Increase Your Online Sales

by Entrepreneurship Expert Roger Pierce,
www.BizLaunch.ca, May 2010

The triple challenge of business is to grow the customer base, increase revenue from each customer and reduce the cost of sale. The compounded results of meeting all three is a very healthy bottom line. Selling online, e-commerce as it is also known, can help you get there. Here are some of the things you need to think about to make strong online sales a reality.

Know why you want to sell online.
While selling online may not be right for every business, for many it offers real advantages. The following is a generic list of benefits. Work up a list that is specific to your company to determine whether an e-commerce project is really worth your while.

• Online sales are automated and make each sale easier and faster.
• The overhead of online sales is typically lower than that of stores, outside sales people or a call centre.
• The lag time between making the sale and collecting the revenue is nil.
• The geographic reach of your e-commerce website is limitless.
• Your site remains open and ready for business 24/7, all around the world.
• Data collection on individual customers is easier.
• Data collection on your product or service offering is easier.
• Data collected is valuable for new product, service and website development.

Of course, knowing why you want customers to buy online and getting them to do so are two different things. You also need to know what motivates them to buy online.

Know why customers buy online.
Essentially, there are four reasons that people buy online:

• Save money: Customers typically expect things to cost a little less online because the seller’s overhead is lower.
• Convenience: Online convenience for the customer comes in many forms – downloading software, subscribing to a service, or shopping 24/7 from a couch is all easier than going to a store.
• Avoidance: There are some purchases consumers would rather keep private. Online buying makes that possible.
• It’s cool: Some people enjoy being more progressive than others. Researching and buying products online can put them in this category.

Know why customers won’t buy online
Just as important as knowing what motivates customers to buy online is knowing what makes them not buy. Customers won’t buy if they:

• Don’t trust the website due to its design, content or copy.
• Don’t trust the payment service used.
• Are not given the payment options they want.
• Are unsure about how their personal information will be used.
• Don’t like the delivery methods, schedule, cost...
• Don’t like the returns policy.

It is important to remove as many of these barriers to purchasing as possible to make your online sales strategy a success.

Moving customers online to buy
Your strategy to move customers to buy online will depend on your products, the inclination of your customers to use the Internet in general and the type of sales experience they are accustomed to – a retail store, call centre or outside sales person. Here are a number of tactics for you to consider:

• Motivate your customer to buy online by offering discounts.
• Educate your customer about the benefits of buying online such as convenience.
• Teach your customers to buy online. Patiently, walk them through the system as often as is necessary so that they can get the online benefits with confidence.
• Promote the online purchasing option at every opportunity: brochures, packaging, invoices, receipts, signage…

Grow online sales – the funnel
The online sales funnel refers to the process that customers go through to purchase a product on your site. For example, you may have 1000 people land on your site. As they explore their buying options, many people will exit. Some may not know your company and wander your site before entering the sale funnel. Returning customers may click the item they want and check out quickly. 100 of those thousand people may actually buy. The objective is to grow online sales by managing how people navigate your site and travel through the sale funnel.

To avoid quick exits and abandoned shopping carts, your site should:

• Load quickly
• Be easy to navigate.
• Have clear, concise copy.
• Use a security seal to increase consumer confidence.
• Make it easy for people to contact you for support.
• Automatically convert to the currencies customers most commonly use.

Continually test and tweak to improve results.
Using services like Google Analytics, you can assess how people are traveling through your site. You can determine if they are working their way through the sales funnel as you want, what page they seem to be stumbling on and where they are exiting most frequently.

This information can be used to improve the success of your e-commerce site. Make small changes one at a time. Monitor the impact of the change. Then, either keep it or return it to its original form and change something else. By continually testing and tweaking your site you will always be on course for increased sales.

Manage the details of your site
A website, like any other aspect of your business, needs regular attention to function smoothly.

• Keep product/service descriptions and pricing current.
• Monitor and test your website on a regular basis looking for problems – better that you find them than your customers.
• Ensure that details are attended to. For example, you may have to set a limit to the number of credit card transactions you can accept in a day. You may also need to raise this limit periodically so that you don’t inadvertently reject sales.

The most fundamental issue for e-commerce success is trust. The customer must trust you. Don’t make outrageous claims, honour your promises and communicate clearly and you will be well on your way to enjoying lower cost of sales and more revenue from a larger pool of customers.