Today I am calling out all ecom business owners… small, medium or large.
We all have one thing in common.
We know the importance of consistent sales coming into our business. For our online store to survive, it needs to generate customers and sales on a regular basis. Without sales, our store can’t fulfill its mission… hire people, buy equipment and manufacture products or deliver services.
So now that I’ve re-iterated to you why sales are so important, how do you go about increasing sales so that your store can strive and reach its goals?
Below I am going to list out nine ways your eCom store can increase its revenue starting today.
These concepts below can be introduced one by one, or simultaneously. Some may suit your business, and some may not. The whole idea is to get your creative juices flowing and develop opportunities for your ecom brand to increase its revenue.
Let’s begin below…
Expand Into Locations You Don’t Currently Serve
One of the quickest ways to begin increasing your revenue, is to start advertising in locations you don’t currently serve. Some online stores limit their marketing and sales efforts to their local area or region. If you fall into this category, why not research the idea of servicing your product outside of your current locality?
In many cases, your product has the ability to capture a wider audience by serving international markets. You may find that there is a ton of potential for your business to thrive in extended locations. Don’t assume another market is being served without investigation.
Raise or Lower Your Prices
To raise or not to raise prices?
That is the question we’ve all asked ourselves throughout the lifetime of our business. If we increase prices to a point where we can forecast that it won’t negatively impacting sales, this will bring additional revenues and profits to the company. A price reduction can stimulate more sales and take market share away from other competitors. If price alterations are done correctly it can have a great impact on the business.
It’s very important that you know how your products and/or services compare with your competitors and how your customers view your products and services. Knowing this information will allow you to best position your prices in the marketplace.
If a price increase reduces sales, you can always react by reverting back to the price before. The good news is that consumers rarely react to slight price increases and often overlook them as insignificant. Justification of price increases from consumers will be met, so be sure you have an answer ready to meet that question.
A small increase in price may not seem significant when compared to the full price, but the impact of the increase on profit is amplified because this increase will streamline directly to the business’s bottom line.| You can always find ways to increase the perceived value of your products when introducing a price increase. EG. Price increase by 10% on your widget, but the customer also receives item X that increases the perceived value and complements the original offer for the consumer by getting even better results
Add Complementary Products & Services To Your Existing Offers
We touched on this in the last point. Another way to increase revenue for your store, is to add complementary products and/or services. This can introduce new opportunities to help you acquire more customers and better serve existing ones. For example, a bodybuilding supplement eCom store might add a complementary supplement to a product for little to no additional cost. In this case, the supplement company may already have the resources in place to offer something like this to existing customers and may attract new customers.
This complementary supplement may help to deliver better results along with the original offer when building muscle and isn’t technically different or difficult to deliver results for a customer. There is a demand for additional items like this and it compliments the original supplement offer.
The more you know about the needs and wants of your customer and the pain points they need resolved, the better able you will be in figuring out what else your customer desires. Using a survey, ask your existing customers what else you could be doing to help solve other problems and pain points. Check out what your competitors are doing to offer additional products and services in the marketplace.
Bundle Your Products
One of my favorite ways an ecom store can increase revenue is by bundling products together as a deal. Bundling is common practice in many competitive product and service markets.
Industries engaged in this concept include telecommunication services, financial services, health care, digital information & software, retail and consumer electronics.
If you sell products that compliment each other, or are used for the same task or at the same time, you might want to consider selling them as a package.
An example would be as follows…
Let’s say you sell men’s shaving supplies. Items would include razors, shaving foam, aftershave cream, brushes etc. If you sold all of these individually, it would be more expensive for each item to buy.
However if you put all these items together as a package or “bundle” and offer it at a reduced price, you’ll most likely see an increase in sales because you have created so much value at a discounted price. This bundle may also increase the order value of customers because with such value in the deal, there is a high probability of upselling them on some other relevant items outside of the bundle.
Definitely worth a test to try out when looking to acquire new customers.
Offer Cashback To The Consumer
Offering cashback is a type of sales promotion that marketers use primarily as a way to incentives sales. This is something my software development team and I did for one of our software products (ItsAboutShopping.com). Anyone who buys using our website on the hundreds of stores we’re partnered up with, we offer a certain percentage of our commission back to the customer.
Offering cashback or rebate as it’s sometimes called can have many shoppers coming back to consume with your business frequently. Price conscientious shoppers are particularly keen on this idea as they appreciate getting a kickback on the price they paid. It’s common practice with retail. The turnaround time for receiving cashback is generally four to eight weeks, though some rebates can take as long as eight to twelve weeks. It depends on the product and service. Usually cashback is activated once the refund period passes.
Introduce a Layaway Program
This is another clever way to increase sales and offers a purchasing option to some of your customers. A Layaway program is basically a way for your customers to pay towards an item they want in increments, rather than all at once. They were first introduced in the great depression as a way to help consumers purchase items they needed in incremental payments.
Layaway programs are good for consumers since they can make purchases when they do not have cash on hand. Unlike credit cards we used today, Layaway does not include interest. It’s a great way for retailers who can help the community and accrue loyal customers that simply don’t have cash upfront. Something you can think about for your own eCom store!
Reignite Old Customer Relationships
As a business owner, you’ve most likely heard the saying that “It’s much easier to sell to a satisfied customer than to find a new one.” It’s also a lot cheaper and less time consuming to sell to a customer who has done business with you in the past!
Products & services previously purchased wear out, break down, or become obsolete. Develop a marketing program to communicate (my personal favorite is email marketing) with old customers and prospects. Get into the habit of contacting them on a regular basis with free valuable content that educates them about the industry you serve as well as current offers you have. You can also update your customers about news from your ecom store and anything that demonstrates goodwill between relationships.
Another great thing about reigniting customer relationships is to ask for referrals, reviews or recommendations. Ask your happy customers to write a review on websites like Trustpilot or your Facebook page. Even publishing these reviews and testimonials on your own website is a smart move. All this positive social proof will help convince new and existing customers to do business with you.
Incentivize & Motivate Your Sales Team
eCom stores that offer more complex, higher ticket offers where the customer journey is more lengthy may use a sales team to nurture and close on a prospect.
Whether you have a small sales team for the business or a large one, why not gather them around and create a contest between them all!
This might be a good idea to shake things up a little in the sales department and pick up motivation whilst having a little fun competition.
Incentivize your sales team with cash prizes, gifts, weekend breaks away or tickets to a popular up & coming event. You can offer multiple prizes for first, second, third, fourth place etc etc. This will help to motivate your sales team and boost your sales.
If your business offers a sales commission structure, then reward those individuals that are generating the most sales for the business by offering increased commission after a certain threshold. For one of my online retail affiliate websites, we had this same structure for one of our partners. After we passed $10,000 in sales for that particular partner in a month, they would increase our commission rate by a couple of percentage. If we managed to pass $15,000 in sales in the same month, our commission would be bumped up further.
Contests and increased commission on sales volume is definitely a solution you want to test if your ecom stores incorporates a sales team.
Create an Affiliate Program
My last suggestion when it comes to increasing sales for your ecom store, is to create an affiliate program. For those of you that don’t know what that is… its like a revenue share system that is done through an automated electronic program that involves a web advertiser (You in this case) and recruited webmasters/Content Publishers (Affiliates – Like Me with www.itsaboutshopping.com)
So for instance… me as the publisher of ItsAboutShopping.com, would publish offers from merchants I am partnered with via an affiliate program. In this example the merchant advertiser could be your store. I would post offers from your business and drive correct targeted traffic to that offer to convert.
Example: Let’s say your stores serves beauty & hair products for women. You could offer me a certain amount of coupon codes that I can publish on my site. I’ll drive the right audience for this offer (women into beauty, makeup, looking good etc) and make it convert. Now these coupon codes can be redeemed at your store online (or offline depending) and you’ll know that I drove those customers to your business with a unique identifier.
You’ll pay me a flat rate commission for helping you deliver those customers. Sometimes other deals are negotiated based on a percentage of the sale. The higher the order value from that customer, the higher the commission I would receive. This motivates me to do a better job of finding customers that are willing to spend more with your products or services.
So there you have it! Nine solid ideas you can think over and see which ones would best fit your ecom store. Don’t hesitate to try multiples of these suggestions simultaneously. Just separate them out as their own individual campaigns as this allows you to track their performances better.
