- Running an e-commerce store?
Good.
What a time to be alive.
One more sales through your e-commerce store?
Good, you're in the right place.
Buckle up 'cause in this video,
I'm gonna give you 15 ways to increase e-commerce sales.
15?
Yes. (laughing)
Whilst e-commerce might appear simple to outsiders,
for anyone who spent a good amount of time
building an e-commerce store, analysing e-commerce stores,
you'll appreciate that the difference between
the real high-performing e-commerce stores and the rest,
can be massive.
At our digital marketing agency, Exposure Ninja,
we've consulted with and analysed thousands
of e-commerce stores and we've worked with a fair few
ourselves as well.
Taking some of our clients from complete obscurity
to multi-million pound industry dominance
through e-commerce.
And what this has meant, is that we've picked up a few tips
and tricks along the way about
how to grow an e-commerce store.
And in this video,
I'm gonna be sharing 15 of them which you can apply
whatever stage of your journey you're at,
to increase your e-commerce sales.
We're gonna go through these really quickly,
because there is 15.
I've included examples as well,
to show you how they work in real life.
Now we've broken up these tips into two types.
So the first four tips are about how to understand
what's actually going on with your website.
How are people using your site?
Where are they getting stuck?
Where are they falling over?
Then tips five to 15 are the tweaks, the tricks, the hacks,
that you can implement to get the improvement
and results that you're really looking for.
Okay, 15 tips.
That's a lot to get through.
Are you ready?
Cue the high energy, fast-paced music, let's do this.
(logo chiming)
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First e-commerce sales increasing tip,
is to understand what's happening with your checkout process
and your conversion flow through your website.
Go into Google Analytics, underneath conversions,
e-commerce, shopping behaviour,
as long as you've got it set up,
you'll see a chart that looks like this.
Now you can use this to identify where people
are falling out in your flow.
And depending on the performance of your store,
you might see some opportunities for improvement.
I'm gonna show you two contrasting stores
with very different stories,
with very different opportunities for improvement.
This first one you can see here, relatively high percentage
of people that come onto the site see a product, right?
So they're landing on a product page.
This store very much focuses on getting people
to the product pages very quickly.
But we have a fairly big drop off from seeing the product
to actually adding it to the cart.
If I contrast it with this site,
we see this site has much smaller percentage
of sessions turning into product view.
So lots of people are coming onto the site
not finding the product that they want,
because there's a much larger site
with many more product categories.
But we can see that more of these sessions
are ending in add to basket, and we even have people
coming back into the site through the add to basket stage.
The opportunity for this site, is looking at the product
pages to make sure that we're doing everything
that we possibly can to get people adding to basket.
E-commerce sales increase tip number two,
add live chat to your site.
I don't want a massive team of support people
answering all the stupid questions that people ask
through e-commerce live chat.
Bear with me.
Live chat helps you do two things.
Firstly, it helps you convert more of your sales,
'cause if people get stuck, they ask a question
and you can make the sale.
But the second thing it does, is it identifies
the conversion blockers, it identifies the holes
that people are falling down on your site
so that you can then add that information
to the page or fix whatever it is.
If you notice that you're getting the same questions
coming over and over again about delivery times or whatever
you can make sure that's on the page,
so people don't have to then ask you.
Tip number three, is to add heatmapping to your site.
Now heatmapping is awesome, because it allows you to see
how people are browsing through your site,
where they're going on different pages,
what they're clicking on.
And it also shows you how far they're scrolling
down a page.
This data is really useful, if you're looking at layout,
if you're analysing how people are using your checkout pages
so you can see exactly what they're doing.
Here's an example of a thank you page
that we've been optimising.
And what we did is we've added a viral sharing plugin
to this thank you page.
Because once someone has converted,
we then wanna be able to use them to share it
with their friends and with their social connection.
So we added this giveaway with the viral sharing plugin.
And what we found is that people were interested
in one particular product included in the giveaway
way more than anything else.
So what this has allowed us to do is think about,
do we wanna test the version of this page,
which focuses just on this product that people really want,
because that seems to be distracting them.
And they're clicking on that more than they're clicking
on the share plugins.
The penultimate tip in our tracking section,
is to spend time looking through user recordings.
Again, you can use Hotjar for this,
or you can go on a site like UserTesting
and record people actually using your website.
There is nothing more insightful than watching real people
using your website, scrolling around,
seeing where they go on different pages.
In this sped up recording on this e-commerce site,
we're watching someone go through the product selection
process, they've added a product to their basket.
They then go through to the checkout.
They start filling in their contact details.
They're having a look to see how they can pay,
they seem to be happy with that.
They then go back to continue editing
their billing information, but they get stuck on the section
which asks them to choose their state.
This business only ships to the US, they're in Australia.
Now that is a conversion blocker.
Now obviously that's a really basic example,
but it just goes to show some of the stuff that you can pick
up through watching user tests and watching user recordings,
which can really help you tighten up the user experience
and make sure people are getting what they need
to on your site.
Okay, so now we're into the tips, the tricks, the hacks
that can help you get more sales
from your website's traffic.
So the first e-commerce tweak, is a benefits bar.
We talk a lot about benefits bars here at Exposure Ninja.
And on the Missguided site, we can see a benefits bar
in full flow.
In fact, we've kind of got three separate benefits bars
going on at this moment.
So the benefits bar can cover things like USPs,
why people should use you rather than competitors,
or it can just cover the simple questions
that people need answering.
Things like delivery terms, sale, coupons stuff,
sign up for a newsletter type thing, that kind of thing.
Here we can see that Missguided aren't using
their benefits bar as USPs.
Missguided customers are pretty switched on
to what Missguided offers.
So instead they're just using it to state the basics,
that, you know, the basic rules of engagement.
But they then got a second benefits bar underneath
with Christmas delivery terms.
And then they've got another kind of scrolling banner
which is acting as a benefits bar,
which is all about the latest sale that they're offering.
Now, the great thing about a benefits bar,
is that this information is visible
on every single page of the site.
So if somebody comes to your site through a shopping ad,
or if someone comes through social media,
they're gonna see those benefits.
So it's a great way of getting that information
straight into people's heads, wherever they come through.
So the next way to increase e-commerce sales,
is product photography.
For this tip, we're gonna run a bit of virtual quiz.
I'm gonna show you the same product on two websites,
and I want you to think about
which one you would buy it from.
Okay, website, number one.
The Danish design pet teepee.
Now what do you notice about product photography
on this site?
It sucks. (laughing)
Yeah, that's pretty much it.
Dreadful.
You can't see the product, it's really, really small.
Now here's the thing, that same product
is on the John Lewis website,
with beautiful product photography.
Yes, it could be better.
It could show installation instructions,
it could show it from multiple angles.
This actually comes with a really lovely cushion,
we have three for our cats and they love it.
So I can definitely vouch for it.
They could do a better job of selling this.
But compared to this, which is just complete rubbish,
it's amazing.
Now which of these two sites would you buy from?
Bear in mind that you're gonna save 15 pounds
from buying it from this site,
but at the same time it feels like a bit of a risk
because you can't even see what you're buying.
So in this case they probably don't need
to be 15 pounds cheaper, they're actually better
at describing their dispatch times than John Lewis are,
so potentially they could sustain a higher price
if they just had decent photography, it's not hard.
Now people complain about this.
"I've got loads of products,
I can't do photographs for all of them."
That's fine, you don't need to do photographs
for all of them, just the ones that you want to sell.
This is the basics of e-commerce.
If you can't get good product photography,
either get it yourself, or from your distributor
it's gonna be very, very difficult.
Tip number seven is to take things to another level stale
and get some product video on the site.
This is particularly important for higher ticket items.
Here we are on the Anderton's website.
Anderton's do a fantastic job of this.
They have product videos
for loads of their different products.
And what you can see here is you can see people
actually using the product.
This is a 38-minute video describing this one guitar.
And you know, the number of guitars they have in stock
is like 155 trillion different guitars.
So again, the lazy e-commerce owners are gonna be whining
thinking, "Oh, can me bother to make a video?"
But here's the thing, if you're running a shop
and someone comes into the shop and starts talking to you
about a product, you could be talking to them
for half an hour anyway.
So maybe just film that and then you only have to do
the talking ones.
What we're really trying to do here as with the photos,
is replicate the in-person experience.
We want to make buying from our e-commerce store
as similar as possible, to buying from a physical store.
And allowing people to get a really good feeling
for the product that we're asking them to buy,
is a really, really important part of that.
Tip number eight, is a bit of a jewel tip.
Firstly it's to use the logos
of the payment processes that you accept.
And then secondly,
is to accept as many different payment options as possible.
So here we are on the ASOS site.
And you can see above the footer on their site,
they have their social icons,
but they also have all of the different cards
and payment process that they accept,
including, PayPal, Apple Pay.
Now really important that you include
as many of the Apple pay, Google Pay, Shop Pay, PayPal type
one-click payment options as possible,
because they make it really quick for people to check out.
Particularly if a lot of your customers
aren't repeat business and they don't already
have an account on your site,
you just wanna make it as quick as possible for people
to fly through your checkout process.
It's always difficult when an e-commerce site
forces everyone to go through just one payment option
like PayPal, for example.
Because some people think that if they don't have a PayPal
account, they can't buy from your store.
Of course, we Ninjas know that you can accept credit card
through a PayPal account.
But the general unwashed masses don't necessarily know this.
And they might see a PayPal logo,
if that's the only way that you accept payment,
and they're like, "I don't have a PayPal account."
And then you'll notice a reduced conversion rates.
So, accept as many payment options as you possibly can.
But, make it easy for people to use.
You don't want them to have to fight through pages
and pages of different options.
Tip number nine, is to include cross sells and upsells.
Here I am resisting temptation on the Jessops website.
Look what happens when I click add this to basket.
Up comes a notification that is saying
it's gone into my basket, but it also with an extremely
relevant cross sale, this item here,
with a one-click add to basket.
Now, yes, they could improve this
by making this more clearly a button.
But what they don't wanna do, is take my eye too far away
from the checkout now,
because they're ready for me to purchase.
So they think about how you can match different products
on your store together and how you can show related
products to people who've just put something in their cart.
And a quick tip here, is an incorrect implementation
of this will be to show someone a different product
in the same category.
Let's say I've just put this camera lens in my bag,
and then I'm shown another camera lens
which might be for different camera altogether,
or it might be a conflicting kind of competing camera lens
to this one.
And then all of a sudden I'm thinking,
"Oh am I buying the right one?"
And I get stuck in the decision process again.
I've just made the decision to put it in my cart,
so show me a related product which isn't gonna reduce
the likelihood of me purchasing or add
some kind of seeds of doubt about the choice that I've made.
That's a subtle but important consideration.
Now we're gonna stay on the Jessops website for a second
for tip number 10, which is to add a phone number.
I know what you might be thinking.
"I don't want people calling me all times
of the day or night trying to buy.
That's why I have an e-commerce store."
(giggles)
I hear you.
Who dares to call me?
But here's the thing.
Having a phone number on your site builds credibility.
Particularly if you're an unknown e-commerce store
or you're selling something that has a perceived risk
attached to it.
So what Jessops does here, is they have a sales line,
which you can click to call.
Other stores would just have the phone number displayed
in the header.
By having it as an icon, it's small,
it's there, it's not gonna draw too much attention,
but it's there if people need it.
So I'm a big fan of this implementation.
Tip number 11,
fix the issues that come up in those phone calls.
So listen back to the sales recordings,
understand the questions that people are asking
your sales team and whether it's questions
about a particular product or the buying process
or your store in general.
Answering those on your website, can prevent other people
from asking those same questions or worse,
just dropping out of your conversion funnel altogether.
There ain't no feedback that beat user feedback.
Tip number 12, incentivize your users to purchase.
Now this is particularly important for businesses
that are selling a product which can be bought
on other stores.
What can you offer people to nudge them
over to buying from you rather than someone else?
Here we are on the Watches of Switzerland site,
which is a beautifully laid out e-commerce store
that does a very good job of matching the in-person
experience of buying a watch.
Which I think does a very good job
of communicating quality and luxury,
but with the conversion elements in play.
What you'll notice here,
is that if you're shopping for an AP Royal Oak watch,
then you're also being offered a complimentary watch winder.
Now here's the thing,
if you're spending 37k on a watch,
a watch winder that may cost a few 100 pounds
is no big deal.
You also see this tactic in use loads in the cosmetic space.
So you'll buy a particular makeup product
and you'll be offered free samples.
These free samples costs almost nothing.
They're gonna lead to follow up purchases
later on, all that type of stuff.
But, they're really exciting to get,
it activates that part of our brain
that we're really excited to get the bonus.
So even if the thing that you're offering people
is fairly minimal, fairly inconsequential,
the fact that you're offering people
an added incentive, really gets them excited.
Now this complimentary watch winder
might be absolute rubbish.
It might be branded Watches of Switzerland,
it might be horrendous.
But the fact that you're getting that versus nothing,
when you'd buy the same thing for the same price
somewhere else, is gonna motivate you to buy
from this, rather than their competitors.
Now, before I give you the final three tips of this video,
I just wanted to offer you some free help
improving your e-commerce sales.
Our digital marketing agency, Exposure Ninja,
helps e-commerce businesses generate more sales
through their website.
We do this by improving the performance of their website,
but also by driving traffic to their site
through SEO, content marketing, paid ads and social media.
Now we'd like to offer you some free help
to grow your business over the next 12 months.
All you needs to do is go to exposureninja.com
and click the big button that says
request my free marketing review.
What will happen when you request this free review,
is we'll ask you a few questions about your business
in a short questionnaire.
We'll ask for a bit of information
about your current digital marketing and your goals
over the next 12 months.
What will happen then,
is one of our expert marketing team will analyse your site,
they'll have a look at the digital marketing
that you've been doing previously,
they'll also have a look at what your competitors are doing,
and then they'll record you a 15-minute video
with recommendations about how to increase the sales
through your store.
This service is completely free.
There's no obligation to use our digital marketing services.
There's no catch at all, it's really genuinely awesome.
Seriously, it's amazing.
Did I mention it's amazing.
So go to exposureninja.com to request your review today.
And one more thing before we go into our final three tips.
If you've enjoyed this video,
please consider liking and subscribing.
If you've already subscribed,
what an excellent person you are.
I wonder who else in your contacts
might benefit from a cheeky share.
Or maybe you fancy sharing this video
across all of your social platforms at the same time.
I can guarantee that all of these social platforms
will then give you an algorithmic visibility boost,
which will mean 100% organic reach.
Please share it.
We love making these videos,
we love the response that we get from them.
If you can share them, that'd be awesome.
Okay, final three e-commerce growth tips.
Tip number 13 is actually a bit of a sneaky jewel tip.
And this is to communicate delivery terms
right at the point where people are about to purchase.
So, here we are on takeawaypackaging.co.uk.
And you can see here, we've got this little countdown
that says order before 1% for free next day delivery.
So this has two benefits.
Firstly, it tells you the delivery terms.
Secondly, with this cortisol inducing countdown timer,
were incentivized.
There's a bit of a scarcity thing.
Even if we don't need it the next day,
we see this countdown thing and the compliant part
of our brain is like, "Oh, I must do it quickly."
This kind of tool can be a fantastic way
of increasing your conversion rate from product pages.
Tip number 14, is to increase your page load time.
Now I'm not gonna show you anything for this.
Because, you know that going on a slow website
really annoys you and it's gonna increase your chances
of bouncing off.
I'm not gonna give you all the stats about the percentage
of people that expect a website to load in three seconds
or under.
But if your site is slow to load,
that can be a real issue and a big conversion block up.
So, couple of tools that you can use.
Caching, you can use a content delivery system
like Cloudflare to serve up a local version of your site
to visitors around the world.
And you can just make sure that you strip out
as much of the code that's bloating your site load
as possible.
And welcome to one of the crowning achievements
of your career so far, you have made it to tip number 15
of 15, that is, split pay.
Offering split pay options is the new craze.
You could argue that there's a massive unsustainable debt
bubble that's gonna burst all over everyone's faces
and take down the entire Western world.
But if you're gonna survive that bubble burst,
then you're gonna need a healthy business.
And in order to do that, you might wanna offer
split payment options to your buyers.
Services like Laybuy, ClearPay, Klarna,
can really increase conversion rates.
Because we're seeing people,
split increasingly smaller and smaller payments.
Here we can see on the Boohoo.com site,
which by the way uses so many of the principles
we've covered today, we can see that they're advertising
these on product pages, because they know
it's gonna increase the add to carts.
And by the way, other things that they've done,
while we're here because it is a MasterClass.
Look, we've got the use of discounts.
We've got help with sizing.
We've got delivery information and a countdown timer,
right where we'd expect to see it.
We've got voucher codes to incentivize us
through this product page.
We've got great quality product photography,
all native to Boohoo, taken by Booboo, looks really good.
All their products match.
We've got a link to find something similar,
we've got a link to similar products.
And here's the sign of the importance they place
on these split payment options,
is that they're even showing the split payment options
in the basket notification,
and they're showing all the credit card logos.
Feel like you need a drink after that one.
So I hope you found this video useful.
Or if not, then I hope you've at least enjoyed it.
Don't forget to like and subscribe.
If you're into digital marketing,
we release a new video every single week.
And remember that you can request your free website
and marketing review,
if you're looking for some professional help
to grow your business, then go to exposureninja.com
and request your free marketing review.
We'll ask you a few questions about your business
and one of our expert team will then record you
a 15-minute video, showing you the low hanging fruit
and the opportunities that your business has to increase
the not only the amount of traffic that you're getting
to your site, but how you're converting it as well.
Until next time, see you soon.
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