.

Tier pricing has some other benefits as well. Firstly, it is flexible. Even if we have a desired product, people can still choose any option. They have free will. Some people genuinely might be interested in a cheaper option as it would fit their needs, but this is still a successful sale.

Secondly, multiple options appeal to a wider audience. A college student, an employee, and an employer can all pick different options according to what suits them. This increases the conversion rates because of a wider audience.

Thirdly, it provides a better experience for customers. Multiple options (although limited) can increase satisfaction rates for customers because of the broad target base. You may use the tips mentioned above and develop a strategy that incorporates everything discussed in this guide. All tips are effective, but together, they are even better.