11 Proven Ways to Increase eCommerce Sales in 2023 (Guide)

Looking to take your eCommerce sales to the next level?

With eCommerce sales hitting the trillion-dollar mark in 2022 for the first time, there’s never been a more opportune moment to capitalize on this booming industry. If you’re an eCommerce entrepreneur looking to stand out and increase your revenue, you’re in the right place.

In this comprehensive guide, we’ve shared some actionable strategies that will not only help you convert more leads but also dramatically improve your cash flow.

Effective Strategies to Increase eCommerce Sales

Let’s get straight into this: How can you increase eCommerce sales quickly?

We’ve left out some long-term strategies and focused on the marketing strategies you can implement right now. None of them is a silver bullet, but they can make a big difference to your conversion rate.

Apply these strategies and make your eCommerce business grow.

1. Strive to Understand Your Target Audience

You run an online store, but do you know who your customers are?

You might think you do, but sometimes we get it wrong. One good way to find out is to ask them directly. Put a short survey on your website asking for feedback.

This way, you get real info straight from your customers.

Getting lots of people to visit your website is good, but it’s even better if they actually buy something. A hundred thousand random people visiting your website won’t help if they don’t buy.

This will save you time and make you more money.

Imagine you sell sportswear. To sell more, think like your customer. If you like sports, you already have an edge. You’ll know what, how, and when they want to buy. Use this info to make better ads and offers.

Remember that when you combine the qualitative data from your analytics, the quantitative data from your surveys, and your natural intuition, that’s when you come up with the best insights.

Learn from your website visitors and loyal customers to improve your service for them.

2. Create a Unique Selling Proposition

Your Unique Selling Proposition (USP) makes your business stand out in a market that is already very crowded.

AffiliateWP, for example, has made a name for itself by giving businesses and affiliate marketers an easy-to-use platform with many high-end features.

To make more money through eCommerce, you must find and promote your USP.

Don’t forget that you’re not the only one in your field. Your marketing plan must be built around what makes you different.

Determining what makes your product unique is like choosing a favorite child—you love all of its features. But your customer’s attention is short, and they need to understand what makes your goods special quickly.

Put aside your feelings and look at the pros and cons of your goods without bias. Using a SWOT analysis can help you learn more about your goods and where you stand in the market.

Here’s a simple way to make a strong USP:

• Do Market Research: To start, you should know a lot about your target group and your competitors. It’s just as important to know your competitors as it is to know your customers.
• Define Who You Want to Reach: You can fine-tune your plan by focusing on dividing your customers into groups. The better you can sell, the more exact you can be about who you want to reach.
• Analyze the Competition: Find out what your rivals’ USPs and value propositions are so you can set your own products and services apart.
• Craft a Persuasive Message: Make your USP as short as possible and back it up with testimonials or examples from the real world for maximum effect.
• Test and improve your USP: A USP isn’t a building, it’s a stepping stone. It should change based on what customers say and what the market is doing.

3. Focus on the Customer Experience

Even though it’s easy to focus on marketing strategies like SEO, social media campaigns, and email newsletters, don’t forget how important a great user experience is for your eCommerce business.

Poor user experience can’t be fixed by smart social media posts or tweaks to keywords. If your website doesn’t make it easy for people to buy things, sales will go down.

This means you should look at your eCommerce platform from the customer’s point of view on a regular basis.

Move around your own site, go through the checkout process, and look for any places of friction that need fixing.

In digital marketing, the need to make sales right away can sometimes make it hard to see how important user experience is. Try to make online shopping as easy as possible and make sure it works well on both desktop and mobile devices.

4. Keep Doing Your Landing Page Optimization

Your customers are busy people.

They’re constantly sifting through information and quickly assigning importance to it. When they land on your website, this process goes into overdrive.

People don’t want to waste their time on a website that doesn’t answer their questions or help them solve a problem.

This is illustrated by the fact that the average bounce rate (when someone leaves your website without interacting with the page) is 47% for eCommerce sites.

To overcome this, you’ve got to keep working on optimizing your landing pages.

When you bring your bounce rate down, it can expand your reach by a huge amount.

If you’re looking for a quick way to make an immediate difference to your landing page, then SeedProd is the best option.

It’s straightforward to use, and offers optimized landing pages that are designed to engage and convert your customers.

5. Utilize Social Proof

It’s human nature to want something other people have (we call it the fear of missing out (FOMO) in marketing, and it’s a great way to create a sense of urgency).

The best way to give people FOMO is by giving them proof that other people are buying your products and loving them.

With TurstPulse’s live sales notifications, you can start leveraging social proof in a matter of minutes, and it can increase your conversion rate by up to 15%.

Add in some beautiful social feeds from SmashBalloon to showcase customer testimonials and online reviews, and you give people a powerful reason to join the club and become your customer.

6. Giveaways and Competitions

If you want to increase eCommerce sales quickly, it’s hard to beat the viral nature of giveaways and competitions.

The key to this is reach, exposure, and brand image.

You might be giving away free products, but the buzz it creates can be incredible if you do it correctly.

So, what’s the best way to run a giveaway?

Well, if your website runs on WordPress, then RafflePress is the perfect option. It’s straightforward to set up and allows you to incentivize a wide range of actions. With built-in marketing and CRM integrations, it can bring in a huge number of leads for your eCommerce store.

Combine your giveaways with other marketing strategies, like coupon codes, to build excitement around your promotions.

7. Double Down on Your Email Marketing

The average return on investment for emails is 4,200%. They generate an incredible $42 for every $1 spent.

With those kinds of numbers, you can’t afford to neglect your email marketing.

Not only is it great for attracting new customers, but it’s also a brilliant way of engaging existing customers. When done well, it can turbocharge your upselling and cross-selling, opening up and expanding your revenue streams.

Just as crucial as the emails themselves is building your email list.

You need to be able to turn website visitors into email subscribers, and the best way to do this is with OptinMonster’s exit-intent pop-ups. This is one of the first steps in your sales funnel, so you need a dedicated solution to optimize this process.

The more you build out your list, the more you’ll be able to track your metrics and use a/b testing to understand what works and what doesn’t.

8. Make Use of Retargeting

Just because someone has left your website doesn’t mean they’re not a potential customer. It just means they need a little time or a little more convincing.

Using an abandon cart email series is an easy way for retailers to answer the questions people need answering before they make a purchase, but you can go further than this.

Retargeting people through Google Ads (normally display ads) and social media ads (Facebook ads are popular) is an incredibly effective eCommerce marketing tactic. Essentially it gives you another chance, and you can be extremely targeted with it.

The important thing to remember is that people aren’t always ready to make a purchase the first time they land on your site.

It takes time to decide, but you don’t want the customer to forget about you during this period.

Remarketing is a great way to keep your products in your customers’ minds and ensure they return to your store when they’re ready.

9. Remove Barriers to a Sale

It’s never your intention to make it difficult for people to buy your products, but sometimes, it just happens.

You add more and more elements to your product pages, try to collect a little more information in your forms, and before you know it, making a purchase becomes a time suck for your customers.

One of the reasons Amazon is so successful (among many) is that it makes it so easy to make a purchase. Once you’ve decided to buy a product you’re on the checkout page before you know it.

The more clicks people need to take to complete checkout, the more you’ll suffer from cart abandonment.

So, what’s the answer?

Keep it simple and keep streamlining.

One of the best ways to do this is with WP Simple Pay’s simple plugin integration.

It makes it quick and easy for your customers to check out using their credit card (or through Apple and Google Pay), and that’s precisely what you need.

Give people convenient payment options (you may even want to look at buy now, pay later), and it will help your conversion rate.

10. Gain Insights from Your Analytics

It’s easy to guess when it comes to understanding how people use your website.

We often oversimplify the customer journey and like to picture the sales funnel as this tidy progression. However, it tends not to work this way.

It takes a lot of touch points to create an eCommerce sale.

The good news is, that a lot of this information is in your analytics, and understanding how to use it can allow you to increase eCommerce sales very quickly.

MonsterInsights is the perfect plugin to help you do this.

It makes it easy to track data, and, most importantly, turn it into valuable insights. It has dedicated eCommerce reports ideal for online stores, allowing you to track your progress and hone your marketing tactics.

11. Start an Affiliate Marketing Program

What if you could have marketing experts promote your products without paying anything upfront?

That’s precisely what you can get when you start an affiliate marketing program, and it’s a fantastic way to increase eCommerce sales quickly.

If your site runs on WordPress, you can start an affiliate program in minutes with AffiliateWP.

You can begin signing up top affiliates, tracking links, and bringing in new sales in just a few clicks.

It’s not just for sales, either. Affiliates can greatly increase brand awareness and build your online business profile.

Creating an army of innovative, engaged affiliates will have a big impact on your online sales without cutting into your bottom line too much.

Get AffiliateWP today to increase your eCommerce sales.

FAQs: Increase eCommerce Sales

Increase eCommerce Sales with AffiliateWP

Starting your affiliate marketing program might be much more attainable than you think.

Setup is straightforward, and there are bound to be eager, skilled affiliates in your niche.

Expanding your audience through affiliate marketing makes these sales tactics even more rewarding. You can open your online business to new opportunities and increase eCommerce sales overnight.

It starts with setting up your affiliate software, so start with AffiliateWP today!