20 ways to boost your online revenue

Boosting your online revenue should always be your primary goal. But in the world of e-Commerce, ways to increase online sales and boost your revenue can be complicated as there are so many different online sales and marketing tactics to experiment with. Therefore, we’re giving you 20 proven methods to reach those goals. It’s good to take into consideration that not every method makes sense for every product or service, so make sure you apply a filter that suits your specific business needs.

1. Target the right audience

First and foremost, it’s important to understand your customers. Only then you can make the right decisions about your products and marketing activities. When you’re operating in various industries such as Telecommunications, Retail, Consumer Electronics, and Automotive, it’s ‘normal’ to have face to face conversations with your customers. This way, you can find out what is appealing to them, but online this works differently. By using analytics you can identify purchasing patterns and preferences. This makes it easier to understand your audience and that will help you to create the right marketing activities. Ultimately, it will boost your online revenue.

2. What’s your USP?

Finding your unique selling point can be a super easy journey, or rather difficult. But once you find that one thing that only you offer and no one else can, you should make sure everybody knows. Include it in your tagline, make it prominent on your website (home page especially), announce it through your social media channels & ads and highlight it in your email marketing. Combining efforts through different channels creates a unified image about your business and your unique selling proposition. This way, you give people a reason to come to your online store and buy your products or services.

3. Empower your customer experience

Customers have high expectations when it comes to the experience on your website and support they’re getting. It should be easy for them to find what they are looking for and then buy it. If your analytics show a high number of people are visiting your site and leaving without buying, your customer experience may be the reason. And obviously you need to fix it in order to decrease cart abandonment. Is it easy for your customers to navigate through your website? Does your search feature work properly? How complicated is the checkout process? These are good questions to test yourself to see the customer buying experience through your own eyes. Note that 83% of customers would consider not buying a product online if the buying process is complicated, inconvenient or not comparable to a physical store. 

4. Full focus on customer service

Customers want a seamless customer experience, the moment they enter your website. Good to know: 81% of respondents say that they would abandon a brand and switch to another if they can’t find the wanted information online and if the customer experience with the brand is bad. It should be super easy for customers to contact you when they have any questions. For example, our One-to-One sales solution for assisted sales can help you with that. Use conversations to qualify web visitors and connect them to your experts in stores, call centers or showrooms. Enable your online customers to have real-time conversations with your sales teams every time they visit your website. This leads to our next point, implement a chat feature.

5. Provide a chat feature on your website

Shopping habits have shifted from brick and mortar stores, to catalog and TV shopping, then to today’s online shopping. Customers still want the ‘human’ experience they are used to from retail stores or even TV shopping – and they want it immediately. This is exactly why integrating a chat function is necessary. 1.4 billion people are using chatbots these days. That’s why 77% of executives have already implemented and 60% plan to implement conversational bots for after-sales and customer service. Therefore, it’s important to provide a chat feature, like Whisbi Sell. We transform your existing sales and support workflows into conversations that classify and qualify web visitors, using chatbots. The experience and conversations can be completely customized and adapted to your business rules and sales workflows.

6. Find the right platform

If you’re thinking about integrating chatbots, think about other Live Commerce solutions too. This is a service that combines live video streaming with instant purchasing – whether that be from selling an actual product during a stream or receiving support from a social community through a chat function or reaction buttons. This way, you can implement Live Video Shopping and engage with your customers in real-time while increasing your sales through interactive shoppable live streams. Live Video Shopping provides the perfect mix between a real store experience & online shopping and brings the offline experience online. Amazon states: “As compared with home shopping television channels, online retailers may lack the human component that motivates people to purchase. Sites such as YouTube that offer user-created videos have become hugely popular with the millennial generation. In fact, how-to videos have become an important driver of purchasing decisions among millennials.” In order to find the right solution, we’ve created a checklist to see what Live Video Shopping tools should offer.

7. Optimize your SEO

Help your customers find you! It’s so important to specifically work on improving your search engine ranking for terms your customers search to find your business. See what your competitors are doing and also create content on your website that leads directly to those important keywords. Try internal linking as much as possible and make sure your content is up to date: the right amount of copy that makes it easy for Google to lead customers to your website, keywords in headings and subheadings, and page optimization according to facts (update the year if you’ve included it in copy etc.).

8. Never stop creating content

If you create accurate and relevant content, it’s easier for Google to recognize your website. Potential customers will find your e-Commerce store faster through SEO. You can write about any topic that’s connected to your products or services. Also try to address common challenges or ways to use what you offer. Keep writing often so your website stays optimized and Google knows your online blog is updated.

9. Responsive (mobile) design

With more than half of all internet traffic shopping from a mobile device, it is extremely important to make sure your website is primed for mobile viewing. If you’re planning on running a successful e-Commerce website this should be on top of your list. Statistics show that 40% of users will go to the competitor after a bad mobile experience, yet an alarming 84% have experienced difficulty completing a mobile transaction. That high number should motivate you to create a mobile responsive and user-friendly website. 

10. Provide high quality images

Your website should look sleek and professional, but also product pictures should stand out. If they’re not high quality, they can come across as dodgy and (potential) customers will be hesitant to buy your product. Good to keep in mind: 22% of online product returns are because an ‘item looks different than the photos’. That will give you way more unwanted work in the end. 

11. Connect your social media accounts

If customers want your products, they want to be able to get them easily without taking too many steps in the buying process. When you connect your social media accounts to your store, they can buy your products directly from your social accounts when they see something they like. For example, use Instagram shoppable posts to allow customers to be redirected to your website immediately. 

12. Email marketing & nurturing campaigns

Sending emails with subject lines including a clear call to action work. Even better: connect your e-Commerce platform with an email service that collects the email addresses and sends them directly to your platform. If you’re hosting a webinar for example, collect those email addresses and set up a nurturing campaign to captivate those leads for your sales team. 

13. Showcase results of clients

Whether you do this through reviews on product pages or creating success stories from clients, it needs to be visible what work you’ve delivered and how much your customers loved it. This way, people feel reassured to buy from your online store.

14. Implement up- and cross selling

The main goal here is to get customers to buy a better version of your product. Include perks like a discount they’re getting when they’re buying in bulk. Or a specific add-on that will make your service better. Cross selling is showing what they might also need as an extension to the original product. Showcase what previous customers frequently bought together and this will increase your online revenue drastically. 

15. Simplify the checkout process

Too many steps during the checkout process can frustrate customers and that will lead to cart abandonment. To speed up the process, you can implement multiple things. With a one-click checkout you can reduce the checkout time by 25%, which will increase your conversion rate. If you’re focused on high ticket products, it could be useful to start livestreaming, directly from your website. This way, you can implement Live Video Shopping where customers can buy anything immediately from the stream. They see the product in real-time and are more likely to buy. 

16. Improve the speed of your website

47% of consumers expect websites to load in two seconds or less. And 40% will abandon a page that takes three or more seconds. For every second of loading time on your website, conversions drop by 12%. Bottom line: make sure your website is up to speed and works perfectly, so customers can easily make a purchase. 

17. Review your product pages

Another optimization that goes jointly with your website speed is to review your product pages. Make sure all product photos, availability and descriptions are up to date. The less customers have to ask about your products because everything is clear to them, the better. This will help reduce returns – which you obviously want to avoid. Have the option for customers to sign up to be notified when an item is back in stock. This will enlarge your mailing list and grow your audience, so you’ll fill two needs with one deed!

18. Start retargeting

If you want to try advertising campaigns to get your brand out there, it’s wise to start with retargeting ads. These ads are displayed to people who have visited your website in the past, but didn’t make a purchase (for whatever reason). They are already interested in your product or service and way more likely to buy in the future. Retargeting ads can be displayed through any social media channel, as well as email campaigns that are sent to specific audiences. 

19. Implement a loyalty program

A good way to increase your online revenue is to increase the lifetime value of your customers. Loyal customers that earn benefits will continue to spend on your website. It’s definitely worth trying if your e-Commerce store offers a ton of products, but think out a strategy on how to put it in place for your brand.

20. Split test new materials

Test multiple versions of a new email campaign, a homepage banner or a pop-up. It’s always a good idea to do this before implementing any of them. Set up the parameters of what you want to test, the CTR or open rate or something else. If you’re completely sure about a design or email headline and you think it’s a total winner – just implement and track the overall site performance. In other cases, split testing will work tremendously. 

Need help getting started? We’ve got you covered. Talk to one of our experts now!

Marloes van Vliet

Product Marketing Manager