Every entrepreneur wants to increase his turnover and profits by selling more. To achieve that, sales are necessary, and never before have there been more opportunities for this than in today’s online world. However, increasing your online sales with a website is not so easy.
This article contains 13 tips that will greatly increase your online sales with a website if you don’t apply them right now. I see it as the standard modern online sales guidelines that every selling website should adhere to.
- Use remarketing for more leads
It doesn’t matter whether you use Facebook ads, use Adwords ads or place banners on affiliate websites. Without remarketing, these strategies are much less effective. With remarketing, your ads will have much more impact, which in turn leads to more leads and ultimately leads to more sales.
What is remarketing?
Remarketing, also known as retargeting, ensures that visitors who have visited your website receive a targeted advertisement. You can make this ad very targeted depending on the page that this visitor has visited
Example: You can remind a potential customer who has filled his shopping cart to complete his payment.
You can target someone who is still specifically looking for a product by showing advertisements with similar products.
What are the benefits of remarketing?
A big advantage of remarketing is that you reach people who have already shown interest in you. You can then use very specific advertisements for the phase in which the customer is (doubting customer, seeking customer, near customer).
With remarketing you give your customer a new boost or let the customer take the very last step: making an online purchase.
Thus, with remarketing, you can influence the decisions of your future customers and thus increase your numbers of online sales.
Example: You can remind a potential customer who has filled his shopping cart to complete his payment.
You can target someone who is still specifically looking for a product by showing advertisements with similar products.
What are the benefits of remarketing?
A big advantage of remarketing is that you reach people who have already shown interest in you. You can then use very specific advertisements for the phase in which the customer is (doubting customer, seeking customer, near customer). With remarketing you give your customer a new boost or let the customer take the very last step: making an online purchase.
Thus, with remarketing, you can influence the decisions of your future customers and thus increase your numbers of online sales.
- Sell more by reaching your customers with social media
Where in the past sending your message in one-way traffic predominated, today it’s all about two-way traffic, interaction and a more personal approach. Social media offers the beautiful combination of these three characteristics.
What is social media?
Unless you live under a rock, surely you have heard of social media. Social media is a collective term in which users share content with each other in an accessible manner. The commonly used social media channels at the moment are Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
Every social media channel has its own characteristics and user laws. Instagram is all about beautiful images. Facebook is about sharing activities, interests, news, or fun content. Twitter is a real-time news medium but is also widely used as webcare. LinkedIn is the most business social media channel. This is about your profile (more like a resume) and sharing business content.
What are the benefits of social media?
Social media is a good way for a company to be visible to its target group in a personal way. This inspires trust, but, if used properly, it also leads to a stronger bond with your brand.
Social media gives you more information about your company and its culture. People get to know you better, but they can also talk to you better.
Social media is in all cases an interactive medium. You can answer questions, comments, and nice (or negative) reactions. This way you ensure more exposure.
- Keep an eye on the conversions
Sometimes the influence of your marketing strategies doesn’t seem so effective. However, this is not always the case. Your advertisements and your activities on social media can indeed have an effect. To find out, you have to look at the conversion paths in Google Analytics.
What are conversion paths?
Conversion paths indicate which steps customers go through to achieve a conversion. You get a clear report via ‘Best Conversion Paths’ in your Google Analytics account. This report displays all unique conversion paths, the number of conversions from each path, and the value of these conversions.
What are the benefits of insight into conversions?
Understanding these paths will give you more clarity about the influence of certain marketing tools. The conversion paths also provide insight into where the customers have dropped out or continued. This way you can optimize the trajectory of your sales ( sales funnel ). You now know what works and what doesn’t. This means that you can further increase your online sales.
- Use the right tone of voice
Addressing the target group does not only mean that you have to use the right resources. It’s all about using the right tone. The customer must understand, understand and embrace your language.sell more
What is a tone of voice?
The tone of voice is the style with which you communicate with your target group. It is about the use of words, the tone, and the consistency therein. A tone of voice differs enormously per company: formal, informal, positive, businesslike, expensive, cheap, screaming, friendly, and so on.
The benefits of the right tone of voice
Use the right tone of voice and create more range, in the broadest sense of the word. By addressing your customers with the right tone, you reach them faster. They understand what you mean, but not only that. You use words and phrases that your target audience also uses. This will help you be found faster on Google. That results in more success for your website!
- Develop and act on a value proposition
Everyone sets up a selling website with a certain commercial goal, but this is rarely the only thing you as an entrepreneur are committed to.
It is not just about the goal of ‘making a profit or ‘generating high turnover. In most cases, there is a higher purpose: the core of your company.
In marketing terms, it is also known as a value proposition. This is an essential part of the positioning of your company.
What is a value proposition?
A value proposition indicates which needs you to fulfill with your products or services and to what extent your products (or services) are unique compared to your direct competitors and substitute goods.
A proposition captures the core of your company in a few words. It is a phrase that appeals to your target audience. A sentence that appeals to everyone is by definition wrong. That means that you have nothing distinctive to offer.
What are the benefits of a value proposition?
A value proposition really only has advantages. A proposition provides guidance in everything you do and communicate.
By acting from a proposition, you know how to make clear to your customer what you can do for them and where your unique selling points lie. This distinguishes your company from other organizations and prevents your company from getting a mainstream identity.
- Attract new customers with follow-up emails
It is often thought: when customers have paid, the job is done. However, that is certainly not true! You are then just at the starting line for the creation of gold mines.
That means staying in the minds of your customers and bonding with them.
Practice shows time and again that the most expensive part of running a business is attracting new customers. Getting existing customers to buy again is by far the most lucrative way of marketing businesses. But it takes a strategy. A good example of such a strategy is follow-up emails.
What are follow-up emails?
A follow-up email is an automatically generated email. A customer who makes a purchase receives a confirmation email and an order number. Someone who registers for a white paper will immediately receive an email that the order is being processed. There are plenty of follow-up emails you can think of, but what’s the point exactly?
What are the benefits of follow-up emails?
It may sound strange to you, but these emails are vital in your marketing mix. They are standardized emails, but these emails often form the first impression of your company. In any case, follow-up emails are the first real point of contact.
It is important that the recipient understands what is in the e-mail, that he feels comfortable with it and that you feel attracted to your tone. The reader must understand what to do now or what to expect.
Follow-up emails are the ideal basis for building a relationship of trust. A relationship is based on openness. Then act accordingly. Email regularly and make sure relevant topics are brought to light. Include clear contact options in the e-mails.
And then the biggest flaw in this area: Impersonality.
There is nothing worse than a company or entrepreneur sending automated emails that look like automated emails.
The best advice I can give you if you want your business emails to actually be read is to avoid making them look like business emails.
Always send your email as you would send it to someone you know. So personally!
Talk in your email as if you were talking to someone you know and prevent that your target group sees in you only a selling party where they are approached as a number.
(Hint: put “Dear customer” in your salutation… you don’t want to know how many nightmares I had about that
- Increase sales through mobile site optimization
The number of sales per mobile is only increasing every year. People are not only surfing the internet by mobile phone, but are also increasingly completing their orders on their mobile device more often and faster.
Can you ignore this as a company? No of course not! Provide mobile site optimization and make it as accessible as possible to mobile users.
What is Mobile Site Optimization?
Mobile site optimization means setting up your mobile site in such a way that it is easy, simple, and accessible for mobile users. There are several factors that determine the mobile experience:
The loading speed of web pages
A clear navigation structure
Easy-to-find call to actions that fit your finger (so not tiny!)
Filter by site search
Purchase without registering
Cross-device purchase
Click to call
Clear design
What are the benefits of mobile optimization?
A well-optimized mobile website only brings profits. It may take a lot of time and energy to initially realize this, but you will definitely get something beautiful in return.
Thanks to mobile optimization, your website is also loved by mobile users (and let that group have just passed the desktop users!). Small chance that this will not affect your turnover.
A user-friendly and accessible website ensures that customers persevere during their surfing session and make the purchase.
Google realizes that mobile users like to be on your mobile website. As a result, your website will rise in ranking when people surf the internet on mobile. This ensures more exposure, and more exposure leads to more success for your website.
- Communicate in an open and honest way
This tip may sound like an open door. However, many companies fail on this point. It’s amazing how much of an effect dishonest copy has on trust in your business.
What is open and honest communication?
Dishonest copy is not necessarily about outright lying, but it comes close. Companies make promises that they cannot keep or only give half-truths about their products and services.
Don’t make claims you can’t live up to and don’t use hyperboles. Openness and honesty are the defining etiquettes.
The most concrete example of this is statements in advertisements, on landing pages, and in free lead magnets.
You can show your advantages to attract a customer, but make sure you can keep your promises.
What are the benefits of open and honest communication?
If you communicate consistently honestly, you connect a customer to you who always knows what to expect from you. Blowing high from the tower may initially attract more interested parties, but once the actual content or quality of your products falls short of your promises, you damage your business and your image to a point where repair is nearly impossible.
Be careful with this. Let the few percent extra subscribers go, and focus on those who do reach you with your unique message.
- Generate more ad clicks with ads extensions
Using Adwords advertisements is a useful marketing tool to achieve more turnover. By using the advertisements in a good way, you increase the return on your online advertising.
One way to do this is by deploying ads extensions (also known as ads extensions).
What are ad extensions?
You can expand an Adwords advertisement by adding subcategories to it. These subcategories are called ad extensions.
Suppose you have an advertisement for pants, then you can hang two sub advertisements under this main advertisement. One about women’s trousers and the other about men’s trousers.
What are the benefits of ad extensions?
By dividing your ad into two distinct categories, you make it easier for users to get to the content they want faster. This increases the click rate. A higher click rate leads to more leads, and ultimately more online sales.
- Using reviews
People are no longer so quick to believe in the bite-sized content that companies provide. The power of word of mouth and other people’s experiences have a much greater influence on your purchases. It’s scary to open up to reviews. But it is much more dangerous to run from it.
Then don’t do that.
What are reviews?
Reviews are also known as references. They are customer experiences.
These can be on external websites, but they can also be left on the main website. People can assign a certain rating to a product or service and provide the rating with substantive comments.
A good example of an organization that applies this principle is Bol.com. Each product has been assigned a certain rating by consumers. Often consumers also mention the advantages and disadvantages of the product in question.
What are the benefits of reviews?
Reviews are fair. This is a quality that every customer values. Reviews often represent a true representation of a product, service, or organization.
Positive reviews work best in the purchase process. Strategically placed positive reviews, for example at the checkout, can remove the last bit of doubt and help a customer over the line.
Reviews on external websites can also provide backlinks to your website and are therefore good for your SEO.
Do you receive a lot of negative reviews? Do not immediately consider this a danger. The reviews give you insight into what could be improved. Address these points and make your business more profitable!
- Creating Scarcity
It is a well-known persuasion tool: responding to scarcity. Robert Cialdini (of whom I am a big fan) has incorporated this psychological tool into his six principles of persuasion.
Do you regularly ask yourself: “How can I increase my online sales?” .
Then follow this principle.
What does creating scarcity mean?
‘Only ten more days…’,
‘Last chance of…’,
‘Only 10 spots available…’.
There are all kinds of methods that show that time is short or that only a limited number of copies are available. Responding to limited numbers and time limits are therefore the most commonly used techniques to create scarcity.
You have to deal with this ethically. If you indicate that you only have 10 places or products available, then also close your sales page after selling 10 products.
If you indicate that an offer is only valid now, make sure that a customer can no longer claim it a day later.
If you don’t, you’ll cut yourself and lose all credibility.
What are the benefits of creating scarcity?
The advantage of creating scarcity is that potential customers who actually want to buy, often do not necessarily do so.
After all, not buying is not a problem. Not buying is not a worse situation for them than buying. After all, they can always buy.
We need to change this. Not buying should be equivalent to “losing something” in the mind of the customer.
The situation of not buying becomes negative, and this often convinces the customer who needed a little push for an investment in your product or service.
It is one of the most proven revenue-generating activities on the internet, but also one of the most abused. So handle it ethically!
- Offer as many payment methods as possible
When buying online, money has to roll. Only this does not happen physically, but this happens digitally. It is important that customers are familiar with the payment options. If that is not the case, then a quick decision is made to let the purchase pass.
Therefore, use as many payment methods as possible.
What payment methods are there?
There are a lot of payment methods. Below is a list of the most appreciated and common payment methods:
IDEAL
credit card
Prepayment
Visa Mastercard
AfterPay
Paysafecard
What are the advantages of offering as many payment methods as possible?
What do you think of credit cards? What do you think of iDeal? What do you think about PayPal? Or prepayment? You probably also have a preference for a certain payment method. Every customer has that. Some prefer to pay with iDeal, while others prefer to pay via PayPal.
Make sure you serve all your customers and therefore offer as many payment methods as possible. When customers are familiar with a certain payment method, they will make purchases faster.
Do you want to discover even more powerful sales strategies about webshops? Then read this article about successfully selling with your webshop
- Invest in good quality images
Quality comes before quantity. That also applies to images. A visual website is nice, but not if the images aren’t beautiful. It rather works the other way around.
What are good quality images?
Design and visual material is the order of the day in website land. But what makes visual material good or bad? A few points:
No pixelated images
Images in the correct format
Images that match your brand identity and your content
Note: images must be royalty-free. So don’t just grab something from the internet. Buy your images or get them from websites that offer royalty-free images.
What are the benefits of good-quality images?
High-quality images. It is often seen as a cost item. However, that is certainly not true.
You can rather see it as an investment that you will earn back in the long term.
The design (including images) plays an important role in how users rate your website. Bad images make users more likely to label your website as bad.
This has a major impact on your turnover.
Use quality images. This will increase your website in prestige. Chances are you’ll see this visual change reflected in your winnings.
