STUDIO FIVE

Stay Ahead of the Competition

Unleash the potential of your e-commerce business with these proven selling techniques. Discover practical e-commerce selling tips and powerful marketing strategies to boost your online business.

Selling your products is paramount for an online business. Without online sales, especially if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar location, your business won’t see the revenue it needs to stay alive. Luckily, when it comes to selling products online successfully, we have a few aces up our sleeves in terms of advice.

In this post, we’ll talk about 21 of our favorite e-commerce selling tips to ensure you sell more products than ever. We’ll also talk about how you can create your ideal e-commerce marketing strategy to increase business revenue. Get ready to enhance your online presence and drive more sales with these expert-approved strategies.

21 Proven E-Commerce Selling Tips

Find your unique selling proposition.

Want to sell clothes, electronics, paint, books, or professional services? Gear up because you will have competition no matter what you’re selling.

The best way to stand out from competitors is to think strategically about your niche. Is it geographical and based on the region where you live? How are you going to cater to or speak to your target market? 

Once you determine what defines your business and makes you different, you can develop a plan with clear milestones to execute your goals.

Create a user-friendly website.

As an e-commerce store, your website is your storefront. That means you need to have the opportunity to light a candle to make your storefront smell welcoming or install the perfect lighting to feature your best products. What it does mean is that you must find ways, through e-commerce optimization, to feature your products in a way that entices users to buy.

You have to figuratively light a candle and make your online storefront just as unique as your hypothetical brick-and-mortar. Working with an e-commerce web design agency is your best bet when creating an on-brand website that sells your products. Here are a few things an e-commerce web design agency can do:

1. Build a website with your brand colors, logo, and style in mind
2. Implement hard-to-ignore calls to action (CTAs)
3. Manage your shopping feed
4. Make the customer check-out process a breeze

These are all crucial elements of a successful e-commerce website.

Optimize your e-commerce store for mobile consumers.

An important e-commerce tactic is to ensure that you optimize your e-commerce site for mobile.

More than ever, users shop online using their mobile devices, and if your store needs to be optimized, you could see a high cart abandonment rate. When your site isn’t optimized for mobile, it makes it difficult for users to browse through and click on your products — putting a wrench in the buying process. Eliminate user struggle by opting for a mobile-friendly e-commerce website.

Talk about your products, not your business.

Regarding e-commerce selling tips, you can’t sell your products if you focus on your business instead of your customers. Instead of talking about your business, why it’s unique, and why it’s the best of its kind, focus on how your products and services can make a customer’s life easier.

Focus on developing a few value propositions and then find ways to incorporate them into your content, website, and social media posts. When you prove to users that your product can make their lives easier, they convert.

Create engaging and informative content.

If you have a beautiful website to display your products, you need content to inform interested customers. Our second e-commerce selling tip is to create high-quality content around your products, services, and brand. To create this content, you’ll want to:

1. Perform keyword research to determine what your target audience is interested in
2. Investigate what kind of content your competition writes
3. Focus on long-tail keywords
4. Create content around those keywords
5. Implement those keywords in title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags

If you need help creating top-notch content for your e-commerce website, PixoLabo is here to help! We offer a wide variety of personalized content creation services!

Use high-quality product images.

When users think about purchasing a product, they want an accurate, high—quality image.

Only post the best images of your product and include images of all angles and elements of a product. This e-commerce selling tip is especially important since a user is shopping online without seeing or feeling the product in person. Give users all the visuals they need to purchase a product with high-quality product images!

Create irresistible landing pages.

Landing pages are a huge part of selling products — primarily if you rely on ads. Your landing page is where a user ends up after clicking an ad for your product or service. This page should advertise the exact product shown in the ad, along with:

1. An enticing CTA
2. Information about the product
3. Color options
4. Size specs
5. Product reviews
6. Product description
7. Product cost
8. An image of the product

If your landing page misses the mark, you likely won’t see many conversions from product ads.

Promote your products

Another of our essential e-commerce selling tips is to promote your products. Create a sense of urgency around no matter what type of promotion or discount you’re looking to run.

Add a timer to the banner of your website to alert customers your sale is only happening for a limited time, or launch a sale where the first hundred customers receive a special perk along with their discount. 

Be prepared for potential trial and error along the way. It’s important to piece together different combinations of discounts, social media platforms and drops to see which times and dates customers bite.

Upsell your products

A common e-commerce selling strategy is upselling your products. Upselling is an e-commerce sales technique where you encourage customers to purchase more expensive products, upgrades, or add-ons. 

Say a customer views the product page for a book you’re selling. Your site could suggest a deluxe edition or boxed set that includes the entire series. As the customer checks out with a book, your site might recommend adding a popular bookmark or a limited-edition cover.

But remember, upselling is about balance and relevance—not being aggressive.

Personalize the shopping experience.

There’s nothing like buying from a company that you feel knows you personally, and one of the best ways to make your customers feel like that is to create personal connections with your prospects.

There are a variety of ways to personalize a buying experience, including:

1. Using a customer’s name in a personalized email
2. Sending a personalized email letting a customer know which items they left in their cart
3. Personalized remarketing ads
4. Personalized coupons with products that a shopper showed interest in

These are just a few ways to personalize someone’s experience and increase their likelihood of becoming a customer.

Focus on customer service.

One of our favorite e-commerce selling tips is to provide stellar customer service. If a customer is dissatisfied with a product, respond to their inquiry quickly and always offer to send a replacement. The golden rule for fantastic customer service is, “The customer is always right.” When you follow this rule, you can’t lose.

Additionally, respond to direct messages in your social media inboxes as soon as possible to show users that you care. Finally, the last strategy to provide great customer service is simple.

ALWAYS put your customers first.

Add live chat

Another of our e-commerce selling tips is adding live chat functionality to your online store. Live chat is a real-time customer service tool that lets shoppers interact with customer support reps or chatbots. It usually appears as a chat bubble on your website where customers can type questions and get immediate responses.

Adding a live chat app like Tidio or Zendesk can create a more interactive and satisfying customer experience, leading to more sales.

Offer free shipping

Another of our e-commerce selling tips is to offer free shipping. If you can afford it, free shipping should be an option. A recent survey found that 82% of shoppers said free shipping was the most important factor when choosing a business to buy from online. 

You can constantly offer free shipping or under specific conditions, such as reaching a minimum order value, obtaining membership in a loyalty program, or during promotional periods.

Provide a variety of payment options.

Today, there are more payment options than ever, and as an e-commerce store, you should capitalize on them all.

Instead of only offering credit card payments, branch out and offer mobile payment options like Apple Pay and Google Pay. Expanding your payment options will make it easy for every user to check out, no matter their choice.

Create a loyalty program.

Another of our key e-commerce selling tips is rewarding loyal customers. There’s an old saying in business that retaining an existing customer is more cost-effective than acquiring a new one. That’s especially true in e-commerce, so you want to reward loyal customers who will likely continue doing business with you.

It’s a smart idea to create a loyalty program for your brand. That way, you can improve customer retention and create brand advocates to recommend your products to others. There are many different types of loyalty programs. You could run a points-based program where customers accumulate reward points and redeem them for complimentary products or discounts.

Develop an email marketing strategy.

Send a weekly newsletter with information on sales, new content, or product drops. Your email marketing strategy doesn’t have to be fancy—and you can find freelance writing support if you’re not great at the task.

Repeated emails to customers keep you on their radar and may sway them to return for a purchase. Effective strategies include:

• Building your email marketing list
  Data can equal dollars, so create a landing pop-up offering customers a discount if they sign up for your email newsletter. If selling products or services in your local community, ask in-person customers to sign up for your newsletter for a discount.

• Being authentic
  If you want creative control over your email marketing, use your own voice (or your brand’s) with your customers. Your business should have a personality to it, and that personality starts with you.

• Keeping an eye on open rates
  As you start to send out email newsletters, pay attention to your open rates. Open rates show how many people on your mailing list are opening your marketing emails. You can easily compare open rates for different messages to understand what people want to read—and what they don’t.

Remarket to shoppers who previously showed interest.

Next on our list of e-commerce selling tips involves remarketing to previously interested users. Remarketing is a tactic that allows you to show ads to users who have already visited your website or clicked on one of your PPC ads.

It’s one of the most effective e-commerce tactics because it gives users a second chance to buy your products. The more times a user is exposed to an ad, the more likely they are to convert.

Optimize your store with search engine optimization (SEO)

SEO is one of the most essential e-commerce selling tips because of the astronomical results it drives. To optimize your e-commerce website with SEO, you’ll take actions like:

1. Adding target keywords to your content
2. Creating a strong internal linking structure
3. Optimizing your user experience
4. Cleaning up the back end of your site

When you optimize your e-commerce store with SEO, your content will rank higher in search engines, and more shoppers will find your products. SEO is essential if you plan on running something other than pay-per-click (PPC) ads.

Use PPC ads to capture interested customers.

Next on our list of e-commerce selling tips is to use PPC ads. PPC ads allow you to target your most valuable customers on Google and social media platforms. There are a few perks that make PPC stand out as an e-commerce tactic:

1. You don’t pay for PPC ads unless shoppers click on them
2. In Google, PPC ads show up above organic results, making them the first thing users see
3. PPC ads are affordable
4. PPC ads start working immediately after you launch your campaign
5. PPC ads are highly targeted

The affordability of PPC ads makes them stand out, but the fact that you can target users based on demographics and location takes the cake. Not only that, but PPC is a quick-win strategy that shows results almost immediately.

Experiment with social media

Another of our e-commerce selling tips is building a social media presence. With billions of daily users, social media is one of the best places to discuss and sell your products.

Of course, you must experiment with which social media platform works best for you. Many platforms are great for e-commerce stores, including Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and X (formerly Twitter.)

Some e-commerce businesses naturally take off on one social media platform over another. For example, a business may have many followers and engagement on Instagram and TikTok but little presence on Facebook.

Still, a comprehensive social media strategy should be active on three or four platforms. This effort can be challenging, especially if you’re an avid user of Instagram and the platform results in more sales. You must be active on several platforms because a competitor in your space may be researching their competition—like you. 

This process includes:

1. Posting original content for your followers: Post written content, links to your website, videos, and images to get optimal interaction with your social media accounts.
2. Connecting directly with interested customers via direct message platforms: Use direct message platforms to answer customer questions and offer advice.
3. Using social media ads: Social media ads are an important e-commerce tactic that helps you sell more products to users by meeting them where they are (on social platforms).

Determine and fix cart abandonment issues.

Another of our essential e-commerce selling tips is to reduce shopping cart abandonment. If you see fewer conversions than you’d like, try performing a cart abandonment analysis. You’ll always have a handful of customers abandon their cart, but determining why is a key e-commerce selling tip.

Users could abandon their cart because:

1. The purchasing process was too difficult
2. You didn’t accept their form of payment
3. They forgot about their products (this is where remarketing comes in!)
4. They didn’t care enough about the products to convert

After determining why users abandon their carts, you can make the necessary changes to optimize the process and increase conversions.

Final Thoughts

E-commerce marketing involves more than just creating products. You also must consider how customers interact with your site. 

Implementing these 21 e-commerce selling tips is crucial for the success of your online business. With online sales being the lifeline for your revenue, it’s essential to adopt these tips to increase your online sales and create an effective e-commerce marketing strategy.

Running an online store will always take work. Still, by using these ecommerce selling tips and backing them up with the necessary resources, you can overcome any challenges you face and significantly improve your chance of success.

Take advantage of the opportunity to stay ahead of the competition and maximize your business revenue. Contact us now for more information and start reaping the benefits today.