23 Effective Strategies to Boost Sales for Your Business

You’ve discovered a product to sell, and your online store generates a few weekly sales. Now, you’re ready to accelerate growth and boost sales significantly.

But with limited resources and a small marketing budget, where should you focus?

This guide reveals proven strategies to increase your online sales – without demanding a substantial time commitment.

Uncover Your Unique Value Proposition

Your unique value proposition (UVP) highlights why your target audience should choose your brand and products. You can uncover this by surveying existing customers to understand their motivations. Why did they choose your product over competitors? What unique problems did you solve for them?

Once you’ve identified your UVP, ensure it’s featured prominently across all touchpoints: social media bios, homepage, product descriptions, and email campaigns. For instance, NOVO watch uses their UVP, “We make watches from sustainable materials saturated in history,” in their product descriptions to attract environmentally conscious buyers.

Gabriel Bertolo, founder of Radiant Elephant, shares how this approach improved a client’s conversion rate: “After refining the value proposition and incorporating it into website copy, the overall conversion rate increased from 1.9% to 4%.”

In today’s competitive online sales environment, standing out is crucial. A clear UVP that addresses a customer’s pain points or desires can significantly boost conversions and overall sales.

Act on Customer Feedback

Understanding your customers’ needs and pain points is key to increasing sales. Leverage tools like Octane AI or Shop Quiz to gather valuable insights. Use quizzes or surveys to uncover their challenges, then recommend personalised products as solutions.

Follow up with targeted email campaigns to address the specific problems customers share. For example, Skinny Mixes created a recipe quiz to learn what dishes its potential customers enjoyed. Participants received personalised recommendations and a discount code, resulting in over 13,000 new email subscribers and generating €500,000 in revenue.

Personalising the shopping experience based on feedback not only increases satisfaction but also drives repeat purchases and brand loyalty.

Skinny Mixes’ recipe quiz has generated over €500,000 in ecommerce sales for the brand.

Share Customer Reviews

Customer reviews are a powerful tool for driving sales, with 93% of shoppers actively seeking reviews before making a purchase. Encourage satisfied customers to leave reviews on platforms like Google Business, Yelp, or TrustPilot.

Maximise the impact of these testimonials by sharing them across multiple channels:

  • Email campaigns to build trust.
  • Social media posts to expand reach.
  • Product pages to reassure potential buyers.

Glossier, for instance, showcases over 3,000 customer reviews directly on its product pages, demonstrating social proof to build buyer confidence and increase sales.

Answer Questions with Optimised Blog Content

Blogging is a cost-effective way to attract high-intent customers compared to paid social ads. By addressing questions your audience is already searching for, you can drive organic traffic to your site.

Start by identifying relevant keywords that align with your audience’s needs. Create content that answers their queries while following SEO best practices. Beardbrand, for example, uses blog posts to target search terms like “how to grow a handlebar mustache” and “how to use utility oil,” drawing in potential customers interested in grooming products.

Noah Kain, founder of Noah Kain Consulting, emphasises the importance of a consistent SEO strategy:

“By focusing on new content, acquiring backlinks, and resolving technical issues, we drive traffic and sales for target keywords tied to revenue growth.”

Offer Free Shipping

Shipping fees are one of the main reasons customers abandon their carts. Modern shoppers expect free shipping, with 47% of buyers leaving if extra costs like shipping fees are too high.

Combat this by offering free shipping promotions, especially for orders over a certain value, to encourage larger purchases and higher average order values.

Maria Shriver, co-founder and CEO of MOSH, shares how a subscription-based offer helped boost their sales. “By providing a 20% discount and free shipping to email subscribers, we nearly doubled sales. This also helped us reach the milestone of one million bars sold in early September.”

Such offers not only incentivise purchases but also help retain loyal customers, creating a win-win for both buyers and your business.

Mosh provides new email subscribers with a 20% discount code to use on a trial pack.

Run Abandoned Cart Email Campaigns

Customers often browse products on an online store, add them to their cart, and leave without completing the purchase. Various reasons, such as unclear pricing or distractions, may contribute to abandoned carts.

Abandoned cart emails help re-engage these customers. Remind them about the items left in their cart and provide an incentive to complete the purchase, such as an additional discount or free shipping.

Grenade exemplifies this strategy by urging customers to buy products they previously viewed “before it’s too late.” These emails instill urgency, boosting sales and re-capturing lost opportunities.

Grenade boosts sales by creating a sense of urgency with its cart abandonment emails.

Use Upsells and Cross-Sells

Not all shoppers find exactly what they need on the first product page they visit. Use upselling and cross-selling strategies to guide potential customers to other relevant options:

  • Upselling: Recommend products that are more expensive but offer better features or quality than the one they’re currently browsing.
  • Cross-selling: Suggest complementary items that enhance the product they’ve already added to their cart.

For instance, if someone is viewing a €19 iPhone case, you could upsell a €39 version with superior drop protection. Alternatively, cross-sell by recommending a matching €4.99 PopSocket to enhance the shopping experience.

Studio Neat suggests a matching tray and totebook for the pen in your shopping cart.

Add Trust Signals to Your Online Store

New visitors to your online store may hesitate to make a purchase, particularly if they’re unfamiliar with your brand. Trust signals can reassure them about your reliability and encourage conversions.

Common trust signals include:

  • Money-back guarantees
  • Positive customer reviews
  • Clear return or refund policies
  • SSL certificates for secure transactions
  • Logos of trusted credit card processors

NCLA Beauty employs this strategy effectively. Their website footer features well-recognised payment processor logos, giving potential customers the confidence to shop securely.

NCLA Beauty’s website footer features logos of trusted payment processors.

Improve Website Navigation

A user-friendly navigation system is crucial for any eCommerce store. Simplify the shopping experience by optimising your site’s navigation, making it easy for customers to find what they’re looking for.

Ensure your main navigation directs visitors to key product categories and provides search and filtering tools for more precise results. Additionally, consider enabling breadcrumbs on individual product pages. Breadcrumbs allow first-time visitors to discover similar products without returning to the homepage.

Into the AM leverages eCommerce navigation to highlight its bestselling products, ensuring they’re easy to find for customers.

Speed Up the Checkout Process

A seamless checkout process directly impacts your sales. The easier it is for customers to complete their purchase, the less likely they’ll abandon their cart.

Simplify the checkout experience by:

  • Limiting the number of form fields to avoid overwhelming customers.
  • Enabling autofill options, to automatically populate shipping and payment details.

Dan Potter, head of digital at CRAFTD London, advises, “Simplify your page by asking for minimal information and allowing autofill to do its magic when it comes to card processing. Avoid cart abandonment by simplifying your checkout page.”

By enabling autofill options, in particular, boasts a 1.72x higher checkout-to-conversion rate compared to standard checkout processes and is even more effective on mobile.

Accept Alternative Payment Methods

In today’s digital era, customers expect a variety of payment options beyond traditional credit card forms. Offering flexibility in payment methods can help increase sales and cater to a wider audience.

Popular payment methods include:

  • Debit and credit cards
  • Buy now, pay later services like Klarna, or AfterPay
  • Mobile wallets, including Apple Pay, and Google Pay

Wolf Circus illustrates how offering AfterPay helps customers split payments into manageable installments, making purchases more accessible.

Provide Exceptional Customer Service

Customer service is vital to building trust and maintaining loyalty. Whether a customer receives a damaged product or has difficulty using an item, providing swift and effective support can turn a negative experience into a positive one.

Adopt a proactive approach to customer service:

  • Apologise for any issues and resolve them quickly.
  • Leverage the service recovery paradox, which suggests customers are more loyal to brands that effectively handle their complaints than those that provide a problem-free experience.

Resolving a customer’s issue not only retains their business but also strengthens brand loyalty.

Offer a Customer Loyalty Program

Acquiring new customers is challenging, but retaining existing ones is just as important. Customer loyalty programs encourage repeat purchases, driving long-term revenue growth.

Research shows two-thirds of consumers adjust their spending habits to earn rewards. Design a loyalty program that offers incentives such as:

  • Rewards for word-of-mouth referrals
  • Perks for sharing your products on social media
  • Discounts or exclusive offers for repeat purchases

Liquid Death capitalises on this approach by offering loyalty program members access to exclusive merchandise, encouraging ongoing engagement and purchases.

Leverage social media marketing

Around 61.4% of the world’s population are active social media users. No matter what buyer persona you’re targeting, there’s a strong likelihood that you’ll find them on platforms like Facebook, X, Pinterest, TikTok, or Instagram.

Effective social media marketing starts with a strong understanding of your target audience. Where do they hang out online? What types of content do they engage with? How do they use social media? Once you know the answers to these questions, you can tailor your ecommerce social media strategy to reach them and drive traffic to your online store.

Most social media platforms also have dedicated commerce features, like Facebook Shops or YouTube Shopping. Ads4Seo integrates with these platforms to display your inventory within each social media app, letting your followers browse products and buy without leaving their social media accounts.

Partner with influencers and creators

Influencers and creators are people who’ve accumulated an impressive following on social media. These followings don’t have to be in the millions – nano-influencers (those with fewer than 10,000 followers) often have the most engaged audiences.

Use Ads4Seo Collabs to shortlist potential influencers to work with or create an application page for your existing customers to start promoting your products.

Duradry generated €50,000 in sales and reduced customer acquisition costs by 29%.

Duradry’s landing page lets loyal fans earn commission on product recommendations.

Expand your product range

The more products you sell, the more opportunities you have to increase sales. But it’s a double-edged sword: You want enough inventory to serve a range of customers, yet selling to everyone means you’ll speak to nobody.

The least risky way to grow your product range is to expand on an already bestselling product. If you’re selling hair products and 40% of your sales came from a frizz-taming spray, there’s demand for it.

Consider making the product available in a larger or more advanced formula and retargeting people who purchased the first version. This strategy will increase sales without necessarily finding a new audience – you’re simply re-engaging people who’ve already tried (and loved!) your products.

Launch a flash sale

A flash sale works similarly to a promotion but is much more time-restrictive. The “flash” concept means customers must buy before the sale ends. Studies have shown this sense of urgency tempts online shoppers into making a purchase.

To pull off a flash sale:

  • Ensure you have enough inventory to meet demand
  • Set a concrete start and end date
  • Make your marketing messages consistent, like offering the same discount on every marketing channel and your website banner
  • Launch them sparingly (customers might not buy if they know another flash sale is coming next month)

Poly & Bark launched a Labor Day flash sale.

Set up instant replies to customer support

You could’ve done the hard work driving traffic to your online store, only to fall at the final hurdle by not addressing a customer’s sales objections. An automated chatbot can take that task off your hands by giving customers real-time answers to frequently asked questions.

Ads4Seo Inbox can give potential customers immediate answers to questions like:

  • How long does shipping take?
  • What’s your refund policy?
  • Do you have any discounts available?
  • Where is my order?

“People that use chat are high-intent customers that tend to make purchases,” says Rennie Wood, co-owner of Wood Wood Toys. “I don’t know if I can put a number on it, but I do know that if somebody reaches out with a problem, I bet eight times out of 10 we can solve it and win the sale.”

Configure automated replies to your FAQs with Ads4Seo Inbox.

Show a Clear Returns Policy

It might seem counterproductive to mention how customers can return an item before they even buy it, but doing so is essential for boosting sales. Studies have shown that 82% of purchasing decisions are influenced by returns policies, with many online shoppers reviewing the policy before making their first purchase.

Make sure to highlight the most crucial aspects of your returns policy, such as:

  • The timeframe for initiating a return
  • What items can (or cannot) be returned
  • Whether returns are free or come with an additional cost

Display this information in microcopy throughout your site, such as in the footer, checkout message, or beneath product descriptions. This transparency can help hesitant customers feel more confident about completing their purchase.

Optimise Product Pages for SEO

Search engine optimisation (SEO) is the strategy that helps your products get discovered by customers actively searching for them online.

Begin with keyword research to identify the terms your target audience is searching for. After determining which keywords are most relevant to each product page, incorporate them into your:

  • Meta titles and descriptions
  • Heading tags
  • Image alt text
  • URLs
  • Product descriptions

Pro tip: Don’t limit your SEO efforts to Google alone. While it remains the largest search engine, other platforms like YouTube, TikTok, and Pinterest are increasingly used for product searches. Apply the same SEO best practices to the content you publish on these platforms as well.

Diversify Your Product Collections

Product collections make it easier for customers to find exactly what they’re looking for. Instead of simply grouping products by category (e.g., “t-shirts”), try creating collections that help customers discover new items. Some examples include:

  • Bestsellers
  • Items on sale
  • Products under a specific price, such as “Gifts under €25”
  • Products for specific use cases, like “Fishing Gear”
  • Gifts for specific recipients, like “Gifts for New Moms”

Brands like Hydrant use curated collections to help customers shop by product benefit, which adds an extra layer of value to the shopping experience.

Use Price Anchoring

Price anchoring is a technique that highlights the difference between an old price and a new, discounted price. For instance, if a product was originally priced at €49 but is now available for €39, striking through the original price makes the deal look more appealing.

However, a word of caution: always ensure the “before” price is a genuine sale price. Inflating the original price to create the illusion of a bigger discount can lead to legal trouble and damage customer trust.

Nerdwax, for example, successfully uses price anchoring to demonstrate the value of its offers.

Consult Sales Analytics

Sales analytics is a data-driven approach to understanding your online store’s performance. It can help guide your decisions by providing insight into how customers interact with your site and purchase products.

For instance, let’s say your Ads4Seo analytics show that Facebook drives 55% of your website traffic, but the conversion rate is just 2.4%. In contrast, TikTok only drives 25% of your traffic but has a conversion rate of 4.5%. With this data, it makes sense to reallocate resources to TikTok content, as it’s proven to deliver a better return on investment.

Increasing online store sales is an ongoing process

What works for one store might not work for another, so it’s important to understand what drives your sales and focus on that.

Stay in tune with your existing customer base to anticipate their changing preferences. Whether it’s improving customer service or offering free shipping, making small, continuous improvements can help steadily increase sales over time.

 

How to Increase Sales FAQ

Can offering free shipping really increase sales?

Absolutely. Studies show that 62% of online shoppers avoid purchasing from retailers that charge extra for shipping. Additionally, 48% of shoppers abandon their carts due to unexpected shipping costs. Offering free shipping can significantly reduce cart abandonment and boost sales.

What are trust signals, and how do they impact sales?

Trust signals – such as customer reviews, money-back guarantees, and endorsements from influencers – build credibility and reassure customers. This sense of trust makes buyers more confident in purchasing from your business, directly improving sales.

How can I bring in more online sales?

To boost online sales, consider implementing proven strategies such as running abandoned cart recovery campaigns, launching loyalty programs for repeat customers, and simplifying the checkout process with one-click options. Offering free shipping, accepting diverse payment methods, and targeting lookalike audiences can also enhance conversions. Optimise your website for SEO, partner with influencers, and improve site navigation to create a seamless user experience. Additionally, explore new social media platforms for promotion, display trust signals like certifications and guarantees, and share customer testimonials to build credibility and encourage purchases.

How does investing in post-sales customer service increase future sales?

Providing excellent post-sales support helps build goodwill and customer loyalty. Resolving issues for unhappy customers can turn them into advocates for your brand, leading to repeat purchases and positive word-of-mouth referrals, both online and offline.

Why does speeding up the checkout process increase sales?

The checkout process is often where many sales are lost – shopping cart abandonment rates average around 70%. Streamlining the process by reducing unnecessary steps and making it user-friendly allows customers to complete purchases quickly, directly boosting conversion rates.