As an online seller, it has never been easy to compete against the likes of Amazon for business. Nearly 44 percent of consumers go directly to Amazon while shopping online. In comparison, only 34 percent of people hit search engines first while just over a fifth of consumers go to retailer websites. In short, a plain vanilla e-commerce store is no longer enough to attract customers. You must go the extra mile to make your business more attractive to the customer. Here are five tips to get more online sales for your retail business.
1. Offer Incentives For Loyal Customers
There are a host of reasons why customers do not come back for a repeat purchase. Businesses may sometimes fail to provide a desirable experience which pushes their customers away to a competitor. Other times, the brand may not be memorable enough for a customer to come back later. Providing incentives for loyalty is a great way to increase your sales through repeat purchases. There are a number of third party loyalty programs that you can make use of to start rewarding customers for their loyalty. Tools like Sweet Tooth, LoyaltyLion and Swell Rewards are available as apps on most of the large e-commerce platforms like Shopify, BigCommerce and Magento.
2. Integrate Your Store With Social Media Selling
Online selling has become increasingly social and customers prefer to engage with businesses over social platforms like Facebook for their sales and support queries. By providing live chat options for your customers over Facebook, it is possible to provide an extremely personalized shopping experience. Integrating Facebook allows your customers to ask questions and buy from you right from within their Facebook window.
Also, if you do not have a social media presence yet, it is a good idea to use Facebook advertising to create a presence. This guide from Shopify should be a good starting point in this regard.
3. Cash On Delivery (COD)
Trustworthiness is a big part of any online transaction. This is also perhaps a key reason why customers prefer popular brands like Amazon over lesser known niche retailers. One way to tackle this challenge and build credibility is by offering to collect cash on delivery. Popularly known as COD, Cash on Delivery (or Collect on Delivery) is a method of payment where customers pay money upon receiving the product. A number of popular shipping companies, including Fedex, UPS and DHL offer COD to their business customers. You can make use of this feature to overcome the challenge your business may face with building a trustworthy brand.
4. Price Competitively
Over 61 percent of customers abandon an e-commerce store because of high costs. One way to resolve this is through dynamic pricing. Look into price optimization software. Price optimization software periodically compares the prices of your products against your competitors’ and updates your prices to ensure your product is always priced competitively. This frees up more time for you that would otherwise be spent researching and calculating competitive pricing.
5. Become An Amazon Seller
As an online seller, your focus needs to be on revenue. If Amazon is a major player in your industry, then your business should be on Amazon. That way, you can expand visibility and get more customers to buy your products. However, you must remember that Amazon charges businesses a selling fee and this can further erode your operating margins. One way to tackle this is by promoting your e-commerce store to your Amazon customers and providing them incentives for buying directly from you.
Follow these tips and your e-commerce business will stand out as more credible, user-friendly and competitive to potential customers.
Featured photo credit: Pixabay via pixabay.com
