Over the last decade, eCommerce has slowly but surely established itself as the people’s preferred mode of buying merchandise. E-commerce today generates close to 8,000 billion dollars a year, and the numbers keep growing rapidly. With a glut of online e-commerce stores, the competition has never been fiercer.

Most eCommerce stores rely on online and offline advertising to garner customers. However, if you do not have the budget for ads, does that mean your eCommerce store is doomed? Not at all. In this blog, we discuss 10 red hot tips to increase online sales by at least 3x without relying on advertisements. Do read this if you happen to be an online store owner. 

At the outset, you have to understand that when you focus on non-paid traffic, it essentially means that you have to concentrate on the website and make it better and easier to use and navigate. A vast majority of customers will not come back to a site where they have had a bad experience, and that is understandable. With many eCommerce websites for every niche, the customer is spoilt for choice.

So here are the 10 best ways to boost online traffic and sales without relying on paid advertisements. Keep reading.

1. Optimize the Website for Mobile Traffic?

Many online businesses out there have very poor, substandard designs, and needless to say, they are not optimized for mobile phones. This is an inviting disaster. As of today, mobile phone traffic has gone past desktop and laptop traffic by a huge margin, and this margin keeps increasing with every passing day.

You, as an e-commerce store owner, have to make sure that your website is built to handle mobile traffic with ease. This might entail a complete website overhaul, but it is necessary. Enlist the designing services at Orderem, which will give you what you need to become competitive. 

2. Build a Blog and Keep it up to Date

Creating a blog and publishing posts regularly is a great way of influencing customers to buy your products. You need not write the blog yourself; there are expert writers at Orderem who will do a wonderful job based on your input and give your website that extra bit of zing. Once a visitor is hooked to the blog, it becomes easier to influence his choices and convert him to a paying customer.

Do not forget to include high-resolution pictures and catchy product descriptions, as they are the keys to a successful conversion and sale. Nowadays, videos are the trend, so I suggest you include short videos of 2-3 minutes duration about your products. 

3. Include Customer Reviews and Testimonials

Gaining the visitor’s trust is crucial if you want him to become a customer. One powerful way of ensuring this is to include customer reviews as well as testimonials on your eCommerce website. Customers go by word of mouth, and if they see that someone has posted a rave review and recommended a particular product, they will be influenced into buying that product themselves.

You can take this a step further. Half your job is done if you can rope in an influencer to endorse your product on the website. Influencers on Facebook and Instagram enjoy a huge following, and their opinions and referrals hold a lot of sway. 

4. Craft an Email List

As a rule of thumb, a repeat customer is more likely to spend much more than a first-time customer. When you have a customer returning to your website, the bridge of trust has been built, and the best way to keep bringing them to your website is to build an email list.

You could try offering a small discount, say 10-15%, to those who sign up for the email list. Another way to make the email list look exclusive is by promoting new products on it. You could also post a teaser on social media that will encourage people who follow the page to sign up for the email list. 

5. Optimize the Checkout Process

It has been observed that a whopping 70% of potential customers abandon the checkout cart. The reasons are hidden fees, a large number of in-between steps, and a substandard overall experience. If you can improve the checkout process, you can gain a lot. Start by being upfront about the pricing of your products and doing away with hidden fees.

Additionally, you could inform the customer about the shipping fees at the outset rather than at the end of the checkout process. Customers will appreciate your candidness and be more likely to purchase a product from your site. Also, remember to reduce the number of clicks for conversion. At Orderem, we help you ensure that the checkout process on your website is smooth and fast, thereby increasing conversions.

6. Go for a Rewards Program

When you sell to an existing customer, the chances of closing the deal are high. The most effective way of bringing customers back to your site is via a rewards program, a brilliant strategy for you to employ. Use customer data to see what repeat customers have in common: location, purchased products, or interests.

If you can study the data to understand what drives the purchase, setting up the rewards program will be easier. You could offer free shipping, discounts, or even access to new products as bait. If you're unsure what to offer, you could simply ask your customers to participate in an online survey. 

7. Create a Sense of Urgency

If a visitor leaves your site without purchasing a product, the chances of him returning and completing the sale are rare. If you can bring a sense of urgency to your product, it will make it compelling in the eyes of the customer, and he will buy the product now rather than later.

You can use exclusivity to create a feeling of urgency and use the fear of missing out to lure the customer into buying your product. To do this, use popups that show other users who bought the product, send a “last chance” email, add a timer to the shopping cart, or even display “limited” products that will not be available later. 

8. Include Chat on Your Website

The majority of customers will want to connect to a person when they are buying stuff from your website. People expect the same attention on eCommerce sites as in a physical shop. You must be available to answer queries, guide the customer, and assist him throughout the sales process.

You will need the help of automatic chatbots for this. They will handle the initial conversation and answer common questions before they connect the customer to your sales team. Chatbots are affordable, and you will only need a handful of actual salespersons for this job, making this effort worth your money. Orderem can help you install chatbots on your website to engage customers while they shop.

9. Leverage Social Media

You cannot afford not to be on social media. Create a channel exclusively for promoting your products on sites like Facebook and Instagram, and ensure that the videos are high-quality with excellent voiceovers. Use SEO to ensure your posts reach the maximum number of people possible.

As your channel gains followers, it will be reflected in visits to your website, and the chances of a conversion are high. This is because the potential customer has already been primed on social media, and he just needs to visit your online store to check out the product and complete the purchase. 

10. Free Shipping

Most customers will expect free shipping on each and every purchase they make on your site. They expect you to pay for the shipping regardless of the magnitude of their purchase, and you will be better off by offering free shipping at the outset before they ask for it, but it is expensive and could eat into your profits.

To make things easier, you could “up” the prices of the products and then offer free shipping. This way, it will not hurt your wallet. Otherwise, you could offer free shipping as part of a loyalty program, ask for the customer’s email address in exchange for free shipping, or offer free shipping only if the purchases exceed a certain amount. 

Conclusion

Not all eCommerce store owners can afford to pay big bucks for primetime advertising. This does not mean that they cannot enjoy handsome profits from sales, and the way to do this is to incorporate the above pointers into their websites to make them optimal for customer conversion. 

At Orderem, we help you build a fast, efficient, and reliable website that can engage customers and ensure a high percentage of conversions. Most of these changes and tweaks can be achieved in a week or two, and they are easy to implement. With these tips, you can easily achieve 3x sales quickly.