How to increase your e-commerce sales

Whether your e-commerce business is well established or just starting out, there is always room for improvement when it comes to sales revenue. Even if you have a solid marketing strategy in place, it’s important to remember that consumer demand is always evolving and marketing platforms and tools are always changing, so your strategy should be nimble and adaptable too. 

Below, we’ll dive into strategies for increasing your e-commerce sales. Ultimately, this means creating a delightful and seamless shopping experience for your customers. One that engages them immediately and entices them to shop, add more to their cart, purchase, leave a great review, and then return again and again. 

Of course, we know a lot needs to occur behind the scenes to make that happen, from merchandising and web page optimization to email marketing, social media partnerships, and more. Here’s what you need to know to increase your sales year after year.  

For web: 

When it comes to your e-commerce store, clarity and ease of use are very important. Shoppers need to be able to find you with a simple search query, and your site itself should be easily navigable (and speedy!). Product pages should have all the information consumers need to decide to purchase, and you should have a content strategy in place to tell your story and provide a good sense of your brand identity and purpose. We also know that shoppers convert better when they’re presented with a sense of serendipity. Here’s how to pull it all off. 

Build trust with reviews on product pages

According to a 2024 Bright Local survey, 75% of consumers report that they always read online reviews. These reviews help shoppers make more informed decisions about their purchase, reducing the chance of a frustrating and costly return. So for your brand and your customers, having reviews available for shoppers to read (and an opportunity for them to leave feedback) is critical. Need help encouraging them to leave reviews? Here are some proven strategies. 

Depending on what you’re selling, it may be useful to have a rating system or fit indicator (like height and weight), so shoppers know how an item will suit their particular shape or preference. An option for uploading photos and videos can also be useful so that shoppers can see, for example, clothes being worn on a body similar to their own. 

Upgrade your product pages

If it’s been a while since you’ve freshened up your product pages, consider improving the quality of the photos and adding video as well. Good quality photos and videos are the most effective way for consumers to get to know your products—to examine the aesthetics, function, sizing, and more—all of which can lead to more sales.

Be sure you take shots from multiple angles and use close-up photos to show any unique details or key product features. Anything you can do to compensate for the fact that customers can’t touch, feel, or try on your products in real time, the better. Need video tips? Here’s a quick guide to creating video for brand marketing.

Use blog posts to inform and convert readers

A blog can be a powerful tool for your e-commerce site if you have a thoughtful conversion strategy. Longform content gives you an opportunity to share your brand story, convey your brand principles, and provide readers with insight into your products. But make sure you include a prompt for the reader to shop. For example, say you’re interviewing a designer whose pieces are new to your site. Within the article, make it easy for shoppers to click on the product pages to buy those pieces. 

Encourage spontaneous shopping

If a shopper comes to your site to buy one item, there is always an opportunity to entice them to put another item in their basket. Say you’re selling a pair of shorts. When a shopper is on that product page, your site could suggest complementary outfit pieces like a top, sandals, and other accessories. They can appear on the shorts product page or even at checkout once they’ve added an item to their cart. Here are more tips on increasing your average order value. 

Use SEO best practices

You can build the most beautiful site with the best products, but if people can’t find you online, you’re missing out on a lot of sales. That’s why search engine optimization (SEO) is important. You can find some SEO best practices in this article to get your products noticed. But here are a few to get you started: 

• Use concise and accurate product titles and descriptions
• Add proper file names for images, including alt text
• Use relevant keywords in your URLs
• Tag your products with accurate categories so they appear in the right searches 

P.S. Need help generating keywords for your site? You can use AI for that. 

Make mobile shopping easy 

You never want a shopper to abandon their impulse to buy, so it’s important to make it as easy and convenient as possible. Try to reduce any friction throughout the mobile shopping experience … any blip like a slow-loading page or a difficult-to-navigate site could discourage someone from purchasing. 

Start by making sure that the shopping journey is as intuitive as possible, from the moment a shopper enters your site to the moment they hit buy. They should be able to find what they need through search, and buttons should be large and clear—pointing them in the direction of the next step. When it comes to checking out, offer a “check out as guest” option, so they don’t have to search for usernames and passwords, and be sure to offer multiple payment methods, like mobile wallets and credit cards. You can get even more merchandising tips right here. 

A/B test to see what works (and what doesn’t) 

If you’re still learning how your target audience shops, A/B testing is a useful option. This method presents shoppers with two different versions of web design or copy. Once you’ve run the test for a period of time, you can look at the data to see which version performs better. This kind of testing will ultimately help you determine how to best engage your audience.

For social:

Today, social media is an essential tool for retailers and wholesalers. Think of these platforms as word-of-mouth (with the potential to reach millions of mouths in an instant). Of course, you don’t need to hire a whole social media team or even post multiple times per day to reap the benefits of social media. Here are some tips for making the most of your time on these platforms. 

Engage with your audience  

Beyond your posting schedule and focus on engagement (responding to direct messages and comments), be sure to stay on top of new platform launches. This means if there are new posting formats, trending audio clips, or shopping opportunities to experiment with, you should be the first to try. Luckily, many social media platforms have documentation to get you started. We also have a handy guide for setting up a TikTok shop and a guide for using Instagram to market your brand. 

Partner with an influencer

If you’re looking for a cost-effective retail marketing technique, partnering with an influencer could be a useful option. Influencers with large audiences (and even micro-influencers with highly engaged smaller audiences) can help bring authority and authenticity to your brand by showing your products in use, creating review content, and more. To determine if an influencer is right for you, ask for some of their metrics, like engagement rates and audience size. Think about the type of personas that your current audience will value, respect, and emulate—and go from there. 

For brand:

Shaping your brand story is a vital step to differentiate yourself from your competitors. From sharing your mission and expressing your values, putting your brand story front and center is the best way to help your customers connect with your business and build trust. Beyond crafting brand messaging and keeping it aligned throughout your site and on social media, here are two ways to use your brand and your voice to keep shoppers coming back for more. 

Build fun, engaging loyalty programs

A Statista survey found that 80% of US consumers claim to purchase more frequently from a brand after joining its loyalty program. That’s a huge opportunity for any brand to entice shoppers to shop more. All it takes is some planning. You could start by offering customers a certain amount of points per dollar they spend, which they can then redeem for special discounts and gifts. If the program gets larger, you could even consider adding local in-person events for VIPs who have reached a certain tier. 

Care about customer service

When it comes to retail, there is perhaps nothing more important than customer service—because mistakes happen, whether the customer ordered the wrong size or there’s been a shipping error. How the brand handles these mistakes can be the difference between losing a customer and gaining one for life. (According to Mailchimp, 89% of customers are more likely to complete an additional purchase following a good customer service experience.) On your site, you could offer live chat and phone or email support for shoppers who need it. If you have a small team, writing up an FAQ page to get ahead of customer questions can be helpful too.

For email: 

Email marketing is a valuable tool to keep your brand top of mind for shoppers, whether you’re offering a special discount or letting them know that you’ve got new items in stock. We have a full list of tried-and-true email marketing tips for retail businesses. Experiment with these especially powerful ones below to see what works for your brand and your audience. 

Revive abandoned carts

There are lots of reasons people abandon their carts, some of which are beyond your control—they might have been interrupted or they’ve decided the price is beyond their budget—and some aren’t, like your website is running too slowly or you don’t accept a popular payment method. Either way, an abandoned cart means lost revenue … but don’t worry, there are ways to re-engage your customers. 

Here are some tips for bringing those shoppers back to their carts so they can complete their purchase: 

• Send a reminder email with an extra discount if they continue to checkout
• Offer extra product details to answer any potential questions they may have
• Share testimonials from social media or product reviews in the email with a photo or video

Personalize email campaigns

Targeted email campaigns are a useful way to let shoppers know that you care about their experience. Whether you reach out about past purchases or segment audiences based on location, personalized emails can make a big difference, especially since the number of email users is only expected to grow—up to 4.73 billion by 2026. Given how high ROI on email marketing can be, this is a big opportunity to boost your sales. 

Together, these strategies can help you provide a seamless shopping experience for your customers—one that helps them find what they need, discover more, and ultimately return again and again. This is what will build loyalty and generate impactful referrals, boosting your sales today and for the long term.