Among the factors that make a successful page, we can highlight different resources that are true partners of your brand on the web. In this sense, we have prepared this article with 7 strategies to improve the sales website, achieve your goals and differentiate yourself from the competition. Check it out!
We all know that the Internet has turned into a space with many businesses and sales opportunities. If you have an e-commerce, for example, you know that your company works as if it were in a physical location. You need to be present, publicize, separate the inventory, offer a good service, and create a relationship with your audience, among other things.
To be committed and focused on achieving success is imperative for today’s businesses that want to excel. If you pay more attention, you will win more customers and increase your sales. To help you create actions to optimize your strategies, it is key to rely on a website that is a major winner in conversions.
Among the factors that make a successful page, we can highlight different resources that are true partners of your brand on the web. In this sense, we have prepared this article with 7 strategies to improve the sales website, achieve your goals and differentiate yourself from the competition. Check it out!
Contents
1. Invest in usability
Usability is increasingly gaining more strength in sales and in winning new customers for an e-commerce. First and foremost, we must say that it is linked to the user experience on a page. When we talk and think about the success of a virtual shop, it is crucial that the visitors do everything in the fastest, most agile and most efficient way possible.
This means that the users, when accessing your website, need to be sure that they will find what they need or are looking for without any difficulty. Otherwise, these visitors may leave your webpage within a few seconds
To make it clearer and to give an example of lack of usability, think about when we access a website and we are faced with the lack or the excess of information. When that kind of situation happens, it is natural for us to leave the page and find another one with more direct and clear information, right?
This means that to offer good usability, the e-commerce must know the profile of potential consumers as well as their desires and needs. Once the shop understands its prospect in depth, it becomes very easy to work with strategies that will appeal to a given audience.
The focus should always be on the user experience and a winning business needs to bear in mind that it must reconcile sales with consumer satisfaction. After all, there is no use in closing a sale if you are not sure if that the product or service has actually solved a problem or met an expectation, don’t you agree?
A website with good usability will certainly attract more users and consequently make more sales. In this context, pay attention not to mix usability and accessibility. The two features add value to a website, but accessibility is an opportunity for people to reach a page, while usability is directly related to meeting the expectations of a given audience.
Here are some tips that you can put into practice to improve usability on your e-commerce website:
- always focus on clear, simple and direct language, according to the needs and expectations of your audience;
- write titles that draw the attention and help put your page in the top positions of Google, according to SEO techniques;
- the website must be easily navigable. Any barriers, such as a delay in opening a link can be a “shot in the foot”;
- pay attention to the colours, since they influence the consumers’ emotions and decision-making;
- highlight the “Contact us” section, giving the idea that is easy to communicate with the company if the customer wants to clarify a more specific doubt.
Usability is key to enhance your website, so you must study and explore this resource. In addition to usability, also bet on strategies to convert visitors, as shown below.
2. Bet on strategies to convert online visitors
When it comes to online conversion, it is indispensable that you create actions that draw the visitor’s attention so that they are encouraged to decide in favour of closing the purchase. For example, the so-called Call-to-Actions, or CTAs, are strategies used to induce the user to do some kind of action.
One of the ways to make CTAs attractive is to create a colour contrast on your page. Another way is to make it clear to users what will happen after they click a particular button. Thus, you should never leave space for surprises that may displease a consumer.
In the texts that accompany a CTA, it should be clear that the visitors will receive something that they will like, such as a useful tool, quality content or even an offer or a discount on a product or service. In addition to the CTA, you should also bet on other tips that we detail below.
Invest in SEO techniques
SEO (Search Engine Optimization) techniques are essential to increase the number of visitors and put the website in Google’s top positions.
- Make your website “readable” by Google, avoiding interference;
- always publish original content because Google may penalize you for publishing duplicate content;
- name products and their categories in a simple, clear and direct manner to make your user’s life easy;
- use friendly URLs, that is, that are easily understood, such as https://www.lojavirtual.com.br/camiseta-corrida-adidas.
Prepare A/B tests
A/B tests are aimed at testing versions of the same page or specific element so that you can identify which one is more successful among users. In the e-commerce context, A/B tests can be used for:
- checkout pages: order of presentation of information, such as discount, delivery time and shipping costs;
- videos and images: which of the two generates more engagement among potential customers;
- description of products: use of images, text formatting, description content, etc.;
- security seal: where to put it;
- registration forms: what information to request, order of the fields, etc.
These are some of the most commonly used strategies in sales conversion. We should mention that they undoubtedly make more sense when used in parallel to the action measurement strategy. In this way, you can assess what is working and what needs to be improved. Therefore, it is essential that you track your visits, as we highlight below.
3. Track your visits
In an e-commerce, the website is obviously the main tool to drive sales. That is why it is crucial that you track your page visits. It is key to carry out periodic analyses to keep what is going well and improve what is not producing results. With the help of some tools, you can carry out these analyzes and get better results for your business.
Among the advantages of monitoring your visits, we highlight:
- you will have an overall view of absolutely everything that happens on your website;
- for example, it is possible to know how many people accessed the website, how long they stayed, their location, what time they accessed it, etc.;
- it is also possible to evaluate operational and technical data, such as screen resolution;
- to have access to all this information, Google Analytics is one of the most used tools.
Tools
As we have highlighted above, Google Analytics is one of the main tools used to track visits to a website. It is free and its differential is to allow the measurement of performance of various entry channels to the website, such as campaigns on Google AdWords, social media, e-mail marketing, reference sites, organic traffic, direct traffic, etc.
In order to use this tool, you must install it and access it using a Google account. Google Analytics itself offers a getting started guide. With this, the tool becomes quite accessible and relatively easy to work with.
In addition to tracking visits, Analytics also offers benefits such as:
- average e-commerce ticket: you can set a specific goal for online shops, which allows you to have data on the revenue, number of sales made, and best-selling items (at the same time, you will know which products are less sold);
- seasonality: the tool also allows you to know the peak periods for certain products or services. This information help coming up with strategies in line with the actions that already worked in your e-commerce.
In short, Google Analytics enables you to thoroughly track everything that happens on your website. In the case of virtual shops, you can measure the full performance of your sales campaigns in real time. The tool provides all the necessary data for you to check the performance of your e-commerce.
In addition to tracking sales, another aspect to be noted to improve your sales website is through loyalty programs, as we will show below.
4. Create loyalty programs
Loyalty programs are excellent for attracting and retaining consumers. In the case of e-commerce, it is very common to find points programs. In general, consumers accumulate points and these points are used in future purchases, often as discount coupons.
In this sense, a loyalty program can be described as a group of actions intended to retain the most loyal buyers, in exchange for advantages in future purchases. When it comes to implementing such a program, the online shop must create a set of rewards that are truly worth it to the customer. Otherwise, the strategy may be the same as “shooting oneself in the foot”.
To create a loyalty program based on a points program, follow the following steps:
Figure out why the customer does not come back
- analyse the level of loyalty in your virtual shop;
- if your buyers are not returning, you must call an alert;
- the competitors may be attracting your consumers;
- your customers’ income may not allow them to buy from you again;
- perhaps you are not advertising your company properly. Thus, customers will simply forget about you.
Define the rewards
- state clearly what the customer will get from consuming more at your shop;
- if it is a points system, remember that, for each new purchase, the consumer can make a redemption;
- the program should be attractive, easy to understand and use.
Choose the prizes
- you may have a pre-determined catalogue with products to be redeemed;
- however, most e-commerces prefer to give discounts;
- care must be taken to show this as a real advantage to the customer.
Define the operation
- if you really choose to use the points system, define the products that will be included in the promotion;
- besides that, make it clear how much the coupon will be worth: the minimum number of points accumulated, among other similar issues.
Set the score values
- you need to define the number of points the customer will get on each purchase;
- obviously, more expensive products generate more points than cheaper goods;
- assess what the reward will be for the consumer, according to their purchase and number of points accumulated.
Choose the name of the program
- creating the name of the program is one of the last stages of the process;
- developing your own identity is important because people love to feel special by joining an advantage club.
After implementing the loyalty program, it is essential to measure the numbers involved in the strategies developed. Among other issues, you must focus on your actions to win new participants. After all, in order to bear the costs of the discounts granted, a large number of loyal consumers are needed.
5. Use price comparison websites
Price comparison websites are a way to enable e-commerce customers to make a simpler decision. They also serve to win over new consumers and increase sales.
In theory, price comparison websites are pages that search and display the prices of a product in several virtual shops. Thus, they compare the various price options for the products on the same website. And this way, customers are able to choose the virtual shop that offers a more accessible price and that is consonant with their reality.
Among the advantages of price comparison websites, we can highlight
- for the customer, ease of use and speed;
- for the seller, potential sales channel;
- it is a possibility to increase the number of visits, because customers are directed to the company’s page;
- conveys credibility to the customer, which may be interesting to virtual shops entering the market or brands that are not yet well-known to the public.
Most price comparison websites use pay-per-click. Thus, the virtual shop pays a given amount every time a prospect clicks its e-commerce link.
Depending on the price comparison website, charges may be per action. In this case, the seller will pay a small percentage on the sale made from the price comparison website. Both models work well. Therefore, you need to study them in order to figure out what will work best with your strategy.
These are some of the most popular price comparison websites:
- Google Shopping;
- Next Tag;
- Pricegrabber;
- Shopping.com;
- Shopzilla
Price comparison websites are becoming more and more popular on the web. To get all the advantages of this type of tool, the tip is to study and explore all the features of the price comparison websites. This way you will make the most out of them. However, do not think that it is only related to closing purchases. It is crucial to keep track of the main sales KPIs, as we will see below.
6. Pay attention to the top sales KPIs
For a company to be successful, it is imperative that it pays attention to the Key Performance Indicator (KPI). This is the metric used to check whether the organization has met its goals or not. Each company defines its own KPIs, but the tip here is to watch especially those that have more influence on your strategy.
For sales in virtual shops, we can mention as good examples of KPIs:
- number of leads generated;
- number of qualified leads;
- conversion rate;
- average ticket;
- number of deals closed, etc.
For an e-commerce to be successful, it is very important to create and track some of the indicators we mentioned in the examples above. Obviously, the most important thing is to create a list of those KPIs that you will really analyze. That is, you must be focused on that process.
First and foremost, the company goals must be very clear. Then, find out what interferes directly with the goals you want to achieve. With regard to the increase in sales, the KPIs we have listed aim at concentrating the efforts on results improvement, increasing the efficiency of the entire team. Thus, the organization will grow and become a reference in its market.
In addition to the KPIs, we also need to talk about some plug-ins that may be fundamental to the success of an e-commerce. We discuss this topic in detail below.
7. Rely on ready-to-use plug-ins
The growth of e-commerce plug-ins for WordPress makes the platform quite viable for virtual shops. In this context, we must make clear that there are several ready-to-use plug-ins and that, among other advantages, they allow to streamline processes. They can be related to SEO, tracking, behavioural tracking and other topics.
For those who are not very familiar with this area, we should note that plug-ins are systems installed on a certain platform (such as WordPress) which add features to the original system. Through them, we can, for example, add sharing buttons in social media and improve the indexing capability of the ecommerce.
There are several plug-in options for virtual shops. Among the highlights, we have WooCommerce, mainly due to its flexibility and robustness. When installed next to WordPress, WooCommerce creates the entire structure of the virtual shop on the platform. In this way, it offers features such as the shopping cart, product management and all the checkout steps.
Speaking more directly and clearly, WooCommerce allows the following:
- perform basic configurations for a virtual shop system;
- create functionalities to insert and manage products;
- create tax-related configurations;
- create payment methods configurations;
- establish forms of delivery;
- integrate with other types of platforms, such as Google Analytics.
Another type of plug-in that should be highlighted is Shopify. Just like WooCommerce, this plug-in offers a complete framework for creating an e-commerce in WordPress. It is one of the most suitable plug-ins for advertisers and is also integrated with social media. Among its advantages, Shopify has an inventory management tool.
If you have an integrated WordPress shop, it is very simple to obtain these plug-ins and take advantage of the features optimization that can be added to your e-commerce. Some time ago, WordPress e-commerce plug-ins were nothing but a desire, but today, they are an increasingly more viable option and they are even essential to the success of a virtual shop.
What do you think of these strategies to improve your sales website? By putting all these tips into practice, it is very likely that your company will sell more, and will achieve its goals while standing out from the competition. As we said at the beginning of this text, the scenario is highly competitive, but those who pay attention to details and invest in specific tools differentiate and consolidate themselves in the market.
You must bear in mind that many of these tips are not complex and they can be put into practice in a relatively easy manner. You just have to be dedicated, committed and patient. You must remember that you will be acquiring new knowledge, skills and attitudes. So, you must also have a little patience. Results do not happen overnight.
After all we have written it is time for you to get down to work and make it happen. So, never forget that details make the difference. Nowadays, although many online shops work hard on marketing strategies, actions tend to be very similar. Therefore, there is a great field of possibilities for those who invest in innovation and creativity.
These 7 strategies will enable you to work differently and, consequently, increase your sales substantially. Treat them as a priority and go ahead with your growth plan.
By the way, download our e-book, which is also full of tips to build a truly winner business.