It’s a safe bet to say that all e-commerce retailers want to increase revenue through sales growth. Sometimes an increase in sales can seem to be random luck, but is it? It can help to look at a particularly profitable time period for your store to determine what exactly went right. Many factors go into creating the right conditions for a sales frenzy, however, there are four factors that typically can explain increases in sales. When you know what these are, you can work on maximizing their potential.
1. Website traffic
It doesn’t take a Harvard MBA to tell you that increased traffic will often lead to increased sales. With so many different ways to drive traffic, each with their own set of costs, it pays to take the time to figure out which sources of traffic will give you the best return on investment. You can focus on SEO strategies, pay-per-click ads, email marketing or social media campaigns. If you are just starting out, the general advice is to focus on one platform at a time, but as time goes on, it’s good to have a wide variety of traffic-generating channels. Also, keep in mind that generating traffic through SEO takes time, whereas email marketing and pay-per-click ads are something you can reap the rewards of immediately.
2. Customer engagement
Once you have more people visiting your site, you want to do all that you can to enhance their customer experience and level of engagement. This can be done by improving the usability of your site and creating a snag-free, smooth checkout process. Also of importance is having a site that is convenient for your customer to use on the go via their mobile devices. Additionally, consider posting a brief customer engagement survey to check on your customers’ level of satisfaction with their shopping experience.
3. Supply chain management
Focusing on your inventory availability should be another high-level priority. Do all you can to avoid out-of-stock items and constantly work on expanding the variety of items to increase your store’s selection. Appath’s multichannel ecommerce inventory management system keeps all your product quantities in sync across all selling channels, this is a must to ensure you are not overselling unavailable products. Customers don’t want to wait. If you have out of stock items, you are probably losing sales. Consider also strategies such as ordering inventory in small batches and improving the level of communication with your vendors. This is one area where businesses based on drop shipping can be at a disadvantage. You have less control over inventory counts if your drop-shipping vendor isn’t keeping you aware of current stock availability.
4. Your competition
The convenience of shopping online means your competitors are only a click away. Stay aware of what your competition is up to. Naturally, you want to keep your pricing competitive. However, that doesn’t always mean striving to provide the lowest price out there, although for some niches, price will always be the determining factor in who gets the sale. By regularly evaluating your competition, you can determine what they are doing right and what you can do better than they do. Your competition provides a resource of information that can help you to increase your e-commerce sales. By studying them, you can get a clear vision of your niche and what makes you unique from everyone else. Find your ideal marketing channel that will reach your target market and focus on that. Finally, allow customers to be your brand ambassadors by letting them leave reviews to set your company apart from the competition.
It’s important to remain flexible in your approach to growing sales because the world of e-commerce is in a constant state of change. However, by taking the time to focus on these four factors, you will have significantly increased your chances of growing your online sales.