3 Clever Marketing Methods That Increase Online Sales

The big day is one week away! That means you have a solid week of Christmas shopping to enjoy. As a business owner, this is most likely a very busy time of year for you. All of that last minute Christmas shopping means more sales for your store. However, it’s important to remember that not all of your customers will be visiting your physical store location over the next week. Many of them will be visiting your website instead.

Is your company website equipped with an e-commerce solution? Are you selling products to your customers via your website? The Canadian POS Corporation Blog has often heralded online shopping as one of the most convenient ways for Canadians to get their hands on items of their choice. In order to ramp up sales over the next week, you may want to try some clever marketing methods.

Here are three:

1. Offer only one product or service on your home page. Now, this may sound like a strange strategy. How can you maximize sales if you don’t highlight as many of your products as possible on your website? According to Derek Gehl on Entrepreneur.com, it’s advantageous to focus on one product to highlight the benefits that it provides. He recommends that you try doing this as a test.

“Instead of trying to please everyone who visits your site by offering a large range of products with minimal detail about each one, if you offer just one product–or one set of related products–you can really focus on one key set of benefits and answer all the possible questions and doubts your visitors might have about your product,” writes Gehl, “And you don\’t have to stop selling your other products–you can always offer them to your customers from other web pages or by using follow-up offers.”

2. Offer free shipping. Arguably, there are fewer things that will get a customer to agree to shop on your site versus your competition’s than free shipping. Especially during this last week before Christmas, it will serve you well to offer express shipping so that last minute shoppers can get their packages before the big day. According to Julia Pimsleur on Forbes.com, free shipping heavily encourages online sales.

“Research shows this is the number one thing that convinces visitors to buy,” she reveals, “Think about Amazon and Zappos. It works. Do the numbers to see how you can make it fit with your business model.” If free shipping is a bit too steep for you to handle for all packages, consider offering it on shipments that exceed a certain dollar amount. This will help to drive up sales that include multiple items and/or big ticket purchases.

3. Include customer testimonials. It’s hard to find a better advertisement for your company than one that comes directly from a satisfied customer. Online shoppers gain much greater senses of confidence when they’re able to read reviews posted by other people who have made purchases from your website. Include an easy-to-find testimonials page on your website. If you don’t have any reviews yet, be sure to ask your customers for them!

“One of the best ways to establish your credibility is to include customer testimonials in your sales letter,” says Gehl, “These should be excerpts from genuine e-mails or letters from customers expressing how your product or service helped solve the particular problem they faced. This last point is important: A customer testimonial that states how your product benefited them is much more effective than one that just says something like, ‘Your product is great!’”

For more information about Canadian POS Corporation’s e-commerce solution, give us a call at 1-877-748-2884 or email us at info@localhost.