After perfectly setting up your Shopify store, you’re ready to start making money. It might seem frustrating if your shop has been open for a while and your sales have plateaued, but this can be helped by using a few simple tactics. In this guide, you’ll learn how to increase sales on Shopify. We’ll share eight techniques and ideas to help you grow your online business.
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How To Increase Sales on Shopify: 8 Ways
The bottom line is that every Shopify store wants to make more money. You might be in a competitive niche and need to use techniques that separate you from the pack. The following eight steps will help you increase your sales and improve your business. Let’s get started.
1. Connect to an Email Marketing Platform
One of the most cost-effective ways to increase your sales is through email marketing. Email marketing has the highest ROI (return on investment) of all forms of marketing. For the best results, you can link directly to an email marketing platform like Constant Contact.
An email marketing platform will help you create professional emails easily. If your store is expanding, choosing an email marketing platform with integrated marketing tools will help scale your email marketing program as well. Constant Contact’s Shopify integration makes it easy to automatically re-engage your Shopify customers through email.
At the very least, you should have a welcome email. This email will add personalization to a customer’s experience with your store. It will welcome them to the family and give them some helpful links to follow.
Beyond that, you can also use an automatic abandoned cart email to help make more money and better maintain your inventory.
2. Focus on Customer Retention
Getting new customers is great, but cultivating loyal customers is more important. It’s less expensive and easier for you to focus on customer retention than spend all your efforts on finding new leads.
When you retain customers, they will keep doing business with you and purchase through your shop. One study shows that increasing your retention by 5% can boost your profits by 75% on average.
You’ll want to reward your customers’ loyalty, exceed their expectations, focus on a near-perfect customer experience, and communicate well. These methods are known to increase customer retention, so you should give them a try.
3. Use a Cross-Selling Strategy
Cross-selling is a strategy that can almost immediately increase your sales. At its core, it focuses on creating multiple streams of revenue through a single purchase. You might offer an extended warranty, suggest a product that works well with the purchased item, or use an automated email campaign.
Cross-selling works because it persuades customers to make more purchases than they originally planned for. An example might be offering the sale of Bluetooth headphones after someone purchases a phone from you.
Similar to customer retention, you don’t need to focus on finding a high number of new customers; rather, you can work with the ones you have. With this method, you’re increasing how much money each customer spends with you.
4. Use Ecommerce SEO
One of the best ways to increase sales through your online shop is to get more eyes on your store. Because this is done through the internet, it’s not as easy as adding blinking lights to your storefront.
This is where ecommerce SEO comes in. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it improves how you rank on Google. A Shopify site with strong SEO will show up sooner on Google, which means more people will see your site.
In this scenario, more views will typically lead to more sales. SEO targets certain phrases or words that you know prospective customers will look up. “Best mittens for comfort” is a phrase you can target if you’re looking to sell your comfortable mittens through Shopify.
5. Write the Best Product Descriptions
As short as they may be, product descriptions can make or break a sale. Because you’re operating online, there’s no way for a customer to hold your product, look it over, or smell it to determine if they want to buy it.
You’ll need to wrap up all these senses into a short-form description. Writing the best product descriptions does the best job of selling your product.
This description is your salesperson. It’s having a conversation with the prospective customer, telling them why your product is so special and what it does.
6. Use a Coupon Marketing Strategy
Who doesn’t love free stuff? That’s the motivation behind using a coupon marketing strategy. In terms of your Shopify store, this can also be called a “discount code.”
The idea is that the customer can type in a certain code to uncover a discounted price, a free item, or any other promotion. You can share this code with your customer through a text, email, or phone call so they can cash in on the promotion.
Coupons also set you apart from your competition. You could have similarly priced items, but if yours advertise a 20% discount, suddenly it’s more desirable. People don’t mind spending more money if they think they’re getting a good deal.
This works especially well if the coupon applies to the total purchase price. You might notice your customers buying even more items to really capitalize on that 15% discount they receive.
7. Sell on Multiple Platforms
Keep in mind that Shopify isn’t your only option. Multichannel retail helps you sell more products in different places, therefore increasing your sales.
Like other sales ideas, this one aims to open up new revenue streams. You might consider posting your product for sale on Etsy, eBay, or Amazon.
Many shoppers stick to a single platform when they’re looking for a product. If you’re not actively listing on that platform, you’re immediately losing the sale. This is even worse if your competitors are using multiple platforms.
This move also helps with brand awareness. When people see your name on different platforms, they associate you with a more reputable brand in the industry. If nothing else, they become more aware of you.
8. Always Offer an Upsale
Remember when McDonald’s used to ask if you wanted to supersize your meal? It was their way of pushing a more expensive option to someone who already showed interest in their standard option.
This technique works well, and it can be incorporated into your Shopify store. As opposed to cross-selling, upselling revolves around the product that the customer is showing interest in.
Rather than your customer buying a three-pack of scarves, you can try to upsell your 10-pack. The customer is already displaying their interest in owning multiple scarves, so why not push them toward an item with a higher price point?
Be mindful of your customer’s budget and what items work well when it comes to upselling. Trying to upsell someone a laptop when they’re showing interest in a pack of pencils isn’t going to work.
More Ways To Improve Your Shopify Business
Integrating your Shopify store with Constant Contact can help boost sales, but what about the other parts of your ecommerce business? As you grow and look to improve in different areas, you’ll need some help. Download our free online marketing guide for retail companies, The Download, to learn more about growing and improving your business from industry experts.