Platforms such as Shopify have made it easy for anyone to start an ecommerce business. This has resulted in a huge amount of online stores popping up left and right, crowding the ecommerce space.

The increased competition makes it crucial for ecommerce businesses to work on attracting more customers and growing their sales consistently. We’ve prepared a guide to show you six ways you can generate more sales for your ecommerce business and stay ahead of the competition.

1) Send abandoned cart emails

If you’re looking to generate more sales for your ecommerce business, a great place to start is to try to recover orders from shoppers who’ve expressed interest to buy from you by adding items to their cart but then left your website without completing their purchase.

With as much as 69.57% of all online shopping carts being abandoned, there’s clearly a big opportunity for generating additional sales by recovering abandoned carts. While there are many different things you can do to reduce shopping cart abandonment, the easiest way to recover a significant part of these orders is to start sending abandoned cart emails.

Abandoned cart emails are automated email sequences that are sent to all customers that abandon their cart without making a purchase. These types of emails have proven to be very effective. Their average open rate is 45%, and 10.7% of them result in a purchase.

Source: reallygoodemails.com

While most ecommerce brands send a single abandoned cart email, it’s been shown that businesses which use an abandoned cart email sequence of three emails get as much as 69% more orders.

The number of email reminders you send to shoppers isn’t the only thing that will influence the effectiveness of your abandoned cart campaigns. It’s also important to consider timing. When it comes to sending abandoned cart emails, you should try to send the first one as soon as possible. This will give you the biggest chance of converting reluctant shoppers.

2) Take advantage of social proof

It’s what makes people rely on the opinions and behavior of others to make their own decisions. You can use this concept to your advantage by acquiring various signs of social proof and then using those to influence shoppers.

Social proof is so effective at influencing shoppers because it relieves them of their main concerns. It can help show shoppers that the product or brand they’re looking at is reliable and trusted by others.

Here are a few ways to gain social proof and use it to influence shoppers.

Get recommendations from experts

One of the best ways to gain social proof for your brand is to get recommended by experts in your industry. Try contacting industry websites and blogs and see if they would be willing to review your products.

Source: gearpatrol.com

With smaller websites, you might get away with sending a free product in exchange for a review. Bigger websites, on the other hand, will probably require monetary compensation.

Collaborate with influencers

The fact that 49% of consumers state that they rely on product recommendations from influencers to decide on purchases shows just how powerful influencer endorsements are.

Source: instagram.com

This type of social proof should be very easy to acquire for most ecommerce brands. Simply find influencers in your niche and arrange a collaboration with them. Most influencers will be happy to work with you in exchange for free products. Fee-based collaborations with micro influencers are very affordable as well, with most charging $250 or less.

Have customers create content for you

User-generated content is a very effective form of social proof. It includes testimonials, reviews, and user-generated social media posts. Most customers won’t think of creating content for your brand on their own, so you’ll need to ask them to do it.

Email your customers and ask them to write a short review of their purchase. Incentivize them to take the time to write a review by rewarding them with a discount or a special offer.

Source: instagram.com

Consider organizing contests or giveaways where you’ll reward the best photo or video of a customer using your product to entice customers to create high-quality content that you can then use as social proof on social media and your website.

Display trust signals on your website

With 70% of online shopping carts being abandoned because of a lack of trust, it’s crucial that ecommerce businesses do whatever they can to help shoppers feel more confident about making a purchase from their website.

The easiest way to do this is to place trust signals on your website such as a security seal from a reputable company such as Astra Security, Norton or McAfee, as well as payment processing logos from Visa, MasterCard, or PayPal.

Source: bermies.com

If your business is a member of a well-known business organization (such as The Better Business Bureau), display their seal of approval on your website as well.

3) Use retargeting ads

Retargeting ads are ads that are shown to shoppers who’ve previously visited your website. It allows you to convert a part of the 98% of shoppers who fail to make a purchase on their first visit. These ads are highly effective at converting indecisive shoppers, with retargeted visitors converting 70% more than non-retargeted ones.

Source: facebook.com

You can retarget shoppers based on:

• Browse abandonment - Shoppers who’ve visited your website previously but didn’t add anything to their cart might still be interested in what you have to offer. Show them some of your other products to try to spark their interest.

• Cart abandonment - Apart from sending abandoned cart emails, you can also try to recover abandoned carts by retargeting shoppers through personalized ads. Consider offering these shoppers a discount to incentivize them to make a purchase.

• A previous purchase - Don’t forget about your existing customers. They’ve already shown interest in your products and brand by purchasing from you. Show them similar or related products to try to get them to make another purchase.

4) Speed up your website

Believe it or not, speeding up your website can provide your ecommerce business with a significant boost in sales. As much as 46% of consumers never come back to a website that is too slow, with each second of delay in load time decreasing conversions by 7%. This makes it crucial for ecommerce businesses to make their website as fast as possible.

Source: skilled.co

Here are a few ways to speed up your website:

• Compress your images - Use a tool like TinyJPG to reduce the size of all the images on your website and make them load faster.

• Minify JavaScript and CSS files - Reduce the amount of JavaScript and CSS files you use on your website and minify the ones that are left.

• Use a CDN - A CDN (Content Delivery Network) improves your visitors’ experience by serving them your website content from servers that are closest to their physical location, thus providing the best possible loading speed.

5) Simplify the checkout process

A complicated checkout process is one of the main reasons shoppers abandon their shopping carts. If you want to generate more sales, you should try to make your checkout process as simple as possible.

Start by giving shoppers the option of checking out without creating an account. This will speed up the entire process and reduce the chances of shoppers giving up and leaving your website without making a purchase.

Source: crateandbarrel.com

Try to remove anything from your checkout page that might distract users from completing their purchase. This includes navigational links in your website’s header and footer, as well as the search bar.

With the average checkout form having twice as many fields than are necessary to finalize an ecommerce transaction, there’s also room for simplifying your checkout form. Remove any fields that aren’t absolutely necessary. A few fields you can safely remove in most cases include the Salutation and Address Line 2 fields.

6) Optimize your thank you page

The customer’s journey isn’t over once they complete their purchase. You should actively try to nurture your customers so that they keep shopping with you for years to come. This is where your thank you page can help.

Once you let customers know that their transaction was completed successfully and show your appreciation by thanking them for their purchase, you should try to extract some additional value from the entire interaction.

Source: hellomatcha.com.au

You can offer them a discount to entice them to make another purchase or ask them to join your referral program and invite their friends to check out your brand. Additionally, you can take a hint from Amazon and try to upsell and cross-sell through your thank you page.

ReConvert can help you optimize your thank you page with ease and generate more sales in the process. You can use it to add timed discount pop-ups, surveys, as well as upsells and cross-sells to your thank you page.

Generate more sales for your ecommerce business

It’s hard to stand out in today’s crowded ecommerce space. Businesses need to employ a wide variety of strategies to get shoppers to their website and convert them into high-value customers.

The easiest way to start generating more sales for your ecommerce business is to create and start sending abandoned cart email campaigns. These will allow you to recover a percentage of your abandoned carts and help you increase your overall revenue.

You should also take advantage of social proof and try to get expert recommendations, influencer endorsements, and reviews for your products to build brand awareness and trust.

If you’re not doing it already, start using retargeting ads to target shoppers who’ve already expressed interest in your products. Work on making your website load faster and simplify your checkout process to make it easier for customers to complete their purchase.