How to Improve Ecommerce Sales in 20 Steps

You will need a very well-thought-out strategy on how to increase sales in the ecommerce business.

The news is, according to Statista, the global ecommerce market is projected to reach $8 trillion in sales by as soon as the year 2027 [1]. In this year alone, over 2.71 billion people worldwide are expected to shop online, a significant increase from 2.37 billion people in 2020, further demonstrating the sector’s vast potential customer base [2].

Other strategy-defining stats for ecommerce for this year includes the following:

• Establishing a strong social media presence is an effective strategy for taking advantage of this rapid market growth. According to HubSpot, 87% of sellers find social selling more effective for their businesses [3]. This could be attributed to social media increasing a shop's discoverability online.
• In the United States, McKinsey reported a 19% increase in consumers moving to ecommerce channels in the year 2020 [4], with cart abandonment rates rising, showing an average of 70.19% of online shopping carts being abandoned, according to Baymard [5].
• In addition, mobile commerce is on the rise, with mobile purchases accounting for 44.2% of all ecommerce sales [6]. As such, WorldPay Global predicts that digital wallets like Apple Pay, Venmo, and PayPal will facilitate 52.5% of the value of online transactions in 2025 [7].

These facts and statistics highlight the need for a comprehensive ecommerce strategy. Let’s now discuss some of the approaches that show how to increase ecommerce sales by leveraging the growing online market, engaging effectively with customers, and driving sales in the ecommerce landscape.

A conversion rate (CR) is a digital marketing metric used to measure a website’s effectiveness in converting visitors into buyers. A conversion is a session that results in product acquisition.

It is especially useful for assessing a store's efficiency. Businesses use the conversion rate to optimize their marketing strategies and online presence. A low CR means that only a small fraction of visitors to your ecommerce store make a purchase.

The conversion rate is a percentage that represents the proportion of visitors who make a complete purchase out of the total number of people who engaged with the site in a given time period.

Here’s the formula used to calculate your conversion rate:

For example, let’s say you sent an email about your new product to 20,000 customers. If 500 clicked to pre-order out of these, then to find the conversion rate, you’d divide 500 by 20,000 to get a 2.5% conversion rate. This means that 2.5% of the people who received your email made the order.

Within ecommerce, the average conversion rate is benchmarked at 2-3 % and varies a little depending on the industry. This means that out of 100 people who click on your website, only 2 typically take the desired actions.

A low conversion rate signifies less engagement on your app or website. This could cause alarm because it might fade away if your business isn’t expanding.

A low conversion rate should be concerning, but it’s still important to analyze the context. Here are some red flags we watched out for through our ecommerce consulting services, as they indicate that your CR is not okay:

• High website traffic but low conversions: This disconnect shows that you can attract visitors without turning them into loyal customers. They might browse only out of curiosity, encounter irrelevant content, or find taking the next step difficult or confusing.
• Declining or stalled ecommerce sales: Even if your conversion rate is not at its worst, any flattening or dropping of online sales is worth investigating for leaks in your conversion funnel. You should find out whether your potential clients are exiting the process halfway through because of unexpected costs, unclear instructions, or lengthy forms, among other issues.
• Rising bounce rate: The bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who leave your site after viewing just one page. A high or rising bounce rate suggests that visitors are not finding what they’re looking for or your site is complex or confusing to navigate.
• Negative customer feedback: People who go through the conversion process but abandon it because of unclear steps or frustration may end up leaving a negative review. For you, such customers should be valuable insights into what exactly is hindering conversions.

Armed with our understanding of the conversion rate, we can leverage the ecommerce tips and tricks to increase its value. In this section, we review a range of tried and tested strategies on how to increase sales for ecommerce.

Cross-sales

Cross-selling encourages existing customers to buy products or services not directly related to the item they’ve just purchased. You can use it to display recommended services or products that other customers who bought the same item also purchased. So, it introduces your clients to complementary products.

Cross-selling is an effective way to drive ecommerce sales, build customer equity, and grow your ecommerce business. It will help differentiate your brand from competitors and enhance customer loyalty, deepening their attachment to your business.

Use email campaign

For ecommerce companies, emails are one of the most effective marketing channels and strategies. They offer a cheap and instant way of getting services and products to the customers’ screens, thus increasing the number of conversions.

An effective email campaign can help you attract customer engagement, generate large ecommerce sales volumes, and increase brand awareness. All these goals can be realized when the campaign yields high conversion rates.

To achieve this, consider using a fascinating subject line to increase open rates, personalizing the email, conveying a sense of scarcity or urgency, including strategic testimonials, and using a compelling call to action.

Create a list of top products

Show off the best things in your catalog, product pages or offering. By curating a list of top products, you can increase ecommerce sales through marketing techniques that increase your products’ perceived value.

Most online businesses label their products as bestsellers, and in their social media postings, they’ll often say things like “Finally back on the shelves.” Such techniques drive up online sales because a product that is in high demand is often regarded as of more value.

Another tip to increase ecommerce sales is putting your top-selling items on display. These products often get more attention online and have more customer reviews. The buzz they create serves as social proof, which helps inspire sales and aids in increasing online sales.

Make the website easy to use

Your site navigation should be simple and seamless. It should also be user-friendly and intuitive to increase usability, which nudges visitors to convert. Visitors come to your site with a specific goal in mind, and your task is to make it as easy as possible for them to find exactly what they’re looking for.

Your conversion rate optimization (CRO) strategies should aim to eliminate all sources of friction in customer experience and make it simple for visitors to understand the steps involved in buying from you.

Shorten your forms

A major reason potential customers don’t convert is the friction they encounter during the purchasing process. For example, if you require users to sign long forms first, they might hesitate to begin the process.

Your main task is to eliminate all sources of hesitation or doubt, not create them. Short forms will create trust among your users, and they will also take less time to fill out, thereby increasing their likelihood of completing them. Complete forms translate to higher conversion rates.

Run ads campaign

Invest your resources and time into targeted advertising campaigns across various channels to reach potential customers and drive traffic to your website. Strategically placing your ads can improve ecommerce sales, increase your visibility, and enhance conversions.

Start working with influencers

The ecommerce sector now understands that influencers have the power to make a significant difference.

Using influencer marketing can boost your conversion rate. 87% of online shoppers base their purchasing decisions on people they follow on social media platforms or those who influence them, that is, influencers [8].

To optimize your conversion rate through influencer marketing, you should build a brand story that influencers would love to share, gauge the dollar value of each influencer campaign post with predictive value, measure the campaign’s true reach, use discount codes, and let micro-influencers review your product and make them your brand evangelists.

Use social media

Social media should be an important part of your marketing strategy. Focus on your social media platforms because they will help to drive conversions. Your accounts can be an important source of referral traffic, and you can use them to drive brand awareness, gain valuable customer insights, and sell your products.

To improve your social media conversion rate, you should take practical steps such as building high-converting landing pages, working with relevant and credible influencers, and leveraging user-generated content for social proof.

You can also try shortening the buying journey with shoppable posts and creating persuasive social copy to entice buyers.

Create a money-back guarantee

There are numerous types of guarantees, such as money-back, satisfaction, and trial, and each serves a unique purpose and can affect your conversion rates differently. However, the money-back guarantee is perhaps the most straightforward type of guarantee.

Customers unsatisfied with a product or service can receive a full refund within a stipulated time frame. The money-back guarantee can prove especially effective in reducing potential customers' perceived risk, thus increasing conversion rates.

Therefore, you should create this guarantee, and if you do, emphasize that the customer can try the product without any risks. You should also specify the guarantee terms, including the time frame or associated limitations.

Easy shipping methods

Shopping cart abandonment gravely affects the conversion rates for most ecommerce store owners. This occurs mainly because potential customers see that the shipping costs are too high or the estimated delivery time may be too slow.

You need an effective shipping strategy to increase your ecommerce sales conversion rate. First, you could try incorporating free shipping. Statistics show that 73% of potential customers are more likely to complete their order if it includes free shipping [9].

It’s better to be safe, though. Baymard Institute research reveals that at least 48% of potential clients abandon their carts because the shipping costs may be too high [5]. You should make everything about shipping clear and easy to understand.

You could also offer a shipping threshold because promotions around shipping are an excellent way of encouraging shoppers to make more purchases, which will help you boost the conversion rate and increase your order value. If you come up with the best shipping options, market them and tell everyone about them.

Multiple ways to pay

Multiple payment options for your ecommerce platform will give rise to a resilient payment ecosystem that will benefit you and your existing customers. Processing transactions across digital wallets like Venmo, PayPal, and ApplePay will increase your conversion rate and deliver a more reliable and smoother customer experience.

Start upselling

Upselling in ecommerce means getting the customer to spend more money than planned during the sale process.

The upsell conversion rate, therefore, indicates the proportion of loyal customers who accept the offer to upgrade, purchase a higher-priced item, or add-on out of the total number of customers who were presented with the offer. This indicator is useful in evaluating the effectiveness of upselling techniques and strategies.

Upselling is a powerful ecommerce trick that can increase conversion rate, revenue, and customer value. To upsell successfully, use persuasive language and highlight the additional benefits the customer would get with more products or an upsell.

Use popups and banners on the website

When placing paid ads anywhere on the website, you should have two primary goals: increasing the conversion rate and reducing the cost per conversion. With these goals, you can develop ads and popup banners that contain lucrative content and prioritize user experience. The ads mustn’t be confused with other sections like navigation and menu.

One major problem with popups is that they can be annoying, but they convert, and that’s why they’re used. You must first determine whether they’re needed; using them should not interfere with the user experience.

They should also be responsive on all devices. Remove them if they’re irritating on mobile or slow down the loading time for mobile shoppers. Practicing these ecommerce tips will significantly improve your conversion rate.

A/B testing

A/B testing is also sometimes called bucket testing or split testing. It compares the performance of two options to determine which is more appealing to viewers or visitors. It tests a control (A) version against a variant (B) version to measure the more successful one based on certain key metrics.

In ecommerce, it’s not always easy to figure out what’s working and what’s not. You can use the A/B test to see what types of call-to-actions (CTAs), layout, copy, colors, and headlines work for your target audience.

Your experiments can be as creative as you want them to be. For instance, you can change your copy's format or test an entirely new CTA type.

Add reviews for the products

Use product reviews to build trust in your ecommerce store. There are numerous benefits of leveraging reviews for a higher conversion rate. If you’re not showing product reviews on your site, you should be because having at least 50 reviews per product could result in a 4.6% increase in your conversion rate [10].

Implement live chat

Implementing live chat support is a good way of increasing ecommerce sales for your ecommerce website. According to Forrester, consumers who use web chat are 2.8 times more likely to buy a product or service than those who do not, and they’ll also spend 60% more [11].

You can find live chat software programs online that use AI to streamline customer service. Some platforms integrate automated translation, offline forms, chatbots, and other helpful features.

Make attractive images

When learning how to drive ecommerce sales, don’t just tell your clients what you’re selling; show them! Having attractive images on your website will boost your conversion rate. When it comes to boosting ecommerce sales, focusing on benefits is more effective than placing your focus on features.

This fact should also be reflected in your images. So, if you sell products, include pictures of someone using and enjoying them. If your specialty is in services, visually show how much better off your customers are after using them. Use creative and attractive photos on your website, landing pages, social media, ads, or even with your emails.

Avoid having cheesy stock photos on your website. Yes, they are convenient and offer a wide range of imagery, but they do not convert very well. Sometimes, there might not be any discernible reason why some images convert better than others.

That is why it’s always a good idea to test multiple photos to gauge which ones get the best reaction from your audience.

Create 360 videos of products

Your customers never get hands-on experience with your product before purchasing, so you must provide them with as much realism as possible. This means taking photos and videos of products from multiple angles and 360-degree videos.

A study showed that a 360-degree video or image could have a 30% higher conversion rate than the ones that don’t. Videos taken from different angles will help your customers be more confident about purchasing your product.

Start a loyalty program

Consider starting a loyalty program. It can be an effective marketing tool that will incentivize customers to continue doing business with you, thus improving conversion rates. Such a program can take any form, from exclusive access to special discounts and promotions to reward point systems.

Loyalty programs impact conversion rates by encouraging repeat purchases, encouraging customers to spend more, and creating a sense of community and connection with customers.

So, if you want to know how to increase sales in ecommerce and boost CR for your business, you must first understand the basics of customer loyalty programs. Then, by knowing your customers, you can design a program that provides them with real value.

Provide excellent customer service

Excellent customer service is a powerful tool for building trust with current and potential customers and improving conversion rates. Make an extra effort to understand and meet your customer’s unique needs to create a positive customer experience that will drive your business’ success and set your brand apart.

Getting started on enhancing your conversion rate can seem like a daunting task, but we can make it much simpler. At EPAM, we offer you access to a full suite of ecommerce management services to optimize your operations and take your online presence to the next level.

We craft tailored ecommerce solutions leveraging data-driven insights to foster seamless online operations and optimize customer experience.

Our access to top professionals in ecommerce allows us to offer you the expert assistance you need to optimize and oversee the various aspects of an online store, from operations to online shopping experience.

So, when you want to know how to boost your ecommerce sales, come to us with what you want to achieve and get a free intro consultation.

With the projected vast growth of the global ecommerce market, there are plenty of opportunities for new businesses to enter the market. With such a large customer base, there will be an explosion in ecommerce businesses jockeying for a portion of that population.

To succeed in this competitive field of ecommerce stores, businesses must adopt a comprehensive ecommerce strategy. By leveraging social media, optimizing conversion rates, implementing effective marketing campaigns, and prioritizing customer experience, businesses can position themselves for success in the ecommerce world.

From cross-selling and email campaigns to optimizing website utility and implementing various customer retention programs, we have numerous ecommerce suggestions and strategies to increase ecommerce sales and drive growth.

At EPAM, we can get you started with an ecommerce audit to surface the insights we need to optimize your operation. Get in touch with us today for a free estimate!

1. Retail e-commerce sales worldwide from 2014 to 2027 [Statista]
2. Global Ecommerce Forecast & Growth Projections [Emarketer]
3. Why Social Shopping Could be the Future of E-Commerce [Hubspot]
4. Five traps to avoid: The long game of DTC and e-commerce [McKinsey]
5. 49 Cart Abandonment Rate Statistics 2024 [Baymard]
6. The Future of Mobile Shopping and How to Optimize Your Site [Shopify]
7. The Global Payments Report [WorldPay]
8. The Influencer Marketing Statistics You Need to Know [Social Media Today]
9. 22 Free Shipping Statistics to Help Skyrocket Your Business in 2024 [SaveMyCent]
10. Online Reviews Can Impact The Conversion Rate Of Your Online Store & Website [FatBit]
11. Retailers Without Chat: A Missed Opportunity [Forrester]