Consumer behavior and preferences should drive how you conduct business. In today’s highly connected and digital world, consumers aren’t stepping foot inside of brick and mortar stores as often. Instead, they’re seeking out businesses that sell the products they want in the online world.
Online shopping has boomed in the last few years. An article published by NPR found that 25% of American adults purchase an item online at least once a month. By 2021, global e-retail sales are projected to reach 4.8 trillion dollars.
With online sales only expected to continue to increase, there’s no better time than now to start working towards boosting your online business’ sales. Here are effective ways to increase leads and conversions so that you can improve your bottom line.
Streamline the Buying Process
A streamlined buying process is crucial for an online business. There’s nothing worse than a checkout page that’s distracting or difficult to use. For example, you don’t want to force users to make an account before they’re able to checkout. This is one of the leading causes of cart abandonment.
You also don’t want a checkout page to have all sorts of ads or graphics. The fewer distractions, the better, as this allows the buyer to focus only on completing their purchase. It’s also important to keep forms as short as possible. A checkout form should have no more than 10 form fields.
Another way to streamline the buying process is to invest in ePOS systems for payments on the go. This allows you to process transactions from anywhere, including at a pop-up shop or a local community event.
Nurture Your Website
Instead of looking at your website as a one and done deal, consider it a plant that needs to be nurtured. A website that was created years ago isn’t likely to meet the needs and demands of today’s consumer.
The user experience that your website provides is critical for driving sales. A successful website should have well-designed forms, an easy to understand page layout, and should be designed for mobile responsiveness.
Other factors that impact a user’s experience include content length, call-to-action placement, and navigation. In order for your website to more easily allow consumers to make a purchase, make sure that your checkout pages are simplistic.
Routinely updating your website with new content is also critical. This includes blogs, FAQs, product descriptions, and even video content! Search engine optimized content helps to improve your search engine page result placement. The higher up you are, the more likely a consumer is to click your website, which means an increased chance of making a sale.
Know Your Target Audience
One of the best ways to boost your online business’ sales is to really get to know your target audience. Making more sales comes naturally when you’re providing exactly what your target market wants and needs.
To begin, create a few buyer personas. This involves creating personas that identify a set target audience. A buyer persona should include factors such as:
- Likes and dislikes
- Income
- Demographics
- Life events
- Age
The more you know about your target audience, the better. Knowing detailed information about your consumers means that you can better shape your marketing and advertisement campaigns. For instance, you’d likely have a very different campaign to attract a single mother persona than you would a fresh out of college persona.
By knowing who your target audience is, you can provide more customized products as well. Understanding each persona’s pain points allows you to create a product or service that solves them!
Build Trusting Relationships
Trust is the backbone of any successful company. Customers should trust your product, your customer service, and your word. Trust is huge, but it has even more consequences when it’s broken. Just look at how consumers react after a data breach, or after your product doesn’t meet their expectations.
When trust is broken, consumers show it. They write bad reviews on social media. They don’t recommend your business to their friends and family members. And worst of all, they stop buying from your business.
Building trusting relationships with your consumers is a must, especially if you want to maintain sales numbers with the hopes of increasing them. In building trust, there are many things you can do.
Keep your word. Offer product or service guarantees. Be transparent. Respond to customer concerns and questions. And most importantly, admit to your mistakes! No business is perfect.
When customers trust your brand, they’re more likely to continue to do business with you. Trust (and honesty) is the best policy!
Conclusion
There are all sorts of actions your business can take in order to boost online sales. From better defining buyer personas to pushing new content to the website on a weekly basis, the options for increasing sales numbers are endless.