Generating consistent sales is the key to success with any ecommerce or Shopify store. Without sales, no business can thrive or survive, let alone grow or flourish. Unfortunately, for someone with limited marketing and advertising experience, creating that steady flow of sales is a lot easier said than done, particularly if you’re working on a shoestring budget. Whether it’s improving your conversion rates or implementing paid advertising techniques, it can be difficult to know where to start.
Thankfully, in this comprehensive guide, I’m going to reveal the 9 very best and most effective ways to quickly boost your Shopify or ecommerce sales, based on my 6+ years of experience with running a successful online store. Essentially my top picks after countless hours of researching, trying and testing, the following techniques are simplistic, proven and almost guaranteed to produce results.
1) Offer Faster Shipping
With an estimated 67% of online shoppers willing to pay extra for faster shipping, offering such an upgrade is essential for maximizing your sales and getting that edge over the competition. From one-day delivery to scheduled or tracked delivery, make sure you offer as many viable shipping options as possible.
The more flexible you are with your shipping policy, the more sales you will attract. While it requires more effort, time and commitment to dispatch orders faster, offering premium or express shipping can actually lead to more overall profits, particularly once you learn how to reduce your shipping costs.
2) Extend Your Returns Policy
Aside from price and delivery speed, your returns policy will also influence your buyers’ purchase decision. Unfortunately, most novice ecommerce sellers opt to offer the basic minimum of 14 days based on standard consumer laws. In fact, newbie eBay sellers are prone to creating a 14 day policy which never looks good in the eyes of buyers.
However, offering a 30 or 45 days return window will give your customer more confidence in your service and significantly increase the likelihood of them placing a real order. In fact, according to a TrueShip study, 60% of customers review a returns policy before making a decision to buy. If you offer only the absolute minimum, it’s unlikely to aid in closing the sale.
3) Provide More Payment Options
Whether it’s PayPal, Apple Pay or a standard credit card, customers like to stick with what they know. Therefore, you should enable as many payment options as possible on your online store, providing ample choice for the customer at the checkout.
The last thing you want is to miss out on a sale because you don’t offer a specific payment method. Luckily, most modern online store builders such as WooCommerce and Shopify seamless integration with most popular payment gateways. To create recurring sales and boost revenues, consider using a Shopify subscription app which enables customers to purchase your products on a recurring basis.
4) Create an Affiliate Program
Creating an affiliate program is an almost guaranteed way to increase your Shopify or ecommerce sales. Essentially a rewards system in which you compensate promoters for driving visitors to your store, affiliate marketing is an ancient and proven concept which is even used by some of the largest retailers in the world including eBay and Amazon.
Whether you sell on Shopify, WooCommerce or BigCommerce, most moden online store builders have low-cost plugins or extensions which allow you to create an affiliate program. Alternatively, using one of the many affiliate networks such as Shareasale or CJ Affiliate to create a rewards system, as well as streamline order tracking and payouts is another option.
5) Harness Dropshipping
What better way to increase sales than by offering more products to your customers? Dropshipping, also known as product sourcing, is an extremely lucrative ecommerce fulfilment method in which products are purchased directly from wholesalers or manufacturers, and then shipped straight to consumers. You don’t need a warehouse and you don’t need to deal with couriers every other day.
By finding a dropshipping supplier, you can instantly and rapidly expand your product range, without spending a single extra penny on stock or storage space. The supplier handles everything from picking and packaging to shipping, allowing you to focus on generating those all-important sales. You also won’t need to worry about returns, packaging or courier costs.
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6) Sell on Multiple Channels
From eBay and Amazon to Etsy and ebid, the more channels you sell on, the more sales you will generate. While it takes a lot of time and effort to manually create listings on each platform individually, innovative multi-channel selling software such as Codisto or Sellbrite will allow you to quickly push your existing listings to eBay, Amazon and other popular marketplaces in just a few clicks of the mouse, regardless of whether your store is powered by WooCommerce, Shopify, BigCommerce or other popular providers.
Furthermore, the software will automatically sync all of your listings across the multiple platforms, allowing you to manage and make changes to titles, prices and descriptions from one central location. You’ll also be able to manage sales, returns and customer enquiries from within the software or through your one primary sales platform of choice.
7) Learn SEO
SEO or search engine optimization is an extremely powerful way to drive free traffic to your online store. While it takes a significant amount of time and effort to learn and implement SEO, the results can be extremely rewarding, particularly in the long-term considering Google processes an estimated 5.8 billion searches every single day.
By simply learning how to optimize your product listings for specific keywords, you’re immediately increasing your chances of being found by customers searching for products on Google, allowing for a consistent and ongoing stream of free organic traffic. Following a comprehensive SEO guide tailored towards ecommerce will point you in the right direction.
8) Try Paid Advertising
While ecommerce newbies tend to shy away from paid advertising methods, it’s the single most effective way to instantly boost your sales. Whether it’s Facebook Ads, Google Ads or even Bing Ads, there are several ways to rapidly get your products in front of credit card ready buyers.
One of the most useful places for learning the most up-to-date and effective paid advertising strategies for ecommerce is YouTube. It’s crammed full of lengthy tutorials which cover everything from creating your first campaign to optimising or tweaking your ads to improve your ROI, performance or conversion rates.
9) Create a Facebook Shop
With literally billions of monthly users, Facebook is one of the most visited websites in the world. It’s also an extremely popular platform for marketing or advertising a business having generated an estimated $29 billion in 2019 ad revenues alone. Facebook is also still growing at an extremely fast rate, bringing in billions of new users each year.
Particularly effective for advertising an ecommerce business, Facebook recently introduced a new feature which allows users to create their own Facebook Shop. Designed to be direct competition for marketplaces such as eBay and Amazon, Facebook Shops are expected to be a gamechanger in the ecommerce industry, allowing for the direct purchase of products through the social media giant. While ecommerce businesses previously used Facebook pages to advertise their products, Facebook shops are expected to take over in the future.
Final Takeaway
From simple tweaks such as offering faster shipping options to creating an affiliate program or harnessing dropshipping, these are my top 9 most effective ways to quickly boost your ecommerce sales. However, you should always keep coming up with new ideas, thinking outside of the box and experimenting with other techniques to find that winning strategy which works best for you and your business..
Whether it’s a viral social media post or getting featured in a local newspaper, there’s countless ways to significantly increase your sales. How quickly you can boost them will depend on your marketing budget, knowledge and overall strategy. Stick at it, work hard and it won’t be long before those sales start to roll in.
