With the changing buyer behaviors and increasing competitors, e-commerce stores are always evolving. That’s especially true today that many brick-and-mortar stores have shifted online to continue selling amid the threat of the coronavirus pandemic. But making your online shop stand out shouldn’t be costly. With the right strategies and a bit of creativity, you can boost your sales and thrive in these trying times.
Attract buyers with content marketing
The word “content” has been thrown around lately, with many YouTubers and bloggers using it to describe the work that they do. You can ride on the trend by launching a simple content marketing campaign for your Shopify store. Start with writing a few blogs that mention your brand or product (with a link to your website) and offer these blogs to magazine sites for publishing. If you’re not good at writing, you can partner with magazine sites and bloggers and ask them to create articles or infographics that showcase or mention your brand. You can pay them at a reasonable price or work out a good ex-deal.
The same goes for vloggers and influencers who create video content. Collaborate with them by showing them the value or unique selling point of your shop and let them freely create a sponsored video. You can even give their viewers a special discount coupon to entice them to visit your Shopify store after watching the latest episode from their favorite vlogger. Just make sure to find vloggers who match your branding.
Be transparent about shipping
Once you’ve mastered how to attract buyers, the next step is to engage them while they’re browsing and persuade them to check out their cart before leaving your website. You can achieve that through snappy content, high-quality product images, easy-to-navigate pages, and enticing calls-to-action. Another way to make sure visitors don’t abandon their cart is to be transparent about shipping rates and processes.
It can be frustrating for customers to find the product they want, add it to cart, and find out a hefty additional shipping cost. Sure, online buyers expect paying for shipping when ordering a product. But they can get easily discouraged when their expectations aren’t met once they are at the check-out page.
It’s best to be transparent about shipping. One easy way to do this is to integrate a shipping API program into your Shopify store. The shipping rate will automatically display, depending on the buyer’s preferred courier. Some APIs also make it easier for buyers to collect necessary shipping information.
Use the thank-you page to upsell
Want your buyers to make additional purchases without making too much work? Maximize the thank-you page to upsell. Once a customer has completed a purchase, they are still in that buying-mode. They are likely to make additional purchases as long as you offer them the right products without a hard sell. So other than showing your gratitude, use the thank-you page to upsell or recommend other products.
You can integrate an app to ensure the products that will show up on the thank-you page are related or complementary to the products that a customer just ordered. Think of how Netflix recommends another hilarious American series after you binge-watch Brooklyn Nine-Nine or The Good Place.
The e-commerce industry has become saturated. But this doesn’t mean it no longer makes sense to compete in the digital world—you just have to be smarter about running your Shopify store today.
