The number one objective for every online business is to make sales and scale up revenue. Unlike the traditional brick and mortar setup, thriving in the competitive online environment demands more than a good-looking website. You will need to develop an innovative plan to steer ahead of the competition! Let us delve into the top five ways that will help you maximize revenue on your E-commerce website.
Drive your Content Strategy
As usual, content is king, especially in a digital ecosystem. What you share and how you share it determines the traffic you receive on your site. The first place to start is to work on your content if you are to increase e-commerce revenue.
It is time to master the 3E’s; your content should be engaging, entertaining, and educative. In essence, your content should create trust with your audience. Find ways to use content to convince your customers that they need your products and why they should buy from your shop, and not any other. Make use of blog posts, videos, and images to send messages.
Tips on content marketing
- Use good product and marketing images, and do not forget to write better product descriptions (SEO optimized). You must know that no matter how great your product, blurry photos, and poor product descriptions will choke your conversion rates.
- Use video demonstrations-most people now prefer watching over reading.
- Humanize your brand-learn to communicate with customers. After sharing the amazing content, take the time, or find a dedicated person to respond to tweets, reviews, and comments. Monitor what customers say, always try to send out longer, helpful responses, especially with bad comments or reviews. This creates trust, especially among new customers. It sends a message that the brand is working hard to provide the best service despite the challenges.
Simplify the Checkout Process
You must have heard of cart abandonment and how it could be hurting your revenue stream. Did you know that one of the main reasons for cart abandonment is complex checkout processes? It would help if you understood that customers do not want to spend hours navigating which buttons to press to complete their transactions.
You can decrease cart abandonment by optimizing your checkout process to increase e-commerce revenue. Bring all things on one page. In cases where you have more than one page, you must consider a progress bar at the bottom of each page to help your customers visualize how much longer the checkout process will take. Keep in mind that the more time customers spend looking for buttons, the more they become frustrated.
Other ways to optimize your checkout pages:
- Show shipping costs
- Let your customers know the form of payments you accept
- Offer more options in terms of payment options they can use
Integrate Social Media Platforms with your Website
According to one report, an average of 85% of all social media orders come from Facebook. Another recent study found out that Instagram and Facebook provide brands with more than two times the engagement of any other social platform.
These stats prove that integrating social media with your online store serves as an effective strategy to create brand awareness traffic and sales growth. As an ecommerce entrepreneur, you must invest in a good tech stack that ties your site to your social networks and allows you to sell directly. Doing this is not only cost-effective but also organically expands the reach of your store. There are many easy ways to integrate social media on your online shop, like giving social login options, sharing plugins on the product page, and using social-based comment systems.
Work on your Cybersecurity; Invest in SSL
As an entrepreneur, you must be aware of the impact of cyber-attacks on small businesses. Cases of cyber threats have become rampant and continue to advance. To survive in the online space, you must invest in cybersecurity. Investing in cybersecurity keeps your business safe and is also an effective way of increasing your website’s revenue.
Well, moving from HTTP to HTTPS allows you to improve customer trust; keep in mind no one customer wants to use their credit card on an unsafe site. Most browsers will even pass on a security warning to customers that might lead to bounce rates.
Remember, when customers trust you, they buy from you and recommend your shop. SSL will also help you rank higher in SEO, gain visibility, and enjoy more conversion rates, which equals sales. Luckily, there are good options for SSL certificates in the market. For instance, if you have a website with a root domain and some subdomains, you can go for what is known as a Wildcard SSL Certificate to protect your consumer. It will also protect your business against costly data breaches.
For example, you can use a wildcard SSL to secure the main store, sales, the media, customer support, and all other subdomains leaving no loophole to plain data transfer. The beauty is that these days you do not have to spend a lot on this. There are many other types of SSL certificates in the market. Find the one that suits your business and secure your shop. Also, use SSL in conjunction with other best practices to uphold cybersecurity.
Tailor for Mobile Access
Another great way to increase ecommerce revenue is by providing mobile access. Consumers are now leaning towards smartphones and thus affecting how business is conducted. It is estimated that 65% of overall traffic now comes from mobile devices.
It means you need to optimize your website for mobile users and improve the traffic on your website. Your customers, especially millennials, who make up for the largest online shoppers, might not have the time to look for a computer every time they want to make a purchase. Make sure that the e-commerce website design is responsive. It ought to be designed to visually adjust to the screen’s size/shape wherever it appears.
Tips to improve the mobile user experience
- Show the trending products
- Use a top navigation menu
- Make sure the checkout process is simple and intuitive
- Create a mobile app if you can!
Wrapping up
In a nutshell, maximizing revenue on your e-commerce website involves tweaking the practices or solutions that you already know or have. It is also evident that you do not need to have a big budget to scale up your online store’s sales. Some of the other ways to maximize revenue include email marketing, social media advertising, personalizing buying experience, and targeting existing customers. The bottom line is to be wise to get an edge over your competition!