in our world, everyone wants good results. we want to clean the house faster, we want the food prepared water, we want to communicate with people instantly, and we often get impatient when it takes longer than six seconds for a website to lead. the same we can see for those who want to increase the number of sales from their website.
we found that as whit most digital marketing methods, it can often take some time to see instant results, however, you can implement these 13 proven ways to increase sales on your website today and simply sit back and watch the sales come.
1- keep your home page simple.
This may be surprising to some of you, as many people assume you’re better off offering as many products as possible on your homepage to give your visitors a range of options. Entrepreneur, however, suggests that offering fewer products on your page with more text describing a specific topic will actually increase overall sales. This works because it allows your company to focus on one or two specific products and answer any possible questions visitors may have.
One great example of a simple, yet effective home page comes from Electronic Arts. Though they offer thousands of gaming titles, you’ll often only find a few recent titles mentioned on their home page. Also, take note that above their fold, they often only present only a couple of calls to action.
2-add videos to your key conversion pages.
Mashable claims that adding videos to some of your top landing pages can result in an increase in conversions averaging 86 percent! Our brains process visual information about 60,000 times faster than text, which means that any visitors to your site absorb information in videos better than they would by reading text. Learning about your product or service will be much more effective through video than text.
A great example of adding a video to your home page can be found at Ditto Residential. Not only is their home page very appealing, but their large, high-resolution video is sure to draw in any visitor.
Email marketing is still a very viable method of digital marketing and produces one of the top ROI across all marketing methods. However, you can’t do any email marketing without email addresses, right? By creating methods to capture a visitor’s email address, you create an opportunity to invite them back to your website through email marketing campaigns.
4-be honest on your sales page.
This might seem painfully obvious, but it’s amazing to me how many sites write checks their products can’t cash. Not only is honesty in your copy crucial to your business's reputation, but it also fosters and encourages trust in your brand. Don’t make claims you can’t substantiate, and don’t use hyperbole lightly – today’s consumers are hypersensitive to marketing BS, so be honest, straightforward, and approachable in all your sales copy, from your homepage to your email campaigns.
This PETA ad was pulled from billboards in the U.K. by the Advertising Standards Authority in 2013 for making unsubstantiated claims.
This principle also applies to how you position yourself as a business. Ever come across a site that’s obviously run by one or two people, but features copy that would be better suited to a multinational enterprise company? This approach not only makes you look foolish but also damages your brand’s credibility. If you’re a small company, take pride in that and be upfront about it – many consumers are turning to smaller businesses precisely because of the more individualized, personal service they can offer. Don’t try to be something you’re not.
5-show customers trust signals.
In today’s social media environment, customer feedback has never been more important. Fortunately, this means that your satisfied customers can provide you with one of the most valuable weapons in your arsenal – testimonials.
Legions of satisfied customers are considerably more influential than even the best-written sales copy, so make sure you include gushing testimonials and reviews from your hardcore brand evangelists gushing about how wonderful you are. These might appear on your product pages, landing pages, pricing pages, even your home page. For more info, check out my post on the power of customer testimonials.
Similarly, the inclusion of trust signals can be an excellent way to increase online sales, as it creates a more favorable perception of your brand in the mind of the prospect and can potentially overcome hesitations preemptively. If your business has any professional accreditations (even something as routine as a Better Business Bureau certification or membership to your local chamber of commerce), put these trust signals front and center on your site. If you have an impressive list of satisfied clients, make sure your prospects know about it.
6-offer fewer choices.
To many businesses, this concept is simply unthinkable. Surely offering more products is a great way to increase sales! Well, not necessarily. In fact, in many instances, a greater variety of choices can lead to indecision on the part of the prospect, which in turn results in lost sales.
If you have a wide range of products, consider structuring your site or product pages in a way that offers visitors as few choices as possible. This reduces the possibility that the visitor will be overwhelmed by dozens of different products. This can be accomplished by arranging your products into increasingly narrow categories (an added bonus of which is offering visitors greater ease to find exactly what they’re looking for), or you could place greater emphasis on fewer individual products. Either way, remember that the more choices you provide, the more likely a customer is to bounce and go elsewhere.
7-answer every question and address every objection in your copy.
One of the most dangerous pitfalls you can fall into when trying to sell online is making assumptions about your prospective customers’ knowledge of your product, service, or even market. Many companies mistakenly believe their customers know more about what they’re selling than they actually do, which results in unanswered questions or objections that are failed to be addressed – both of which can harm sales. Consider every question you can possibly think of about your product, and answer it in your copy on your product pages. Similarly, think about every potential objection a prospect might have about your offering and preemptively overcome it in your copy. This might seem impractical, but remember, you’re not bombarding prospects with unnecessary information – you’re giving them exactly what they need to make an informed decision. This approach is also an excellent exercise in writing tight, clear, concise copy. If you’re worried there’s too much copy, you can always trim it down. Just keep the focus on the customer and how it benefits them, not why your company is so awesome.
8-implement tiered pricing.
When you go to a restaurant, the chances are pretty good that you’ll invariably choose one of the mid-priced dishes. This is because many restaurants manipulate psychology to push people toward mid-range meals. We’ll often avoid the cheapest dishes – and the most expensive – making the middle-tier options the most appealing. This is a technique known as “decoy pricing.” The same principle can be leveraged to increase sales online with tiered pricing structures.
By including a third “decoy” option in your pricing structure, you can push people toward the middle option – the one you really want them to buy. Sure, some people will go for the most expensive option anyway (which is a bonus, revenue-wise), but most will subconsciously avoid the decoy and choose the middle-tier option, which is precisely what you want them to do.
Many companies leverage this psychological principle (also known as the “asymmetric dominance effect”) to make us buy what they want. To learn more about decoy pricing, check out this post by Neil Patel at MarketingLand.
9-reach out to bloggers and the press.
It’s hard to grow a business and market it alone. When it comes to selling online, the more connections you have the better—especially if they’re connections with an engaged audience of their own. Having connections who will talk up your product is essential to driving traffic to your site and increasing sales. This is where blogger outreach comes in.
Blogger outreach is about more than making friends online. It’s a process to help you achieve measurable success in your business. Even if you don’t have a lot of contacts online you can still reach out to people. The key to successful blogger outreach is to offer value and tell bloggers exactly what’s in it for them. Even if they are a good-natured individual, asking for help rarely will work, as people are busy and have a million things of their own to do.
Here are some blogger outreach ideas to help you generate traffic:
- Guest post on other blogs. While growing your own audience, guest posting gives you a way to get in front of someone else’s. Link back to your site where relevant, even if it’s only in the author bio.
- Do an expert roundup. Seek out experts on a topic and ask them to contribute an idea, such as a tip, recipe, or story, to your blog post. Then, publish a list of all the responses you get back. Let them know when you publish your insight and they’re likely to share it with their audience.
- Solicit product reviews. Contact bloggers with relevant engaged audiences and offer to send them your product for free in exchange for an honest review. If you have a great product, they’ll love it and tell everyone.
- Find affiliates to promote your business. Incentivize other people to drive traffic to your business by using an affiliate program and offering a commission on every sale.
- Get included in gift guides. The right gift guides can increase sales and traffic to your website. However, inclusion in these guides does not happen randomly and requires some effort, as there is strong competition to get your product listed.
- Ask Instagram influencers to promote your product. The same techniques for reaching out to bloggers still apply when contacting Instagram influencers. Getting the right mention or stylish photo can drive traffic or sales to your store.
- Get press coverage. If you have a great story or an interesting product that people will want to write about, put it out there! Get in touch with bloggers and journalists who cover businesses like yours and tell them what you’re up to.
You don’t have to target the biggest and most successful people. You have a better chance of getting featured by influencers with a smaller audience because they’re not constantly swarmed with requests. Keep in mind that the loyalty of the audience matters almost as much as its size.
10-Put What's Popular in the Spotlight.
If you provide software or another kind of service that has multiple pricing packages, highlight the most popular one. In terms of design, this could include using a different color or increased column size for the most popular option to make it stand out from the rest in a pricing chart. Banners and other callouts could also be used throughout your site’s design to draw attention to the plan on multiple fronts. And, of course, you can always include an easy-to-navigate bestsellers page or category for your most popular products.
11-optimize your website for mobile.
In a highly connected world like ours, customers can visit your online store and make purchases whenever they want. That’s why it’s extremely important to make sure that your site is optimized for mobile, as well as desktops and tablets if you want to increase online sales.
To ensure your site is totally mobile user-friendly:
- Simplify your checkout process.
- Include plenty of mobile payment options like Google Wallet and ApplePay.
- Decrease page load times.
- Make navigation as simple and intuitive as possible.
- Ensure that users can easily return to their carts, even if they do so on a different device.
Remember that mobile users often don’t convert in a single session — they may come back to your site multiple times across different devices before actually making a purchase (which is why remarketing campaigns can be so helpful for generating complete conversions). Make it as simple as possible for them to come and go without losing track of their items or forgetting how to get needed information on your site.
12-install livechat.
Live chat tools are a fantastic way to generate e-commerce sales, but they can also be used to address any questions visitors to your site may have. They’re also more likely to be used than a contact form because they generate an immediate response. Almost every type of business website can benefit from this tool, even those who don’t do sales through their site. For a double bonus, you can also use this live chat tool to gather email addresses.
A great example of live chat done well comes from SnapEngage. Not only do they have chat available directly on the site, but you’ll also receive a chat notification whenever you enter a page with a 404 error.
13-address objections.
One great way to improve the quality of your website is to address any objections or questions that may not be directly answered through the content already available. As suggested by the Harvard Business Review, it’s more important to focus on keeping up with your customers, not your competitors.
Take the time to go through your site and make a list of any hesitations you believe visitors may have based on the information already available. Critically evaluate your site in this step—don’t just assume that the visitor will be able to find the answers. You want to ensure everything is easily accessible. Once you’ve done this, provide a solution to the problems you uncovered. Not only will this increase conversions across your site, but it will also make it more user-friendly.
-finally.
now you have the best 13 ways to increase the sales on your website so you can implement it and it gonna work for you.