1. eCommerce Now at the Latest
If you haven’t thought about how you can digitize your business processes and how the internet could support your business, let me assure you: You are late!
The best time would have been 20 years ago and the second best time is today! What processes can you automate via online applications?
Find top people who know how to implement what you need and talk to them. Get help, get tips, attend webinars and meetups. Plan your success with the help of specialists. Then you will also see rapid progress.
2. Visibility
You already have tools online that help you with your business or even generate sales? Great! But what is this SEO everyone is talking about?
In order for your eCommerce tools to generate sales, the potential customer needs to know they exist or find them somehow. This can happen in many ways, very often through search engines, or rather the search engine. Think about what terms you want your sales tools to be found for. Look at your competition and try to differentiate yourself conceptually.
Here, too, we recommend that you consult specialists. Either by reading blog posts, participation in (online) communities or by personal consultation.
3. Think Ahead
It’s fine if your eCommerce is currently making decent sales per month. But what about in 5 years? Everything, including your industry, is constantly on the move. What sells well today may be a slow seller tomorrow.
The only constant in eCommerce is change.
A big and long-term trend at the moment is sustainability, climate neutrality and veganism. Many people have understood how it is about our planet and want to act responsibly accordingly.
Whether it’s coffee, textiles or hosting tariffs, your customers are becoming increasingly aware of the impact of their consumption behavior. You should respond to this with the presentation of your products to ensure that your sales graphs will continue to point upwards in the future.
Can you show a FairTrade, Sustainable or Vegan category for your products or services? Do it and talk about it. Find products and services for the new category.
4. Find Weak Spots
Why are so many orders cancelled in your online store? Probably neither your store system is buggy nor PayPal is broken. Your potential customer has suddenly decided not to buy from you. Find out what the reason could be.
Is your appearance serious? Is your business conduct 1A? Does your eCommerce tool give your customer the feeling that you are a competent and reliable business partner?
Writing: “We are a competent and reliable business partner!” hardly helps if the appearance of your webshop communicates something completely different. Your customer will get an intuitive picture of your business based on the look and feel, regardless of what you say or write about it.
Make sure that your tools are technically working properly. Google Search Console can help you a lot with this.
A/B testing and conversion optimization tools, e.g. the Google Toolbox, can help you find the places where your customers drop out of the ordering process. It is worthwhile to adjust these screws.
5. Create Incentives
Often, all that’s missing is a little nudge to get your customer to actually complete the order. This could be a limited discount, only small quantities in stock, additional freebies or free shipping.
However, the very best incentives are of no use if no one knows about them. Newsletters and social media help you to inform your potential buyers about the “incredible discount that is only available today”.
Bonus Tip: Vouchers
Imagine it’s Saturday night at 9pm and you remember that tomorrow is mother-in-law’s birthday. Wouldn’t it be great to be able to buy a nice gift certificate from your mother-in-law’s favorite online store to print out and hand over from the comfort of your sofa? Perfect that would be!
We know online stores that make almost 50% of their sales from coupons. This works especially well with vouchers for intangible products like photo shoots or nail salon treatments (provided it’s not pandemic).
From a commercial point of view, the voucher has other decisive advantages over goods and services: many vouchers are not redeemed and expire. Then we have made completely legal turnover without rendering a service or delivering goods in return. This is an unbeatable margin of 100%. Even if the voucher is redeemed, there is a high probability that the customer will buy more than the value of the voucher. We may even gain a loyal customer for the future via the voucher if the buying experience is right.
So voucher sales are the best thing that can happen in eCommerce. Don’t miss any opportunity to offer coupons for your products and services.
We hope you found some of the tips useful and wish you a lot of fun and success in applying them to your eCommerce project and while increasing sales. You’ll find more about e-commerce here:
Mastering WooCommerce Shipping Classes: Your Guide to Effective eCommerce Shipping
WooCommerce Delivery Time on Backorder
Howto Manipulate WooCommerce Metadata via SQL
