There is no such thing as too many sales for a retailer — well, for as long as you have enough goods stocked. That’s why all owners of e-commerce businesses never get tired of finding out new ways to increase traffic and the number of leads.
We’ve gathered the most effective techniques that will help you figure out the right strategy for your e-commerce site and get closer to your desired goals. But before you jump to studying the methods, we want to remind you about one important thing. You need three things for your e-commerce site to be successful:
- A hosting that can handle the load — otherwise, you will lose buyers due to downtimes.
- An SSL certificate to keep your customers safe — no one will buy from an unprotected website.
- A technically polished website — slow pages and errors make visitors leave the site.
Once you have these requirements checked, you can move to the promotion of your products.
Master social media
Social media platforms are now one of the primary sources of leads for e-commerce businesses. People spend a lot of time scrolling their feeds and talking to friends on social media, so it’s only logical for retailers to use it for their benefit.
There are quite many things you can do on social media to build your audience and generate leads. We can generalize these activities to divide them into two sections: actions for selling products, and actions for increasing brand awareness and gaining trust.
How to improve the image of your brand on social media platforms?
Why do you need that at all? Because today it’s not enough for people to see an ad of a product to buy it. They want to know who created it and who is the seller. Partly, they want to know it because of ethical reasons — more and more buyers won’t support the brand that tests its products on animals or expresses some unpopular opinions, for example.
But also, the audience wants to know more about the retailer because they’re buying items online — and it’s not the same as buying things in a land-based shop. You can’t touch it, check it out before buying. And the lack of a physical store creates a sense of insecurity — you can’t just come back to the shop and demand a refund or replace it if the product is low-quality.
That’s why e-commerce businesses actively use social media to improve their images and gain the trust of their target audiences. You can make your brand more trustworthy and recognizable by:
- Telling more about your business. Don’t hesitate to tell interesting facts about your journey — how and why you created the brand, which issues you’d faced. This will help you to show your audience the human side of your business, and that’s exactly what attracts customers today.
- Telling more about your products. If you’re selling something you create by yourself, tell your audience about the process. This will let them see what they’re paying for. Also, they will trust you more as you don’t hide the backstage from them. And if you’re just selling products of other brands — tell the audience about the items and maybe share some tips on how to use the products you’re selling.
- Interacting with the audience. The brand that answers to comments on social media and engages in conversations with the audience is extremely appealing for buyers. Such activity makes them see that the business is ready to step in if something goes wrong and help a customer to solve the issue.
- Publishing customer reviews and user-generated content. Real reviews written by buyers are priceless — they help other potential clients to make the decision. User-generated content is also very valuable as it increases the engagement of the audience and shows potential buyers that your clients are satisfied with their purchases. You could post photos of products your customers share with you and other kinds of content — just remember to make sure the person doesn’t mind you sharing their photos, texts, and videos.
How to sell products on social media?
Actually, if you perform the actions we’ve discussed above, you’ll quite likely increase your sales without additional promotion. However, you still want to:
- Create posts about specific items. You could tell your audience about the qualities of a particular product and give some advice on how to use it properly.
- Create ad campaigns. Use photos and videos to advertise your products and capture leads.
- Use built-in marketplaces. For example, Facebook and Instagram allow businesses to showcase products through the special feature that will lead the buyer to the page of the item on the website of a brand.
Collaborate with influencers
Influencers have strong voices and audiences that trust their opinion. So it will be quite easy to increase your sales by collaborating with bloggers.
Here are some guidelines that will help you get the most out of your collaboration:
- Don’t go for big influencers. Here you can study in detail the scale of influencers so to say. But if you don’t want to dive into nuances, just focus on micro-influencers (10.000 to 100.000 followers) and nano-influencers (less than 10.000 followers). Such bloggers usually have more loyal followers who genuinely trust the opinion of an influencer. Therefore, your chances to actually increase sales are higher. Also, smaller-scale bloggers are usually more eager to collaborate, and they create more interesting and engaging content for paid ads.
- Study the audience. Make sure that your brand and a blogger really share the same target audience, otherwise, the collaboration will not be efficient.
- Check how followers perceive an influencer. Sometimes a blogger has a lot of followers and seems to be very popular. But once you check the comments, you’ll see people mocking and hating this influencer. True, some people look for such questionable fame. Such a blogger is not what you’re looking for — collaborating with them you can harm the image of your business.
- Go the extra mile to create quality content. If an influencer struggles to create really good content for your brand, help them out. Don’t agree to just a post with a photo of your product and something like “buy this cool brand” in the caption. The ad should be useful and interesting for the target audience.
Create a sustainable email strategy
Emails are still a significant source of leads if all the contacts on your list have subscribed for your letters willingly, of course. Some e-commerce businesses buy databases with emails to use them for their campaigns, but that’s unethical and often not effective. Most of the letters sent to such email lists will go straight to spam because people don’t recognize the brand and won’t open the letter or worse — mark it as spam. It will harm your domain reputation.
Offer visitors to subscribe for emails as they come to your e-commerce site — ideally, you want to give them something in exchange. It can be a discount for the first order, for example. Then you can be sure that users in your email database are ready for your letters, and they will likely open and read them. Making sure that recipients consented to receive email is vital for building a solid community and a good brand image.
Also, create a good strategy. Don’t send letters too often, but also, don’t send them too infrequently. Try sending letters once a week and see how your audience reacts. Also, you can try sending emails that don’t promote your products directly — instead, share some useful tips related to the items you sell.
All the other details
Some things are essential if you want your e-commerce business to be successful:
- Make sure the website works properly. If visitors struggle trying to buy products, they will leave.
- Work on the search. Make it easy for users to find what they need on your site.
- Make the payment process smooth. Give buyers a choice of payment methods.
- Deliver as fast as you can. The quicker the buyer receives their purchase, the more satisfied they will be. Therefore, they will likely advise your brand to a friend.
- Packaging matters. It should protect the product from damage. But also, it’s pleasant if it looks nice. Make the buyer enjoy the unwrapping process — then they might share the experience on their social media accounts.
- Fix SEO issues. Work on the tech side of your site to make sure search engines will favor your business.
- Create a useful blog. Share articles with tips and other valuable information that will attract visitors.
- Discounts matter. Create special offers to drive your sales. You can connect them to some event — holidays or a new collection, for example. Or you can just offer discounts when you feel like it.
As you attract more traffic, you will need more resources for your e-commerce site. King Servers got you covered here — our VPS hostings are highly scalable, so you can expand and shrink your resources as you like. Feel free to contact us if you want to know more.
