Increasing sales is the key to any successful business, and it’s the primary goal of countless businesses, large and small alike. While we wish it could be as easy as building a website and waiting for sales, it’s a little more difficult than that. Thankfully, we have four tips, or best practices, for getting more online business. One thing before you begin, make sure you have some measurable goals in place so you can accurately track your results. Whether you sell physical goods or run a service-based business, these best practices are actionable ideas that you can start implementing right away.
Show Off Customer Testimonials and Trust Icons
Building trust is key to skyrocketing your sales. It’s important to reassure potential customers that their information is safe when they shop with you. Testimonials and trust icons both go a long way with potential customers.
Customer feedback is more important than ever before in today’s social media environment. Lucky for you, that means that satisfied customers are a valuable tool you can use to your advantage by harnessing their testimonials. These testimonials are more valuable than even the best-written sales copy because they are authentic.
Make sure to highlight these gushing testimonials and reviews from buyers. You can include testimonials on your product pages, landing pages, pricing page, and even your home page. You have the opportunity to build an even deeper level of trust when you pair these testimonials with a picture or other information, like social media handles, about the people who have endorsed your product or service. You’re guaranteeing that not only are your testimonials real, but you have provided a way for customers to contact the people who’ve endorsed your business.
In addition to testimonials, trust icons reassure potential customers that their information is safe with your business. If you have an impressive list of satisfied clients, include that list. If your business has any professional accreditations, like a Better Business Bureau certification or membership to your local chamber of commerce, you want to highlight these trust signals on your site. When you prove to customers that you can be trusted with their sensitive information, your sales number will soar.
Create a Sense of Urgency with Incentives
If done correctly, urgency is a powerful motivator. Many consumers respond positively to incentives that create a sense of urgency. This is done through time-sensitive specials and limited-edition products to time limitations or contextual limitations such as a holiday. The ways you can accomplish this feeling of urgency are diverse; for example, you might display a countdown on a limited-time sale. Adding even a small indicator of urgency has the potential to make a dramatic impact on the success of your sales.
While it’s important to be honest and transparent about who you are and what you do, you also want to create a sense of urgency to persuade prospects to buy from you right now. The reason for the urgency needs to be believable for it to work. Just make sure you don’t overuse this tip and add urgency to everything. Use urgency when and where it makes sense to use it. You’ll see that creating a sense of urgency is a great way to increase online sales.
Eliminate Distractions on Your Website
The idea of offering fewer choices may seem counter-intuitive, but it could be the key to more sales. Sometimes a greater variety of choices can lead to indecision. That indecision means a lost sale for your online business.
If you have a lot of products, or even a wide range of products, consider structuring your website to limit the choices customers see. This might happen through filters to help people narrow down their options, or by arranging products into increasingly narrow categories. Reduce the possibility that a visitor will be overwhelmed by all your offers, and offer visitors greater ease to find exactly what they are looking for.
Of course, distractions aren’t just how many products you have, it’s also about how busy your layout is, competing elements, and how many things in total are vying for your customer’s attention. Here’s the key, the closer you get to closing the sale, the fewer things you should have on your screen. Unfortunately, the more choices you provide, the more likely a customer is to go elsewhere.
Simplify the Checkout Process
Simplifying the checkout process is a great way to boost your online sales. Whenever you ask people to commit to something, there’s resistance. Potential customers will have doubts, hesitations, and second thoughts before making a purchase. The key is to simplify the checkout process, reducing as many barriers to purchase as you can. Things that add frustration to the checkout process include long forms, poor website usability, and insufficient information.
You need to make things as easy as possible for people to buy what you’re selling. Each extra step in your checkout process makes it more complicated to complete and drives away a fraction of your potential buyers. Start by eliminating any unnecessary steps in your checkout process, skip unnecessary fields in forms, and don’t time them out and make them start over from the beginning. When you reduce the friction in the checkout process, you will increase your sales.
If you’re consistent with these best practices, you will find online business success. Safeguard can help with both expertise and a suite of services to provide everything you need to be successful online. Our web services make it easy; contact us today.