6 Tips to Increase Your eCommerce Sales

Key Takeaways

did you know 287 of all sales happened on the internet during coving did you know that 941 percent of teenagers aged 25 to 32 have never even seen a high street did you know that by 2023 there will be more voice product search on the earth than water if you want to increase your ecommerce sales then stay tuned because in this video i'm going to share six digital marketing tips to help you do exactly that and by the way these things work whether you're b to b b to c doesn't really matter what you sell to whom all of these things are based on making people do things on a website which is exactly what you're all about right so let's go before we get started there's actually only three different types of thing that you can do to increase e-commerce sales firstly you can increase your conversion rate i.e turning more of your website visitors into buyers the second thing that you can do is to drive more traffic to your ecommerce store the third thing that you can do is do both of them since you're on the expose ninja page and you're obviously an absolute savage we're gonna focus on number three so that is doing both increasing your conversion rate and generating more traffic and my six tips are going to combine both of these throughout we're going to share some real examples and even some behind the scenes to illustrate each point let's go the first tip is to actually employ lead capture on your website so you might be thinking well i want to sell products why do i want to collect people's email addresses on my e-commerce site isn't that just going to distract them from what i actually want them to do here's the thing not everyone is going to buy from your website the first time they land on the page even if you've got a really well optimized ecommerce site you might be converting between five and fifteen percent of your visitors into sales depending on how much repeat business you're getting but that means between 85 and 95 percent of your visitors are just coming onto your site and they're leaving they're not converting so adding a lead capture element can be great at taking a shot at those people next time so here's how it might work now if we go on a site like look fantastic which is part of the heart group which we also have a very in-depth video on pizza a pizza hut kentucky fried chicken and a pizza then you'll notice as soon as we get onto the site it says sign up today and enjoy 20 off your first order plus exclusive brand launches early access to sales exclusive offers a week ago this pop-up said newsletter and my first tip was going to be don't call it a newsletter it's great to see they're no longer calling it a newsletter so there's lots of really good stuff here sign up today and enjoy 20 off your first order is a really strong incentive to get you to make that first purchase now 20 of your first order you might be thinking that's equivalent to my profit margin why would i ever want to do that well if you're selling something that's a repeat purchase like for example this site is selling beauty products which are obviously a repeat purchase they're happy to break even on the first sale because then they know they can get you over and over and over and over again likewise if you sell any kind of subscription offer and if you don't you should probably look at ways that you possibly could do this is a way of getting people over and over and over again so as long as you can afford to do it and you're not like a one-shot purchase then some kind of financial incentive to get people to sign up is a really good idea and by not calling a newsletter like they now don't you're actually removing the low perceived value that sash was signing up for a newsletter like who actually wants to sign up for a newsletter i mean actually had a sales call earlier on my phone and they said hey this is just a quick call to talk about life insurance have you got five minutes and i thought i mean sign me up for the newsletter while you're at it no way jose turns out she wasn't called jose but using a model like this can be a great way to build an email list which you can then run offers to it also allows you to send checkout abandonment emails to people if you can cookie them as you've got their email address comprende jose tip number b is to install a benefits bar on your site now benefits borrow is a bar that just sits underneath your menu which gives people a reason to buy from you or multiple reasons so you can see here on coggles which is another hot group property check out the hot group video if you're interested in more deconstruction about how this business has grown to be such a beomoth then you will see that we have these four different benefits listed in the benefits bar so usually it's a good idea to include something about delivery on your benefits bar typically if you're able to offer fast or free delivery you might also offer a purchase incentive for first orders this is designed to increase the conversion rate of that first order because the first order is very important you might also offer a discount against first orders because that first order is all important because that's when you buy the customer and you get a chance to get the repeat business now how you implement this on mobile is ideally you want to have it scrolling through so notice how corals have done here rather than having it stacked up in a big line or just making them really really small or just showing one if you can have it cycling through then it means people are more likely to see all of the benefits now the great thing about benefits bar is it sits on every single page of your website so whatever page people come through that you can immediately establish them with these are the reasons why people choose to buy from us which is a great thing to do and a lot of businesses really struggle with this because they get people coming in through product category pages or product pages where there might not be too much introduction to the business well this benefits barn is a good chance to give them three or four usps straight up front so they know great this is the place i'm gonna buy this product from step three is to offer a great product experience i'm not talking about good product experience i'm talking about great product experience so think about how people buy something when you go into a shop you pick it up you look around you make a decision to buy for some reason a lot of e-commerce businesses fall into the trap of thinking that that buying process is very different online and instead all people need to do is see one tiny low resolution picture of a product in order to be compelled to immediately part with their money and make the purchase not so actually we need more reassurance online because we can't pick it up we can't feel it so how do you get over this well let's not go any further than looking at the masters amazon amazon has taught the world how to buy through e-commerce and let's look at some of the reasons why amazon is so successful in this space if we have a look at amazon product page here is an excellent excellent book how to get to the top of google 2020 by explosion engine geez these guys are freaking awesome as good as this book is it's nowhere near as good as the amazon product page that it sits on first thing we get nice clear headline information about the manufacturer in this case the author we then get a product description and on amazon a lot of the product descriptions are actually written by the seller or the manufacturer if you've ever sold anything on amazon you know that a long product description helps to make sales people think who's going to read all that copy buyers do so have a look at most of the product descriptions on amazon and you'll notice that for top selling products they're usually pretty lengthy this one is no exception plenty of information about the book tells you exactly what's included then we've got other related products so what they're trying to do here is head against the possibility that you might not want this product unlikely and you instead might want one of these other products definitely not because what they don't want you to do is leave this page without converting we've then got more information and of course amazon's absolute goldmine the user generated reviews these are fantastic because not only do they include target keywords because people write about the things that they've bought but it's user-generated content it's really useful for conversion and increases the amount of time that people spend on the page so when you're thinking about your product page i'd also encourage you to think about what are the conversion blockers i.e what are the things that will stop people from buying if they don't get that question answered they just cannot make a purchase so for example often for fashion a conversion blocker will be the fit of an item so for example people are unlikely to buy a shirt if they can't actually see it on someone because they don't know what it's going to look like and if you can show them people with different body types so they can find someone that's similar to them great you'll notice a lot of the larger e-commerce fashion sites now actually show different models at different product sizes so you can see what it looks like on someone who's more likely to have a body shape like yours so you can see what the fit is more likely to be well this is really important in fashion because if they can't see what the fit is they might not buy it or you might be like asos you might have a 40 return rate because people are buying multiple items and then they'll try them on and see which one fits them best the more you can help people do that on your website the less you'll have to deal with those really annoying and expensive returns for some products a conversion blocker might be size so show the product in context we were reviewing a diamond ring site the other day and the diamond rings all just shown in isolation on a white background the trouble is you're not going to buy a diamond ring unless you can see what it might look like on a finger so you need to show it and without that you're really unlikely to get the sale for some e-commerce businesses one of their main conversion blockers between people buying their products and not will be functionality for example if you're selling a bag and you don't show people what's inside the bag what's the pockets how does it work it's going to be really difficult for them to justify buying that because they're taking a massive gamble and it's going to be a pain to have to send things back so give people the full experience let me show you an example of an e-commerce store that does a really good job of this anderson's music is a music shop and they sell a whole bunch of different products including drum kits now if you're going to buy a drum kit online fairly risky purchase usually you'd want to try it out you'd want to have a go with it so what they need to do is they need to bypass that objection because that could be a conversion blocker for people have a look at how they've done it so first thing they show lots of product images they show you the products at all different angles nice high resolution photos they're already trying to upsell me and i haven't even bought yet love it then we've got reviews we've got different ways to pay we've got benefit statements so rather than having a benefits bar they've actually got the benefits in their product page then we've got the description this is where the genius happens because loads of the products on anderton's have actually got individual unique videos recorded about them these are great product videos they show you the product in context they have people talking about how it works and demonstrating how it works so this replaces the need to go and try it for people so this is a really elegant way of getting through those conversion blockers and increasing the conversion rate of those all important product pages and my final recommendation under giving a great product experience is reviews who wants to be the first person to take a chance on a product if you've ever been on an amazon page and you've seen that it's got no reviews you're like nope why would it be any different for your site so if you've got products that don't have any reviews yet a couple of things you can do to get around that firstly contact people who've bought the product and ask them to review it if you've had no one buy the product yet then it's up to you to leave a review and i'm not talking about going in there and using a fake name mr smith gave it five stars mrs smith gave it five stars no i'm talking about making a video explaining what the good and the bad features are about the product being completely honest showing who it's good for and who might want to choose an alternative by giving this kind of honest feedback we can actually start to build trust with the customer but also bypass their need for third-party reviews because they're like well this business is being so honest with me about the good and the bad parts of this product that i still feel like i can trust them go and watch the anderton videos and see how they do it tips four five and six are all about traffic so tip four is it's a really good idea to have at least one profitable paid ad channel for e-commerce brands that have built all of their visibility on organic channels like seo or social media now it can feel a bit scary and maybe undesirable to start bringing in paid advertising but here's the thing having at least one paid traffic source that you can focus on particular product categories or even particular products that you need to sell more of not only allows you to level out the inevitable fluctuations that happen with organic traffic but it also insulates you against the effects of any possible negative impacts from algorithms which unfortunately can be a thing whether you're focusing on seo or social media but not all paid ad campaigns are created equally have a look at this google shopping campaign that we've been running for a client and notice how over these eight months we've been able to increase the number of conversions that comes through the website that's the red line whilst decreasing the cost per conversion so they're spending less per sale but they're generating much much more sales than they were when we first started and you can see how in this high ticket b2b e-commerce space we've gone from 38 sales a month to over 250 sales a month whilst decreasing the amount that they have to spend on ads for each sale likewise with this google text ad campaign for another e-commerce business similar sort of thing the key is persistence and relentless management this is about making sure that you're constantly going in and optimizing your ad campaigns not just setting them and forgetting them because let me tell you if you think that spacex developing a super rocket which can carry a fully loaded jumbo jet as cargo is expensive then you want to try running a set and forget google ad campaign without optimization within six months you'll be living on the streets within 12 months your country's currency will be so devalued you'll have to take your cash to the shops in a spacex super rocket villagers will be washed away by your tears in other words if you don't have time to manage your ad campaigns get a pro tip 5 is organic traffic now in particular i'm talking about organic search traffic now i know i've just said that paid traffic is important but tip five is actually to focus on organic search traffic now here's the thing yes you want paid traffic to your site but if you only grow your business through paid traffic you're always going to be paying for every user that you get whereas if you can get your website ranked prominently for people that are actually searching for the products that you sell bingo that is the most qualified traffic and of course every visitor is free so if you said to me what sort of website visitors can you have you could have anyone i would say get me to the top of google i want to be found by the people who are searching for exactly what it is that i sell now as an e-commerce store you've got two ways of ranking you have commercial pages and you have informational pages so your commercial pages are like your product and your category pages which are more likely to rank for phrases that google decides have commercial intent so for example if you're trying to rank for red size 6 nike shoes then that's likely to be a product page or a category page that's going to show up then you've got the content pages on your site so things like blogs and knowledge bases and these are great for people that are maybe further up the funnel they haven't yet decided that they want to buy they're still in the curiosity and research phases now here's a site that we've been working on for over five years notice how organic search has helped them sell 35 million dollars worth of product boom whitley they're not viral on tick tock yet here's the thing organic search takes time tip number last is all about using influences now just like swinging influences aren't right for everyone but if your business can use influencers then it's an experience that you probably want to give a go at least once now possibly the greatest example of an influencer marketing led e-commerce store is jim sharks my name's tim cameron kitchen and i'm head ninja at a digital marketing agency called explosion ninja now we love reverse engineering i'm going to show you the marketing that's helped gymshark to go from zero to over 150 million pounds in revenue one of the world's most competitive apparel markets sportswear this is one of the greatest business growth stories of our generation we're going to look at how their website has evolved over time we're going to take a look at their social media we're going to take a look at seo and we're going to put it all together into some lessons that you can learn if you're looking to tap into some of that ridiculous growth for your business [Music] we've done a much more in-depth video on the backstory in the digital marketing success of gymshark which looks into that influencer marketing strategy but here's the thing about gymshark to say that influencer marketing is important to jim shark is like saying that snow is important to skiing right influencer marketing has built gymshark if you have a look for example on their youtube channel you will notice that all of their most popular videos feature influencers prominently here we have all of their most popular videos in order of the number of views and you'll see that it's all influencer led as soon as they stop talking about influencers people are much less interested pretty much all their instagram is influencers as well now here's the fundamental reason that influencers are such a powerful marketing tool for e-commerce businesses all of us spend 165 of our lives on social media scrolling through instagram and when we are scrolling through instagrams 27 hours a day what we're really looking for is we're looking for people we connect most with people yes we might follow some brands but typically the strongest connections that we have on social are with people and the most influence is built from someone showing us into their lives and us having a connection with them this is why influencers are so powerful and this is why brands like to tap into influencers so it's one of the reasons why we tend to recommend influencer marketing for relevant e-commerce businesses that are clients of ours now what are my top tips for influencer marketing well first up actually don't go for the biggest influences that you can possibly find actually what tends to work best is people that you have a really strong relationship with as a brand and people that will give you more for example if you notice gymshark throughout the years they've worked with influencers that actually they helped to promote they helped build these people up and they gave them their own clothing range and they worked on collaborations because these people were you know a similar sort of level they didn't go for the biggest people in the world they didn't go for huge well-known mega star athletes they weren't for people that had a really solid influence with their audience and were at the sort of level where actually jim sharp could pull a bit of favors and get these people to do collaborations and to come to the pop-up stores and feature with them much more prominently so those are six tips to increase your e-commerce sales i hope you found at least one of them semi-useful theoretically and if you enjoyed this video for any reason even if it's just the fact that it is now over i would encourage you to subscribe to the youtube channel because we do more of these and also click like and leave us a comment what's your favorite tip i have to be honest the reason we're asking for comments is because it boosts youtube engagement and we think it improves the algorithmic visibility of these videos so just leave us a comment saying anything please and in return we will not stop making these videos and don't forget if you need some help with your digital marketing if you're watching this thinking i really want to grow my ecommerce store well guess what we can help you free of charge because what we do at exposure ninja is we do free website and marketing reviews after you're thinking i've had one of these free reviews from like neil patel or whatever it just gives me a whole load of red crosses and tells me i'm a complete failure in life what's the point of another one hahaha not so fast the free website and marketing reviews that explosion ninja does what happens is we ask you a few questions about your business your marketing and your goals one of our team will then record you a 15 minute video like actually a video they'll show you on the screen how to improve the conversion rate of your website and also how to drive more traffic to it they'll then send this to you completely free of charge so that you can either implement the suggestions or if you really want then you can ask us for help this is how we get clients this is how we've built a business this is how we've got 100 people there's no obligation to use our service although i have to warn you that 295 percent of review recipients do have you noticed the theme with the stats in this video you can get it from exposureninja.com the day you get your marketing review will possibly be the best day of your life uh maybe aside from you know the standard generic stuff like getting married and having babies and stuff like that anyway this has gone on long enough hope you've enjoyed it see you soon