7 Clever Ways to Get the Most Out of Your Online Store

Having some trouble making your store work for you? Want it to do more, sell more? There are lots of ways to do it, but here’s a few you might not have thought of and they could be more effective than you’d think.

1.Exit Intent Popup

People window shop, even on the web. It’s just a fact of life, so you need to adjust to it. But you may not have to live with it. What if after someone picks a few items, checks them in their shopping cart, and then goes to leave the page a popup appears reminding them they have things in their cart and offering them a limited time discount on their purchase? Would something like that reduce cart abandonment? It’s one of several ways to get people to finish their purchase on your site rather than leave and it does work.

2.Free Shipping

One of the most common reasons shoppers abandon their items is shipping costs. It can be because shipping was too expensive or made the total too high. It could be because they needed to get all the way to the end of the process before shipping was revealed. Or just because the amount they had to purchase to get free shipping was too high. Some sites are getting great results by offering free shipping on all their purchases, no matter the amount. Check your pricing and adjust for this and you could be stealing business from less savvy stores in no time.

3.Payment Options

Another disappointing experience for customers is finding out your preferred method to pay isn’t one of the ones the store will accept. Besides the list of credit cards there are also a wide variety of electronic payment systems that people use. The more methods you can handle the less sales you will lose due to payment paralysis. Be adaptable and take people’s payments no matter what form they take.

4.Upsell/Downsell

Offering an upgrade or a better, but more expensive, model of a purchase can seem a bit pushy, but if you tell your customer what they will be gaining with their extra money they may thank you for the information and buy it. Upselling, asking the customer to consider buying a more expensive item, actually works quite well. People are willing to pay more as long as they know they are getting more for their money. Don’t forget to downsell as well. Offer add-ons or accessories to their purchase. You can even offer discounts on those additional items to make it a sweeter deal.

5.Sales and Giveaways

Putting items on sale is a tried and true way to generate more purchases, but even more than that, giving away items can be a great way to entice customers to make purchases. Whether you are running a pay per click ad campaign, or just sending them something for signing up on your email list, that little extra boost gives them a good impression of you, which may bring them back or encourage them to recommend your store to others. And isn’t that worth the cost of a little promotional item. Which just so happens to have your website name and URL on it.

6.Friends and Family

You can’t make a business work just selling to people you know or are related to. But they can be a great marketing force for you. Encouraging friends to spread the word and share your links when you do something big, your grand opening or a really great sale, can turn them into a far flung salesforce for you, giving you access to their individual networks and spreading the news far and wide.

7. Urgency and Scarcity

Limited time offers can be a great driver for people to make a purchase now. If you have a sale going but it will be over tomorrow, customers are more likely to make their purchase today rather than wait for the higher price. Another related tactic is limited availability. If there are only ten of the item left in stock and you have a plugin displaying that steadily dropping number as they are purchased, customers know they will miss out if they wait too long. This also offers social proof, an indication that other people are buying the item and believe it to be worth purchasing.

There are literally hundreds to ways you can improve sales through your online store but these are a few you might not have thought of yet. A bonus trick: measure how well these work. Measure how well any sales or marketing campaign works and keep the ones that work the best. Analytics are your friend! Come up with clever tactics of your own, try them out, and measure their effectiveness. Go with what works. And make your store more profitable. That’s the clever bit.