Ecommerce business owners understand how frustrating it is when sales seem to come to a standstill. And while steady revenue is not necessarily a bad thing, everyone wants to make more money and use different strategies and tactics to help increase revenue. Fortunately, it doesn’t have to be difficult. With the right plans, you’re one step closer to bigger payouts.
These three simple solutions can help any ecommerce site increase their sales:
Custom Site Search
Search boxes have much more power than you might think. One study found that roughly 30% of ecommerce site visitors will use the search box feature, and conversion rates are nearly double when consumers do use the search feature.
In the past, the Google Site Search feature helped businesses put its own version of Google search boxes on their sites. With a few code tweaks, brands could have the power of Google’s search functionality, coupled with their own branding. However, earlier this year, the company announced it would be shutting down the Site Search functionality. This left many business owners wondering how they could effectively provide powerful search solutions on their websites.
Companies like Instant Search make it simple to add an ecommerce custom search plugin to provide you with advanced capabilities similar to Google’s Site Search. After all, a reliable search box can mean the difference between a sale and a flop. Many themes come equipped with standard search boxes, but these are nowhere near capable of effectively sorting through hundreds of products or content pages.
Custom search provides you with the ability to customize how a user will see their results, and what they can do on the results page. For example, let’s say you sell home goods. If a potential customer wanted to search for decorative pieces that matched their bedroom, maybe they’d search for just a color, like brown. That customer can then refine the search by price, product category, and more.
There’s so much you can do with your custom site search box to help increase your revenue, so it’s important that ecommerce business owners aren’t tempted to put up a standard ready-made search box.
Push Relevant Upsells & Cross-Selling
Selling your products at a base level isn’t the only way of bringing in additional revenue. You can also have methods in place for increasing transactional value. You can achieve this through cross-selling and up-selling. Up-selling involves promoting more expensive products, upgrades, or bundle packages that add dollars to the customer’s cart.
A good example of upselling is Dollar Shave Club’s pricing model. The starter package costs just a dollar, as the name suggest, but they use copywriting and social proof to convince customers to opt for their higher-priced packages.
Cross-selling, on the other hand, is when you try and convince the customer to make a related purchase. This is typically a product that complements the product they are interested. For example, if your selling custom three-ring binders, you might cross-sell different types of paper.
Both present ample opportunities, and you can execute cross-selling and up-selling on your website, and through your email marketing campaigns. Amazon does great on-site cross-selling; you’ll notice that when you’re interested in a product, underneath it, Amazon will bundle two-three related products and present a total cost that’s lower than purchasing those items separately.
Pay Attention To Abandoned Carts
In order for you to truly capitalize on the visitors who come to your site, you nust have a strategy to address abandoned carts. Web research company Baynard Institute found that, on average, nearly 70% of consumers abandon their online shopping carts. There are many reasons why people abandon their carts, with the primary reasons being:
- Shipping costs too high
- Only browsing or researching
- Slow shipping
- Long checkout process
- Bad site navigation
With the majority of your customers changing their mind at the last minute, it’s worth the time and effort to try and reverse their decision. Email marketing is the key tool in getting those customers back. And yes, it’s possible. Think about a retail shop: you wouldn’t go browsing a store, add to your physical cart, and ditch all your items before you walk out. There’s a reason why those products are added to the cart in the first place, but when it comes to ecommerce, sometimes shoppers just need a little extra push.
Your job is to convince those cart abandoners to complete their purchase. By crafting a powerful email marketing recovery campaign, you can communicate different ways of persuading them to proceed with the checkout process. You may want to offer them free shipping, a time-sensitive discount, or free item in exchange for a complete purchase.