1. Offer More Targeted And Relevant Discounts

2. Paid Traffic (PPC, SM Ads, Google Shopping, YT Ads, etc.)

3. Prepare & Implement Promotions In Good Time For Holidays

4. Improve/Expand/Discount Your Shipping Offering

5. Display Icons That Show Your Site Is Trustworthy

6. Use Photos When You Include Customer Testimonials / Social Proof

7. Utilise User-Generated Content

8. Showcase Your Top Selling Items

9. Create A Sense Of Scarcity or Urgency

10. Focus On Product Benefits, Not Features

11. Use Email Marketing

12. Re-engage Previous Customers

13. Keep Customers In The Know - Shipping, Sales, After Care, Warranties, Promos

14. Reduce And Save Abandoned Carts

15. Reward Loyal Customers

16. Ask Customers What They Want From You

17. Accept Different Payment Options

18. Optimise Your Product Pages

19. Use Video Demonstrations

20. Add Live Chat/Support Lines

21. Ask For Reviews

22. Implement Cross Sell And Upsells

23. Focus On Your Value Proposition

24. Build Brand Awareness

25. Embrace Omnichannel Selling

26. Start A Content Marketing Program

27. Take A Local Approach

28. Embrace & Track Search Engine Optimisation

29. Always Be Testing

30. Set SMART KPIs

31. Use Good Data & Review it Often

32. Keep, Adjust, Or Roll-Back Changes

Use discounts to renew interest, move old stock, and boost sales with little to no effort. Review your stock, your shop’s analytics and what your competitors are doing. Then make a plan and market the discount code everywhere. If you have customer history information, use that data to send targeted emails with relevant discounts based on their purchase history.

Organic traffic is golden. Paid traffic is a necessary evil. Your shop is one amongst millions of websites, many of which receive less than 100 organic visits per month. Boosting traffic with targeted pay-per-click (coupled with an SEO strategy) is a necessary part of doing business online.
​
There are hundreds of agencies and consultants who can set up PPC ads for you if want to outsource this task. Alternatively, there are various courses from Google and others that can show you how to get the best results from pay-per-click adverts. Running a business is tough, and there’s a lot to learn. Spending some time learning about PPC, in general, is always a good idea for e-commerce owners as it’s inherent within the industry.

Don’t leave promotions to the last minute. Most large retailers plan their campaigns a year ahead. Look at what promotions may be suitable for your niche over the next 18 months and spend a day or two planning what you could do to bring customers to you instead of your well-organized competitor or Amazon.
​
Once you have a plan in place, start building the content. Maybe it's ad copy, new banners, new product pictures, or something else. Giving yourself a lot of time before the day itself means you can spend more time ensuring there’s enough stock for the projected sales. It also gives you time to adjust the promotion if you need to compensate for a competitor or lack of stock.

Shoppers are savvier, more demanding and more discriminating than ever. Your shipping costs, times and courier choices are the final encouragement to getting a customer’s checkout over the line. If your shipping methods take too long, cost too much or are provided by couriers with bad reputations, then conversions are sure to fall short.
​
Fortunately, there are a lot of companies out there who can and will do deals with you depending upon how much you regularly ship out. It could well be worth giving them a call and doing a deal. If it saves your customer £1.00 on delivery costs, how much will that increase your conversion rate? If it gets to your customer one day quicker, how much will that increase your conversion rate?

Some icons are a given, such as a Visa or MasterCard logo or an ABTA logo on travel sites. They inherently imply to customers that your site is safe to use and reassures them that you are, in fact, a legitimate merchant.
​
Look at what your competitors are doing. Is there a relevant association, club, or agency that you can join to enhance your offering? If so, work out if the return on investment is positive and get that logo up ASAP.

Using pictures of people from a stock website is a big no-no. If you can, use genuine pictures of genuine customers. Even better, link to their Insta or Twitter account (if they’re happy for you to do so). Show the world you’re a real merchant dealing with real people.

Do you get tagged on Insta, Twitter, or Facebook by customers? If yes, then use it. Integrate a feed into your website under Customer Testimonials or Reviews page or, better yet, on a product page. If not, start asking. It never hurts to reach out to happy customers and ask for a review. Either way, check with your customers if they’re happy for you to use it.

Look at your shop analytics and find the best-selling items. If they have a good margin, even better. Promote best sellers as Featured products and put them on your homepage above the fold. Push them out on social media and sell the benefits to the customer.

FOMO, or Fear of Missing Out, is a very real thing. For better or worse. People don’t like to miss out on a deal or the latest hot thing. An easy way around this is to use Limited Edition or Only x Left. Encourage people to add the product to their basket and checkout before it's too late.
​
Urgency is another method. We’ve all seen the unavoidable countdown timer. The difference between a well-thought-out gift and a Lynx Gift set or socks. Order in the next xx hours to receive your item before Christmas or some such variation is a cliche, but it certainly is effective.

Nike, ASOS, and Apple are experts at selling benefits. It’s not about a product, it’s about how that product is going to improve your life, how it will enable you to run x times faster, impress your colleagues at the next work party, or reduce time spent on mundane tasks.

If you’re not emailing your registered customers, then you are missing a big trick. If you have the consent to contact them via email, then even a quarterly update could help increase conversions and bring customers back to your shop to check out your latest products. Spend time crafting the best email Subject line you can and keep the email copy clear and to the point with one great call to action.
​
The platform offers an in house email marketing service called Stor Broadcast. If you are interested in getting this set up, please get in touch with our Support team.

You could always reach out in other ways. Hubspot has 17 tricks to re-engage old customers, albeit more B2B than B2C, but, they’re a great place to start. We especially like the handwritten note, a novelty in the Social Media age.

Keeping customers informed at each stage of their purchase delivers a great customer experience (also known as CX). Think about how you would like to be kept in the know if you were a customer, then act on it. This can be time-consuming at each stage but is a really valuable self-audit of your business and its processes. Become less transactional and more relational.
​
Look at everything from the point of purchase to shipping, aftercare of items, and check backs. Request reviews to help improve your CX and products with follow-ups. Use mailers on future promos and sales that may be of interest to them. Building a long-term relationship with customers cements you as a brand into their minds. It builds trust. It builds loyalty. Ultimately, it builds repeat customers.

With an average abandoned cart rate of nearly 70%, can you really afford not to have an abandoned cart process in place? That’s not to say you shouldn’t be optimizing your cart to ensure the best checkout process possible. However, if you’re not sending a follow-up email to a customer if they abandon their order, then you are missing a trick.
​
Even a simple email sent up to 24 hours later with an, Oops, you left xx in the basket, is enough to nudge some customers back and complete their transaction. For others, the process may take longer or be a lost cause entirely. But, if you don’t ask, then you don’t get. So start asking.

Customers who come back to your shop are your greatest marketing avenue. The word-of-mouth referrals they can generate on top of the repeat sales they’re giving you are not something to be taken for granted. Utilise some type of reward for these repeat and/or loyal customers to ensure they continue buying from you.
​
Ken Blanchard’s Raving Fans book explains how to turn customers into brand fans. Written in an admittedly Americanised way, the salient points are a great starting point to building a loyal following worthy of Apple Inc.

Building a rapport with customers and actually asking them about their experience and expectations pushes the customer experience and buy-in to the next level. If a brand you love reached out to you specifically and asked what they could improve and then actioned your comments, how would you feel?
​
Outside the buying experience, you could ask customers or followers what they want from you content-wise. This is two-pronged. Firstly, you learn what your followers would like to see more of, which helps you build a content strategy going forward. Secondly, your followers feel valued and heard, both of which are great for building customer loyalty. This may work really well for some businesses and not so great for others. If you’re struggling to get responses back, then think about offering a voucher or discount code in exchange for completing a quick survey.

We all know the phrase about putting all of your eggs in one basket, and yet we still do it. Giving customers different payment options is important, for instance. It can reduce cart abandonment (average of 6% uplift) and offers a great contingency plan. What if, on the run-up to Christmas, your primary payment provider goes down? That means lost sales, annoyed customers, more support calls and chats, plus any reputational impact.
​
And, of course, if a customer is able to choose a payment method that they can simply log in to (PayPal, AmazonPay, etc.), then they’re likely to have a quicker checkout experience, all with the added benefit of not entering a bunch of personal information.

Optimising your product page can be anything from improving the product description, and improving product imagery to optimising the SEO aspects (e.g. titles, meta descriptions, keywords, etc.).
​
Remember that if you don’t have a brick-and-mortar shop, then your product page needs to inform the customer of the benefits and ultimately get the customer to add the item to their cart.

Video is the new hotness, and it’s unlikely to diminish anytime soon. Investing in video for your products aids everything else on your product page and can be as simple or as complicated as you (or your budget) can manage.
​
Alternatively, you could add a video review that an influencer or customer has done for you. Utilise any relevant source material that helps you sell the product to your customer. Make the video clear, concise and all about the benefits. This blog from Vimeo about Creating Killer Product Videos is a great place to start.

A study by ATG into global consumer trends found that 90% of customers said the Live Chat button gives them confidence. - SuperOffice
​
Any effort to inspire confidence in your brand is a boon to any serious e-commerce owner. Live chat is a super simple way to do just that. And, it doesn’t need to cost that much, if anything. With Facebook Chat and third-party apps like SmartsUpp in the mix, you can add some code to your site and be good to go in a matter of minutes.

Reviews can increase loyalty from existing customers and inspire trust in your brand and, therefore, your online shop. On top of that, reviews can benefit (when correctly set up) your shop’s SEO as well. That’s a win-win-win all around. ECN has a great article on the wider benefits and some interesting stats on this Benefits of Reviews in eCommerce post.

You’re standing in a line waiting to pay for your lunch. Around you are low-cost items like hair bands, batteries or chocolate bars. These up-sells are there for the impulse buyer. In essence, the shop owner is hinting that the chocolate bar in front of you would go really nice with that sandwich in your hand. Nudge nudge.
​
You can do the same with your online shop. Adding related items on product pages and upsell products at checkout creates an opportunity to increase the average spend without too much effort. Just ensure that the items you add are, in fact, complement the item being purchased.

It’s a horrendous cliche, but what are you offering that sets you apart from your competitors? The go-to response is better service, more personalised service, or some such. But it pays to look deeper. Is your product offering better, are the benefits wider, is your shipping quicker, do you have more useful content?
​
If you can add value to your potential customers in some way, then they’re more likely to convert over to you than your competitor. Of course, you then need to tell people why and how you’re different, ideally in a way that doesn't disparage your competitor.

Building a brand for your business is a big step and a lot of work. It takes time, planning and a fair amount of luck. Companies like Gymshark, Chubbies and Chilly’s Bottles, amongst others, are the new breed of brands that are building an engaged, eager and energetic customer base.
​
The success factors behind building a great brand are deep audience research and pushing quality content when and where it’s needed most. Definitely a long-term goal rather than a quick win here.

Logically omnichannel selling (i.e. selling products in different places and on different platforms) makes a lot of sense. You reach a different audience and, in the case of marketplaces, don’t have to pay for extra marketing on top of their fees or subscription. An ideal customer-centric approach allows new and existing customers to check out your products when and where they want to.
​
In practice, omnichannel selling can be time-consuming and, if you’re not careful, quite expensive. There are a multitude of third-party apps, SaaS products and integrations that will help the process, but it’s definitely worth investigating if you’ll see a good return on investment before jumping on the latest marketplace bandwagon. Veeqo has a brilliant article about Omnichannel selling which is definitely worth the read.

Content has been and will continue to be king. Whether this is Instagram posts, YouTube videos, blogs, news articles, podcasts, books or smoke signals. If you’re targeted and strategic in building and distributing your content to your (well-researched) audience, then organic growth is yours for the taking.
​
A Hubspot survey suggested that brands should aim for 11+ blogs per month for the best return on investment. That’s a high target for sure, but even if you’re blogging once a month with the target to grow that to 11+, then you’re on the right track. Just remember a content marketing strategy is a mid-to-long-term target for growth. Put in the time and produce quality content, and the impressions, clicks, and views will come.

Even if you’re selling purely online, taking a local approach can be beneficial. This could be as simple as putting up a Google My Business profile with a local address or could include taking out an advert in a local paper.
​
If you want to take it up a gear, then how about selling your products at a local weekend market or school fair? Local networking meetings can also be a good source of contacts and potential word-of-mouth sales. Expanding outside of the conventional realms of e-commerce can be risky but can also lead to some all-important sales and brand awareness.

SEO is a central part of doing anything online, if you want to be found, that is! Embracing this, at least to some degree, is a valuable use of time that may save you not only a fair chunk of change but also some missteps in the future. There are, for better or worse, hundreds if not thousands of resources about SEO and how to improve it, most of which are less than useful. But, some of them are worth their weight in gold. A few resources we highly recommend are Ahrefs' YouTube Channel, Search Engine Land and, of course, the famous Rand Fishkin, founder of Moz and general SEO guru.

In marketing circles, the phrase Always Be Testing is inherently drummed into everything we do or plan. The reasoning is that we can always do something slightly better next time, the whole marginal gains theory.
​
Does changing the Add to basket button colour from red to green actually increase conversion? Surprisingly, sometimes it does. That comes down more to the choice of the colour palette of your site and the button visibility as a whole rather than the colour of the button itself. However, it’s something else that can be changed and tested to eke out an extra percentage point towards conversion. Similarly, changing the page copy or any copy (product description, headline, etc.) can improve conversions by making it speak to your audience.
​
The reasoning behind any changes you make should be either based on solid data, audience research, buyer personas or strong educated guesses. Each change should be made in isolation and should include a control (i.e. some customers see the change whilst others see the original). Then using the data from the winner should be implemented across the board.
​
​A/B testing can be as little or vast as you want it to be. It should also come with a caveat, not everything can be solved by changing button colours. Some things can only be affected by a wider marketing strategy.

Key Performance Indicators are quantifiable goals used to check how your business is performing. As the saying goes, If you can’t measure it, you can’t improve it. KPIs for e-commerce stores could be:

Setting and tracking KPIs is useful as long as you can pull some actionable insights from them and then use the data to plan for the next test or update. Carve some time out of your week to set some S.M.A.R.T. KPIs and start tracking them early to build a good set of data.

Garbage in, garbage out is a central tenet of all things IT. Namely, if you’re putting rubbish data or code into a system, then it’s likely that you’re going to get rubbish data or results out again. Using good data that has been collected for a representative period of time from a suitable source is absolutely key to testing any hypothesis you may have to improve your online shop. Of course, you could blindly make changes, but can you guarantee that it improved your metrics? Probably not.
​
Data, however, can be overwhelming. Due to the systems we use, a lot of data is collected without us even thinking about it. So, again, take some time to narrow down what you want to concentrate on for the next week, fortnight, month, year. That focus will allow you to disregard other data that isn’t currently contributing toward your goals and targets. Set a schedule (and a calendar reminder if needed) to review the data regularly. Look at ‘if’ and - if possible - ‘why’ it’s improved or worsened.

Once you’ve tested your hypothesis to improve your SMART KPI, collected and reviewed the data, you can then decide on the next steps. Whether to roll the change out to everyone, adjust it and try again, or completely roll back to how it was before. There’s no harm in any of the options. Sometimes a test just doesn’t work. That’s not to say it never will, and it may be worth adding it to a “try again later” list and moving on to something else.
​
E-commerce, as with any business, is all about the grind to keep improving step by step or if you’re lucky, leap by leap. The excitement of hitting or exceeding your KPIs for a period, successfully rolling out a new feature or just receiving great customer reviews about your products feels great.

This list could easily have been 50 or 100 tactics to improve sales. But using some or all of these tactics will go some way to helping you on your journey to bring in more customers and hopefully more money. Use these as a springboard for the next idea, the next improvement and the next marketing plan.
​
Over to you.

If you have any queries about this, feel free to get in touch with our Support team on Live Chat or via email.